Newsletter Excerpt, October 31, 2021 -- "Game Four"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"The Braves, however, are taking away hits at an incredible rate -- their implied DER of .734 would have led MLB this year and been one of the best marks ever. The Braves are also striking out the Astros at a very high rate relative to the Astros’ established level. Fewer balls in play and fewer hits on those balls in play -- with some help from cool nights in Atlanta -- have made it hard for the Astros’ offense to function."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 30, 2021 -- "Game Three"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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"There’s been a lot of focus on the trade pickups Alex Anthopoulos made in July, but the real difference between the playoff Braves and the regular season Braves is that three of the team’s top four relievers, none of them stars, none of them dominant in 2021, have stopped allowing runs."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 28, 2021 -- "Tick Tock"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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"We’re pining for an era of baseball that never existed. From almost the moment baseball went to nighttime World Series games, those games have ended after 11. There are exceptions -- the 1983 Series seems to have been played with chess clocks, as was that ’77 one Reggie ended -- but for 40 years, World Series games have ended after 11 p.m, and sometimes after midnight."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 27, 2021 -- "Game One"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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"Valdez was decidedly not pitching well, and Yimi Garcia had been warmed up. There was just no reason to let Valdez pitch to Duvall and the run of hitters who would follow. That two-run mistake by Baker shaped the rest of the game."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 26, 2021 -- "World Series Preview"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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"This is the primary battleground of this series: The Astros’ ground-ball staff against the Braves’ fly-ball hitters."

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, October 24, 2021 -- "Thinking Inside the Box"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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"Football championships are won by quarterbacks who have the ball in their hands on every play. Basketball championships are won by the best basketball players in the world, touching the ball on almost every possession, taking over the game as the clock winds down, controlling it, owning it.

"Baseball championships are won by whoever’s turn it is to bat, whoever is asked to pitch. No one knows what’s coming, and that’s why we watch."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 23, 2021 -- "Astros vs. TBD"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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--

 

"The arc of Baker’s managerial career has been fascinating. From the start, he’s received strong praise as a leader of men, as someone who gets the most from players, especially veteran players. With the Giants, that often manifested itself as a bias toward veterans and a reluctance to commit to younger players. He also had the biases of his era when it came to managing pitchers, a weakness that peaked in his overwork of Mark Prior and Kerry Wood in 2003. Baker was never a stathead’s favorite manager, prone to doing things like leading off OBP-nightmare Corey Patterson."

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, October 22, 2021 -- "CT3"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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"Before last night, Chris Taylor was best known for being at the intersection of two modern trends. One, the way players change the trajectory of their careers by emphasizing hitting the ball hard and up. Two, the development of players who can effectively play multiple positions regularly."

 

Joe Sheehan Newsletter, October 21, 2021 -- "Starting Pitching"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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The Joe Sheehan Newsletter
Vol. 13, No. 108
October 21, 2021

When the two games have a composite score of 18-3 with no lead changes, you’re not left with much to analyze. Let’s step back for a second.

There was a lot of online chatter yesterday about the lack of innings thrown by starting pitchers in this postseason. There’s no one reason for it. Many starters have spit the bit, including Astros starters in seven of their nine games. We’ve seen a few openers and a few bullpen games, tactics that send a segment of the baseball world into hysterics. The use of starters as relievers, thinking here mostly of Max Scherzer, has chipped away at the length of some starts.

Even the pitchers who have had conventional, effective starts haven’t worked deep into games. That’s a function of how starters are used in modern baseball; no starting pitcher averaged more than 6 2/3 innings a start this season. There were just 33 nine-inning starts all year (seven-inning games (and extra-innings versions of same) make calculating that as a percentage a challenge, but it’s well under 1% of starts). There were 111 starts of at least eight innings, well under 3% of all starts. Pitchers don’t do that any more against the Pirates in May, so it’s unrealistic to expect them to do it against playoff-caliber lineups in October.

Where the conversation loses me is in calling this some existential problem for baseball. Look, I get that my generation of sportswriters was shaped on the older end by the aces of the 1960s and the workload monsters of the 1970s, and at the younger end by the 1990s Braves and -- I’m pretty sick of hearing about this one game -- the John Smoltz/Jack Morris matchup in Game Seven of the 1991 World Series. Between those two bounds, though, you had a half-generation of incredible pitchers that was broken by overwork, the Gooden/Saberhagen/Hershiser class. No one talks much about that group when glorifying the days when men were men.

The fact is, postseason baseball hasn’t just been Gibby and Sandy throwing haymakers for 175 pitches on two days’ rest. It’s been Casey Stengel employing quick hooks throughout the Yankees’ 1950s dynasty. Some years his starters threw 35 2/3 out of 37 innings in the Series; some years he quick-hooked like Sparky Anderson after a case of Red Bull. Speaking of Captain Hook, his vaunted Big Red Machine won consecutive World Series in 1975 and 1976. In 17 playoff games, Anderson’s starter saw the eighth four times, which is as many times as they didn’t reach five innings. Managers have always played to the conditions of the game and the strength of their roster. Heck, you know when this trend towards winning championships by throwing relief pitchers at the problem accelerated? 2011, when Tony La Russa used a deep arsenal to make up for a lack of frontline pitching on his way to the title.

The “primacy of starting pitchers” is something that has waxed and waned throughout history. It’s in a fallow period now, and maybe forever, because pitching is as hard as it’s ever been. There are very few soft touches in a lineup any more, certainly not in playoff lineups. On a per-pitch basis, pitchers in the modern playoffs are working the hardest of any pitchers in baseball history. The same amount of energy that might have gotten you four times through a lineup half-filled with 150-pound singles hitters in 1965 now gets you two times around one in which everybody can take you deep.

Yesterday, we saw Framber Valdez throw eight innings for the Astros’ third LCS win, and we saw the Braves use six pitchers to get 27 outs for their third LCS win. Neither is better than the other. The White Sox were as starting-pitching-forward as any team in baseball, and they’re home. The Brewers were shaped much the same, and they are golfing as well. Until we start holding parades and making commemorative gear for “the team that came closest to a championship while playing baseball the way it was played in 1983,” shut up about how the wins are racked up.

We want as many different approaches to winning as we can get. One of baseball’s real problems right now -- not “old people don’t like where the second baseman stands,” but actual problems -- is the lack of ways in which teams can win. You can’t win without power. You can’t win without having a bunch of strikeout relievers. You can’t win with one-run strategies because there aren’t enough singles to cash them in. I am very guilty of talking too much about baseball in the 1980s, but you had a combination of competitive balance and variety of approaches that has never been matched before or since. The deployment of pitchers is one of the few ways in which teams are taking a range of approaches, and we need to embrace that.


Astros/Red Sox

Alex Cora faced one of the toughest decisions he’s had this October in the sixth inning last night. Chris Sale was pitching better than he had at any time since his Tommy John surgery, allowing one run on two hits, with seven strikeouts against one walk in five innings. He’d thrown just 79 pitches in going around the Astros’ order twice.

A conservative approach would have been to thank Sale for his work keeping the Sox in a 1-0 game and turn to Tanner Houck. Houck had not pitched since Game One, throwing only an inning in that contest, seemingly so that he could serve as Sale’s backup should one be needed. One may not necessarily have been needed, but a fresh Houck versus Sale at 80 pitches facing the Astros a third time is probably a debate won by Houck. Like a lot of decisions this month, this one falls into a range where I can see it both ways.

Complicating this is that gorgeous Astros lineup, which starts RLRLRLR, leaving no obvious place to bring in a reliever to gain the platoon advantage, and perhaps more importantly in this moment, no obvious place to remove Sale. If you didn’t take out the lefty after the fifth, with the top of the order coming up, there would always be a left-handed batter coming up to tempt you into leaving Sale in.

That’s exactly how the inning played out. Sale issued a five-pitch walk to Jose Altuve, an at-bat during which he threw his slowest four-seamer of the night (92.5 mph), and didn’t break 95 on any of them. This was a sign that Sale was losing effectiveness...but coming up was a left-handed batter, Michael Brantley, so it made sense to leave Sale in. Brantley topped a first-pitch slider to third, a difficult if makeable 5-3, but Kyle Schwarber flat dropped the throw to first. Altuve went to third on the error.

This is where I think Cora went wrong. He needed to have a right-hander ready for the Alex Bregman/Yordan Alvarez/Carlos Correa stretch, and he didn’t. If you can defend sending Sale out for the sixth, you can’t defend doing it without having a reliever hot. With no one ready -- Brantley put the first pitch in play, remember -- Sale faced Bregman, who also put the first pitch in play, topping out to Sale. Now, we’re back to having a lefty at the plate in Alvarez, and there’s again no case for taking out Sale. Alvarez hit a first-pitch fastball -- 95 mph, again among his slowest of the night -- down the left-field line, and the game was over.

(Aside: The first indication from the broadcast that the Red Sox had anyone up in the bullpen at all was a shot of Sale walking to the dugout after being removed. Terrible. Just terrible.)

It’s hard to take out your nominal ace when he’s pitching as well as Sale was. It’s hard to take out your lefty starter when two lefties are due up in three batters, and you don’t have a lefty reliever up. It’s hard to take out your pitcher when he’s been victimized by an error. It’s hard to take out your lefty starter when he’s allowed a walk and two weak grounders and there’s a lefty at the plate. At every turn, I can understand why Alex Cora made the choice that he did, but it was passive managing in a situation that called for being more active.

This streaky series has now seen the Astros rip off a 17-1 run over 11 innings to head back to Houston up 3-2. Their rotation is a bit of a mess, down Lance McCullers and with Luis Garcia’s knee a question mark. The Red Sox send their best to the mound Friday night, Nathan Eovaldi, and after the week the Dodgers have had we’ll all be watching to see if Eovaldi is affected by throwing 24 pitches in relief on Tuesday.


Braves/Dodgers

Eddie Rosario seems to have taken the baton from Enrique Hernandez as the playoffs’ random hero. He had a triple and two homers last night in the Braves’ 9-2 win at Dodger Stadium, putting the Braves, for the second straight year, one win away from the World Series. Never forget:

“What an embarrassing trade deadline for Paul Dolan. The Cleveland front office made four deals at the deadline, and two of them were entirely accounting tricks. They gave Cesar Hernandez to the team they were chasing in the division to save about $1.7 million. Then they made a one-for-one deal with the Braves, sending Eddie Rosario out for corner infield prospect *checks notes* 34-year-old Pablo Sandoval. That trade shuffled about another $1 million off the payroll. That is literally all it does, as Sandoval was released almost immediately.”

Tonight’s game flips the script from Game Four, with the Dodgers employing a bullpen game against the Braves’ good young lefty. Max Fried. The Dodgers can pitch anyone at this point and it won’t matter unless they get their offense going. The second-best offense in the NL during the season has hit .211/.266 (!)/.422 in the playoffs, scoring just 3.5 runs a game. It’s actually a little worse than that, as they’ve been held to three runs or fewer in five of their nine playoff games.

The Max Muncy injury can be blamed for some of that fall-off, but you have the Turner Twins at .154 with two walks and a .218 SLG being a much bigger factor in the team’s wretched month. Justin Turner is done for the year after straining his hamstring last night, and it may very well make the Dodgers better in the short term.

It’s silly to write off the Dodgers when we saw this script play out a year ago. This year, though, the Dodgers are a bit worse at this stage of the season, the Braves are a bit better, and the final two games aren’t being played in Arlington. The Braves have been the best team in this series, and unless that changes immediately, they’re headed back to the World Series for the first time since 1999.

 

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, October 20, 2021 -- "Scripts, Flipped"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"Last night, down one again, bases loaded again, Cora did it again. He put Perez into an incredibly high-leverage spot, and Perez allowed not just one of the runs to score, but all of them, turning a 3-2 game into a 9-2 final. It’s a weird blind spot, or maybe a couple of them, that has Cora going to a mop-up man in spots where his team still has a very good chance to win. That’s a leak he needs to close."

 

 

Newsletter Excerpt, October 19, 2021 -- "LCS Check-Ins"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"We’ll know early in tonight’s game whether the Dodgers are making the necessary adjustments. I’ll even hang a number on it: If Morton turns over the lineup the first time on fewer than 35 pitches, he’ll be in the driver’s seat."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 18, 2021 -- "Four Pop-Ups"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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"Four balls in play, none hit even 80 mph, none hit even 260 feet, but they’re the difference in this series right now. The Dodgers have a higher OBP, a higher slugging, a much better strikeout rate and not a single win, because the Braves have won on the dirt, with better baserunning and defense in the games’ biggest spots."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 16, 2021 -- "NLCS Preview"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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"The history of matchups like this, though -- which I didn’t realize until I did the research Friday -- sways me. The fact that the Dodgers have outplayed the Braves even over the Braves’ best stretch of baseball sways me. As well as the Braves’ bullpen pitched in the NLDS, I’m inclined to think that was more a reflection of the Brewers’ weak lineup than an endorsement of the law firm of Matzek, Jackson, and Smith. I was leaning Dodgers in five before the Scherzer news, and I’ll stick with it even though an extra game may now be needed."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 15, 2021 -- "ALCS Preview"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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"I don’t expect it to happen. The Astros aren’t a great matchup for anyone, but a team that puts the ball in play hard is a particular problem for these Red Sox, a bad defensive club all around the field. The Rays, in losing to the Sox, hit .255 on balls in play. That number is headed up, and that’s probably going to be what swings the series. Astros in five."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 15, 2021 -- "Checked Out"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

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--

 

"The final moment of the Giants’ season was Wilmer Flores checking his swing on an 0-2 pitch, and first-base umpire Gabe Morales calling it a swing, a strike, and ballgame. Replays showed, to the extent you can ever be sure about these things, that Flores hadn’t gone far enough around to have been called out. This is unusual; most of the time, it looks like the player held up and replay shows that he went around. If you can find someone who looked at this replay and thinks Flores went, you’ve done better than I have. It’s not just that it was a bad call; it was a bad call that was hard to defend, made at a terrible time, that left even Dodger fans cringing a bit."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 14, 2021 -- "What I'm Watching"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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--

 

"These are the signature franchises in the history of the National League. The Dodgers have won 24 NL pennants, the Giants 23. They were tentpoles in New York and their paired move to California reshaped the baseball map. The longest stretch of National League baseball played without one of the two being its champion is 11 years, and that took a format change and a Braves dynasty to come about. At one point in the 1950s, the teams won six straight NL pennants between them. Today, they have won six of the last 11 and whoever wins tonight’s game will be a considerable favorite to make that seven of 12."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 13, 2021 -- "Thinking Inside the Box"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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--

 

"The Braves won this series from the mound, throwing two shutouts and allowing just six runs in four games. They struck out 48 men -- a 35% rate! -- and walked just nine. They held the Brewers to 2-for-23 with runners in scoring position and just two homers. Without Freeman, who raked in the series, they might well have had to go back to Milwaukee and face Corbin Burnes for the right to advance."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 12, 2021 -- "Two Rookies"

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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--

 

"This is baseball now. They don’t care how old you are, don’t care what you did in Topeka in 2019, don’t care if you’ve never done something before. Teams identify skills, and they sharpen those skills, teach the player how to get the most from those skills, and if that player can help them win, they put the player in position to succeed."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 11, 2021 -- "Division Series Reset"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

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--

 

"I know everyone’s numbers look better after hanging a 12-spot, but can we talk more about Luis Robert? He might have been safe on the Gurriel throw anyway after getting a great jump off third. He’s now 6-for-12 in this series with just one strikeout against two walks. (His teammates have 29 strikeouts and seven walks.) There’s a Fernando Tatis Jr. quality to his game, where you have to keep your eyes on him at all times, because he might do something you’ll tell your friends about. I have no rooting interest here, but as with the Rays and Wander Franco, I’d like to see the exciting young player play more this October."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 8, 2021 -- "Giants/Dodgers Preview"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $59.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

--

 

"The Giants, who have been playing baseball since Reconstruction, set a franchise record with 107 wins. They needed every single one of them to end the Dodgers’ eight-year streak of winning the NL West. The difference? The Giants went 10-9 against the Dodgers. The Dodgers actually outscored them 80-78. The Giants won both extra-inning contests. The teams split six one-run games. If you dig into third-order records, the Dodgers pull away a bit, but really, there’s not much separating these two teams."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 8, 2021 -- "Brewers/Braves Preview"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $59.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

--

 

"So are the Braves an 88-73 team? A 37-19 one? Something in between? Will their low-OBP, high-power offense play up in postseason games where scoring in as few swings as possible is the best strategy? The NewBraves scored 47% of their runs on homers in August and September."

 

Newsletter Excerpt, October 7, 2021 -- "Rays/Red Sox Preview"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $59.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

--

 

"So these teams look somewhat close on the page, over a full season. But the Rays have been the much better team -- the Rays have been a truly great team -- for more than half the season. That’s the team that takes the field at The Trop tonight."

 

Newsletter Excerpt, October 6, 2021 -- "Astros/White Sox Preview"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $59.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

--

 

"Put it all together, and the White Sox had the fourth-highest strikeout rate, and sixth-best K-BB%, in baseball history over a completed season. The top eight guys on this staff are capable of shutting down any offense in baseball, including that of the Astros."
 

 

Joe Sheehan Newsletter, October 6, 2021 -- "What I'm Watching"

Cardinals (Wainwright) at Dodgers (Scherzer), 8 p.m. ET

We’re going to hear a lot about how the system doesn’t work because of this matchup between a 106-win Dodgers team and a 90-win Cardinals team. Many people will notice, for the first time, that it’s a little ridiculous to make a team play a one-game playoff against a team whose record was far worse over a 162-game season. They will be right, of course. What they’ll miss is that this ghost has always been in the machine, and MLB just got lucky for a decade. From a piece I wrote all the way back in 2010:

“Let's play it out, though. The Yankees and Rays bust their humps all month, win a few extra games, maybe 99 for the Rays, 98 for the Yankees. With a "second wild card" to play for, the Red Sox make a couple of small additions, pick up some wins in September and get to 91. One of those extra wins comes at the expense of the White Sox, who fade a bit faster, enabling the Red Sox to lock up their spot in the Coin Flip Game heading into their last series of the year.

“Now, the #3 seed, the #4 seed are preparing for the playoffs, while the two best teams in the league are playing for the right to not be dropped into this unimaginably stupid Coin Flip Game against a team that, because the sixth-best team in the league is far enough behind the fifth-best, is itself resting! Moreover, after proving itself to be eight or so games better than than its divisional partner over a full season of play, the second-place team is now, after losing its run at the division title, shoved into a single-game playoff.

“The second-best team in baseball could go from fighting for a division title and the best record in its league to a one-game playoff against a team it was miles ahead of for six months. It may sound far-fetched, but it is not that far removed from what we would have had this year had the rule been in place. It's pretty much what you would have gotten in the AL in 2005, where the Yankees and Red Sox tied for first place while the "second wild card" would have been the Indians, five games clear of the A's for the #5 seed.”

It wasn’t far-fetched, it just took a few years to play out this way. The Cardinals clinched their wild-card berth Tuesday and had five days to play low-pressure baseball, rest the people who needed resting, and set their pitching up for the Wild Card Game. The Dodgers, by dint of being a whole lot better, played meaningful baseball through the last day of the season, when their first baseman suffered a terrible injury and they burned their #1...#1A if you want...in pursuit of a division title they would be locked out of.

This is a very bad system, one that never should have been implemented, and one that is likely to go away next year. If in its death throes it finally invalidates six months of baseball in a single evening -- if the 90-72 Cardinals advance over the 106-57 Dodgers -- well, MLB will have gotten its just desserts. For the problem isn’t a single playoff system or any single decision, the problem is MLB’s 40-year streak of being unable to envision the consequences of its actions. There’s just never been anyone standing there to say, “You know, a wild card could kill great division races.” “If we go to interleague play, the All-Star Game will lose its luster.” “Trashing our players for two generations might eventually turn people off of baseball.”

This is a bad playoff system for a league that plays 162 games, and it always has been. I don’t know what comes next, but I do know this: It will have flaws that MLB won’t see coming, because MLB never sees anything coming.

What I don’t want to hear is that this isn’t fair. The Dodgers approved this and played ten seasons with it. Everyone knew the system at the start of the season. The Cardinals did their job, finishing with the fourth-best record in the league, in fact. If they are playing in San Francisco on Friday, it will be because they earned that spot.

It could happen. It’s crazy, the Dodgers, despite having to play an extra game, are the overall betting favorites to win the NL pennant and the World Series. I picked the Dodgers at the start of the season and I think they’re probably still the best team in baseball -- hold that thought -- but for them to be favorites starting from the wild card defies everything we know about the baseball postseason.

How could this particular apple cart be upset? Start with a Cardinals team that became the Gashouse Gorillas down the stretch: 56 homers and a .480 SLG in September, leading the NL and second in all of baseball. Max Scherzer has had an incredible bounceback season, arguably worthy of the NL Cy Young Award, but he does put the ball in the air.

Up (FB%, 2021, min. 100 IP)

                          FB%
Jameson Taillon   NYY   48.3%
Max Scherzer      2tm   48.3%
Triston McKenzie  CLE   48.1%
Marco Gonzalez    SEA   47.9%
James Kaprelian   OAK   47.5%

This isn’t an unusual season for Scherzer, either. He has been a flyball pitcher his entire career. To beat him, you have to go deep against him. Of the 53 runs he allowed this season, 34 (64%) came on longballs. Scherzer’s teams were 9-6 behind Scherzer when he gave up a dinger, and 13-4 when he did not. Tonight, it’s ball go far, Cardinals go far.

The Cardinals are as close to their best selves as they have been all season long. Obviously they’ve played well, but they’re also now putting their best team on the field. Trade-deadline pickups J.A. Happ and Jon Lester stabilized the rotation -- and yes, I remember mocking the acquisitions. Journeyman reliever Luis Garcia bolstered a bullpen that had been worked very hard. Edmundo Sosa mostly took over at shortstop for Paul DeJong, providing much more OBP at a small defensive loss. Tyler O’Neill had his long-awaited breakout at the plate, finding a spot on my MVP ballot in the process. Even Jack Flaherty, who has had a lost season due to injuries, may be available in limited roles throughout this month.

The Dodgers, on the other hand, come in hobbled. Max Muncy suffered an elbow injury Sunday on a collision that will keep him out of tonight’s game at least, and could cost him the whole month. Muncy is a key piece for the Dodgers, balancing a lineup that can list to the right, providing a high OBP, and giving Dave Roberts a lot of intra-game flexibility. With the collapse of Cody Bellinger, Muncy’s role only grew in importance. His loss changes the Dodgers' lineup in a way that will be felt tonight against a good right-handed starter in Adam Wainwright. The Cardinals’ deep stable of right-handed relievers -- Garcia, Alex Reyes, Giovanny Gallegos, maybe even Flaherty -- becomes more effective in the absence of Muncy.

One interesting aspect of this game is the way both fan bases are terrified of their manager. Dave Roberts, who overall is one of the best managers in baseball, has often had his tactical shortcomings exposed in October. He has a high-effort roster, with platoons and a middling bullpen, and sometimes that catches up with him in the playoffs. Mike Shildt has traditionalist tendencies -- staying with his starter too long, mixing in smallball -- that hurt him as well.

If there’s a danger spot for the Cards tonight, it’s Wainwright facing the Dodgers the third time through the order. Forget his 2021 splits, which are excellent (.180/.229/.304). The third-time penalty is immutable, as Wainwright’s career illustrates: his batting average, OBP, and slugging allowed all rise with each pass through the order.

As an analyst, I’ve dreaded this matchup. The Dodgers have been a dominant team for nearly a decade now, but until last year hadn’t won a championship. We don’t handle teams like that well anymore, emphasizing the losses in October rather than the wins that preceded them. Winning the World Series last year tamped down the criticism, but should the Dodgers lose tonight -- hardly a notable event given the Cardinals' quality -- it would ramp up again. There is a segment of media and fans aching to attach an asterisk to the Dodgers’ 2020 championship, and a loss tonight would allow them to do so. I find myself rooting for the Dodgers not out of attachment to the team or any dislike of St. Louis, but just to avoid what will be six months of absolutely miserable coverage of the Dodgers.

The Cardinals can make that happen by hitting a couple of homers off Scherzer and not leaving Adam Wainwright in too long. It’s a simple formula on the page, a bit harder on the field.


Red Sox/Yankees

The Red Sox continued their surprising campaign with a 6-2 win over the Yankees last night, advancing to the AL Division Series against the Rays. There wasn’t much to the game -- the Red Sox hit a couple of early homers off Gerrit Cole, who had good velocity and bad control. The Yankees were appropriately aggressive against Nathan Eovaldi with nothing to show for it through five innings.

The key moment of the game came in the sixth. A solo homer by Anthony Rizzo and an infield single by Aaron Judge chased Eovaldi. Giancarlo Stanton greeted Ryan Brasier with a long fly ball off the Green Monster, his second of the night. Judge, perhaps hesitant to make a baserunning mistake, didn’t run hard to second, picked it up when he saw the ball hit the wall, and decelerated again as he headed towards third base, expecting this to be a long single. Phil Nevin, seeing the play behind Judge, waved the big man home. Judge was out by...actually, he just reached home now.

I’ve written here about how teams are too conservative sending runners given the likelihood that the next batter will strike out or pop out, given the high rates of those events in today’s game. Philosophically, I’m with the idea of making the defense make a play, because baseball is hard and making multiple good throws and a tag isn’t as simple as it looks sometimes.

With all that said, this was a bad send. The run wasn’t critical -- Judge was the second run in a 3-1 game. Nevin may have read the play correctly, but he didn’t read his baserunner, who had gotten no jump and who wasn’t running hard into third. The decision was incredibly costly, turning first-and-third and one out into a runner on second and two out. The Yankees would make eight straight outs after this play and get their final run on a solo homer by Stanton down 6-1 in the ninth.

The Red Sox were the better team last night, which is what matters in October. There’s a lot of garment-rending in the zip codes around me today, but the Yankees won 92 games in the toughest division in baseball with no center fielder. They need to fix some things, and that might be hard given the contracts in play, but the idea that a team that has the third-best record in baseball since 2018 -- under Aaron Boone -- has to start over is nonsense.


Picks

With last night’s win on the first five under, Newsletter picks are now 7-0, which mostly makes me want to apologize to Rotowire for the first three months of the season.

I don’t have a strong opinion on tonight’s game and will pass. Maybe the over 7.5 if you want the action, but it’s really a pass.

What I have today are some Division Series and futures calls. The Dodgers being the betting favorite from the wild-card slot is mathematically indefensible and should be creating some value elsewhere, but the books take so much juice from the futures markets that I still don’t like the numbers. The Rays at +650 to win the World Series, though, isn’t bad. They’d be +700 (7-1) if everyone was equal, and they are definitely a tick above the field. The only team clearly better than them is the Dodgers, and the Dodgers have to play the extra round and don’t have Muncy (or Clayton Kershaw). I can recommend that one.

I gave out the Brewers at 25-1 to win the NL and 44-1 to win the World Series in March, so I can’t get excited about their current short odds. Here’s hoping you’re holding a ticket.

The White Sox are underrated coming into the playoffs and undervalued as well, a posted underdog to the Astros. You’ll see in the series preview how high I am on them, so getting plus money for them to win their series has value to me. White Sox +110 for the series, and if you’re feeling frisky, +850 to sweep.

Newsletter Excerpt, October 5, 2021 -- "What I'm Watching"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $59.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

--

 

"As was well covered, Cole was one of the pitchers whose spin rate was down a lot this summer as well. On their face, his statistics indict him. They may lie, though. While Cole did decline after the crackdown, he bounced back to pitch well in July and, after a bout with the coronavirus, in August. From the crackdown through September 1, Cole had a 3.31 ERA and a 2.68 FIP, hardly a big change from before. It seems to have been the injury, and not a loss of grip enhancers, changing his stats."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 4, 2021 -- "Baseball 1, Chaos 0"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $59.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

--

 

"Looking ahead, the Mariners have talent coming through their system, but they do need to evaluate the 2021 roster as if it were a 76-win team, and not a 90-win one. Their unbelievable performance in high-leverage situations -- the best ever relative to overall performance -- will not be repeated."

Newsletter Excerpt, October 1, 2021 -- "What I'm Watching"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $59.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

--

 

"You’d like to think the Red Sox are in good shape to get the wins they need, but they just lost two of three to the Orioles. Variance swamps everything."

Joe Sheehan Newsletter, August 27, 2021 -- "Second Place"

 This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and has been a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $59.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

--

 

The Joe Sheehan Newsletter

Vol. 13, No. 78

August 27, 2021

The Dodgers recovered from Wednesday’s marathon game more quickly than their opponents did, shutting out the Padres 4-0 behind near-Padre Max Scherzer. The win pushed the Dodgers’ record in August to 18-4. Jon Weisman, the great Dodgers writer, pointed out that all that winning has gained them just a half-game on the Giants (18-5) this month.

Now, I’m stubbornly sticking with my preseason pick of the Dodgers to win the division. They trail the Giants by 2 1/2 games, three in the loss column, with 34 to play. The two teams have a pair of three-game sets in September that will go a long way to determining who wins the division and whose season comes down to beating Luis Castillo or Yu Darvish. 

Whoever lands in second, though, is headed for history. The Dodgers are on pace to win 102 to 103 games, an incredible number for a second-place team.

Greatness Denied (most wins without finishing first, MLB history)

           Year    Record    Behind

Dodgers    1942    104-50    Cardinals

Cubs       1909    104-49    Pirates

Giants     1993    103-59    Braves

Yankees    1954    103-51    Indians

Athletics  2001    102-60    Mariners

Dodgers    1962    102-63*   Giants

Tigers     1961    101-61    Yankeees

*101-61 in scheduled play, lost NL playoff series to Giants 2-1

What jumps out here is that most of these seasons happened in moments of low competitive balance for one reason or another. The 1942 Dodgers, of course, played during World War II. The 1993 Giants, 1962 Dodgers, and 1961 Tigers all posted their marks in expansion seasons; Oakland's big year in 2001 happened as the game was still rebounding from the 1990s double expansion and CBA changes that drove competitive imbalance. These Giants and Dodgers play in the tanking era. There’s almost always an externality that allows for these extremes.

When it comes to great records falling short, I think of the 1980 Orioles, who went 100-62 and finished three games behind the Yankees. I was obsessed with baseball, and had been too young to really follow the 1978 team, so this was my first experience living through a real pennant race. I still have an image of watching a late-season Yankees/Orioles game, almost certainly on a Sunday, in a long-gone American Legion hall that my family was a big part of in the 1970s and 1980s.

Those Orioles, coming off an AL pennant in 1979, were 42-36 and nine games behind the Yankees at the All-Star break. They would go 58-26 in the second half, Weaverballing their way to five runs a game over that stretch, playing great defense. They closed to a half-game of the Yankees in late August but never caught them, succumbing to the Yanks' 30-11 closing kick that pushed them to 103-59. (As I recall, they didn’t play a postseason that year.)

The Orioles won 100 games and went home, one of just two teams to do that since 1963. The 1993 Giants, in The Last Pennant Race Ever, won 103 games and finished just behind the Braves at 104-58. Fans younger than...well, me...might find it hard to believe the way that race was the biggest story in sports that month. Baseball used to own September in most years, a position it forfeited, probably forever, just 11 months after that Braves/Giants race ended.

In the wild-card era, just two teams have won 100 games and not won their division. The 2001 A’s, pre-Moneyball, had the misfortune of trying to chase down the 116-win Mariners in the AL West. The format then meant that the A’s weren’t much worse off than the Mariners were in October, and when they took a 2-0 lead in the Division Series, it seemed like they would get another crack at Seattle in the ALCS. Mike Mussina and Derek Jeter intervened. (As I recall, they didn’t play a World Series that year.)

Seventeen years later, it was the Yankees’ turn to be a great second-place team, winning 100 games and never really getting close to the best Red Sox team ever. The Yankees did get a second shot at the Sox in the Division Series, but were taken out in four games as the Red Sox waltzed to their fourth World Championship in 15 years. 

That’s the scenario we could be headed for in 2021, with the NL West champion finding itself facing the team it bested over 162 when it plays its first playoff series. (The aforementioned Mssrs. Castillo and Darvish may have a say in the matter.) In a season where team greatness has been undercut by injuries on a daily basis, the prospect of a playoff series between two teams that won 100 or more games is tantalizing. That the teams are rivals dating back a century makes it that much more delicious.

However the postseason plays out, though, it’s nearly certain that the NL West runner-up will be among the most accomplished bridesmaids in baseball history.