OAKLAND — Major league baseball is a game played by some of the best athletes on the planet, bankrolled by billionaires and broadcast by megacorporations worldwide. This year, despite the global shuttering of the economy, the show went on; it’s a big business, for players and ownership alike. It’s still a game though, and in today’s elimination game between the White Sox and A’s, that mattered more than anything else.

Empty stadiums don’t exactly invoke a playoff vibe. There were perhaps 100 spectators for today’s game, mostly team personnel and media. The first two games had been dominated, to my ears at least, by a group of boisterous White Sox staffers sitting in the stands behind the visiting dugout. Oakland staffers countered today — 20 or so stood at windows perched above the outfield and cheered on the A’s.

If you’ve ever been to a particularly important Little League game, you can roughly imagine the sounds. “Let’s go Mike!!!” screamed an A’s staffer after leadoff hitter Tim Anderson swung through a changeup to make the count 0-2. “Good eye TA!” countered Chicago’s crew, after Anderson took the next pitch for a ball.

Through the pointed cheering floated incongruous crowd noises, generic bursts of voice and applause that seemed only tangentially related to the action on the field. A swell of noise punctuated a Jake Lamb pop out, roughly the same volume and tempo as the reaction for a Tommy La Stella single (sure) and a Khris Davis foul ball (huh?). That generic roar is the sound of baseball as imagined by a TV executive, but the two dueling groups of team personnel screaming personalized encouragement did far more to emphasize the enormity of the moment.

If the atmosphere felt vaguely like Little League, the actual game did nothing to dispel the feeling. Both the White Sox and A’s go roughly two deep on healthy and effective starters. Astute observers will note that this is the third game of the series, which means both teams went with the tried-and-true “whatever’s left” strategy. Mike Fiers started for the A’s and barely escaped the first inning unscathed, with the Oakland bullpen already stirring in left field. Read the rest of this entry »

Cincinnati is named for Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a patrician of the early Roman Republic, and a historical figure to whom a few legendary tales have been attributed. The story goes that Cincinnatus was called into duty, exercised absolute authority as dictator, then gave up his power and went home quietly. If postseason baseball can serve as an homage, the baseball team representing his namesake city got the “quietly” part of it right at least.

The Braves completed their two-game sweep of the Reds in convincing fashion on Thursday afternoon, winning 5-0 and advancing to the National League Division Series to face the winner of the Marlins and Cubs. Luis Castillo wasn’t quite as sharp as Trevor Bauer was in his Game 1 masterpiece, but he threw effectively for 5 1/3 innings, striking out seven and allowing just a single run.

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Thanks to 2020’s 16-team postseason format, the Brewers hold the dubious record of being the first playoff team in baseball history not to spend a single day of the season above the .500 mark. That unfortunate track record continued Wednesday night as the Brewers dropped the opening game of their three-game Wild Card matchup against baseball’s winningest team, the Los Angeles Dodgers. En route to a 4-2 loss, 15 Brewers faced a strike three and a sad trudge back to the dugout.

While the Brewers were never favored entering this series — or in any of its game if you fancy the ZiPS Postseason Odds — a few nasty surprises before first pitch soured their odds even further. The team had originally reshuffled the rotation to try to line up a possible Game 1 start for Corbin Burnes, who put up a 2.04 FIP, 2.4 WAR campaign, qualifying for the ERA title by a single out (he would have finished fourth). Unfortunately for the Brew Crew, an oblique issue scratched Burnes from the Wild Card roster and likely the postseason. Joining Burnes yesterday was Devin Williams, out with an unspecified shoulder injury.

Already down two of their most important pitchers, the Brewers turned to Brent Suter to start Game 1. Their other option was starting Brandon Woodruff on short rest, but coming off a 108-pitch win against the Cardinals (the most pitches he’s thrown in the majors), he was instead held back for Game 2. Suter has extensive experience as a starter, but the Brewers have generally been cautious with him since his return from a 2018 Tommy John surgery, not letting him hit the 60-pitch mark in any start. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a scene Cleveland baseball fans are familiar with. At the height of the team’s contention window — when Corey Kluber, Trevor Bauer and Mike Clevinger all led the pitching staff, LeBron James could visit the luxury boxes from down the road, and Francisco Lindor and José Ramírez were a couple of dazzling kids to dream on — this kind of drama had unfolded many times. The starter would get himself into trouble earlier than the team had hoped, and force manager Terry Francona to call on the bullpen to either sustain or revive the season. Many times, it worked out. Andrew Miller or some power right-hander would take the mound and coolly stop the opposition in its tracks, and everything would turn out OK.

Relieving starting pitcher Carlos Carrasco with the bases loaded against the New York Yankees on Wednesday, however, James Karinchak couldn’t provide a heroic moment. Nor could rookie Triston McKenzie in the sixth, or veteran Brad Hand in the ninth. There were simply too many good takes, too many well-timed swings, too many damn good hitters in that damn Yankees lineup, pummeling Cleveland’s world-renowned pitching staff for a second-straight night to win Game 2 of the best-of-three AL Wild Card series. New York advances to face No. 1 seed Tampa Bay in the ALDS, which begins on Monday.

Karinchak’s difficult bases-loaded, no-outs assignment came in the fourth inning, with Cleveland ahead 4-1. Carrasco had flummoxed Yankee hitters his first time through the lineup, striking out six while allowing just one walk and a solo dinger to Giancarlo Stanton. But his effectiveness abruptly vanished in the fourth. Aaron Hicks led off with a shot up the middle that was woefully misread by Cleveland center fielder Delino DeShields, who initially charged in on the ball only to panic as he saw it soar over his head. Hicks legged out a triple, after which Carrasco issued back-to-back walks to Luke Voit and Stanton to load the bases. Read the rest of this entry »

In a perfect world for the San Diego Padres — or even a still-imperfect, slightly better world — Dinelson Lamet would have been on the mound in Game 1 of their Wild Card Series against the Cardinals. In that better world, Mike Clevinger would have been waiting in the wings for a Game 2. But that’s not the world that the Padres got. Instead, Lamet and Clevinger, both injured, were left off the series roster; Chris Paddack was the hastily-announced starter for the series opener. And without their two best pitchers, the Padres find themselves already staring down elimination after a grueling 7-4 loss in Game 1 that took nearly four hours and saw each team use more than six pitchers.

From the first batter of the game, the Cardinals lineup — which ranked 19th in wRC+ and is coming off one of the most brutal stretches of non-stop baseball that we’ve ever seen — was all over Paddack. It’s been a tough sophomore season for the 24-year-old, largely due to the ineffectiveness of his fastball: What was, in his rookie season, a strength of his repertoire has been a weakness in 2020, with decreased movement and poor command resulting in a lot of hard contact. Paddack was one of baseball’s hardest-hit pitchers this year, and today the damage against him started almost immediately. After a leadoff popup off the bat of Kolten Wong, five consecutive hits — single, home run, double, single, double — put the Cardinals ahead 3-0. A sacrifice fly made the score 4-0 before Kwang Hyun Kim had faced a single batter. Three out of those five hits had exit velocities above 100 mph, including the home run crushed off the bat of Paul Goldschmidt. Read the rest of this entry »

Postseason baseball is supposed to be nonsense, a combination of drama and chaos that results in the best laid plans and prognostications of men and metrics being ruined with ease. Every now and then though, you get a game or series that plays out on the field the way it should on paper. Such was the case in Tampa, where the No. 1 seed Rays did as everyone expected and swept the eighth-seeded Blue Jays out of the way with a comfortable 8–2 win in Game 2 to advance to the Division Series.

There was a chance, before things began, that the scrappy young Jays could maybe steal one off the Rays and force things to a winner-take-all Game 3. But the deck was arranged so heavily in Tampa’s favor that those odds were low from the start and plunged as it went on. The Rays had a better and more flexible lineup. They had a better rotation. They had a better and deeper bullpen. They had a better defense that was always in the right spot at the right time. They had home field advantage (for whatever that’s worth when the official attendance is just the few dozen Rays employees and team family members who were sitting in an otherwise empty Tropicana Field). Toronto’s best selling point was that anything can and often does happen in a short series, and the Rays snuffed that out so quickly that, by the time the third inning of Game 2 rolled around, it was hard to see how anyone at all had talked themselves into a Jays upset.

The best hope Toronto had was the man on the mound, left-hander Hyun-jin Ryu. After excelling in his first regular season with the Blue Jays, the rock of the rotation had been pushed to Game 2 to get him some extra rest. That decision didn’t work out. With his team’s season on the line, Ryu needed 25 pitches to get through the first inning, in which he loaded the bases with none out and somehow allowed only a single run. He couldn’t escape his doom in the second, however. A Kevin Kiermaier single and a Mike Zunino homer made it 3–0. Six batters later, with the bases again loaded, Hunter Renfroe lofted a high cutter into the left-field corner for a grand slam. Just like that, it was 7–0 Rays. Ryu’s day was done, and so were the Blue Jays. Read the rest of this entry »

The Minnesota Twins’ postseason losing streak reached 18 games Wednesday afternoon after a 3-1 defeat at the hands of the Houston Astros. They haven’t won a postseason game since 2004 and haven’t won a postseason series since 2002. Yesterday, it was poor defense that led to their loss; today it was a total lack of punch from their bats. Four Astros pitchers — Jose Urquidy, Brooks Raley, Cristian Javier, and Ryan Pressly — combined to hold Minnesota to just three hits and a single run.

For the Astros, their two-game sweep is a little bit of vindication after entering the playoffs with the worst regular season record amongst the American League field — not to mention the lingering skepticism from their sign-stealing scandal. Houston’s bats didn’t carry the load; rather, it was the injury-wracked pitching staff that got them through this short series. A day after Zack Greinke and Framber Valdez shut down the Twins offense, Urquidy and three relievers were just as strong in the series clinching game.

The game started off much like yesterday’s did. The Twins loaded the bases in the first inning but couldn’t push a run across. After throwing 26 pitches in the first, Urquidy settled in and cruised through the next three innings. He allowed just three hard hit batted balls, all of which came in the fourth inning but amounted to a harmless single. He relied heavily on his fastball, throwing it 64% of the time on Wednesday, 10 points higher than his season average. It was a little surprising to see so many heaters from him since his changeup is so good and the Twins had six left-handed batters in their lineup. But the game plan seemed to be focused on fastballs up in the zone and it was extremely effective: He generated six whiffs and seven fly ball outs with his four-seamer.

The Astros scored their first run of the game in the fourth on a seeing-eye single off the bat of Kyle Tucker. Twins starter José Berríos had looked like he was in complete control through three innings but walked two straight batters with two outs and paid for that lapse in command with a run. Read the rest of this entry »

OAKLAND — Chris Bassitt spent the month of September on the best streak of his life. In four regular season starts, he allowed exactly one run, a Joey Gallo homer. That works out to a 0.34 ERA, but it was far more than that: it won Bassitt Pitcher of the Month honors and essentially guaranteed him a start in the playoffs.

Why wasn’t more made of Bassitt’s September? Because it looked, well, like Chris Bassitt pitching. He struck out 24.8% of his opponents while walking 4.8%. His 12.4% swinging strike rate barely cracked the top 20 starters on the month. He turned those middling stats into dominance by stranding 100% of the runners he allowed to reach base. He also put up a stellar 3.7% HR/FB mark; hit the ball in the air against Bassitt, and it simply went nowhere.

The A’s know that, but they also knew something else: good luck in September or not, unsustainable sequencing or not, Bassitt is their second-best starting pitcher at the moment. With their backs against the wall, they turned to him to keep their season going — and he put the White Sox to sleep in much the same way he befuddled batters all September.

This wasn’t Lucas Giolito overwhelming the A’s the day before, or Trevor Bauer and Max Fried throwing matching gems today. It was ugly but effective in the same way that Bassitt’s September was: an inch off the barrel here, an escape from a jam there, and pretty soon, baby you’ve got a good start going.
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The Miami Marlins haven’t had a winning season since 2009, and coming into the year, there was every reason to think that the club’s playoff drought would eventually extend into a second decade. But with an expanded field, key contributions from rookies, and unexpectedly solid play around the infield, Miami slipped past the velvet ropes for the first time in 17 years.

Amusingly, the Marlins are the only franchise in baseball to never lose a playoff series. After a 5-1 victory in Game 1 of the Wild Card round, they’re just one win from extending their perfect record.

The importance of any one playoff game underscores how differently most of us watch them than regular season fare. Granular events — a single at-bat, a pitch even — take on much more resonance. In the regular season, a failure to execute in the early innings will be forgotten minutes later. Watching closely though, you recognize how missed opportunities shape a game every bit as much as the highlights shown on SportsCenter. Viewed under the microscope, baseball becomes a game of chances taken and chances missed.

For the Marlins, the early part of the game was dominated by the latter. Take Garrett Cooper’s at-bat in the fourth. With one out and a runner on third, Cooper had a great opportunity to plate the game’s first run. On a windy day, against a pitcher with below-average strikeout numbers, this was an opportunity to hunt for a ball he could hit in the air. Instead, he swung at the first pitch and grounded to third. Jesús Aguilar couldn’t advance, and was ultimately stranded after another ground out.

An inning later, the Marlins spurned another chance. With two on and nobody out, light-hitting Chad Wallach was ordered to bunt. The run expectancy table suggests swinging away is the better option here, but it’s very close, and given Wallach’s weak bat and the quality of his opponent, the bunt seemed like a reasonable option. He couldn’t get it down though, and eventually tapped into a rally-killing double play. Read the rest of this entry »

Our preview of the Braves-Reds series, which ran yesterday, closed with the following words:

“This one looks fun, and it should ultimately come down to which team pitches best.”

This afternoon’s Game 1 neither proved nor disproved that prediction. In a matchup of two National League Cy Young contenders, both pitching staffs flat out shoved. Trevor Bauer and Max Fried combined to go 14 2/3 scoreless — with 17 strikeouts and no walks, no less — and the relievers that followed them to the mound were every bit as good. In the end, Atlanta prevailed 1-0 on a walk-off single by Freddie Freeman off Amir Garrett in the 13th inning.

Both teams came out swinging. Three pitches into the game, the Reds had runners on the corners, courtesy of base knocks by Nick Senzel and Nick Castellanos. The aggression-fueled early scoring opportunity went for naught. Fried proceeded to record three outs on six pitches, with an Eugenio Suárez liner to short sandwiched between a pair of harmless ground balls. Read the rest of this entry »