The Inning the Cubs Stole
This morning, Cubs fans are celebrating a World Championship, and a well-earned one. They were the best team all year. They didn’t ride a late-season hot streak to a title; they were the class of baseball from April through October. It doesn’t always happen in baseball, but this year, the best team won it all.
But it almost didn’t happen. For a few minutes, it seemed like the story this morning was going to be Aroldis Chapman. Well, Aroldis Chapman and Joe Maddon. Maddon’s risk-averse decision to use Chapman in Game 6 was one of the big stories coming out of Tuesday’s game, and while Maddon said he didn’t think that outing would have any adverse effects on Chapman’s effectiveness in Game 7, that quickly proved to not be the case.
We all saw the eighth inning. Chapman came in with two outs, looking to convert a four-out save, and he just didn’t have his normal stuff. He threw 19 fastballs in that inning, averaging 98 mph, and topping out at 101. For most pitchers, that’s electric; for Chapman, that’s worrisome. And while Chapman’s normal top-end fastball is enough to put hitters away even without command, this diminished fastball was not.
Brandon Guyer fought off some fastballs away, took some pitches that weren’t close, and worked the count 3-2. And then Chapman threw this pitch.
In terms of horizontal location, it’s actually not bad; outer corner, maybe in the zone. But it’s also a belt-high 98 mph fastball to a right-hander, and Guyer lined it into the gap for an RBI double. That at-bat was the first sign of trouble, because Chapman threw seven fastballs to Guyer, and he didn’t get a single swing and miss.
Chapman would throw 12 more fastballs in the 8th inning, getting just one swinging strike, and of course, he would give up a game-tying home run to Rajai Davis on a 98 mph fastball down and in. It took him 21 pitches to get one out a night after throwing 20 pitches to get five outs, and in that inning, it seemed pretty clear that Chapman was just gassed. The workload had caught up to him, and he just wasn’t able to throw the fastball by anyone the way he was used to.
Which is why I, and a lot of other people, were shocked when Chapman trotted back out to the mound to pitch the ninth inning, with the game still tied at six.
The glorious symmetry of this postseason starting with a manager not using a closer and maybe ending with a manager using a closer too much
— Ben Lindbergh (@BenLindbergh) November 3, 2016
It was clear that Maddon didn’t trust any of his other relievers, but Chapman had now thrown 87 pitches in the last three games, not including the warm-ups he tossed while getting ready to pitch in seven different innings. The bottom of the ninth was the eighth inning in which Chapman had pitched in four days. And Chapman knew he couldn’t just do what he normally does. He just lost a three run lead by trying to throw fastballs by Cleveland’s hitters, and he wasn’t going to do that again.
So instead, Chapman decided to abandon the pitch that made him famous. Here’s how he pitched Carlos Santana leading off the ninth.
That’s an 86 mph hanging slider in the middle of the plate, which he used to steal strike one. The location of the pitch, in pitch chart form.
Everyone expects fastballs from Chapman, so hey, smart pitching by starting Santana off with a slider. He got a free strike, since that’s clearly not what he was looking for on the first pitch of the at-bat. Except, then, the next pitch.
Another slider, this one not close to the zone. Chapman had gotten Yan Gomes to chase a couple of breaking balls out of the zone for the one out he got in the 8th inning, but Carlos Santana isn’t Yan Gomes. Now, the count is 1-1 to Cleveland’s best hitter.
Hey, look, another slider. This one actually had some break to it, but the location was so far from the zone that Santana was able to hold up. 2-1.
From there, Chapman decided to try a fastball. But it was 97 and way outside, so now he was behind Santana 3-1. This was trouble, as a leadoff walk could easily turn into a walkoff hit with the middle of the line-up coming up, so Chapman had to challenge Santana the best he could. He decided to go with another fastball. This is where it ended up.
That’s a centered and elevated 97 mph fastball. Santana was probably looking for something a little lower, knowing Chapman didn’t have his out-pitch fastball, so he didn’t want to chase up out of the zone, but this is a pitch that could have been crushed. Just like the first strike, Chapman got away with a poorly located hittable pitch, but at least now it was 3-2. Now he could try and put Santana away.
But then he threw this.
This might be the worst pitch Arodlis Chapman has ever thrown. That’s an 86 mph slider down the heart of the plate, diving into a right-hander’s bat, in exactly the area where breaking balls get hit to the moon. Again, the pitch location chart, with this particular slider circled.
This was the pitch Carlos Santana dreamed about as a little kid. World Series Game 7, bottom of the 9th, tie game, and a home run immortalizes your swing in baseball history. Except Santana missed it. Go back and watch his hop after he makes contact. He so badly wants that pitch back. He wants another chance to hit that ball 500 feet, because that’s what that pitch deserved.
So that was the first out of the ninth inning. A middle-middle slider for strike one when Santana was probably looking fastball, a borderline 97 mph fastball that was called for strike two but could have been ball four, and then a horrendous hanging breaking ball in the middle of the zone that Santana just missed hitting to the moon.
And yet, Aroldis Chapman kept pitching. With Jason Kipnis up, at least Chapman had the platoon advantage. And after hanging a couple of sliders, maybe he’d go back to his fastball?
Nope.
85 mph belt high slider. Again, borderline strike that goes his way. 0-1, but he still hasn’t thrown a good pitch for a strike the whole inning. What’s next?
Hey, look, another 85 mph slider. This one missed away, which was probably for the best, because that was another loopy breaking ball at the belt. At this point, Kipnis has probably figured out what everyone watching had figured out; Chapman had abandoned his fastball. It was time to look for a slider.
Oh man. This is the same exact pitch he threw Santana. Same spot, same movement, same chance for heroism. This is a disastrous location for an 85 mph slider, but just like Santana got under it a little bit, Kipnis was just out in front. If he waits back a fraction of a second longer, that’s an extra base hit, and maybe a walk-off home run. Chapman narrowly avoided disaster again.
From there, he threw an 87 mph slider into the right-handed batter’s box for ball two, then an 84 mph slider at Kipnis’ eyes for ball three. For the second straight batter, the count was full, and Chapman had to avoid walking the winning run on base. At this point, he had thrown six straight sliders, and everyone in the world knew what was coming next, Kipnis included.
Yeah. Let’s just go to the chart.
85 mph belt-high slider, down the middle. Kipnis spins away in disgust with his version of Santana’s little hop. Another one missed. Another pitch that deserved to end up in the seats. These are terrible pitches, thrown from an exhausted pitcher, in predictable fashion. But Cleveland just kept barely missing.
Finally, perhaps realizing that calling for another one of these sliders is just tempting fate, Miguel Montero sets up for a low and away fastball.
Here’s where the pitch actually ends up.
98 mph fastball, middle of the plate, but up out of the zone. Kipnis went after ball four, and Chapman got his first whiff of the inning. On a pitch that wasn’t anywhere near where his catcher wanted it.
And that was mostly that for Cleveland’s chance to walk it off against an exhausted pitcher who shouldn’t have been on the mound. Francisco Lindor popped up a first pitch 98 mph fastball on the inside corner, a pretty well located pitch, for out number three, and the Cubs went on to win the game in the 10th inning.
But I don’t know if there’s any way to tell the story of Game 7 without talking about how that game was almost lost in the bottom of the ninth on multiple occasions. An overworked pitcher with nothing left, throwing meatballs to Cleveland’s best hitters, and it somehow resulted in a 1-2-3 inning. That’s baseball for you.
The Cubs absolutely deserve to be champions today. They were the best team of 2016, and this time, the postseason rewarded season-long excellence. But man, that bottom of the ninth. That could have so easily gone differently. That probably should have gone differently. And we’d have an entirely different story to tell today.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
The Indians absolutely had to win it in the 9th because there was no way Schwarber/Bryant/Rizzo was not going to produce at least one run. They got an absolute gift when Maddon left Chapman in and they had a half dozen opportunities in the form of great pitches to hit with their best hitters at the plate. I was rooting for Cleveland but am not an Indians “fan”. If I was, this half inning would probably haunt me for the rest of my life.
I think you’re right simply for the fact the neither team had any bullpen studs left and the Cubs’ bats were/are simply better. I think the game advantaged the Cubs after the ninth and the rain delay.
I’m not an Indians fan, but this article would break my heart if I was. Fortunately, I’m just a baseball fan, and I can appreciate how “it somehow resulted in a 1-2-3 inning. That’s baseball for you.”
Cheers for showing this to us.
I am an Indians fan and this is the thing that bothers me most about the game. Maddon did the wrong thing and got bailed out. I am happy for all the Cubs fans, especially the older ones and the real long time fans. I know what its like to be disappointed year after year, I am a Cleveland sports fan after all. I’m happy for the FO and the players, sure. But I’m definitely a little bitter that Maddon goes down in history as the winner and it extends the narrative that he’s an amazing manager and already Hall of Fame worthy (many people have said that he would have a better HOF case than Francona if they won this series).
Honestly this article makes me feel better. I “knew” it was a terrible idea to have him pitch the 9th, and if I can’t have my team win at least I can be right in thinking that. And I like being right.
Going into the post-season, everyone was saying the best managers were Bochy, Showalter, Maddon, and Francona. Showalter got destroyed, Bochy’s bullpen failed (but that’s partly on the players), and Maddon almost cost his vastly superior team the championship. Meanwhile, Francona was forced to toss a #5 starter on short-rest.
Francona was better than Maddon by leaps and bounds, and it’s probably neck-and-neck between him and Bochy for best manager in baseball.
I was completely disillusioned with Bochy this year and many Giants’ fans feel the same way. He could have done much much better with the situation than he did.
It’s for reasons like this that a manager’s contributions to the overall result of the game are very, very minimal. Unless the decisions are absolutely batshit bananas insane, like if a manager decided to put his backup catcher on the mound as the starting pitcher during a World Series game, who the manager is makes pretty much no difference. If peak Earl Weaver suddenly managed the 2016 Twins they’d still be a raging dumpster fire. If a manager has a great team he can do great things with it, but no manager can turn a AAA team into a contender. It never has nor will it ever happen, because baseball is a game that is the sum of its parts, the exact reason why the Angels are a terrible team despite having one of the greatest players in the world on it.
Maddon didn’t make the wrong decision. He made the right one. Let me explain. I tend to think of managerial decisions in baseball in two different ways.
There are good and bad decisions.
There are right and wrong decisions.
A good decision can be a wrong decision. A bad decision can be a right decision. What defines good and bad is the reasoning. What defines right and wrong is the outcome.
The Baez bunt? Good decision. Also the wrong one. Leaving Chapman in the 9th? Bad decision. Also the right one. This is baseball. It’s crazy.
Joe Maddon often makes good decisions. Sometimes he’ll make bad ones. But every manager will make bad ones. Not every manager makes good decisions most of the time. And like every single manager in existence, right and wrong is out of his hands. That’s on the players and lady luck.
Also, can we all stop acting like Francona wasn’t looked down upon for his managerial decisions for years until this year? His use of the bullpen and Andrew Miller was by circumstance. He had no choice in the matter because of the injuries to his rotation. It was either use them the way he did or have no chance. The amount of complaints aimed at Francona over the years have been numerous. People have short memories apparently.
It’s almost like it’s still really hard to hit baseball no matter how poorly it’s pitched.
Unfortunately for me, the Cubs did hit Blanton’s mistakes.
One of the alluring things about baseball is that it looks so easy to play. When you see a player swing and miss a meatball down the center of the plate it’s easy to get frustrated, but if you go to the batting cages and turn the machine speed all the way up, you blink and you miss the ball, and then you gotta think that Major League pitchers throw much faster than that and players in the batter’s box don’t get the benefit of knowing that it’s always gonna be a fastball in the same location like a pitching machine. It’s crazy just how incredibly difficult baseball really is.
This was a terrifying inning to watch. I didn’t realize until most of the way thru that first at-bat that the fastball had gone missing. After realizing it, pure terror.
Btw, the fun thing about the position you took on Chapman’s usage is that you’d be claiming you were right no matter the outcome… and we were one perfectly-pulled choked-up Rajai Davis swing from the other version of this story.
Kris Bryant is a once and a lifetime player and honestly if I was starting a team he would be my number 1 choice. I know the popular choice is probably Trout or Posey but really Bryant is insanely good errrr GREAT! He adjusted mid at bat to hit curveballs. Even when he was fooled he made small in swing adjustments. He really threw his hips and drove with his hands to produce a better swing for the bender. The way he planted his foot in correlation to his eyes making minimal shifts stay postured through the zone was o-face inducing.
Kris Bryant is probably the best NL player, right now. He’s fantastic and I’d love to have him on my team. But he’s only 4 months younger than Trout, and despite having two great offensive campaigns, he’s still been 20% less effective at the plate. In fact, Trout’s worst offensive season was 13% better than what Bryant did this year. And Trout plays the more demanding/important position and runs the bases better. Bryant is a superstar, and any team would be lucky to have him. But Trout literally has 35 more career WAR than Bryant at the same age. Let’s not go crazy here. If you’re picking anyone over Trout to start your team with, you’re picking from one of the 22 year old shortstops (Lindor, Correa, Seager), and that’s about it.
I don’t know anybody that would pick Posey as their number one choice if they were building a team and could have any player to build their team around. Catcher is a premium position and Posey is great defensively and offensively but I just can’t see picking him first, ever
I absolutely agree. Nothing against Posey, but he’s 30 in March and has caught almost 6,000 innings in the majors. The age and wear and tear alone knock him very far down such a list.
Kris Bryant is one of the players, and my life and I really started to get my first choice. I know this is a popular choice of salmon or Posei safe, but Bryant is particularly large Errrr! He hit the ball in the middle – to adjust the attack. Even if he was right, he made a slight correction in step. Really lift your hips and hands driving motivation for better products for Bender. He planted his feet in correlation with their eyes, the change in the minimum horizontal through the evocation of the face.
This article and the one August wrote about Shaw executing exactly the pitch he wanted on the Zobrist go-ahead double made me appreciate last night’s game even more: I really did not think that would be possible.
Cameron, this is a great freakin’ piece. For some reason, I completely misread the Kipnis foul ball and thought instantly that it was gone. All of this must be tough for any Indians fan to take.
I’m with you on that Kipnis foul. It looked like he crushed it and was going to be a loner over the wall. I think the camera angle helped with that thought tho
I agree with both of you. Something funny with the camera angle where first I thought homer and then thought for sure that it would be fair for a double in the corner.
Yes, me too. I was watching at home and was ejected from my seat thinking Kipnis just hit a walk off bomb in the bottom of the 9th in game 7 of the world series. It should be illegal to deke people out like that.
They also stole the fifth, if you want to be technical about it, when Bryant walked on two terribly called pitches and later came around to score; he should have struck out to end the inning.
As Joe Sheehan has pointed out, Miller walked Bryant on 9 pitches that AB, and only one of them was thrown outside the strike zone.
https://twitter.com/majorleagueump
While watching , I thought the called strike 3 from Lester to Napoli was the most egregious one in the game because it was so inconsistent with other calls. The ump was generally squeezing pitchers on the corners – some Miller pitches, a Hendricks pitch noted below, probably some others that I don’t recall offhand – but then suddenly Lester got a very generous call off the corner in his favor.
Have to agree on the pitch to Napoli and what amazed me is how well he took it. No posturing or griping. He just went stone faced back to the dugout.
The zone was terribly called in several cases against the Cubs too, is this really the thing we’re going to complain about in a totally unrelated comment section?
You could argue that, but if you are going to point to the zone, you can’t ignore that the ump missed strike 3 from Hendricks to Santana that should have ended the bottom of that inning. Instead, two runs would eventually score. There isn’t really recourse here.
Yeah, Bryant was gifted that walk, but at least the Cubs actually had to DO something to drive him in, and it amounted to a run tacked on in a game shaping up to be a laugher at that point. The egregious missed strike 3 for Hendricks changed the entire game. That call gifted Cleveland two runs in an inning where they essentially did nothing positive outside of one swinging bunt hit. It put Cleveland back in the game and was the catalyst for Maddon’s descent into madness. If Bryant strikes out in his PA, it’s a 4-1 game instead of a 5-1 game. That’s not meaningless, but it’s not a whole new ballgame. If Santana strikes out, it remains 5-1 with Hendricks still in the game and cruising at 60something pitches against an increasingly deflated Cleveland team that’s seen Kluber chased and Miller tagged a bit. It’s not unreasonable to think there’s a good chance the Cubs would’ve coasted to victory under those conditions, making that blown call about as impactful as any one ball/strike call can be. If the Cubs had lost the game, I have to wonder if an automated strike zone wouldn’t have picked up a lot of support this offseason.
Thanks for this article, Dave! Stefan Fatsis of Slate’s “Hang Up and Listen” podcast said this morning that Maddon was vindicated leaving Chapman in for the 9th given his 1-2-3 inning. You just can’t just a process by its outcomes, just like you can’t say Maddon managed a good series b/c he now has a ring.
Exactly. The last time I saw a Cubs pitcher throw that much junk to get through an inning, he peeled back the tape on his glove to find out that his mom had been the star baseball player all along!!
“Float it”
As I commented on an FG article last night, I’m glad we won but boy oh boy did I ever want to put Maddon through a police-style interrogation. I’ve never been so stumped about baseball as when Chapman came back out for the 9th. What on earth was Maddon thinking?
(Don’t get me wrong he’s a great manager and I’m so glad we have him, but I am really questioning most of his pitching management/changes in the Series from my comfy armchair over here)
This was the most baseball half-inning ever. It needs a clever name to remember it by.
The most frustrating part of the whole Chapman outing for me was that he was throwing the same pitch over and over again. Against Rajai Davis, he threw about 7 straight fastballs without getting a swing and miss, and never adjusted. I’d guess that anything off-speed would have gotten Davis to strike out in that spot.
Then after he lost trust in the fastball, he started throwing only sliders! The Kipnis strikeout described here proves that even a bad 98mph fastball can be effective if the hitter doesn’t know it’s coming. How does a major league pitcher not realize that he needs to mix up his pitch selection and keep hitters off-balance?
As I watched it, I didn’t realize just how fat a lot of those pitches were in the 9th. I thought at the time that Chapman was smart to go away from his fastball, because the first 18 (!) pitches he threw in the 8th were all fastballs and that had resulted in 3 solid hits (double, HR, and single) and a 2-0 count on Gomes. No swing and miss strikes to that point and only one taken strike.
You’ve convinced me instead that it was just baseball that the Indians didn’t tee off on one of those 9th inning sliders.
Great post, Dave. Thank you.
My initial reaction to this article was “Man, we really got away with this game!” but after thinking about it, I think the correct reaction is:
1) The Indians didn’t miss Chapman’s mistakes in the 8th
2) The Indians did miss his mistakes in the 9th
Chapman is still a major league pitcher and hitting a 90mph slider is no joke.
Hitters miss/don’t swing on mistake pitches every inning (Christ, how many mistakes did Heyward alone miss in this series?).
Hate to pile on Heyward b/c I still root for him, but his AB in the 10th was honestly one of the least professional at bats I’ve ever seen. Strange that during the rain delay he was supposedly the guy talking about staying calm and collected, then went out and came across as the jumpiest guy on the field.
I would imagine it’s way easier for a guy who routinely throws 102 MPH to get away with mistakes. An 85-mph hanger from, say, Jaime Garcia isn’t that different from his fastball – you can adjust to it easier. But if you guess Chapman’s heater and he instead throws a sloppy middle-middle cement mixer, you’re still probably toast. IOW, not all hanging sliders are created equal.
On top of the other factors, I was also surprised to see Chapman go back out there in the 9th because of how long he’d had to sit in the dugout for the top of the 9th.
I don’t know exactly how long it was (nor how to locate that information readily), but it seemed like a pretty long half-inning. Only 4 batters, but we had a mid-inning pitching change, a replay review, two long AB’s (8 pitches to Heyward, 6 pitches to Baez), and several throws to first after the first runner of the inning reached base.
Still sort of waiting for an article about how poorly Joe Maddon managed this series. A straight up criticism (there’s definitely snippets here and there already) might not come since he got away with it by having a better roster.
Question: do some of Chapman’s postseason games (including this one) moderately hurt what he’ll get in free agency, because they’ve highlighted that he looks a lot more hittable when his average velocity drops from triple digits into the 98 range?
Or did teams already have the information and scouting to worry about what Chapman may pitch like in 3 years – summarized as “today he relies heavily on a triple digit fastball with sometimes questionable command”? And aging closers falling from “lights out” to “somewhat useful middle inning reliever”when they lose velocity is hardly a new concept.
Velocity wasn’t really chapman’s big problem yesterday. When a pitcher gets tired, the drop in command is often even more noticeable than the drop in velocity, and chapman was just so much farther from his spots than usual
I remember thinking at the time that Maddon had morphed into Grady Little and was wondering if he would get fired by Theo if Chapman lost it. He simply was gassed and everyone knew it as Maddon sat in the dugout with his fingers crossed praying to the baseball gods. The gods answered his prayers, but game 7 might have been Maddons worst ever as a manager (squeeze with 2 strikes, Lester in too early with a man on base, Lester out too early after cruising due to an IF hit when Chapman was clearly not going to be at his best with his recent workload)
I don’t for a second believe Theo Epstein would overreact to one series to the point of firing one of the game’s best managers, but part of me wonders if he would’ve had a choice in the matter. Lose that game and Maddon may well have become the next Steve Bartman in the city of Chicago (albeit less an unfortunate scapegoat and more genuinely deserving of the blame).
I got the feeling through the series that Maddon was conscious of the public discussion about how great a manager Francona is, he felt like he should manage more like Francona, and that caused him to make mistakes, like for example pulling Hendricks without a good reason and leaving in his ace reliever even though he clearly didn’t have it.
Yea. I bet Maddon was sitting there on the front step of the dugout asking himself “how can I manage more like Francona” in game seven of the World Series…
No. Just no.
Pulling Hendricks was not a bad decision. Putting in Lester with runners on was.
This is not really on the point, except on the topic of questionable managing, but I don’t see anywhere else to mention this and this might have been very important to the outcome of the Series–why did Francona start Bauer in game 2 and Tomlin in game 3? The plan of starting them in games 5 and 6 on 3 days’ rest, even if they had thrown relatively few pitches in the preceding game, seems very questionable (Kluber okay because he was clearly the ace and the quality of his pitching relative to the others made this reasonable, but this argument doesn’t hold for the other starters). Tomlin had clearly been the more reliable pitcher, and it seemed that the Indians’ best chance of getting a win in games 5 or 6 (between Kluber starts) would have been to pitch Tomlin in game 6 on 4 days rest, which meant starting him in game 2. That would have meant starting Merritt or someone else in game 5, but it’s not like there were high expectations for Bauer in any case no matter how many days’ rest he had, and if the Indians had split games 5 and 6 they would have won the series. Tomlin had pitched 3 solid games in the postseason on 4+ days’ rest and then in game 6 on 3 days’ rest he got bombed. Might not have been a coincidence. And even if putting them both out on 3 days’ rest was the ultimate choice, why not start Tomlin in game 2 so there would have been this option when game 5 came around? It looked like a very strange decision for this reason when Francona announced the rotation before the series and in retrospect it’s even more mystifying.
Merritt was not considered at all a viable option. And starting Bauer before Tomlin allowed Bauer, who they knew would be better than Tomlin on short rest, to come back for Game 7. If the Indians get another hit or two in the 10th, that decision and Bauer’s two outs look brilliant.
Why would merritt be an option against the blue jays but not the cubs? And on any case, so what? They only needed one more win in game 5 or 6 and the best chance for that was tomlin on 4 days rest. And if bauer in relief was such a valuable option, why did they way so long to use him? It doesn’t add up. If those are the best arguments, it was a mistake.
I’ll preface all of this by saying that I think Francona overall did a very good and very creative job with a difficult hand in the post-season.
I’m not as certain as you that Tomlin is better than Bauer – it’s small sample recency for Tomlin vs. projections and a few years of performance for Bauer.
That said, I was also surprised not to see Merritt for Game 5, possibly with a planned Salazar piggyback for a couple innings. I get that Francona probably wanted to make that decision before Game 4 so that the Game 5 starter could be prepared. But it just seemed to make so much sense whether you’re up 3-1 after 4 games or tied 2-2.
I understand that Merritt probably isn’t very good, but Bauer or Tomlin on short rest isn’t a high bar to clear. And that’s just in Game 5. Whether you line it up as Bauer or Tomlin in Games 2 and 6, you not only get the Game 2 starter on full rest for Game 6 but the other one is available either on short rest for relief in Game 6 or on full rest for relief in Game 7.
As an aside, I’m pretty sure that Merritt ended up as the only player on either World Series roster who didn’t appear in a game.
I am not convinced that Francona managed circles around Maddon as some have claimed. After all, Francona is the one who pitched everyone on short rest when he didn’t have to. It caught up with Kluber in game seven and that might be why they lost the game. Why is that more forgivable than what Maddon did with Chapman?
Using Kluber three times was forgivable because he had so little after Kluber. Whether you want to go by projection, career, or this season, Kluber is a 3 to 3.25 FIP pitcher. Bauer’s more like 4 – 4.25, Tomlin is more like 4.5, and Merritt is probably worse than Tomlin. So basically one legit ace (Kluber), one mid-rotation or #4 starter (Bauer), a #5 starter (Tomlin), and a question mark who had pitched 11 innings in the regular season. Even if Kluber drops off quite a bit due to short rest, it’s not hard to believe that he’s still Cleveland’s best starting pitcher, so have him start 3 games
The more I think about, though, the more I do think that using both Bauer and Tomlin on short rest was a bad decision. Better to take the risk with Merritt and use either Bauer or Tomlin on full rest.
The less forgivable part with Chapman was using him up 5 runs in Game 6. Maddon knew that Chapman threw 40+ pitches 2 days before that. Maddon knew that the Cubs needed to win both Games 6 and 7. If you are wavering on whether or not to trust your non-Chapman relievers enough to get 7 outs before giving up 5 runs, then the logical corollary is that you’re more than likely going to need to get multiple innings from Chapman in Game 7. So don’t use Chapman with a big lead. Or, even if you do use him to get Lindor out with 2 on and 2 out, then certainly don’t him bring out to pitch the 8th inning and throw even more pitches.
Psychological advantage. Even if the Cleveland hitters ended up looking for sliders, in the back of their minds, they’re afraid of missing the fastball. It’s why they couldn’t quite square up the badly thrown sliders. Chapman didn’t get out of that inning by luck. He got out of that inning by reputation.
I think you’re on to something here. The hitters undoubtedly know that Chapman throws about 80% fastballs (81% this season, 78% for career). They can’t force themselves to forget that information even if they’re seeing mostly sliders. Chapman threw just enough fastballs to Santana (2 out of 6 pitches) to keep the fastball in their minds.
Seems similar to Jeff Sullivan’s point about stealing on Lester: guys just can’t force themselves to take an absolutely massive lead and steal on first movement because it goes outside of their comfort zone and normal approach.