Archive for 2017 Playoffs

Congratulations to the Houston Astros! After distinguishing themselves as one of the best teams in the regular season, they managed to survive the giant Plinko board that is the postseason. Truly a worthy champion.

There will certainly be much attention paid to the World Series winner in the wake of their victory. For the moment, however, I’d like to consider the team that fell just short — and, specifically, to examine their much-maligned ace, Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw stepped onto the mound in Game 7, his team needing him to hold the wall in the worst way. The Dodgers were already down five runs when Kershaw entered, their win probability reduced to just 10%. It was pretty dire.

Kershaw responded, throwing four innings of shutout ball, striking out four, unintentionally walking none, and limiting hard contact along the way. He looked like the guy who’s established himself as the best pitcher of this generation. As the game unfolded Wednesday night, the fans who joined the Game 7 live blog grasped three central points of Kershaw’s performance in very short order, as illustrated by the following excerpt from that chat:

These six comments are representative of observations made by other readers, observations which fell into the three following categories:

1. That Kershaw pitched effectively.
2. That naysayers would comment about the low leverage of the moment.
3. That, however well Kershaw fared, it wouldn’t alter The Narrative.

I’d like to address those points in a moment. However, before we descend (as Jonathan Yardley would put it) “into the Void,” let’s take a quick step back and appreciate Clayton Kershaw’s performance on Wednesday, in what will likely be a lost chord in his playoff opus.

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As illustrated by basically all the win-probability graphs featured here on any given night of the season, the average baseball game tends to be composed mostly of plays that, individually, have little influence on the outcome but which, when taken collectively, push the game towards one conclusion or the other.

This graph from the Brewers-Cardinals game on the last day of the season illustrates the point:

You can see Brett Phillips‘ home run annotated here. That one play shifted the probability of victory about 20% in Milwaukee’s direction. Other than that one event, however, the game is defined mostly by a series of small ups and downs before it flatlines in favor of the Brewers in the ninth.

This is the how these win-probability graphs typically work. There aren’t often moments where, based on one play, you tell yourself, This game is over — or, alternatively, Wait a second, this changes everything. There’s usually some build-up, an accumulation of smaller moments leading to a bigger one.

This World Series, however, has abandoned the slow burn. It continues to produce big moments at an unprecedented rate.

If we define a “big moment” as the sort of play the produces a win-probability change of 25% or greater — that is, a play that brings a club back from precipice of defeat or, alternatively, appears to render a tight battle over — we find that 96 of the 113 World Series played since 1903 have featured four or fewer “big moments” over the course of an entire series. This year’s World Series matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros has beaten that number this series… in a single game… twice.

*Setting the bar at .25 is admittedly somewhat arbitrary, but going too much higher increases the rarity of something that doesn’t occur all that often. Even using the threshold of .33, for example, would reduce the number of instances by half. Similarly, lowering the bar to .18 would double the amount of plays. Although slightly haphazard, .25 seems to set a decent balance.

When the Dodgers and Astros combined for five game-changing plays in Game 2 of this series, it was unprecedented, and I wrote about it at length. To briefly recap: prior to Game 2, there were just three World Series games with four plays featuring a WPA of at least .25. Only 11 other World Series games had even had three such moments. Game 2 had five of those big, single-plays that change a game.Sunday’s night’s Game 5 matched that number and produced an even wilder result than we saw just last week.

As I did after Game 2 to provide some context, here are the biggest plays of this year’s postseason by WPA, with Sunday night’s game now included.

Of the 11 biggest plays in this year’s playoffs, eight have come during the World Series. The fact that it’s the World Series doesn’t make these plays more likely. Any individual game can produce dramatic swings — only one in three actually do have plays with a WPA of at least .25 — but this matchup has produced more dramatic moments than we’ve seen throughout the rest of the playoffs. Individual plays aren’t the end-all-be-all of excitement. In the bottom of the seventh inning on Sunday, for example, the Astros increased their win expectancy from 35% at the beginning of the inning to 93% by the end due to multiple plays of significance, but no single play did as much damage as the plays in the chart above.

When we consider the sheer number of plays we’ve seen in this World Series that have changed win probability by 25%, it blows away every other series we’ve seen, as the graph below shows.

The World Series of 1912, which went eight games due to a tie in Game 2, featured eight big moments. Fred Merkle, who is known mostly for his “boner” in the 1908 series, very well could have been the hero in Game 8 after recording an RBI single off of Smoky Joe Wood in the top of the 10th that put the New York Giants ahead 2-1. He didn’t receive the distinction, however, as Tris Speaker produced an RBI single off of Christy Mathewson to tie the game and then a bases loaded sacrifice fly ended the series.

The 1975 World Series, perhaps most famous for Carlton Fisk’s Game 6 homer, also had eight big moments, including an RBI single by Joe Morgan in the top of the ninth of Game 7 that broke a 3-3 tie with two outs. This year, the Dodgers and Astros tied the record in Game 5 when Jose Altuve’s three-run homer tied the game at 7, and the two teams broke it three times before the game ended. Here are some of those same numbers from the graph above, but only showing the leaders.

All the years of the World Series omitted from the chart above — and there are number of them — featured fewer game-changing moments over the entirety of the series than occurred in Game 2 and Game 5 of this year’s Dodgers-Astros matchup alone. More than one-third of all series had either one or zero moments of that magnitude. They weren’t necessarily boring, but they might have lacked for some particularly big moments.

We’ve had eras off good and bad pitching and eras with a lot of homers, but we’ve never had a World Series quite like this one. Maybe the ball is juiced and slippery and maybe the teams and the bullpens are worn down because of the long season and increased usage of late, and maybe everybody is trying to hit it out of the park, but we aren’t just talking about homers here. Three of the five biggest plays on Sunday night were on batted balls that stayed in the park. Two were singles. Because we haven’t looked at it yet, here’s the win-expectancy graph from Sunday.

When looking at Game 2, I couldn’t help but compare it to probably the craziest World Series game anyone has ever seen: Game 6 in 2011. While Game 2 this year had five “big moments,” the moments back in 2011 were bigger at the top, and there was a lot more depth in terms of tension and moments. Game 5 comes a lot closer to matching up with Game 6, which, as an elimination game, carried a bit more weight in terms seasonal leverage.

Here are the top-20 plays in terms of WPA for each game:

Ultimately, even the games from the current World Series — objectively crazy as they’ve been — can’t compete with Game 6 from 2011, which featured three win-probability changes of at least 40%. Where Sunday night’s contest can match up with 2011 is the significance of the plays after the top three. If we simply average the top-10 plays, it comes to 28% for 2011 and 26% for Sunday night. If we go down to the top-20 plays, the averages are 19% and 17%, respectively.

While we might not remember it with all the hits, Sunday’s game also had its share of big outs. In Game 2, there were just two plays where the pitcher’s team increased its chances of winning by at least 10%; on Sunday, there were four. That doesn’t quite measure up to the seven from Game 6 in 2011, but it isn’t too far off. Game 6 also has the 11 plays with a leverage index greater than 4.0, compared to just one in Game 2 and three in Game 5.

Game 2 was crazy. Game 5 was even crazier. We aren’t guaranteed more of the same in the next contest (or two), and odds are actually against it. It felt surreal watching Sunday’s game go back and forth. The numbers support that feeling. Removing emotion from the equation reveals just as crazy an outcome as it felt watching — which for me, enhances my already great appreciation for the game.

In terms of significant, game-changing moments, no World Series game in history compares to Wednesday night’s epic between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros. In the sixth inning, Corey Seager hit a two-run homer off of Justin Verlander to break a 1-1 tie. In the top of the ninth, Marwin Gonzalez hit a solo shot to tie the game 3-3. In the 10th, Jose Altuve broke the tie with a solo shot. In the bottom half of that same inning, Enrique Hernandez’s RBI single tied the game, and then in the top of the 11th, George Springer hit a two-run homer that would put the Astros up for good. Each of those five plays increased the scoring club’s chances victory by 25% according to Win Probability Added. That’s never happened before in a World Series game.

Since 2002, only one in three games have produced plays with at least one play with a WPA of .25 or greater. To put that in greater context, consider: there have been only 18 plays total this posteason that produced a WPA of .25 or greater.  Here they are, in order of impact on win probability:

Of the eight biggest plays in the postseason this year, four occurred in Game 2. Hernandez’s single in a losing effort produced the highest WPA of any play in this postseason.

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Last year’s World Series featured a true face-off between big and small markets, pitting the high-revenue Chicago Cubs against the lower-revenue Cleveland Indians. The difference in each club’s markets materialized in their respective payrolls: Chicago outspent Cleveland by roughly $90 million in 2016. The contrast was stark.

This year’s Series represents a different kind of contrast. Everyone’s aware of the Dodgers’ financial might, of course, but the Astros enjoy a large market, too. And even if that hasn’t been obvious recently, the club’s payrolls from a dozen years ago reflect the club’s spending capacities. Over the last decade, however, the team has executed a massive tank-job and also navigated difficulties with their gigantic television deal. The result? Dramatically lower payrolls. The rebuild has worked, however, and the club’s payroll has nearly doubled in just the last two years. However, that payroll is still in the bottom half of baseball and represents only half of the Dodgers’ expenditures in what is the largest disparity in World Series history.

I would be remiss when discussing the disparity between the two teams not to mention that the gap between the clubs’ payrolls is much more modest when comparing only active rosters. Carl Crawford has been gone from the roster for quite some time, but his $22 million salary is still on the books. Scott Kazmir is hurt. Adrian Gonzalez is in Italy. Those three account for around $60 million in salary alone. A handful of other players are no longer on the team. As a result, the Dodgers’ 25-man World Series roster is earning “only” $143 million. Even with all the money the Dodgers have written off, they still have an active roster that would place them in the top half of MLB payrolls. As for the Astros, their World Series roster comes in at around $115 million.

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It would be easy to assume that the Dodgers bullpen is just another part of the club bought and paid for by means of the organization’s massive and unrivaled resources. With the team’s payroll and competitive-balance expenses coming to roughly $250 million this season — itself a substantive decrease over the $300 million outlays of the 2014-16 campaigns — the Dodgers clearly have the capacity to spend with little restraint. And they’ve certainly utilized some of that financial might to the end of bullpen construction: the club, for example, brought back free-agent closer Kenley Jansen by guaranteeing him $80 million over five seasons.

For the most part, however, the Dodgers haven’t built their bullpen on high-salaried free agents or top prospects. Instead, they’ve mostly cobbled it together with a series of low-risk trades and signings, addressing needs in-season when needed without giving up prospects of significance.

Los Angeles opened up this season with a payroll of about $235 million. Close to $50 million of that total was designated for players no longer on the roster. Of the remaining money, half went to the starting rotation. Another 40% was earmarked for Andre Ethier, Adrian Gonzalez, Yasmani Grandal, Yasiel Puig, and Justin Turner. As far as the bullpen, there was Kenley Jansen and his big salary, of course. The second-highest salary in the bullpen at the start of the season went to Sergio Romo, though, who was guaranteed $3 million by the club in February. That figure was the third-highest guarantee the Dodgers have made to a reliever since Andrew Friedman took over operations after the 2014 season. That’s three full offseasons, and the second-biggest free agent guarantee the team has made to a reliever was the $4 million for Joe Blanton a few years ago.

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Playoff baseball has changed in recent years. Where managers might have once employed tactics very similar to those used in the regular season, that has increasingly not been the case. In 2011, for example, Tony LaRussa used his bullpen just as often as he did his starting pitchers en route to a championship for the St. Louis Cardinals. A few years later, the Royals shortened games with an elite collection of relief arms on their way to consecutive World Series appearances. Last year, Andrew Miller appeared for Cleveland whenever the situation demanded, frequently throwing multiple innings.

Now everybody is using their bullpen more often. Relievers are accounting for a greater share of innings and wins in the regular season. This postseason has featured at least one game during which the winning team’s starter didn’t even survive the first inning. In terms of pitching effectiveness, it seems as though clubs are approaching an optimal state; however, there are some aspects that are getting worse, particularly when it comes to inherited runners.

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Last night represented the sixth game of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ postseason run. Over the club’s first five playoff games, the left-handed trio of Andre Ethier, Joc Pederson, and Chase Utley recorded one start combined — specifically, Chase Utley’s in Game 3 of the National League Division Series against the Diamondbacks. That arrangement appeared to work: Roberts and company entered Tuesday with five consecutive wins. That’s what made the manager’s decision on Tuesday slightly unusual. Against Kyle Hendricks in Chicago, Roberts started all three players.

The gambit worked. All together, the trio went 3-for-10 with a double and home run. At one level, the decision was simple, logical. Because of the stage, however, it would have been easy for Roberts to go in a different direction. We often talk about how the postseason is different from the regular season, that it requires a different style of management. That’s no doubt true, particularly when it comes to the bullpen. There are instances, however, in which it’s also important to keep managing like the regular season. Roberts did that last night.

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There was a point during Game 3 of the National League Division Series between the Cubs and Nationals at which I began to play out some extra-innings scenarios, wondering who would pitch for the Cubs in such a case. We discussed the possibilities a bit in the Live Blog. With Pedro Strop, Carl Edwards Jr., and Wade Davis having already appeared in the game, Mike Montgomery seemed the most likely choice. I suggested John Lackey, though someone commented that he would probably be saved in case Jake Arrieta didn’t go deep into Game 4.

The game never reached extra innings, of course, the Cubs coming back for a 2-1 win (box). The next day, though, some of our questions were answered when Arrieta failed to pitch deep into Game 4. It wasn’t John Lackey who relieved Arrieta, however, but Jon Lester. With three days of rest thanks to an earlier rain delay, Lester pitched 3.2 innings in relief to keep the game at a 1-0 deficit. Unfortunately, Carl Edwards Jr. and Wade Davis allowed the deficit to expand, and now the Cubs must win today to advance their season. And just like last year, it appears as though Joe Maddon has lost trust in his bullpen.

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In Saturday’s game against the Washington Nationals, manager Joe Maddon allowed right-handed pitcher Carl Edwards Jr. to face left-handed dynamo Bryce Harper with a runner on first and one out, his Cubs leading by two in the bottom of the eighth inning. Harper hit a two-run shot to tie the game. Three batters later, lefty Mike Montgomery would allow a three-run homer to righty Ryan Zimmerman, giving the Nationals a decisive lead. Managerial decisions that lead to playoff losses tend to draw scrutiny, but this particular set of moves seems pretty defensible.

To briefly review, a few relevant facts:

• In Game 1 on Friday, Kyle Hendricks pitched seven strong innings. Carl Edwards followed with a perfect eighth inning, striking out Trea Turner, inducing a weak blooper (for an out) from Bryce Harper, and then striking out Anthony Rendon. Wade Davis pitched the ninth.
• The Cubs bullpen has four right-handers: Wade Davis, Carl Edwards, John Lackey, and Pedro Strop.
• The Cubs bullpen has three left-handers: Brian Duensing, Montgomery, and Justin Wilson.
• In Game 2, Jon Lester pitched six innings, and Pedro Strop pitched the seventh inning.

Based on both the first game and then the first seven innings of Game 2, it seems as though Joe Maddon had established a pretty clear pecking order for his bullpen, featuring Wade Davis at the top of the depth chart and Carl Edwards just below. One might place Pedro Strop third on that list, although an argument could be made for Mike Montgomery, too, depending on the matchup. In any case, if there was any doubt regarding Maddon’s feelings about Edwards, his decision to use the the right-hander in the eighth inning of Game 2 erased it.

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Tonight, the Chicago Cubs begin their attempt to become the first team to repeat as champions since the New York Yankees won three in a row from 1998 to 2000. Since free agency really took hold about 40 years ago, the only other team to win consecutive titles has been Toronto in 1992 and 1993. Since integration, the A’s, Blue Jays, Reds, and Yankees are the only franchises to repeat — and the runs by Cincinnati, Oakland, and (in one case) New York all occurred in the 1970s. While parity seemingly drives the game, a repeat isn’t impossible, and the Cubs have passed the all-important first step of making the playoffs.

That’s not to say it was easy. The Cubs dug themselves a hole early this season, going 43-45 before the All-Star break, about eight wins shy of where the projections thought they’d be at that point. In the second half, however, they produced a 49-25 record, about six wins better than the projections called for. In the end, the club fell just a few games short of their preseason forecasts and made the playoffs without much trouble.

As I wrote in September, it’s hard to characterize this Cubs team as one that’s underachieved. While some have attributed the club’s early-season difficulties to a “hangover” effect from last year’s championship, there’s not much evidence that the club actually underperformed reasonable expectations, receiving strong campaigns from a number of their stars and good production from unexpected sources. There’s also little evidence that World Series hangovers exist in the first place.

More on that second point in a moment. First, let’s consider the team’s most important players. We begin with Kris Bryant. The Cubs’ third baseman might not be clutch, but he recorded his third consecutive season of six wins or better, finishing sixth in the majors by WAR. And about his clutch performance: while it might be fair to say he hasn’t been clutch, that’s obvious different than being clutch. Keep in mind that the 150 wRC+ Bryant has recorded in low- and medium-leverage situations has occurred over 1,801 plate appearances; the 87 wRC+ he’s produced in high-leverage situations, meanwhile, is the result of just 213 plate appearances.

A sample of 213 PAs is obviously subject to considerable variation. For example, did you notice when, in the 197 regular-season plate appearances between September 2 of last year and April 23 of this one, that Bryant recorded an 82 wRC+? Probably not. (Especially since he recorded a 148 wRC+ in the middle of it during last year’s postseason.) Those 197 PA where Bryant wasn’t so good obviously don’t represent his real talent level. They occurred over an interval of two different seasons and he actually played well in the middle of that span. So naturally, if those somehwat disjointed 200-or-so plate appearances don’t reflect the real Bryant, it’s possible that the other 200-or-so high-leverage plate appearances — spread out over three years and inclusive only of regular-season play — likely don’t, either. Probably best not to make a big deal over them.

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