The Dodgers Are World Series Bound
It’s impossible for a single play in the fourth inning to decide the outcome of a baseball game. There are simply too many at-bats left, too much time for something else to happen that invalidates whatever occurred so early in the action. Consider a bases loaded, two out situation, down two runs in the top of the fourth, for a random example: hit a grand slam, and our WPA Inquirer will tell you that the away team wins 70.3% of the time. Strike out, and it’s 21.1%. In neither case is the game over.
Don’t tell Atlanta that, though. In the top of the fourth inning, the Braves were ready to hit the turbo button. With a one-run lead already in their pocket, they had an enviable situation: runners on second and third with no one out. A single could make it a three-run game; heck, a grounder to the right side and then a sac fly would suffice. Nick Markakis, the batter, almost never strikes out; he’s the exact kind of player the Braves wanted at the plate in this moment.
Markakis put the ball in play. Dansby Swanson broke on contact, and well, yeah, he probably wishes he could take that decision back:
Going on the crack of the bat puts pressure on the defense, but it comes with a downside: if the ball is hit firmly and directly at a fielder, there’s no recourse. Not all teams would send the runner on contact there, but given that nine-hole hitter Cristian Pache was on deck, it’s not an outlandish decision. Swanson was dead to rights as soon as Turner fielded the ball; his job at that point was to get into a rundown that gave the remaining baserunners time to advance:
From that perspective, his baserunning was a success. An initial retreat forced Will Smith to make a return throw to Turner, at which point Swanson turned homeward and drew the play out, all according to plan. He wasn’t getting out of this jam, but if trail runner Austin Riley made it to third, a sacrifice fly could still add to Atlanta’s lead.
Yeah, about that:
Riley spent the first half of the play loitering off of second base, the kind of loitering my grandfather would tell me meant someone was up to no good. He finally moved about halfway between second and third, as far from safety as is possible in the confines of a baseball diamond. Finally, he took an odd lunge back towards second before starting a headlong sprint for third. One clumsy slide later, the Braves, like an alchemist who flunked out, had turned gold into lead.
It’s impossible for a single bases-empty play in the top of the fifth to decide the outcome of a baseball game. Let’s say you’re up a run. A homer puts you ahead by two, but two run leads aren’t insurmountable. An out is just an out — you’re still up a run, and one run leads hold up all the time. Freddie Freeman made an out:
I’m underselling it, because that’s the silly conceit of this article, but what a catch! No one has ever conclusively proved that Mookie Betts isn’t a time-traveling wizard, and this play didn’t clear anything up. It was somehow his second home run heist of the series, but you can’t score on defense; the Dodgers still trailed by a run.
Just because those two plays didn’t decisively end things, though, doesn’t mean they didn’t matter. Combined, they kept the Dodgers within a run, which, conveniently enough, is the exact number of runs a solo homer is worth:
Tied isn’t ahead, and before the inning was over, the Braves made a defensive stand of their own to keep it that way. With Chris Taylor on third base with one out, the Dodgers tried a contact play of their own. It ended less disastrously than the first one, but just as consequentially: Ozzie Albies beat Taylor home with a throw, and a Justin Turner strikeout ended the sixth with a whimper.
Because the Braves didn’t score any runs on those two earlier plays, they were tied instead of ahead. Because they were tied instead of ahead, they were promptly behind, because Cody Bellinger hit one to Plano:
Truthfully, I have no idea which direction Plano is, and neither, presumably, does Bellinger. He was sure he hit it somewhere far away, though, so sure that he took a little time to admire his handiwork. The sheer length of a baseball game cuts both ways, though. The Braves weren’t done after Bellinger’s home run; they had six outs to make things right. You’re reading this recap, though, and you read the title of the article: you know that didn’t happen.
The Dodgers used, by my rough math, 6.2 trillion pitchers in this series. The last one to take the mound was Julio Urías, and that’s all Los Angeles needed. He wasn’t overpowering — he didn’t strike out a single batter — but he repeatedly got ahead and coerced soft contact from the opposing hitters. Johan Camargo hit a sinking liner that AJ Pollock corralled in the seventh, and Freeman smacked a line drive directly towards Bellinger to start the eighth, but none of the other seven batters he faced even put a scare in the defense. Nine up, nine down, thanks very much for coming out.
It’s true that a single play in the fourth inning can’t end the game right there. The Dodgers were still underdogs after Riley clomped unsuccessfully from second to third. The Braves were still ahead after Betts defied gravity. In some other universe’s version of tonight, Atlanta held on 3-2. In another version, they scored in bucketloads and won 10-6, or perhaps the Dodgers stormed back to win 10-4.
None of those happened here tonight, though. Here, those pivotal plays did matter. The Dodgers are a juggernaut, and in the first two rounds of the playoffs they simply discarded their opponents. This series, they encountered an even match. After six innings tonight, the teams were tied 3-3 in runs and games, and a three-inning game determined the winner of the National League. In a series shortened to a microcosm, one play can matter, and tonight the Dodgers made all the plays that mattered.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
Misleading to say the Braves were an even match…they played well but cmon Dodgers definitely the better team
The Dodgers were a favorite in this series, but the Braves were a credible opponent, and definitely close enough to the Dodgers in overall ability to get into the point where anyone can win.
It’s notable the Dodgers begin 8% higher to win the next 7 game series as they were to win this one. In fact, if you looked this morning, when the Dodgers were 55/45 to win this game against the Braves, they already had better odds to win the World Series than the Rays: both the Dodgers and Braves were substantial favorites in the playoff odds, and the Dodgers’ edge is silly (68/32 as of this comment; the Braves sat about 57/43)
It is interesting to me that the Dodgers are such large favorites over the Rays…it seems a tad high, no? I mean I realize the Dodgers are a better team, but the Rays have such an awesome bullpen that I do not feel is being adequately accounted for. For example I do not feel like the Braves are better than the Rays. I think a lot of the things that the Rays do well (platoon advantages/bullpen) aren’t accounted for in the projections. As well as the emergence of a potential superstar (Arozarena).
I agree, that is way, way too high. The Dodgers are a good team, but the Rays are probably pretty similar to the Braves in terms of what sort of rotation they can roll out there, they have a better bullpen, and the lineup isn’t that far off of the Braves (even though they don’t have the insane mashers at the top they also don’t have the low-OBP wasteland of guys like Markakis at the bottom).
ZiPs has it at something like 53 to 47. I’d put it at 57/43, since I don’t like Blake Snell as much as ZiPs does. and that bullpen game looks like it’s going to be rough. Every single one of these games, except the bullpen game, is and should be between a 55% and 45% for either team to win it.
I mean, the Rays BP is better than the Braves, but the Rays scored 4.8 runs per game this year and the Braves scored 5.8. Their offense isn’t in close to the same category, even if their pitching is a bit better. I think that is what drives the difference.
Also, the Dodgers match up really well against the Rays in a couple ways.
First, the Rays bullpen spends a good bit of time outside the strike zone; the Dodgers have the lowest chase rate and one of the lowest strikeout rates in MLB. The Rays, on the other hand, have one of MLB’s highest strikeout rates offensively. The Rays are about to take an offense that’s wasn’t particularly awesome at hitting home runs, and has subsisted in the postseason entirely by hitting home runs, to Costc..Globe Life Field, which is not great for that kind of plan offensively.
Secondly, the Dodgers are one of few teams in MLB prepared to attack the Rays platoon-heavy roster approach. Against the Braves, the 5 left handed pitchers in their bullpen were a liability because some of them were basically unusable, as they couldn’t be trusted against the strong RHH surrounding Freeman, and the Braves had virtually no other LHH (and putting Albies on the RHH side actually makes him better). Against the Rays, having multiple strong left handers will let them force the Rays into difficult decisions. In a Buehler start, for instance, the Rays will want to stack their left-handed platoon guys. The Dodgers can then use a strong left handed reliever to attack all the LHH platoon guys, forcing the Rays to choose between allowing that to continue, and swapping all those guys out for the RHH halves of the platoon. If they make the swap, the Dodgers can use the RH part of their bullpen (the ones we saw in this series) freely thereafter, knowing that they’ll enjoy the platoon advatnage for the rest of the game. In a Kershaw start, it’s the opposite – the Rays will avoid their LHH, the Dodgers follow Kershaw with a righty, and if the Rays bite and put in all the LHH, the Dodgers have Gonzalez, Kolarek, McGee, etc to punish them for repeated trips through the lineup.
The top arms in the Rays pen are fantastic, but they spend a lot of time getting swings and misses out of the zone. I don’t know the Dodgers will bite on that stuff as much, and the 2nd tier of arms in the bullpen are not at that standard. The Rays are either going to have to heavily rely on only a handful of guys or use that 2nd tier of dudes.
The Dodgers offense is so far ahead of the Rays. Arozarena’s been fantastic, and maybe he’s a real star, but there’s only one of him, and there’s 3 or 4 Dodgers who are players of that caliber.
It’s easy to identify places the Dodgers can wield a significant advantage. It’s pretty hard to identify places the Rays can in this series, IMO, and that’s why they are the favorites. The Rays haven’t faced anything even close to the Dodgers offense this season: the best offense they faced was the yankees, who scored more than a half-run per game less than the Dodgers. BaseRuns puts the gap at 0.60 RS/G. That’s .. a big gap.
On the other side, the Dodgers allowed nearly a run per game less than the best team the Rays played .. also the Yankees.
In the end, the gap in the projections is based in part on league strength assessment. The Braves were favorites over the Rays as well in the FanGraphs Playoff Odds, and the Dodgers were substantial favorites over the Braves. It’s understandable why it looks that way.
The Rays can certainly win, because the big thing about the MLB playoffs is that once you reach a certain level of talent, anyone can beat anyone. But they’re not the favorites, and I don’t think this series would accurately be described as a coinflip. The Dodgers have produced better results at virtually every single thing a baseball team does this season, and usually by fairly wide margins. Their bullpen and rotation both allowed less runs, their offense scored more runs, their defense was more effective, etc.
Edit for Trombone: The Rays scored dramatically less runs than the Braves while playing in a division full of hitters parks, while the Braves played in a division with some of the most pitcher-friendly parks in MLB. I don’t think it’s accurate to describe the Rays offense as remotely being in the same category as the Braves, and it’s a real stretch to suggest it’s even close. When you account for how the Dodgers also have a greater ability than nearly any opponent to attack the Rays platoons, I think that half of the matchup is very bad for the Rays. That offense is really going to struggle to keep up with what the Dodger offense can do even to a good pitching staff, and the Dodger staff is better than any they’ve seen this season by a substantial margin.
I think ZIPS has the series way too low and that the zips per-game odds can be real deceiving because they simulate each game in isolation and assume the entire bullpen is available for each game, which isn’t reality. I dont know that the nearly 70/30 split is right either, and suspect this series slots in a little north of where the Braves/Dodgers series was, something around 65/35 or so, which is about what the Dodgers’ odds against the Padres looked like in the 5 game series.
There are offdays here, but the Rays are going to be doing 2 bullpen games back to back, and they’re not going to get through this series without relying on most of their bullpen. Like with the Braves, I don’t think those guys are going to prove capable of fending off the Dodgers enough.
This is not really correct on a lot of points, I’m sorry.
-The Braves/Dodgers series was also way too high. The probability of winning a game to regresses towards 50/50 because the teams are (in the big picture) so evenly matched and because sequencing plays a big role in scoring runs. This is especially true at the later stages of the playoffs when you are dealing exclusively with good teams. 65/35 on the Dodgers implies that the Dodgers were overwhelming favorites. The Dodgers won only 72% of their games this year, and the Braves were way better than the modal team they faced during the season, even on days when they weren’t starting their top 2 starters.
-The Rays have four starters they trust (Snell, Glasnow, Morton, Yarborough). There is only one bullpen game, and it will probably be bad. But even then, we are talking about a game in the 70/30 probability range.
-The bullpen will get taxed, but we’re talking about exceptionally deep bullpens here. This is the same mistake people were making in the early part of the Braves / Dodgers series, including me. By Game 7 they’re going to be gassed, but that’s not going to affect things earlier in the series and they can always put Ynoa and Tomlin out there if things get out of hand and they need to soak up innings. This is only a problem if they have to pull starters early and the game is close. Lots of ifs there.
-Runs scored isn’t a good indicator because of differences in stadiums. It’s true that the Dodgers and Braves have better offenses. But it’s not quite as big as you are stating.
“The Dodgers won only 72% of their games this year, and the Braves were way better than the modal team they faced during the season”
Yes, but you only need to win 57% of your games to win a 7 game series.
I don’t get why the Rays bullpen game would necessarily be bad, either. The Rays have an amazing bullpen. That is why I think they are closer to 40% to win this series, they aren’t going to allow a lot of hitters to see the same pitcher 2 (or 3) times. On the same subject, I fail to see how they are such a large underdog.
To say that ballpark factors favored the Rays (vs the Braves) I think is a bit disingenuous. In a normal season, yes, but the Braves played 20 interleague games as well. They played against the Orioles in Camden and against the Yankees in Yankee stadium. They also got to face the Blue Jays (ok pitching) and the Red Sox (worst in the MLB). They also scored 29 runs in one game, which by my math would raise their runs per game by apx .5 per game (29/60).
The Rays on the other hand had to play at a poor hitters park as well, against superior competition, and didn’t exactly have cakewalk games against the NL (deGrom, Scherzer, Nola, Sixto, etc)
I’d say the Braves offense is better than the Rays, but it certainly is close, at least in my eyes. Also they mostly didn’t have Arozarena who doesn’t look flukey whatsoever, and has a career 167 wRC+ . He has never not hit. Just look at the last 5 numbers on his wRC+ 162, 151, 138, 176, 244. I realize that projections are conservative, but lets say he is closer to the lowest of those numbers (138)…well a team just added one of the best hitters in the game in the middle of their lineup. That would improve all offenses. Is it fair to think he is that good? I do not know. He bulked up considerably, and statcast loves him. He also certainly passes the eye test. But that is in line with what Austin Meadows did last year, and he now looks completely lost. So, who knows.
Rays/Dodgers should be fun. I could see the Dodgers winning, I could see the Rays winning. The Dodgers are a better team , but with the Rays I do not see the same sort of scenarios happening that happened with the Braves where it seems like a given that the Dodgers are going to score a bunch of runs because the pitching is so weak, unless the Rays give up on a game as they did twice vs the Astros.
Going from a Yoshi Tsutsugo/Hunter Renfroe platoon to on fire Randy Arozarena makes a difference from the regular season numbers, and I wouldn’t call using an opener for Tyler Glasnow or Ryan Yarborough a bullpen game, I think they’re just as good as Gonsolin, May, and Urias. Not sure how much any of that moves the needle against a team that’s just as deep as the Rays with three MVP level talents in the lineup.
Just as good? I’d certainly take Glasnow over all 3 of those guys, and Yarbough might only be a shade below.
Why would the Rays be forced into two back-to-back pen games? Snell, Glasnow, Morton, Yarbrough, rest day, repeat – I don’t even see the need for a single pen game.
What am I missing here, Mike?
Not enough is being said about how bad the Dodgers offense is when pitchers hit their spots. Yeah, they can score in bunches, but they are flummoxed by anyone that can throw a curveball for a strike and a fastball on the corners. The Rays staff is more than capable of making this a short and one-sided series. Plus, LA used 3 of their 5 starters in game seven which means somebody is starting on short rest. The Rays might have one bullpen game, but the Dodgers might be looking at 2 or 3 given how quickly they’ve had to pull May and Gonsolin generally, and one will be on short rest.
68/32 is insane. Especially since TB has 2 days off between series.
I would imagine the playoff odds have a hard time overcoming one of the two teams beating their opponents by more than 2 runs a game on average
That kind of thing is actually unheard of. The Dodgers outscored their opponents by 2.2 runs per game and BaseRuns only barely narrows that gap.
The 116 win Mariners didn’t outscore their opponents by 2 runs per game, and stuff like BaseRuns imply their overperformed their expected records a bit
The Dodgers have BaseRuns and Pythag that support their result. It’s not something we’ve ever seen in modern baseball.
It’s an extra half run per game differential over the best teams of recent history, like the 18 Red Sox or 16 Cubs; those teams both won their games on average by 1.7 runs.
It’s the kind of thing we haven’t seen in MLB since pre-integration Yankees. It’s going to get projection systems attention.
Like we’re so used to extreme win totals and streaks reflecting good luck and overperformance to BaseRuns and other indicators that I don’t think we properly reckon with having a team that is more or less expected to do that. Every projection system had them over 100 wins as a median outcome: for most, it was the first time they’d ever done that. Any serious attempt to simulate them produced similar outcomes. Both BRef and FanGraphs did simulated seasons with the outstanding OOTP engine during the coronavirus shutdown. The Dodgers broke the single season wins record in both.
They test the upward bound of to what degree a baseball team should ever be favored over another good team. I don’t know that we know the answer.
I agree with Mike regarding how exceptional the 2020 Dodgers’ roster is. As incredible as their .717 win percentage was, it’s plausible they could’ve been better. Some key players significantly underperformed their expected WAR (Bellinger, Pederson, Muncy, & Buehler), while only Taylor, Gonsolin, and couple BP arms were arguably, although not inevitably, due for regression.
Sure the chaos of baseball would made it unlikely they sustain the results they had enjoyed through 60 games, but I offer this cheap observation to lend credence to the best-record-of-all-time simulation projections and thus the favorable odds in a given series.
Rays have 2 days off between series, but the Dodgers don’t have to fly anywhere and have played 13 games in the park to the Rays’ 0.
There is an awfully big difference between saying that, if this series was played in an infinite number of universes, we would expect the Dodgers to win the series more often than the Braves, and what we actually saw. This might not have been the closest series I’ve watched but it was close.
Dodgers looked like the better team for approximately 1.5 games. Braves looked like the better team for 2 games. The rest they looked evenly matched in my opinion.
The Braves had a really good offense, the FG numbers say they were the best in the league! It was the leagues best pitching staff vs the leagues best lineup and a mediocre pitching staff vs a top 3 offense.
It was pretty close to even like 55-45
Easily one of the best things I’ve ever read. FanGraphs is hitting it out of the park with these recaps.
Then clearly they’re not hitting these articles out to right, because Mookie would never let anything clear the fence.
My first instinct was that the TOOTBLAN should be blamed/credited to two people:
1: Snitker, for calling the contact play in the first place
and
2: Justin Turner, who made a -ridiculous- defensive play here, the kind of stuff you expect from Nolan Arenado.
Dansby Swanson was screwed. The minute he executed the contact play, he was done. He didn’t make a meaningful decision in this play, and he executed his part in the rundown.
Now, Riley I also originally assumed is in a similar position. I think there’s still some truth to that. He breaks on contact because the contact play is on. But he immediately stops because it looks like Turner might catch it on the fly, and he’s worried about being doubled off. Swanson can’t see the ball, and so he’s not worried about that.
I don’t know that I entirely understand what Riley did afterwards. Did he think for a moment there was a chance for Swanson to make it back to 3rd? Did he still think the ball was caught for a split second?
The thing about this play is that I think it usually doesn’t matter. Guys in Riley’s position hesitate all the time and easily make it to 3rd. The thing that transformed this play was Justin Turner making an Arenado/Andrelton Simmons-esque defensive play with his lunge. You would never teach this play. It was an insane, incredible risk – if you miss the tag, you have to throw the ball through Swanson to the catcher from the ground without the ability to rotate your torso at all to get any kind of accuracy or velocity on the ball. It’s incredibly improbable that you do that successfully.
But he did make the tag, and then, the throw back to 3rd is easier. You’re able to get your torso into it and make a decent throw.
Riley hesitated, but I bet most baserunners do hesitate there, and most of them don’t pay a price for doing so. It was Turner’s incredible play that turned his hesitation into an out.
Roberts’ worst decision in this game was calling the contact play himself. With the infield in, given how hard Corey Seager hits the ball, a lot of his ground balls score a runner no matter what. But, like this play, if the ball is fieldable, the runner is screwed. Seager’s making such hard contact that any ball that can be fielded will leave the fielder ample time to make an accurate throw. In that situation, the contact play was entirely about forcing a bad throw or scoring in the event that someone had to dive and knock a ball down. Those are pretty niche cases.
#2: 1) Turner makes a solid defensive stop, 2) Turner makes a great throw to home, 3) Turner and his dive – you’re right, you don’t teach/expect/want to do that unless you are completely sure you can tag the runner, 4) Tuner gets up and completes it with another great throw to get Riley (“what was Britney thinking?!?!?”). And also note the way the Dodgers lined themselves into position(s) for the rundown right away. Yep, the better team won, thankfully, this time. Great use of the video of this play, sir!
I don’t think one team was that much better than the other. Both teams are strong, performed admirably and fought to the end. A tip of the cap to both. Either would have been a deserving NL Pennant winner.
On the rundown, coaches tell players from Little League on, if you hesitate, you’re dead meat. Once he hesitated, he just needed to return to 2nd. You can’t give up a 2nd out there. That said, Turner made three outstanding plays which all proved crucial.
That’s why baseball is such a great game.
I think it’d be better to say that over just a few games, differences in talent between 2 good teams are hard to see. We know how much better the Dodgers are than the Braves over a much larger sample than 7 games; the outcome of this series, whether it was what happened or a 4-0 sweep in either direction, shouldn’t really adjust that too much.
With that said I think what you saw especially over the back half of the series is that the Dodger team is just more complete and deeper and they eventually reaped significant benefits from that reality despite not really showing up at all for the first 15 or so innings played in the series. The Braves could match them strength for strength, and they just slowly eroded them and beat them by being better at all the little things along the way.
Is it worth noting, too, that, with the infield shifted right, Turner is positioned perfectly to field the ball in the first place?
Dodger positioning in this game was incredible. The braves had a .083 BABIP; only Ozuna’s 1st inning single and Riley’s 3rd inning single were hits. The Dodgers only struck out a few batters and everything in play was an out. Turner was the only player who was playing in on the Markakis play: the other 3 infielders were conceding the run. There were multiple flared line drives to the opposite side away from the shift that were hit exactly to Max Muncy. It was really something to see.
If you look where Swanson is when Turner makes the lunge, I’d make the argument that Swanson was out before the lunge ever occurred. I don’t want to credit Turner for thinking that but a replay review might well have had Swanson out in any event. And given the type of ballplayer that Turner is, I wouldn’t rule out that he was thinking that.
Riley has to make it to third once he’s in no-man’s land which (as you state) he was the second the ball was hit because contact was on. He just has to make it to third. It was a well fielded groundball to third. It’s an out. Make sure that it is just one and who cares if Swanson makes it back to third.
Finally, am I the only one who thinks Snitker missed several opportunities in the series to ask for a review? On the play in question, I thought the tag at third was arguably late, despite the ball beating Riley there by an hour. I am not saying I’m sure but given the magnitude I would have asked for the review. There were a couple of other plays that I can’t recall at the moment where I (as a Dodger fan) was concerned for a review and relieved not to get one.
I feel badly for Snetker. He seems a decent man and his players appear to respond to him. But he really made some terrible decisions here. He’s going to have to look back and realize that he used Chris Martin for the Braves’ most important inning of the season for the 5th time in 7 calendar days and one night after Martin’s longest outing of his career. He also used A.J. Minter to face Joc Pederson when the entire baseball world knew that Pederson would make way for Kiké. The same Minter who had pitched a season-high 42 pitches on just one day rest. Unused were his best pitcher, Mark Melancon (who made 16 pitches in two wins in games 1 and 2 and finally got used again once behind in game 7) and Huascar Ynoa who was critical in game 3 mop up duty. That’s besides the fact that when they failed to sign Yasiel Puig due to COVID-19, they apparently hired him as their baserunning consultant.
Who expected the two teams with the best regular season records to make the World Series in a playoff scheme loaded with 16 teams?
A small sample size season brought large sample size results!
Watching this postseason it felt very obvious which teams simply didn’t actually belong in the postseason and they were by and large filtered out very, very quickly.
The Marlins were the only unlikely NL team to survive the Wild Card round, and they played by far the least-imposing team, the Cubs.
On the AL side, you had more than 5 credible playoff teams to begin with. The Yankees and Astros eliminated credible AL Central opponents, the Blue Jays were clearly not really in the Rays class, and the A’s being good was not at all surprising.
Just by the start of the LDS only 1 of the 8 remaining teams was not a team we expected to be a serious playoff contender pre-season. The Astros’ record was not good, but I don’t believe anyone thought they were actually not a good team anymore, and it was easy to see they were more of a 2019 Nationals situation even before they won their playoff series vs the Twins and A’s and pushed the Rays to 7 games.
MLB was more or less assured by the LDS to have good matchups the rest of the way, but even then the various injuries and such ensured that the good teams that weren’t in shape to compete (like the Padres) went out pretty quickly.
It felt like one of the takeaways from me about MLB regular season baseball is that records and results are clustered in part because teams simply can’t afford / sustain 100% effort for a full 162 game season, and that when you put elite teams on the field with mediocre or just a bit above average type teams with 100% intensity, the difference in talent is more quickly evident than you see in the regular season. Most of the unlikely and mostly-unworthy looking teams that squeaked into this playoff format got thrashed, and i wouldn’t be surprised if the ‘playoff odds’ mostly over-estimated their odds of winning because we’ve never really had the opportunity to see this kind of scenario in action.
I’m really, really down on the number of teams in the first round who definitely shouldn’t have been there but the no-days-off thing at the end made it a lot of fun.
Agreed I very much enjoyed the dynamic of how it added extra stress to the teams and tested their quality more. Of course, this also probably is why my team won the series in the end, but after last year where the Dodgers lost a 5 game series to a team that only used 6 pitchers because the back half of it’s pitching staff was unplayably bad, it was sure nice to see the quality of their roster be an asset.
I really like that it forced teams to make a lot of tough decisions about pitching changes. Really, really liked it.
Yep in general it made the whole roster matter and I really liked that.
Of course, my team has a better whole roster, but I’ve thought its dumb for a while that MLB has these situations where parts of the roster become irrelevant in the postseason (4th and 5th SP in particular) in a way you don’t see in other sports. The situation where certain acquisitions only help the team get into the playoffs and do nothing for the team once it’s there is real stupid to me; it’s like if the NFL was like ‘ok in the playoffs there won’t be any special teams’ – they may not be the most important part of a team, but they are a part of one and are a place where similar teams may separate from each other. Ditto the, say, 20th-25th spots on a MLB roster.
Yes – my favorite team – the Nationals – benefitted a lot from all the off days in the post season. Honestly, though, I like the no days off format better for the reasons listed here. It gets more players onto the field and tests roster depth more and takes a lot fewer days to complete.
In my ideal world, MLB goes back to the 10-team playoff format, but eliminates off days during each series. Yeah, there will be travel, but they do that all the time in the regular season, so why not?
I am glad, though, that the off-day heavy format was in place in 2019!
It won’t happen since the MLBPA demands off days for travels during playoffs. Personally I liked the Wild Card being a series, and going forward I’d prefer it being 3 days in a row at the higher seed, with gate revenue going first 2 games to the home team and the 3rd going to the away team, which plays as home in a Game 3
Create fewer travel days. Instead of 2-3-2, let’s go 2-5. 1 day off, then 5 in a row at the higher seed
Fully agree with all of this. While I’ll gladly enjoy extra baseball, the expanded wild card round was pretty pointless given the obvious disparities. This year reaffirmed that the near-.500 true talent teams really had little business being in the playoffs. Sorry Brewers/Marlins/Reds/Blue Jays/AL Central.
Obligatory reminder: we have a sample size of one for this format. The fact that the 60-game season and expanded playoffs has given us a good result in 2020 doesn’t mean much except that the 2020 MLB season won’t go into the books as a complete disaster (to be fair, that is a big accomplishment in itself).
I expect MLB will use this as Exhibit A as they push for expanded playoffs in the future, though. Clearly the fact that in 2020 we got some good matchups and two very good teams rose to the top outweighs everything we know about short series odds and we should do this every year.
I dont favor expansion overall and I think you’re right MLB will push it but I also think that the main defense against it is not how the format goes, but that MLBPA is opposed to it and recognizes it’s real bad for salaries (because if your team is even remotely good it’s gonna get into the dance, and the payoffs of investing are diluted by the format).
The players apparently were very reluctant to agree even for just this season, and it doesnt sound like they’re interested in agreeing in the long term. That’s always been our best defense.
Yeah it seems like the Dodgers and Rays winning G7s kind of obscured that we nearly had a sub .500 team vs a team with 1 starting pitcher they can rely on to go more than 5 innings in the WS . Braves Astros wouldn’t have been a terrible WS but I don’t think anyone is praising the expanded format if that happens
I think it was pretty evident that the Astros are good and we expected them to be good, and that their record is more of a 2019 Nats situation than evidence that their team isn’t actually good at baseball
Ditto the Braves, who were widely expected to contend. A contender who overcomes injuries with some luck isn’t viewed badly. We knew the Braves were probably the best team in their division to open the season, and were very likely to be in the playoff picture.
A really big problem with the expanded playoffs as structured this season is that it moved the playoff races from good teams competing for the division/WC spot to mediocre teams battling to be .500 and the 8th seed. And there wasn’t much incentive to care about your seeding – the last series between the Dodgers and the Padres showed this. If the Padres swept the Dodgers, they were in first place – but neither team cared too much beyond not getting injured. In previous years, both teams would care about winning the division, as you avoid the WC game. If this playoff system had happened it a normal year, it would have been a dull year – and why would fans of very good/great teams continue to watch the rest of the regular season why their team is guaranteed a playoff spot in July?
I read a great suggestion on Fangraphs a month ago on how to fix that – you need to really penalise the non-division winners in a very meaningful way. So something like:
Seed 1 vs Seed 8 – 3 games, the top seed needs to win 1 game to progress, the 8th seed needs to win 3 (essentially a best of 5 with the top seed starting off 2-0)
Seed 2 vs Seed 7 – 2 games, the 2nd seed needs to win 1 game, the 7th seed needs to win 2.
Seed 3 vs Seed 6 – same as above.
Seed 4 vs Seed 5 – best of 3 games (so this one stays the same)
I think this would make the regular season meaningful – you always want to get a better seed (2nd/3rd and 6th/7th are the ones where this doesn’t matter too much – but if you’re 3rd there is a lot of pressure to make sure you win your division) – and winning your division gives you a big boost in the playoffs. The Dodgers and the Padres would have cared massively about winning the division – going from ~90% chance of progressing to almost coin flip odds is a massive difference. And if you’re the 8th seed, you really want to be the 7th seed – as you have about double the chance of an upset.
Also it makes 6th, 7th and 8th seeds have to really earn their upsets – the Brewers could easily have beaten the Dodgers in a three game series, because that’s baseball, despite the Dodgers being a far superior team over a full season. But if the Dodgers had three chances to beat the Brewers, and couldn’t in a single one, then that gives
Baseball’s main product is the regular season – and I think expanded playoffs as currently constructed diminish it massively – and also water down the playoffs. There is a parallel universe out there where we are gearing up for a Marlins – Blue Jays right now.
This seems like a really big mess when you could just give home-field advantage for the entire series to the division winners and call it a day.
I’m fully happy to accept it’s overcomplicated.
Is home field advantage really that big an incentive though?
For the whole series? Yes, I would say that it is. Not just because it’s frustrating to play on the road for 5 or 7 straight games, but also because teams are tailored to their home park more often.
Even this solution isn’t great. Wild Card Series viewership was bad this year, especially with the debates at the same time. MLB might like the extra money, but I highly doubt the risk of a good team getting eliminated in a WCS outweighs the 3 games you get from a poorly-watched series.
I think the Wild Card round hurts the regular season – as over half the teams make the playoffs anyway – and then dilutes the importance of the playoffs.
5 teams out of 15 from each league seems pretty much spot on.
I think we should rethink playoff format all together. If they want 8 teams, how about this:
3 div winners play double round robin to seed div winners 1-3 (4 games each), tie breaker is head-to-head or run differential.
The 5 next highest teams play round robin to determine the 1 WC team that moves on, hosted at the highest seed (4 games each). Tie breaker is head to head
#1 div vs WC 1-4 format (gm 1 at WC, day off, then 4 straight at #1 div)
#2 div vs #3 div, same thing, gm1 at lower seed, day off, then 4 straight at higher seed
LCS format is 2-5 (2 at lower seed, day off, 5 at higher seed)
WS is the usual 2-3-2 format with the higher seed being the team with the better regular season record.
Any format that is a straight bracket is going to disproportionately penalize better teams in baseball. So you essentially give the 3 div winners a bye but they still play to determine seeding.
The 5 wild card winners play a brutal round robin just to move on but the best WC is rewarded with it being at their home site.
The higher seeds are still further rewarded with the higher amount of home games. 16 teams get in, you’re guaranteed 17 more games, division winners are rewarded.
I think the lesson is less days off. A 90 win team with a top heavy rotation has a much better chance playing a 100 win team when their best 2 pitchers can pitch more innings.
If 2019 was played without offdays, what are the Nats odds of beating the Dodgers?
So the round-of-3 playoffs were pretty boring for me because so many teams clearly didn’t belong there, but the grueling 5 and 7 game series without breaks was awesome. I loved it.
I suspect that if you expanded the playoffs only a little bit to include a few more teams you could reward teams who won their division by (a) always matching them up against teams that didn’t win their division during the regular season and (b) giving the permanent home field advantage throughout the series. As a committed “you should have won your division” partisan I would be a fan of that if we have to go to an expanded playoff format, because that would enable the no-days-off grind.
I hated the round-of-3 playoffs at the beginning though. If there were 32 teams it would still be too many, and I don’t know if there is a way to make it worth mathematically with 6 teams in each league.
I think they should just do this for all series going forward. Why do we make the playoffs easier than the regular season? Make these guys get on a plane and fly out after a game and play the next day. They do it in the regular season, they can figure it out.
A problem with the guaranteed not-division-winner thing is that isn’t always an upside. We’re probably gonna have a perverse incentive in the NL for the next few years where the 2nd best record is more desirable than the best record, because the 2nd best record gets to play the NL Central winner, whereas the best record will match up with whichever of Dodgers/Padres didn’t win the NL West in the LDS.
That was specifically prohibited by rule before the expansion to the 2nd wildcard, and we just haven’t had the situation where the 2 best teams in a league are in the same division since the 2nd wild card was introduced. The Padres/Dodgers this year illustrated that’s kind of a problem.
In the single wild card era, by rule you could not play a team from your own division in the LDS, and you would always be on the opposite halves of the bracket. This would have put the Padres and Braves in the same bracket this year, and given the Dodgers the Cubs as a partner. As it was, the best record was a punishment.
The Dodgers managed to get through that bracket anyway because they’re a stupidly good baseball team and also they got lucky and some of their opponents had some injuries, but it was pretty dumb that being the best record in the NL was effectively a penalty for them, and the Braves gained an enormous advantage by winning less games than they did in the form of a dramatically easier bracket.
“we just haven’t had the situation where the 2 best teams in a league are in the same division since the 2nd wild card was introduced”
Yes we have. The 3 best teams in baseball were all in the NL Central in 2015.
Edit: Cubs and Brewers had the best record in the NL in 2018 as well, but the Cubs dropped the WC game
I do think making them get on a plane and play the next day is a bit much. But also, I think it totally works to just give the team that won the division home field advantage for the whole thing. Make the wild-card teams suffer! If we’re going to have more of them and they don’t have to get through the wild-card game there needs to be something to balance things out.
Things get trickier once you get to the world series or have teams that won their divisions facing off against each other.
I really want them going 7 in a row in the LCS and even the WS.
I think the effect we saw in these series would have been dramatically reduced by even a single offday.
I would totally support first 4 games at home for the higher seed, one day off for travel, and then 3 at the away team.
Especially if we ever get two expansion teams and a balanced schedule.
That’s also a really good suggestion for teams that both won their divisions.
That’s fan unfriendly. I get partial season tickets so I can buy playoff tickets. I want to be assured of a home game in any series except maybe the first round.
Yeah, as much as I’m against expanded playoffs, it was awesome to have no off-days. Both for the strategy and for the pace of the series. I would love to see that come back when the playoffs are inevitably expanded. Unfortunately, that seems like the sort of thing that both the players and the owners would be against. The players like off days, and the owners like being able to line up all the games for primetime. And since the fans don’t get a vote…
I meant to put this in earlier, but I am of the mind that if they want a 16 team playoff they need to have a much larger number of teams. Forget expansion to 2 cities; we could have six new teams and make each division five teams. There is just no way that half the teams or more should be making the playoffs.
If you did something like this I think you can justify 16 teams. Otherwise they need a way to figure out how to make a 12-team playoff work; except for maybe, maybe, maaaaybe the White Sox it was pretty obvious that the bottom four seeds did not belong.
Thank god we won’t have to see a team taking selfies in the world series.
I’m pretty sure the numbers say that the contact play is usually the right play, especially in this situation as Ben mentioned with the nine hitter due up, but I really, really hate the contact play.
Fun series between two really good teams. Hope the next one plays the same way.
I agree. The fact that the Braves jumped out to the series lead like that really ratcheted up the tension.
Even though it maybe wasn’t a guarantee Kike gets put in, with two other righties behind the spot, I still can’t understand why Minter was brought in there and not Martin. The three pitches Kike fouled off before the Homer were probably the best stuff Minter had to throw.
I also thought he should have used Martin where they used Minter, and saved Minter for 2 guaranteed LHH that wouldnt be removed.
I think you can also critique how Melancon was used and not used in the series. One of two things is true: Melancon was their best reliever, in whichcase they should have used him in high leverage spots regardless of a lead, or Melancon was not significantly better than their other relievers, and it should have been OK to use him a couple times to give those guys a blow
If Melancon absorbs an inning or two in games 3-4-5-6, the Braves bullpen is perhaps in a bit better shape tonight. As it was, Melancon recorded only 4 outs in the series before being brought in to pitch the bottom of the 8th with his team behind.
It seemed like the Braves were doing what the Dodgers had sort of quietly done in recent years with Jansen: Use the traditional closer role to avoid dealing with the fact that their Proven Closer was no longer their best reliever, by saving him for save situations and mostly using other relievers in the highest leverage spots, and having him pick up a few high leverage spots in specifically 1 run save situations, which is OK because he’s still one of your better guys, and all while avoiding the drama of displacing the veteran
Only they never re-assessed this strategy, and Melancon sat around for most of a week doing nothing while his bullpen-mates crumbled around him due to overuse and repeated looks.
Hes either good enough he should have been used in other high leverage spots, or not noticeably better than Martin, etc, in which case he should have been deployed to give one of those guys a break somewhere.
Beautifully written in such a way to make me both laugh and more greatly appreciate the game I watched last night. Thanks for being a gem Ben
Just like it’s difficult to pin so much on a single play, it’s also difficult to measure how important the bottom of the 9th of Game 2 was for LA, despite their comeback efforts falling short. I know the old adage is that “momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher,” but to have that barrage of hits and runs to almost tie that game up certainly contributed in some fashion (tangible or no) to help them move forward.
After being told by Smoltz several times over that giving up solo homers is fine, to have a 3-2 lead and then….
Well, it was not a fun way to lose, though I guess those don’t really exist.
@Ben …. loved the article, @fangraphs community, amazing comments, opinions and insights. Come on, where else can you enjoy reading the comments as much as the article from the professional writer!