Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller break down the latest ALCS and NLCS action, touching on the Cardinals’ offensive outage, Mike Shildt’s old-school managing, the Nationals’ pitching, the Astros’ purported pitch-tipping and sign-stealing, Aaron Boone’s quick hooks, and the de-juiced ball, plus a Stat Blast about this October’s anomalous bullpen usage.

Audio intro: Neil Young, "Wolf Moon"
Audio outro: The Flaming Lips, "Hit Me Like You Did the First Time"

Link to story on Paxton’s pitch-tipping in April
Link to story on Paxton’s latest purported pitch-tipping
Link to post on pitcher usage and the home run rate
Link to story on Correa’s home run dedication
Link to order The MVP Machine

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With the Nationals, it’s always the damn bullpen. Over the past eight seasons, that unit has provided the franchise with more embarrassment and grief than relief, from Drew Storen‘s ninth-inning meltdown against the Cardinals in Game 5 of the 2012 Division Series to manager Matt Williams‘ passivity in the late innings of Game 4 of the 2014 Division Series against the Giants, to Jonathan Papelbon‘s attempt to choke Bryce Harper near the end of the 2015 season, to the ongoing fiasco of the past two years, including Trevor Rosenthal’s reach for infinity. Washington’s bullpen ranked among the majors’ very worst this year, and while its overall numbers in the postseason aren’t pretty, some stellar high-leverage work has helped the team advance further than ever, winning the Wild Card game over the Brewers, defeating the Dodgers in the Division Series, and taking the first two games of the NLCS from the higher-seeded Cardinals in St. Louis.

Indeed, while the headline-grabbing no-hit bids of Aníbal Sánchez and Max Scherzer are the primary reason for that 2-0 lead, the unit with the 6.04 ERA thus far in October — third-worst among the 10 postseason teams, ahead of only the now bygone Twins (9.00) and Dodgers (6.75) — has come around lately. In winning their past four games, the Nationals’ relievers have allowed just one run and five baserunners (four hits, one hit-by-pitch) while striking out eight in 9.1 innings. Driven by a combined seven innings from Sean Doolittle and Daniel Hudson in that span, that small-sample stinginess probably can’t be maintained to the same degree over the remainder of October, but it’s a refreshing rebound given the bullpen’s work over the first three games of the Division Series, when the group allowed five homers and a ghastly 14 runs in nine innings, even with one exhilarating inning from Scherzer in their NLDS Game 2 victory:

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s amazing how quickly a baseball game that has gone on for four hours and forty-nine minutes can end. On the first pitch of the bottom of the 11th inning — before the broadcast had even gotten a chance to fully cut away from its commercial break housekeeping — Carlos Correa ended Sunday night’s epic affair with a single swing.

It was a no-doubter right off the bat, and as Correa watched it fly, he pulled off one of the best postseason home-run celebrations we’ve yet seen. He walked down the line, bat parallel to the ground in his hand, before casting it aside; he cocked a hand to his ear, waiting for the cheers, daring any disapproval. Then, taking off down the bases, he pointed a finger upward, to all the fans leaping from their seats, before shooting his batting helmet into the waiting arms of his teammates, gathered around home plate to greet him.

One has to go on quite a journey to reach a point of such inspired triumph, and Game 2 certainly provided such a journey. Far from the one-sidedness of Game 1, Game 2 saw the Yankees and the Astros exchanging narrow leads before spending five innings knotted in a 2-2 tie. While the Yankees’ bats and the individual performance of Masahiro Tanaka shared the spotlight in Game 1, it was pitching on both sides that took center stage for most of Game 2 — though the two teams constructed their dominant performances in rather different ways.

In the early going, the game looked like it could easily get out of hand for the Yankees. Starter James Paxton walked George Springer to lead off the bottom of the first, which, unfortunately for him, turned out to be a harbinger of command issues to come. Paxton never seemed comfortable; there was some speculation that he was tipping pitches, or that the Astros were stealing signs. Whatever the cause, it didn’t take long for the Astros to jump on him. A single from Alex Bregman, a walk from Yordan Alvarez, and a double from Correa in the bottom of the second gave the Astros an early 1-0 lead. After Michael Brantley and José Altuve reached on back-to-back singles with one out in the bottom of the third, Aaron Boone went to his bullpen. Any hope of length out of Paxton was dashed early. Read the rest of this entry »

In a matchup between the two best lineups in baseball, you don’t expect to see a pitching duel. In a matchup between the team with the best starting rotation in baseball and the team with the best bullpen in baseball, you don’t expect to see many runs scored. This series was hard to characterize before it started, but last night’s Game 1 of the ALCS between the Astros and the Yankees felt neither like a pitching duel nor a shootout; it felt like a regular season game between two mismatched opponents, the last thing we expected from this much-anticipated series.

Soon enough, the games will be dominated by high velocity and overpowering four-seam fastballs. Justin Verlander and James Paxton face off today, followed by Gerrit Cole and Luis Severino. The flames the broadcast shows on the score bug for the fastest fastballs will get a workout. But yesterday, we got the kitchen sink; Zack Greinke, who sometimes throws his fastball more slowly than his changeup, took on Masahiro Tanaka, who pitches off of his slider and threw the fifth-lowest rate of fastballs among all starters.

Tanaka stuck with the blueprint that has served him well throughout his time in the majors; an even split of sliders, splitters, and fastballs. The slider was on point all night, and it’s a good thing; all eight of the swinging strikes he generated came on sliders, and it also got more called strikes than any other pitch.

Now, eight swinging strikes isn’t an overpowering amount; Tanaka struck out only four batters. Even with the deadened postseason baseball, allowing that much contact is no way to live for a pitcher. How did Tanaka make it work? He controlled the count to great effect. He allowed 13 balls in play, and exactly one of them came with the batter ahead in the count (a pop up off the bat of Kyle Tucker). Read the rest of this entry »

Two spring trainings ago I was at the Padres complex in Peoria, Arizona, chatting with Dave Cameron. The longtime FanGraphs frontman had recently joined the NL West club as an analyst, and he had a suggestion. “You should talk to Rowan Wick,” Cameron said of the non-roster invitee whom San Diego had claimed off waivers the previous month. “He’s a good story.”

Indeed he was. Wick entered pro ball as a catcher in 2012, converted to the mound in 2015, and possessed what was later described to me as “one of the shortest, quickest arms I’ve ever seen.” He’d had yet to throw a pitch in the big leagues.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to Wick before departing Arizona, but I remembered Cameron’s suggestion when I returned to the Cactus League this past spring. The right-hander — now with eight-and-a-third MLB innings on his resume — was in camp with the Cubs, a long shot to make the team. A full year after having the bug put in my ear, I wrote about the 26-year-old hurler from North Vancouver, British Columbia.

He proceeded to outperform all expectations. The bulk of his big-league action coming since mid-June, Wick logged a 2.43 ERA and a 2.82 FIP in 31 games out of the Chicago bullpen. Those weren’t even his most-impressive numbers. Opposing hitters slashed a paltry .183/.295/.233 against his overpowering arsenal — one which included a retooled secondary offering.

Wick pointed to just that when asked to explain his breakout campaign. Read the rest of this entry »

After getting shut down by Aníbal Sánchez, the Cardinals offense would get no respite with Max Scherzer taking the mound for Game 2 of the NLCS. Scherzer hadn’t been himself for much of August and September coming off a stint on the Injured List with back problems, but his last start against the Dodgers provided a hint that he was getting closer to normal. Against Los Angeles in Game 4 of the NLDS, Scherzer gave up four hits and three walks, striking out seven and allowing just one run, a Justin Turner homer in the first. Scherzer left no doubt that he was back against the Cardinals, shutting down the club’s offense and putting together a no-hitter through six innings. Adam Wainwright attempted to counter Scherzer, and offered his home crowd a vintage performance. It was the second straight very good postseason performance from Wainwright that ended with a Cardinals’ loss, and as the teams head to Washington, the Nationals do so with a huge advantage.

Scherzer was on from the beginning, striking out three in the first inning. He would strike out another seven before the Cardinals got their first hit, a Paul Goldschmidt single to lead off the seventh. A punch out of Marcell Ozuna and a groundball double play off the bat of Yadier Molina ended the “threat.” That would be Scherzer’s last inning, as there were signs he was wearing down. After his recent run of disappointing play (disappointing, of course, only relative to his usual greatness), his velocity in the postseason has been encouraging. After averaging 94.9 mph on his fastball during the regular season, Scherzer’s three playoffs appearances have seen his velocity move up to 96.3 mph on average. Before his start, he attributed the increased velocity to playoff adrenaline and finally moving past his injury.

[I]t’s just adrenaline in the moment, especially the Wild Card, when it’s a do-or-die it’s literally every pitch, you got one game to decide everything going into it. And I was on seven days’ rest going into that. So, yeah, that’s just the product of playing in the postseason sometimes. So I feel healthy, feel great, really recovered off of these injuries that I had in the middle of the year and made the progression back kind of all the way through September to get to this point where I really feel good about myself and what I can do with the baseball.

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8:05

Jay Jaffe: Hello folks, and welcome to the FanGraphs ALCS Game 1 chat. I’ll be joined by Dan Szymborski shortly and we’ll get this thing up to speed. For the moment, here’s my ALCS preview: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/postseason-preview-new-york-yankees-vs-hou… And here’s Dan’s ZiPS-driven game-by-game odds. https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds/post-season-zips?seas…

8:10

Jay Jaffe: I’m hesitant to call any single game outside of an elimination game a must-win, but obviously, the Yankees’ road to four wins is more difficult if they lose tonight, and the likelihood that they can beat both Verlander AND Cole in back-to-back games would mean that they’re almost certainly playing from behind.

8:12	Jay Jaffe: Thanks, it’s good to be here. I previewed this series and I’ll be covering the New York leg of the series on-site, so I thought it would be worth chatting during it as well. Emma and I are home watching baseball anyway

8:13	Dan Szymborski: Good evening!

Read the rest of this entry »