NEW YORK – One day before taking the mound at Yankee Stadium for the most important game of his life, Garrett Crochet sat in the visitor’s dugout with Alex Cora. A few members of the front office were out in the bullpen, and Cora told his ace that it’d be fun to give them a call.
“Tomorrow you are going to make one call to the bullpen,” Crochet said. “Maybe two,” the manager responded.
But the 26-year-old lefty was adamant. One pitching change, with Aroldis Chapman closing things out, was all it would take for the Red Sox to beat the Yankees in Game 1 of the best-of-three AL Wild Card Series.
So, naturally, that’s exactly what happened. Crochet dominated the best offense in baseball across 7 2/3 innings. He allowed one run, four hits, no walks, and struck out 11 before he was finally pulled after 117 pitches, the most he’d ever thrown in the majors. Cora called on Chapman, who secured a four-out save and a 3-1 Boston win. Read the rest of this entry »
Wrigley Field and its patrons are accustomed to day baseball, as the club still honors its once electricity-free history by playing Friday home games in the afternoon rather than at night. And so despite having not hosted playoff baseball since 2020 (and a playoff win since 2017), the scene on Wild Card Tuesday, a day that saw Chicago bathed in gorgeously clear fall light while still enjoying lovely late-summer temperatures, was a familiar one, as the Cubs dispatched the visiting Padres 3-1 in a brisk Game 1. The afternoon’s action was headlined by back-to-back home runs by Seiya Suzuki and Carson Kelly, as well as the perfect 4 2/3 innings worked by the Chicago bullpen.
Much like ABC’s broadcast, both offenses struggled to make sustained noise (was anyone else’s volume constantly fluctuating?) in this game. The teams combined for just 10 total hits, and the Cubs didn’t have a single hit with a runner in scoring position all afternoon. Under the hood, it was the Padres who made more frequent, high-quality contact, even though they managed just four hits. San Diego was responsible for 14 of the game’s 21 hard-hit (95 mph or more off the bat) balls in play, many of which were struck right at Cubs defenders. Read the rest of this entry »
The first game of the 2025 postseason played out exactly as scripted, plus or minus a few crazy bounces. In the Wild Card series between the Tigers and the Guardians, the aces looked like aces and the offenses looked, well, inoffensive.
Tarik Skubal, who will be picking up his second straight Cy Young in a month or so, carved up the Guardians to the tune of one (barely) earned run over 7 2/3 innings. Gavin Williams, who put up a 3.06 ERA and allowed just six runs over his final five regular season starts, returned the favor, allowing two unearned runs over six innings and change. The two starters combined for 22 strikeouts, with 14 of them coming from Skubal, who earned the win and gave Detroit a 1-0 series lead. Read the rest of this entry »
As somebody who watched almost every single Anthony Volpe defensive play this year, I can confidently say that for a lot of the season, he didn’t look comfortable attacking the ball. What I mean by that is this: In his couple of steps right before fielding the ball, he didn’t look like he was moving in rhythm. He led the AL with 19 errors, 13 of which came while throwing.
Last season, he was one of the best defenders in the sport. What he lacks in top-end athleticism and arm strength he made up for with supreme footwork, instincts, and pace. He doesn’t have the luxury of a rocket arm, making all those features even more important. This season, the quality of his footwork around the ball was inconsistent and led to mistakes on plays he made consistently through the first two seasons of his career, both with his glove and the accuracy of his arm.
Some of Volpe’s defensive woes could be related to his health. He played through what was later revealed to be a partially torn labrum in his left shoulder, an injury that occurred on May 3, when he felt a pop in the joint while diving for a ball against the Rays. He finally received a cortisone shot to address the injury on September 10, more than four months later. Only three of his 19 errors came before he hurt his shoulder, and he didn’t make an error in his 12 games after returning to the field from the shot. Although the injury wasn’t to his throwing arm, it still could have affected his throws. Shortstops use their left arm as a stabilizer to lead them in the correct direction while throwing. Think of the basic mechanics you’re taught as a kid: Point your glove at the target, step at the target, then throw the ball. If your non-throwing shoulder is hurt, you may not be able to use it to properly begin the mechanics for an accurate throw. Many times, shortstops are fielding the ball while moving and don’t have time to plant their feet and step directly toward first base before releasing the ball. In these instances when the lower half of the body is neutralized some, it’s even more important to have a healthy non-throwing arm to direct the ball. That’s especially true for shortstops like Volpe who don’t have strong throwing arms and rely on a quick release to compensate. There’s no way to know how much the shoulder was bothering him, but that is likely how it would have hindered his play.
If the shot did the trick, and if the shoulder truly was the primary cause for Volpe’s poor fielding, then the Yankees should be in a much better position entering the postseason, when making one play could mean the difference between advancing and getting eliminated. He’ll be at shortstop tonight at 6:08 p.m. ET, when the Yankees host the Red Sox in Game 1 of the best-of-three AL Wild Card Series at Yankee Stadium.
With all that in mind, let’s break down Volpe’s defensive season to get an understanding of what went wrong and how, maybe, it could all be going right again at the most important time of the year. Read the rest of this entry »
David Laurila: I’ve seen each of the Guardians and Tigers in-person six times this month, so I have a decent feel for this series.
1:06
David Laurila: And despite their records over the past month, I favor the visiting team in this series — unless the Tigers don’t win with Skubal on the mound.
1:08
Pocket Pancakes: Favorite pitching matchup today?
1:08
David Laurila: Crochet-Fried, but Skubal-Williams is close. Gavin Williams is really good.
After the last four playoff spots were decided during a wild final weekend of the regular season, the postseason is finally upon us. The 12-team field features a number of ballclubs that were playing their best baseball down the stretch in September, plus a few teams that backed into the playoffs in the midst of some worrying slumps. But the slate is wiped clean in October, and anything can happen in the postseason. Here’s a look at the 12 playoff teams and how they stack up against each other.
Last year, we revamped our power rankings using a modified Elo rating system. If you’re familiar with chess rankings or FiveThirtyEight’s defunct sports section, you’ll know that Elo is an elegant solution that measures teams’ relative strength and is very reactive to recent performance. Since we’ve reached the postseason, I’ve removed the playoff odds weighting to our raw Elo calculations and presented the teams in the tiers below based on our odds of them winning the World Series. If you’re curious about how your team finished in the standard regular season power rankings, the full table can be found at the bottom of this article. Read the rest of this entry »
After a thrilling end to the regular season that saw the final NL Wild Card spot and both the AL East and Central division crowns come down to the last day, the postseason is here. The field features returning powerhouses, upstart challengers, and many of the game’s brightest stars. And while the bracket’s top seeds could be poised for deep runs, a lot can happen in a short series. That makes it difficult to predict how October will unfold, but 25 of our writers from FanGraphs and RotoGraphs did their best.
Below are our predictions by league and round, as well as each writer’s full forecast (those tables are sortable). You can find our playoff odds here and the ZiPS postseason game-by-game odds here. Happy playoffs! Read the rest of this entry »
The Cleveland Guardians are playing postseason baseball for the seventh time in the past 10 seasons, and it’s not because of a prolific offense. The low-budget AL Central club doesn’t score a high number of runs, but neither do its opponents. The Guardians allowed the third fewest runs in the junior circuit this year, and only the Houston Astros have been stingier over the past decade. Cleveland’s reputation as a pitching factory is well-earned.
How do Guardians hurlers view the organization’s pitching group, which is fronted at the big league level by pitching coach Carl Willis and includes assistants Brad Goldberg and Joe Torres, as well as bullpen coach Caleb Longshore? I recently asked that question to a quartet of Cleveland pitchers, three of whom are on the current staff, and another who was on the team prior to this summer’s trade deadline.
Before we hear their thoughts, though, it makes sense to touch on the 26-year-old right-hander who is slated to take the mound in this afternoon’s Wild Card Series opener against the Detroit Tigers. I didn’t talk to Gavin Williams about the Guardians pitching group, but I did ask him how his game has grown since we first spoke two years ago. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about their plans for playoff livestreams and an MLB attendance announcement, then recap the highlights of the last weekend of the regular season and discuss what excites them about the playoffs. Along the way, they rank the collapses of the Astros, Tigers, and Mets and banter about trade-deadline do-overs, playoff-clinching walk-offs, Game 162 incentives, whether tiebreakers are fairer than tiebreaker games, a smart save by a first-base coach, the scariest October teams relative to the regular season, the AL wild card matchups, two Alex Cora quotes, the potential for first-time champions, and more, plus follow-ups.
For the third time in the past eight seasons, and the sixth time since 1999, one of the game’s most storied rivalries has spilled over into the playoffs. In the matchup of the top two AL Wild Card seeds, the Yankees (94-68) host the Red Sox (89-73) for a best-of-three series at Yankee Stadium. Though they won 11 of their last 12 to erase a five-game lead in the AL East by the Blue Jays, the Yankees lost their season series tiebreaker to Toronto, 8-5, bumping them into the Wild Card round, making their road to return to the World Series that much harder.
The Red Sox have taken the past three postseason matchups between the two clubs, most recently beating the Yankees in the 2021 AL Wild Card Game at Fenway Park and before that the 2018 Division Series. You have to dial back to 2003 for the last time the Yankees defeated the Red Sox in October — with current manager Aaron Boone hitting a walk-off homer off Tim Wakefield to send New York to the World Series.
In terms of more recent and somewhat more relevant history, the Red Sox did win the season series, 9-4, and took seven out of nine at Yankee Stadium. That said, the Yankees won three of the final four games between the two teams. Read the rest of this entry »
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