When AJ Pollock went down with a Grade 2 right hamstring strain in early September, it wasn’t entirely clear that he would be available to the Dodgers for the postseason, let alone remain as productive as he’d been. Fortunately for Los Angeles, the 33-year-old left fielder made a quick return, hit reassuringly well over the season’s final days — .300/.389/.867 (214 wRC+) in 36 plate appearances post-injury — and is well-positioned to help pick up the slack for the injured Max Muncy, who dislocated his left elbow on the final day of the regular season. In Game 2 of the Division Series against the Giants on Saturday night, the Dodgers’ left fielder played a key role in all three of their rallies.

Pollock, who had taken a pair of 0-for-3s in the NL Wild Card game and the Division Series opener, first made an impact upon Game 2 as part of a move that backfired on the Giants. With two outs and Chris Taylor on second base in the second inning, he got ahead of Kevin Gausman 2-0 by laying off a 95-mph fastball just below the strike zone and then an 85-mph splitter low and away. Rather than challenge him in the zone and risk a big hit, the Giants elected to intentionally walk Pollock, who was batting eighth, to bring up pitcher Julio Urías, a decent hitter who made the Giants pay by driving in the Dodgers’ first run of the series with an RBI single. Pollock took third and then scored on Mookie Betts‘ single.

In the sixth, Cody Bellinger’s bases-loaded, two-run double off reliever Dominic Leone — who taken over for Gausman and made an inauspicious entry by walking Taylor — extended the Dodgers’ lead to 4-1. On Leone’s very next pitch, a slider right on the outside corner, Pollock reached out and lashed it to left field for another two-run double:

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Most sports fans likely would’ve guessed that the weirdest thing they would see Sunday had already occurred. Hapless NFL kickers, a bizarre ground rule double, and an unlikely walk-off home run had peppered the first two-thirds of the day. Then the Astros and White Sox combined to score fifteen runs during the first four innings of their Game 3 tilt in Chicago, with an epic and somewhat controversial crescendo packed into a wild 90 minutes at a boisterous Guaranteed Rate Field.

Dylan Cease blazed through the top of the first inning, which ended with an emphatic 100-mph fastball blown past Alex Bregman. After that moment, the game became a grinding, roller coaster affair, with several haymakers thrown over the next few innings, culminating in a five-run third and three-run fourth for the White Sox, respectively the largest and the decisive blow in their 12–6 victory to keep the season alive for a Game 4 on Monday.

Chicago chipped away immediately as part of a high-stress first inning for Astros starter Luis Garcia, who was constantly blowing into his pitching hand as if he were cold. Turns out, he was. A Tim Anderson leadoff single would eventually score via an Eloy Jiménez knock to center field, but there were signs of danger beyond that. Garcia fell behind hitters, got away with a grooved 2–0 fastball to José Abreu, and watched Yasmani Grandal crush a ball into foul territory, as all three outs he got in the first were put in play at 95 mph or above. The White Sox only got one run out of it, but the 25-pitch first inning for Garcia, lasting nearly 30 minutes, was a portent of doom for Houston.

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BOSTON — It’s a shame that one team had to lose. In a game that will go down as a postseason classic, the Boston Red Sox walked off the Tampa Bay Rays, 6–4, on a 13th-inning home run by Christian Vázquez to win Game 3 of the ALDS and take a 2–1 series lead.

Now, on to what transpired.

The eventful first inning epitomized modern-era baseball. Red Sox right-hander Nathan Eovaldi fanned three Rays batters in the top half but also gave up an Austin Meadows home run — a 406-foot shot off the back wall of the visiting bullpen — that followed a Wander Franco single. In the bottom half, Rays right-hander Drew Rasmussen was taken deep by Kyle Schwarber — this one at 390 feet — but then fanned Rafael Devers after giving up a 104.8-mph single off the Green Monster by Enrique Hernández.

Eight batters into the game, we had four strikeouts, two home runs, and a pair of singles, one of which would have been a double in 29 other ballparks. Moreover, all four batted balls were hit with triple-digit exit velocity. Again, modern-era baseball: whiffs, dingers, and Statcast readings to measure it all. A three-strikeout, one-walk top of the second only added to the three-true-outcome mix. Read the rest of this entry »

Meg Rowley and guest co-host Mike Ferrin of MLB Network Radio discuss his recent trip to Monument Valley before recapping the weekend’s ALDS and NLDS action and looking ahead to what might come next, including thoughts on the Giants’ approach to platooning, Cody Bellinger‘s season-long slump, AJ Pollock‘s past postseason woes, the Brewers offense, Eduardo Escobar, Milwaukee’s bullpen, Atlanta’s starters, Houston’s bats, Craig Kimbrel‘s role, Wander Franco, the Rays’ young starters, J.D. Martinez and Kiké Hernández providing thump in Boston’s lineup, and Alex Cora’s strategy to contain Tampa’s offense. Then Meg and Mike listener emails on spitting, the strike zone, a robo ump compromise, a creative proposal to score series rather than games, and rookies adjusting to the big leagues. Plus, a Statblast/Meet a Major Leaguer combo on player debuts versus and for the Kansas City Royals. Read the rest of this entry »

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Baseball lends itself to stories, October baseball perhaps most of all. During the regular season, a team’s narrative can unfurl slowly. The postseason, by contrast, is marked by the frantic crowning of heroes and chokers. Subplots abound, and the identity of the game’s central character isn’t always clear until the late innings.

After losing to the San Francisco Giants, 4–0, in Game 1 of the NLDS, the Los Angeles Dodgers hoped to even the series on Saturday. The Giants, for their part, were looking to push the Dodgers to the edge of elimination. In the process, the two teams told three different tales.

The Hero’s Journey, Deferred
If you had told the Giants in June that Kevin Gausman would be starting Game 2 of the NLDS, they would have been thrilled. Heading into the All-Star break, he had posted a 1.73 ERA and a 2.57 FIP, led by a four-seam fastball that finishes batters high and a devilish splitter that wipes them out low and is among the best in the game.

But after a scintillating first half, Gausman faltered. He posted a 4.42 ERA and a 3.65 FIP. His splitter had less sink. He tinkered with his pitch mix, toying with throwing more sliders and what Pitch Info classifies as changeups, though not to particularly great effect. The final month of the season suggested a course correction, though not quite a return to form, an assessment seemingly shared by Gabe Kapler when he tapped Logan Webb to start Game 1 of the series.

And for the first few innings of Saturday’s game, you could see why. Gausman threw first-pitch balls to three of the first four batters he faced. In the second, Chris Taylor doubled. After a Cody Bellinger strikeout, Gausman fell behind AJ Pollock, 2–0, and Kapler opted to put him on intentionally to get to Julio Urías. But the pitcher and his .203 season average slapped a hanging splitter for a single, scoring Taylor; Mookie Betts followed with an RBI single of his own (his third hit this series and fifth this postseason).

It looked like Gausman’s night might end half an inning later, as Kapler almost pinch hit Tommy La Stella for his starter when San Francisco threatened after a Wilmer Flores walk and a Brandon Crawford single. Ultimately, though, he thought better of it when a Donovan Solano sacrifice fly plated a run and pushed the Giants to two outs, and Gausman rewarded that faith by settling down and retiring the next nine batters he faced. It seemed like it might be the sort of start that, provided the Giants rallied, would be described as gritty — not dominant, but necessary in the march to the World Series.

Then the sixth inning hit.

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In what might be the most-thrilling play we’ll see all October, Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Randy Arozarena successfully executed a straight steal of home in Game One of the ALDS. Moments later, I shared the following on Twitter:

“Instead of calmly throwing a ball right down the middle for strike three to end the inning, Taylor panicked.”

Journalist friend Bruce Schoenfeld responded as follows:

“That is exactly right. I kept waiting for the announcers to say it. I wrote a [Sports Illustrated] piece on straight steals of home & talked to every active player who’d done it. They agreed that nobody should ever try with two out and two strikes, All the pitcher has to do is throw a strike.”

In other words, Arozarena’s theft could have been nullified.

I checked with a rules expert to make sure Bruce and I weren’t mistaken. According to Chris Welsh — a former big-league pitcher and current Cincinnati Reds radio and TV analyst who runs the website Baseball Rules Academy — we had it right. Had Red Sox reliever Josh Taylor simply remained on the rubber and thrown a pitch that landed in strike zone, the batter would have been out and the inning would have been over. Instead, he made the mistake of stepping off, thereby making himself a fielder and not a pitcher. His hurried heave toward home plate wasn’t nearly in time.

Again, there were two outs and two strikes on the batter. Read the rest of this entry »

For both the Braves and Brewers, postseason success shares a similar blueprint: length from the starters, timely hits from the lineup, hope for the best with the bullpen (albeit at different times). Milwaukee executed that to perfection in Game 1 of this NLDS; in Game 2, it was Atlanta’s turn, with the Braves drawing the series even with a 3–0 win.

The difference on Saturday was Max Fried, who out-dueled Brandon Woodruff with six shutout innings, striking out nine against just three hits and zero walks. The lefty needed only 81 pitches to record his 18 outs before giving way to three relievers, who dodged plenty of trouble but managed to secure the final three frames with no damage. Like Corbin Burnes in Game 1, Fried didn’t so much beat opposing batters as brush them aside; Willy Adames was the lone Brewer to make it as far as second base against him on a sixth-inning double. Most of his outing was whiffs and soft contact, with Adames’ double the only ball in play he allowed to crack the 100 mph exit velocity mark. At-bats and innings were over in flashes.

The explanation for Fried’s success is simple: He threw strikes. Of his 81 pitches, 58 were in the zone, a 71.6% rate, which he pounded with his four-seamer — humming in at 95 mph on average — before busting out his slider and curve to finish things. Not normally a big swing-and-miss pitcher, he racked up a dozen whiffs on the day, six on the slider, to go with a CSW (called strikes + whiffs) rate of 40%; of his nine strikeouts, seven were swinging. By the time the middle innings rolled around, he’d found a groove: The final 10 Brewers hitters he faced all started their at-bats with a strike, and just two of them reached base. Read the rest of this entry »