Baseball Bytes: On the Razor’s Edge
For the first time ever, each Division Series is locked up at 1-1. Plus, Fernando Tatis Jr.'s playoff revival.
Welcome to another ✨Postseason Edition✨ of Baseball Bytes1 — a column in which I dive into several byte-sized pieces of information that jumped out to me from my various baseball spreadsheets. If you’ve noticed a Baseball Byte of your own, email me and I’ll feature it in a future column!
⚾ State of the Race
We’ve now played eight total games of the Division Series round… and we’re not really any closer to knowing who is going to meet in the League Championships, much less the World Series.
After the Royals and Tigers evened their respective series with the Yankees and Guardians on Monday, each LDS matchup is all knotted up at 1 game apiece. In the nearly 30 years since that round of the postseason became permanent in 1995, this is the first time ever that all four Division Series were 1-1 through their first pair of games:
That leaves us with a pretty serious logjam in the playoff probability forecasts. As of Monday night,2 every remaining team in the postseason — all eight of ‘em — had between a 10 percent (we’ll round the Royals up from 9.7) and 15 percent chance to win the World Series according to the “stats-only” version of my MLB Playoff Predictor, with every LDS matchup sitting between 46 and 54 percent:
Talk about things being on a razor’s edge. And this means the next game in each series will carry some massive implications for the rest of the season.
The theory of the playoffs going in was that there was a Big Three of teams who’d separated themselves from the pack throughout the regular season — the Dodgers, Phillies and Yankees — with the possibility that the Padres (and Astros or Orioles, whoops) would join them conditional on advancing from the Wild Card round. The many upsets of the opening series only seemed to bring this reality into greater focus, as teams who looked less formidable on paper advanced and made the favorites look even more likely to take control.
But that’s why they play the games. And baseball’s penchant for the unpredictable always makes any theories of structure to the proceedings mere guesswork.
The Phillies, Yankees and Guardians — I’m not ready to even declare who the “better” team is between San Diego and Los Angeles — could each turn around and win their Game 3s, imposing a degree of order back on the baseball universe. But the odds are high (roughly 85-90 percent, to be exact) that at least one team who was considered notably beneath their LDS opponent — in terms of talent or regular season résumé — will be moving on, whether it be the Mets, Tigers or Royals.
That’s not necessarily where we thought we’d be after a couple of games in the Division Series. But with a new bunch of de facto best-of-3 series on our hands, anything can happen from here.
⚾ Tatis’ Twists and Turns
To say Fernando Tatis Jr.’s career defies simple narratives is an understatement.
After bursting onto the scene as a rookie in 2019, he bounced back from a season-ending back injury to play like an MVP in the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign… then signed a massive 14-year contract, injured his shoulder multiple times, still put up nearly 7 WAR, injured his wrist in a motorcycle accident and was suspended for 80 games after failing a PED test — causing him to miss all of 2022 — came back as a good (but not quite as great) hitter in 2023, was on pace for a better season at the plate in 2024 before another midseason injury cost him 59 games, and returned just in time to warm up for the postseason with 7 home runs in September.
Got all that?
In yet another twist, Tatis Jr. has been powering the Padres’ strong World Series odds in the chart above. In 4 postseason games, he has 9 hits, 2 doubles, 3 home runs, 3 walks, a .643 batting average and a 2.151 OPS. Going back to our friend RE24 (Base-Out Runs Added), Tatis’ performance in San Diego’s 10-2 romp over the Dodgers on Sunday — 3.31 runs added — was the best of his postseason career and the 10th-best game of his MLB career, period.
The Padres looked like a threatening team anyway as the playoffs loomed, and that was with Tatis Jr. missing most of the season’s second half. They have now won 20 of their past 30 games — tied with the Tigers for the best in MLB — and Tatis’ surge down the stretch (and in the postseason) adds yet another X-factor for San Diego’s opponents to be worried about.
Filed under: Baseball, Baseball Bytes
Not to be confused with Baseball Bits, the excellent YouTube series from Foolish Baseball.
If you’re reading this first thing in the morning on Tuesday, this update will only incorporate the average odds from Elo and SRS ratings; FanGraphs and Vegas will be added later in the day. (NOTE: The table of “stats-only” odds has been added to this story on Tuesday AM.)
Agreed. We seem to be in a bit of a transition period where injuries are forcing teams to think outside the box, but not enough for real innovation.
The Opener strategy is a diluted form of what I think is going to happen more broadly. It always struck me that the Opener was limited in intent - a way to optimize the standard rotation by getting through the first 3 batters and extending the outing of the starter deeper into the game. What I think must be approached is something more radical - scheduling say 3 short inning pitchers of various styles (lefty, rights, fastball, then slider etc.) each game every 4th day. The so called 3-3-3 rotation (proposed by Dave Flemming in 2009) using a total of 12 pitchers. You can configure it several ways that are not relevant to the overall strategy.
You gain a lot of effectiveness from variance in pitching styles to disrupt the offense, and each pitcher is slated to go around 120 innings in a season. This should reduce stress on arms by lowering innings and game level pitch counts and allowing pitchers to know going in how many innings are expected for pacing.
The economics of the game are almost demanding something new at this point. I mentioned earlier this year that I would like to see an accounting of how much money teams are spending each year on starting pitchers on the IL with arm problems. I've never seen that reported, but it must be jaw dropping.
Consider the Dodgers with $241MM in payroll having to cobble together enough junk drawer pitchers for the postseason run...before you get to pitchers not coming back as effective (Buehler), not able to work as deeply into games and wearing out the bullpen or the luxury tax impacts.
GM Andrew Friedman has said they need answers to the rash of injuries to their starters. Well, they should start by thinking broadly about leaning reflexively on the traditional rotation that just hasn't worked for them...particularly, if they get eliminated again. If Friedman is being moderately observant, yesterday was a glimpse of a much better future where even Ohtani's arm ins 2025 can be preserved.
How effective could it be? It was so effective that when the Opener was hot, agents and the MLBPA complained that using relievers in this way was a devious method to lower paying starting pitchers.
Predictably, the baseball Luddites argued that it "won't work" because you can't depend on getting 3 innings out of pitcher. However, injuries are changing the calculus. The people you are bringing in to replace injured starters repeatedly throughout the year are not effective yet get more innings as a starter. It's not about which strategy is theoretically optimal, but which strategy available to you is best.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Encouragingly, people are starting to catch on:
https://www.southsidesox.com/2024/3/17/24102376/lets-beat-that-dead-horse-for-3-3-3-pitching-rotation-for-the-chicago-white-sox-once-again
This will likely start with bottom level teams but quickly expand as other teams realize the upsides in effectiveness, injury reduction and lower costs.
Postseason...each game realky matters...Tigers and Dodgers...two staffs racked with multiple pitchers recovering from arm surgery...Tommy John surgeries now happening to pitchers used in the Postseason...LA and Detroit use 14 pitchers in two critical games, for two shutouts, no starter records more than 4 outs. Historic.
Can you feel it?
There is a paradigm shift coming to baseball pitching where the standard "starter on pitch count goes 5 or 6 followed by a reliever then closer" is dying in favor of using multiple relievers going all out on cheap contracts going once through the lineup at most.
Once known as the "3-3-3" or "3-3-2-1" rotation, this is coming to a successful team near you. Cheaper and replaceable with less arm strain and avoidance of the 3rd time through the lineup penalty or platooning strategies.
Feels like something ripe that you could be out front on in examining.
Just a thought...