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!

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The beginning of the season was met with a juiced ball conspiracy; the end of the season has been greeted with more speculation about changes to the baseball. Jay Jaffe discussed whether the balls used in the playoffs are different from the homer-happy balls used all spring and summer. Rob Arthur presented research at Baseball Prospectus showing increased drag on balls used in the playoffs, and Ben Lindbergh has weighed in as well.

Ahead of the second game of the NLCS, I asked Cardinals manager Mike Shildt about a couple hard hit balls in the first game of the series, whether balls were carrying as far in October, and how it might impact his on-field decisions. He confirmed some of the suspicions about the dead ball.

I thought Ozuna got his ball, based on the sound, based on the swing. But clearly it didn’t get out. And you kind of realized then we were dealing with an evening where the ball wasn’t going to carry as much. I guess — I don’t guess, our front office analytical group is saying the ball’s not traveling at about a four-and-a-half foot difference. So I don’t know how that impacts what you do as far as your matchups or more inclined to throw a fly ball guy, I mean four-and-a-half feet is not overly significant, maybe gives us an opportunity to rob someone of a homer a little bit more. But I don’t think it really impacts how you make decisions. I don’t think it’s that much of a disparity in that to determine if you’re going to throw a guy a certain way or play a guy a certain way.

As to what was causing the drop in fly ball distance, Shildt refused to speculate:

I mean there’s probably all kind of different theories behind that that I won’t really get into. Just the fact of the matter, it could be any number of things. And again, small sample size. What we do with it is, it’s more of a fact than it is a bit of a tidbit than it is anything we’re going to really ultimately act upon. I don’t know whether it’s just our games or in total in postseason baseball or what have you. It’s not a big enough number or sample size for me to do anything about.

Shildt wasn’t the only person who noticed balls haven’t been flying quite as far. Dave Martinez, managing the Washington Nationals, said he noticed the change and thought it might have been the weather. The Marcell Ozuna ball in the second inning came off the bat at a launch angle of 36 degrees and an exit velocity of 106 mph, and went 382 feet. This season, there have been 68 batted balls with a launch angle between 35 and 37 degrees and exit velocity between 105 and 106 mph. The average distance of those fly balls was 399 feet; only seven went 382 feet or fewer. Forty-five of those 68 balls went for homers during the regular season. Martinez had this to say about Ozuna’s shot.

[W]hen he hit it, he hit it you awfully high and awfully hard. The thing I know about this time of year is the air gets a little heavy, so I was just hoping that the air was really, really heavy after he hit the ball and it stayed in the park. I think Gomes hit a ball really hard too and it short-hopped the wall. So I knew that the balls weren’t going to carry.

Martinez indicated that less carry actually impacted some of the decisions he made during the game.

[O]ur outfielders played a little bit more shallow yesterday than they normally do, only because we figured the ball was not going to travel as far. The other thing, too, is that I talked to the guys about maybe, last night, if they get an opportunity to bunt for hits or whatnot, that go ahead and try it.

He went on to say he absolutely did not tell Juan Soto to bunt on his attempt during Friday’s game. Whether MLB is using different balls from the regular season is probably still a question that needs answering, but managers and teams have taken note that balls aren’t traveling as far in the playoffs and making some strategic decisions based on that knowledge.

Ahead of the Division Series against the Braves, the Cardinals had the option of starting Adam Wainwright in the opener on regular rest, but the team opted to start Miles Mikolas instead. With Jack Flaherty locked into Game 2, Wainwright started the third game of the series and pitched a gem at home. Fast forward to the NLCS, the Cardinals again could have opted to start Wainwright in the first game of the series, but again opted for Mikolas, lining Wainwright up for potentially two starts at home in Games Two and Six. It is certainly possible that starting Mikolas ahead of Wainwright is simply the better choice, but it also might feel like getting Wainwright more starts at home is a savvy choice because of his fairly massive splits home and away.

In games started at Busch Stadium this year, Wainwright has a 2.56 ERA. That’s significantly lower than his road ERA of 6.22. The results have been markedly different, and the gap is large enough that we might think Adam Wainwright has pitched a lot worse on the road this season. Even his FIP, which is 4.77 on the road and 4.02 at home, suggests there might be something happening that requires examination. Wainwright had this to say about pitching better at home on Friday:

I don’t know if there’s a dead set reason, other than I just like pitching at home. But there’s been years where I pitched better on the road, too, than I did at home. And guys were asking me the same questions the other way around. Why would a talented pitcher like [Mike] Soroka pitch much better on the road? Sometimes it, just weird things happen like that in baseball. Sometimes there’s a reason, sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason. Sometimes it’s matchups, sometimes it’s — I don’t know what sometimes it else could be. But baseball has a way of correcting itself. Who knows, it might come back next year and be 16-0 on the road. We’ll see.

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The best way to avoid a questionable bullpen is for a starter to pitch deep into the game. Aníbal Sánchez made for an unlikely candidate to do so, as he was the worst starting pitcher in baseball this season the third time through the batting order. But unlikely or not, Sánchez took a no-hitter into the eighth inning, was rarely in any trouble, and gave the Nationals exactly what they needed in the first game of the NLCS. Sean Doolittle got the final four outs of the game and Washington jumped out to an early series lead before its big three of Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin could even take the mound.

Sánchez is known for mixing his pitches, and he played to the Cardinals scouting report, throwing fewer of the four-seam fastballs the Cardinals like and opting for a sinker he doesn’t use with regularity. On the season, Sánchez threw his sinker to right-handed hitters just 13% of the time, but through four innings he tripled that percentage. As the game wore on, he featured his fastball less as its velocity diminished, but the Cardinals couldn’t take advantage. And even when they got close, they were ultimately stymied. Ryan Zimmerman made what might have been a no-hitter saving play in the eighth inning on a hard-hit ball by Tommy Edman.

Sometimes it’s just not your night. Two batters later, Sánchez’s countryman, José Martínez (H/T Enrique Rojas), hit a solid single; with the no-hitter over, Sean Doolittle came in to get the final out of the eighth. Read the rest of this entry »

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