The Padres and Dodgers submitted their rosters for the Division Series on Tuesday morning, a formality for most postseason series but one that this time around carried considerable intrigue. As was hinted by multiple reports in the 24 hours leading up to the deadline, the team has indeed included Mike Clevinger, who has pitched just one inning since September 13 due to issues with his biceps and elbow and who was left off the Wild Card Series roster, and furthermore, they have tabbed him to start Game 1. Dinelson Lamet, who similarly left his September 25 start with tightness in his biceps and missed the Wild Card Series, was not included.

To review: after throwing seven innings of two-hit shutout ball on September 13 against the Giants, Clevinger was scratched from his turn five days later against the Mariners due to soreness in his right biceps. After the team and the 29-year-old righty were reassured by a bullpen session on September 21, he started against the Angels two days later, and pitched a 1-2-3 first inning, striking out both David Fletcher and Mike Trout, but his velocity was down a bit, and he didn’t return for the second inning. The Padres said his biceps was bothering him again, and two days later, they revealed that he had been diagnosed with posterior elbow impingement (a side effect of inflammation) and given a cortisone shot.

Clevinger resumed playing catch on September 28 and then threw a 23-pitch bullpen session the next day, but was left off the Wild Card Series roster. After a higher-intensity bullpen session on Sunday, the Padres sounded notes of optimism that made their way into a handful of tweets suggesting he was likely to be added and to start Game 1. That is indeed the case. Read the rest of this entry »

Miguel Rojas has come a long way since signing with the Cincinnati Reds out of Venezuela in 2005. Six years removed from being acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers, the 31-year-old shortstop is the heart and soul of a Miami Marlins team that is playing in October for the first time since 2003. A plus defender, Rojas is coming off a season where he slashed .304/.392/.496 and put up a 142 wRC+.

His off-the-field presence is every bit as impactful as what he provides between the white lines. Equal parts engaging and cerebral, Rojas isn’t just a leader in the clubhouse — he’s the Marlins’ player representative. That respect is well-earned, and it’s also a subject well-worth addressing. This interview, which took place at the end of September, focuses on precisely that.

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David Laurila: You went from a 16-year-old kid in Venezuela to not only a big-league shortstop, but also your team’s player rep. What was that path like for you?

Miguel Rojas: “It was a long road, man. You become a professional baseball player — that’s what you want to do — and you want to be a complete professional. You want to cover every area, and for me one of those areas was learning a new culture in the United States. It was learning the language and being able to have relationships with guys from different parts of the world. That’s something I focused my attention on, early in my career, when I was with the Reds.

“I had an opportunity to be with a great organization — the Reds — and after seven years with them I went to the Dodgers, who are another great organization. Then I got traded here. So my path kind of helped me to become the player, and person, that I am right now. It’s not just the baseball player, or the starting shortstop, that I always envisioned [myself] to be… I always wanted to be a starting shortstop, but all of a sudden I began earning the respect from my teammates, and from the people who run the organization. I think that’s because I put the time in to get to know the people that I work with.” Read the rest of this entry »

As you’re probably aware, the Yankees took the first game of their ALDS series against Tampa Bay by a score of 9-3. A five-run ninth inning made a laugher out of what had been a very competitive game, one that had swung back and forth several times in the middle innings.

The ninth inning was not short on substance. The Yankees were up 4-3 at the outset of the frame, and rookie John Curtiss came in to keep things close. Instead, the Yankees walked three times and notched five hits. Giancarlo Stanton, finally healthy, put the finishing touches on the rally with a grand slam to center. All told, the Yankees spent more than half an hour at the plate. Things got so out of hand that Kevin Cash felt comfortable bringing Shane McClanahan in for his debut. For his part, McClanahan managed to record his first out and get tackled by Brandon Lowe while trying to field a grounder.

Although it’s nice to see Stanton healthy and smacking dingers again, I found New York’s execution against Blake Snell far more compelling than their late rally. Indeed, the beating they gave Tampa Bay’s ace looks representative of a scary new normal for this group, and reinforces the sense that the Yankees mighty lineup is peaking at the perfect time.

If you graded pitchers simply on the crispness and overall quality of their stuff, separate and apart from command, sequencing or anything else, Snell would have to be among the top five pitchers in baseball.

Aside from James Paxton, he’s just about the hardest throwing left-handed starter the game has ever seen. Nobody touches his slider, and hitters fare even worse against his curve. His change isn’t quite of the same caliber, but it still induces a whiff 15% of the time he throws the pitch, and it’s a very effective weapon against righties. Since his debut in 2016, no starter has allowed a lower contact rate than Snell. Read the rest of this entry »

With just a few weeks of the postseason left, it’s hard to believe that it has been almost eight months since the major league season was postponed. I’m sure that for all of us, these past eight months have felt like a lifetime.

Since March, we’ve been asking for your support and you’ve been there every step of the way. Things looked pretty grim when I published my first update on the state of the site as we grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic, but we’re still here and that’s entirely thanks to you. We are so grateful to have such supportive readers.

For the last fifteen years, our small staff’s dedication and love of baseball have allowed us to punch above our weight in the baseball media space despite a tight operating budget. But the revenue landscape for FanGraphs has changed considerably, and once the postseason winds down, we’ll have five baseball-less months to bridge until the start of the 2021 season. And so I’m here to ask for your help once again. Even though our traffic has rebounded to within 10% of our normal August and September levels, our revenue has not, due in large part to the continued depression of online advertising rates. This has forced us to become considerably more reliant on Memberships to make up the difference.

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If you’d been asked, before this postseason, to name as many Astros relievers as you could, how many would you have rattled off before you had to stop? Many fans could probably recall Ryan Pressly, the closer with the high-spin curveball who’s been an integral part of Houston’s bullpen the last three seasons. Maybe Josh James is a familiar face if you’d paid enough attention, a young right-hander with a powerful fastball and questionable command who’s bounced between the rotation and bullpen.

After that, though, it’s likely a lot of blank stares and silence. The relief corps that the Astros turned to throughout the 2020 season was as anonymous as it was unexceptional. Houston’s bullpen ranked 16th in the majors in WAR and ERA and 18th in strikeout rate. By Win Probability Added, they were a miserable 26th. The only stat they were near the top of the league in was walk rate — 12.4%, second-highest in the league. None of that should have come as a surprise: The Astros lost two of their better relievers from 2019 in Will Harris and Joe Smith to free agency, then they saw closer Roberto Osuna throw all of 4.1 innings this year before blowing out his elbow.

The bullpen then became a carousel, spinning constantly as new bodies jumped on seemingly every day. Twenty-two different pitchers trotted out in relief for the Astros, most of them rookies, trying their best to fill what increasingly looked like a bottomless hole. Some of the names cycled through were downright Pynchon-esque: Cy Sneed, Nivaldo Rodriguez, Humberto Castellanos. Some players were barely there for a few days before disappearing while others stuck. And although the bullpen on the whole was never anything more than average, a few of those pitchers managed to secure a spot in Dusty Baker’s circle of trust. Read the rest of this entry »

4:01	Dan Szymborski: And I am here!

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Note: The Padres did indeed include Mike Clevinger on their roster, which was submitted on Tuesday morning, but not Dinelson Lamet. For more on the impact of both teams’ rotation and roster decisions, please see here.

Despite some nail-biting moments in their respective Wild Card Series, the Dodgers swept the Brewers and the Padres outlasted the Cardinals to produce a Division Series matchup that just so happens to pit the National Leagues’s two best teams by both won-loss record (the Dodgers went 43-17, the Padres 37-23) and run differential (+136 for the former, +84 for the latter) against each other. In that regard, it’s a pity the two teams only get a best-of-five series to settle things instead of a best-of-seven. With MVP candidates Mookie Betts, Fernando Tatis Jr., and Manny Machado — not to mention past MVPs Cody Bellinger and Clayton Kershaw — and perhaps some future Cy Young candidates, this one has the potential to be as entertaining as any later-round series.

The Dodgers, after playing at a 116-win pace during the regular season — not necessarily the best omen, mind you — never trailed the Brewers during the Wild Card Series. They didn’t exactly run away with things in their 4-2 and 3-0 wins, but none of their pitchers had to work back-to-back days. The Padres, who played at a 100-win pace but lost starters Mike Clevinger and Dinelson Lamet to arm injuries during the final week of the season, won their first playoff series in 22 years, beating the Cardinals despite not getting more than 2.1 innings from a starting pitcher in any of the three games. They lost Game 1 and had to climb out of a four-run hole in the later innings of Game 2, but won the rubber match via a nine-pitcher shutout, an unprecedented postseason showing. Four of their pitchers worked all three games, though none threw more than three total innings.

During the regular season, the Dodgers beat the Padres in six out of 10 games, and outscored them 60-48. A single 11-2 win on August 13 — during which Chris Paddack was shellacked for six runs in three innings while Julio Urías pitched 6.1 strong innings — accounted for the lion’s share of that run differential.

Worth noting: this series will be played in the Globe Life Field, the brand new home of the Texas Rangers. It’s covered, and has artificial turf, and with outfield dimensions of 329′-372′-407′-374′-326′ from left to right, it’s shorter to the power allies but deeper to center field than its predecessor. It plays as a pitcher-friendly venue, and could help the more fly ball-oriented Padres staff more than the Dodgers. The 66 homers hit there this year ranked 22nd in the majors, so for all the power these two teams showed during the regular season, there may not be as many fireworks. Read the rest of this entry »

If Major League Baseball awarded MVP honors for the Wild Card Series, then Max Fried, Ian Anderson and the rest of a Braves pitching staff that held the Reds scoreless for 22 consecutive innings would have rightly claimed it, but Freddie Freeman played a significant role in the Braves’ advancement as well. In the bottom of the 13th inning of Game 1, more than four and a half hours into a scoreless standoff that set a postseason record, the 31-year-old first baseman’s single up the middle brought home Cristian Pache, his latest big hit in a season that for all of its brevity has been full of them.

Since the ballots have been cast, that hit won’t affect the voting, of course, but Freeman’s regular season performance has given him a shot at becoming the first first baseman to win an MVP award since Joey Votto in 2010. His performance was all the more amazing given that he tested positive for COVID-19 in early July, and feared for his own life as he battled high fevers. Thankfully, he not only recovered and regained his strength but did so in time to be in the Braves’ lineup on Opening Day. Remarkably, he played in all 60 games, one of 14 players to do so (not counting Starling Marte, who squeezed in 61 while being traded from the Diamondbacks to the Marlins). Freeman hit a sizzling .341/.462/.640, placing second in the National League in all three slash stats and wRC+ (187) behind Juan Soto, who played 13 fewer games due to his own COVID-19 battle.

Big hits? Freeman batted .423/.583/.885 in 72 plate appearances with runners in scoring position, good for a major league-best 264 wRC+ in that capacity. While he finished second in the NL behind teammate Marcell Ozuna in RBI (56 to 53), he led the majors in Win Probability Added (3.17), more than a full win ahead of the 10th-ranked Ozuna. Read the rest of this entry »

The National League East was stacked this year. The Braves were one of the best teams in the NL last year, the Nationals won the World Series, the Mets have talent, and the Phillies signed Zack Wheeler during the offseason. It’s no surprise, then, that two NL East teams are meeting in the NLDS. The Braves were again one of the best teams in the National League, and the Marlins… wait, sorry, the Marlins?!?

This preview isn’t a rehash of Miami’s remarkable regular season campaign. It’s about the five games that will be played to determine a spot in the NLCS. Both of these teams will come into the series rested and ready, at least to the extent that anyone is rested and ready at this point in the year. That doesn’t mean the regular season performance of both teams doesn’t matter, though, because it provides a window into both how these clubs are built and who is likely to win.

The Braves are built around a dynamic offense. Freddie Freeman is a leading candidate for NL MVP, and he may not even be the best hitter on his own team; Ronald Acuña Jr. has a solid claim to that crown. Acuña took a step forward this season, and he was already one of the brightest stars in the game. He added plate discipline and power, walking a career-high 18.8% of the time and clobbering 14 homers in just 202 plate appearances.

We’d be talking more about Acuña’s season if it weren’t for Freeman, who took his normal controlled aggression to a new level. He walked more often than he struck out for the first time in his career, batted a video-game-on-easy-mode .341/.462/.640, and had the underlying batted-ball metrics to back it up; a career-high barrel rate and hard hit rate were backed by a ludicrous 31.1% line drive rate. His 187 wRC+ was second only to Juan Soto’s 200 mark across all of baseball.

Behind Freeman and Acuña, the Braves have yet more pop. Marcell Ozuna is having a bounce-back season after two years of middling numbers for the Cardinals. Ozzie Albies is more than just a favorable contract; he’s also a solid hitter with above-average defense. Travis d’Arnaud, a castoff only a a year ago, hit a BABIP-aided .321/.386/.533 this year. Maybe you can’t count on d’Arnaud to keep that up, but the rest of the lineup — Austin Riley, Adam Duvall, Dansby Swanson, and even Nick Markakis — provides admirable depth to go along with the headliners.

The job of stopping the dynamic Atlanta offense will fall to a precocious Marlins pitching staff. Sixto Sánchez would be my choice for NL Rookie of the Year if I had a vote; he made only seven starts, but he immediately looked like he belonged. His four-seam fastball averaged 99 mph, a remarkable number for a starter even in velocity-mad 2020. His changeup and sinker were excellent as well; they combined to prevent opposing hitters from putting anything in the air, a key part of his phenomenal 0.69 HR/9 rate.

After Sánchez, Sandy Alcantara and Pablo López will both certainly make starts. Alcantara took a step forward this year after some inconsistent performances in 2018 and 2019. He set a career high in strikeout rate (excluding an 8.1 inning stint with the Cardinals in 2017), a career low in walk rate, a career high in groundball rate, and career lows in FIP, xFIP, and SIERA. Alcantara has always lived off of his fastball, and he’s throwing his sinker more than ever this year to good effect.

López is a clear third in the hierarchy at the moment, but he too gets a ton of grounders while still missing bats — his 24.6% strikeout rate this year doesn’t look like a fluke, as he got more chases and missed more bats than any of his previous major league seasons. After López, it gets dicey — Daniel Castano will probably make a start, and both José Ureña and Trevor Rogers are acceptable fifth starters.

Those starters would be well served to go deep into games, because Miami’s bullpen was abysmal this year. They looked excellent in two games against the Cubs, but Brandon Kintzler, Brad Boxberger, and friends were terrible on the year as a whole, and Braves batters hit .315/.395/.589 against them in 10 meetings this year, good for an 8.69 ERA and 6.65 FIP. The less the Marlins have to rely on their ‘pen, the better.

On balance, Atlanta has the edge when they’re batting. Their powerful lineup doesn’t need to win against Miami’s rotation, merely fight them to a draw and get to the bullpen. Most of the time, the playoffs would allow a more focused bullpen, minus the chaff, which might make Miami’s weakness less glaring. In their case, however, the entire bullpen is made up of chaff — only Yimi García pitched 15 or more innings with an above average xFIP or strikeout rate.

If the Marlins want to win, then, they’ll need to do it with generous contributions on the offensive side of the ball. This season, that production has come mainly from Miguel Rojas, Brian Anderson, and Garrett Cooper. Rojas, a glove-first shortstop who had never displayed much power before, cracked 10 doubles, a triple, and four homers in only 143 PA. Nothing in his batted ball data backs up the breakout, however, and even the Marlins don’t seem to believe it — he has batted seventh and eighth in their two playoff games.

Anderson, on the other hand, looks like the real deal. For a third straight season, he put up solid offensive numbers in relative obscurity. His only real shortcoming this year was a troubling uptick in swinging strike rate that ballooned his strikeout total, but he made up for it with more barrels and more power in general.

Cooper has flown under the radar in Miami, but he’s looked like a diamond in the rough this year; a bruising righty slugger who hits too many balls on the ground but makes up for it by spraying those grounders and making the most out of the balls he does hit in the air. He’s one of the rare hitters in baseball who doesn’t suffer against breaking balls; he does far more damage on contact against bendy stuff. That could pose a problem for any pitchers who like to spot in-zone breaking balls as a way to get ahead in the count.

Miami has some other hitters capable of hurting the Braves. Jesús Aguilar can still take mistakes out of the park and just posted the lowest strikeout rate of his career, albeit in only 216 PA. Matt Joyce still hits righties. Jon Berti provides league-average hitting and wow-he’s-fast speed. Corey Dickerson is a member of the Marlins.

One key question for Miami’s offense remains unanswered: what will become of Starling Marte? Marte was the team’s big deadline acquisition, likely the best offensive player on the team. He suffered a fractured pinkie when Dan Winkler hit him on the hand in Game 1 of the Wild Card series, and his availability is as of yet unknown. The Marlins played Magneuris Sierra in center field to replace Marte, a tough blow for an offense that was already short on difference-makers.

Atlanta has dealt with injury issues of their own; Mike Soroka and Cole Hamels, two of their top three starters, are both out for the year. Even pickled pepper picker Philip Pfeifer, a pitching prospect who was expected to be depth in case of injury, is out. That leaves Max Fried and Ian Anderson as the last two impact starters, with some combination of Kyle Wright, Huascar Ynoa, and maybe even Fried on three days’ rest to fill out the rest of the rotation.

The Braves didn’t allow a single run in their two games against the Reds, and while Fried and Anderson won’t get to pitch in every game of the NLDS, the bullpen will. Atlanta’s bullpen was excellent this year; Mark Melancon and Chris Martin led the way for a deep unit. Tyler Matzek, A.J. Minter, Shane Greene, and even Josh Tomlin all had excellent seasons. Will Smith was abysmal, but anyone can be abysmal in 16 innings — he struck out 29% of opposing batters but was victimized by a brutal 33.3% HR/FB; a full third of the fly balls he surrendered left the yard, and that probably won’t continue.

If the Braves are hoping to fight to a standstill against Marlins starters and then thrive against the bullpen, Miami needs to thread a trickier needle. They’ll be at a disadvantage against the high-octane parts of the Atlanta bullpen, and if Fried and Anderson are in late-season form, that’s no great shakes either. The latter part of the starting rotation is the best place to strike, but — curse you, math — it won’t come into play in the first two games of the series.

I’m not exactly going out on a limb here by saying that the Braves are heavily favored in this series. ZiPS sees Atlanta as 76.8% to win the series, about as lopsided as a five-game series can get. The Marlins have never lost a postseason series, as you might have heard once or 50 times during last week’s broadcasts, but they’ll need to pull off an upset against an opponent far more formidable than the Cubs to keep that streak going.

All four Division Series matchups pit division rivals against each other, but none have the same kind of recent history as the one between the Athletics and the Astros, their first ever meeting in the playoffs. These two teams have battled for the AL West crown the last three seasons, with Houston coming out on top in the two seasons prior before stumbling in this year’s shorter slate. That kind of familiarity and competition is a breeding ground for animosity. Tempers flared in early August when, after being hit by a pitch for the second time and a subsequent shouting match with Astros hitting coach Alex Cintron, Ramón Laureano charged the Astros dugout. On the other side, former Astro and current A’s starter Mike Fiers, the whistleblower who revealed the Astros’ illegal sign-stealing scheme during the offseason, has become a popular villain in Houston. There’s no love lost between these two clubs.

Houston dominated this matchup in 2018 and 2019, going a combined 23-15 against Oakland during those two seasons, the A’s worst record against an American League opponent during that period. They just couldn’t compete with the Astros’ high powered offense and elite pitching staff. But the A’s took advantage of Houston’s recent struggles to score and slew of diminished and injured arms to win seven of the 10 games these two teams played this year:

The Astros haven’t done much to put the concerns about their ability to score runs in the playoffs to rest. They scored just 3.8 runs per game in September and only pushed seven runs across against the Twins in their two game sweep in the Wild Card round; three of those runs came in the ninth inning of Game 1 after an inning ending ground out was botched on a bad throw to second by Jorge Polanco. Read the rest of this entry »