Watching Mookie Betts on a daily basis makes it difficult to understand how his teams ever lose, though they did in Game 2 of the World Series on Wednesday night, in part because the Rays kept him in check. The 28-year-old right fielder is one of the game’s top hitters, but his contributions are hardly confined to the batter’s box, and during this postseason — as it’s been throughout his seven-year major league career — he has amply illustrated just how well-rounded his game is.

In Tuesday’s World Series-opening 8-3 victory, Betts put on a show with his baserunning, that after working a five-pitch leadoff walk against a flagging Tyler Glasnow to start the fifth inning. The Rays had just trimmed the Dodgers’ lead to 2-1, so when Betts stole second and then third base — the latter at the front end of a double steal with Corey Seager, who also walked — and then scored on a fielder’s choice thanks to a great secondary lead and a well-executed slide, it was a big deal.

Betts’ journey around the bases not only produced a run without the benefit of a base hit, it effectively tossed an anvil to Glasnow as he was trying to keep his head above water. “At that point, he was kinda not in the zone as much,” Betts told MLB Network’s Greg Amsinger afterwards. “So I knew he was going to try and slow up and get back in the zone, and I was able to take advantage of it.” Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2020-21 free-agent market.

This year, we’ve added a few new features to the ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor-league contract, or won’t receive one at all. We’ve elected to show averages from the 2017-2019 seasons so that this year’s shortened slate doesn’t skew the numbers, but we’ve also included 2020 stats as a point of recent reference. 2020 salary figures represent players’ pre-pandemic contract amounts. Statistics are prorated to full season where noted; the projected WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2021 Steamer600 projections.

Below are ballots for nine of this year’s free agents — in this case, another group of relievers. Read the rest of this entry »

Prior to Game 2 of the World Series, there was little ambiguity about how Brandon Lowe’s 2020 postseason had gone. He was dreadful, owning a .107/.180/.161 slash line over 61 plate appearances with just one home run. To say the least, Tampa Bay had expected more from him — with 2.3 WAR in the regular season, he was the Rays’ most valuable player, in addition to leading the team in a host of offensive categories. His manager, Kevin Cash, continued not only to play him every day, but position him prominently at the top of the lineup. But with one disappointing series after another, he was quickly running out of time to make a positive impact.

Mercifully, that extended slump fell by the wayside on Wednesday. Lowe homered twice and drove in three runs against Dodgers pitchers, as the Rays defeated Los Angeles 6-4 and knotted the series up at a game apiece. The two sides will take a day off before reconvening Friday, with Los Angeles right-hander Walker Buehler scheduled to face Tampa Bay righty Charlie Morton.

Wednesday’s tilt had a dramatically different feel from the previous evening’s Game 1, when the Dodgers rode a dominant starting pitching performance and an offensive surge in the middle innings to an impressive victory. Los Angeles tapped right-handed rookie Tony Gonsolin as its Game 2 starter, just two days after he’d thrown two innings in a relief appearance during Game 7 of the NLCS. The decision to use Gonsolin, as opposed to Buehler on three days rest, was a signal that the Dodgers were comfortable relying upon their relievers to throw a large chunk of Game 2 — it was just unclear when we’d see them. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rays made it to the World Series for a lot of reasons, but one of them is indisputably their bullpen, which has given Kevin Cash the flexibility to pull starters whenever he wants and follow them with an unending stream of hard-to-hit relievers. Cash, in turn, has used it masterfully; he’s pushed the right button at seemingly every turn. Last night, I think that might have changed.

In the top of the fifth inning, Tyler Glasnow couldn’t find the zone. He walked the first two batters he faced, allowed two runs (on a fielder’s choice that didn’t get anyone and a single), and generally looked gassed. Cash went to his reserves and brought in Ryan Yarbrough.

That sounds like a reasonable usage choice, but it’s simply not how Yarbrough is deployed most of the time. Here are the particulars of his previous playoff appearances this year:

Okay, there have only been two of them, but he’s been used as either a starter or a bulk guy in both. He throws a near-starter number of pitches and faces a small sliver of the lineup a third time through. That’s similar to his usage this regular season:

Mostly starts, with a few relief appearances thrown in. It’s not unreasonable that the Rays might want to turn him into more of a reliever in the World Series, the only round of the playoffs with off days, but 19 pitches? Four batters faced? The last time he faced four or fewer batters in the regular season was July 13, 2018. He had two short appearances to only one extended stint in last year’s ALDS, but that was part of a gambit to use a true bullpen game (Diego Castillo drew a start) with Yarbrough handling two innings, then use him as a LOOGY in two other games.

Yarbrough is essentially a starter. We had him penciled in for Game 4 of the World Series, something which would be tricky now; that would be on three days’ rest, and while he only threw 19 pitches, it’s still a disruption to his routine. The Rays still could use him there, but I think that game is now more likely to be a bullpen game with perhaps two innings out of Yarbrough. Glasnow, Snell, and Morton would then each draw two starts to fill out the full complement of seven games. Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2020-21 free-agent market.

This year, we’ve added a few new features to the ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor-league contract, or won’t receive one at all. We’ve elected to show averages from the 2017-2019 seasons so that this year’s shortened slate doesn’t skew the numbers, but we’ve also included 2020 stats as a point of recent reference. 2020 salary figures represent players’ pre-pandemic contract amounts. Statistics are prorated to full season where noted; the projected WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2021 Steamer600 projections.

Below are ballots for eight of this year’s free agents — in this case, a collection of relievers. Read the rest of this entry »

Tom House and Dusty Baker go way back. They were Atlanta Braves teammates from 1971-1975, and before that they roomed together in the minor leagues. Their bond remains as strong as ever. Just last week the Houston Astros manager tapped into the renowned pitching guru’s expertise — albeit for reasons you might not expect. Baker consulted with House because his second baseman was battling a serious case of the yips.

“We kind of have this troubleshooting thing,” divulged House, who is often referred to as the father of modern pitching mechanics. “When Dusty runs across something he’s not quite sure about, or if I have a question about something that I don’t have access to… we’ve maintained a pretty solid communication relationship since way back when.”

What’s shared between the old friends follows the Vegas Rule, but while anything Jose Altuve specific would thus remain in-house, an overview of the phenomenon qualifies as fair game. I asked what causes a player to suddenly not be able to throw a baseball with any degree of accuracy.

“It’s when the conscious mind and the subconscious mind have a disconnect,” explained House, who has a Ph.D. in sports psychology. “Basically, it’s what they call a double-bind — you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Your brain won’t allow your arm to throw properly, because it doesn’t want to suffer the consequences of throwing the ball. It happens with catchers all the time. Steve Sax is famous because he couldn’t throw from second base. With golf, it’s putting the ball into the hole.”

Interestingly, an attack of the yips — or, as House prefers to call them “the creature” — rarely inflicts duffers. Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2020-21 free-agent market.

This year, we’ve added a few new features to the ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor-league contract, or won’t receive one at all. We’ve elected to show averages from the 2017-2019 seasons so that this year’s shortened slate doesn’t skew the numbers, but we’ve also included 2020 stats as a point of recent reference. 2020 salary figures represent players’ pre-pandemic contract amounts. Statistics are prorated to full season where noted; the projected WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2021 Steamer600 projections.

Below are ballots for 10 of this year’s free agents — in this case, a collection of outfielders. A quick note on Marcell Ozuna – Steamer600 references our existing depth charts for positional playing time (and adjustments). If his WAR projection strikes you as a bit low, it could be because it assumes that he’ll be used mostly at DH, as he was by the Braves. Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight as the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays face off in Game 2 of the World Series, the FanGraphs crew will be watching along on our Twitch channel, and you’re invited.

Ben Clemens and Eric Longenhagen will be joined by Meg Rowley and Paul Sporer as they chat with readers and each other throughout the game. As usual, there are no tickets, fees, or asterisks, just us watching the baseball game together via the World Wide Web and welcoming you, our readers, to join us. So tune in to the game tonight and then find us here, on the FanGraphs main page, or over on our Twitch page, and bring snacks. We hope to see you then! Read the rest of this entry »

On the opening night of the 2020 World Series, a puzzled nation watched a flagging starter get lit up as he passed the 100-pitch mark and asked, “Why are they leaving that guy in there? He’s cooked!” To the relief of Dodgers fans, the subject in question wasn’t Clayton Kershaw. The three-time Cy Young winner with the rocky postseason record pitched at the top of his game on Tuesday night, dominating the Rays while the Dodgers lineup waited out opposite number Tyler Glasnow and erupted for eight runs in the middle innings. The Dodgers cruised to an 8-3 victory.

Kershaw’s three previous starts of this postseason had offered a classic case of diminishing returns. After spinning eight innings of three-hit shutout ball while striking out a career postseason-high 13 Brewers in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series, he allowed three runs in six innings in Game 2 of the Division Series against the Padres, the last two via back-to-back solo homers by Manny Machado and Eric Hosmer as they faced Kershaw for the third time. In his NLCS Game 4 start against the Braves, which had been pushed back two days due to back spasms, Kershaw allowed just one run and four hits over the first five innings and 61 pitches, but when the lineup turned over, the dangerous Ronald Acuña Jr., Freddie Freeman, and Marcell Ozuna all reached base — the last two via balls hit at 105 mph or higher — opening the floodgates to a seven-run inning in what became a 10-2 rout.

From the Dodgers’ side, this outing was hardly as fraught. While Kershaw allowed two of the first three Rays he faced to reach base via a Yandy Díaz single and a Randy Arozarena walk, he struck out Hunter Renfroe on a curveball in the dirt — his only swing and miss from among his 20 first-inning pitches — and made a good defensive play on a Manuel Margot dribbler to escape. That began a run of 13 straight Rays retired; he didn’t need more than 14 pitches in any of his other five innings, and three times needed 11 or fewer. His 92.5 mph first-inning fastball velocity boded well; it was just 0.1 off his season high, set in that Wild Card Series start, and matched his Division Series start. By comparison, he was at a season-low 90.7 mph in the first inning of his NLCS start. Read the rest of this entry »