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.
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"Thinking Inside the Box" is an occasional Newsletter feature that pulls topics from a reading of the box scores. The lines in fixed-width are the player's box score line for the game in question.
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Tigers 3, Guardians 0
IP H R ER BB K
Cobb, L (0-1) 3 3 2 2 1 2
Alex Cobb isn’t really the story, but I may be running out of days to write about the Guardians, and I’m fascinated by how they’ve built their playoff pitching staff. They skipped over the guy who was #2 in starts, and haven’t yet used the guy who was #5. (#3 and #4 have long been removed from the rotation.) Their Game Two starter, Matthew Boyd, made eight starts this year; Cobb made three.
In the bullpen, three relievers who made at least 50 appearances each were left off the team, while Andrew Walters (nine appearances) and Erik Sabrowski (eight) are present. Throw in Joey Cantillo (nine), and the Guardians have turned over about half their pitching staff for the playoffs compared to what got them here.
I’m not questioning the choices. Cobb looked awful yesterday, but I’ve been a fan of his for a long time and believe he’s a better pitcher than Ben Lively is. I wrote up Sabrowski just a week ago, and I would absolutely take him over Pedro Avila & Co. It’s just fascinating to me how a team that goes to war in the playoffs now can be so different from the team that played for six months. We used to get some of this with waiver-trade pickups in August, but those were at least players who were in the majors all year. Now, front offices treat the playoffs as an entirely different season and assemble a roster based solely on which 26 players provide the best chance to win.
For much of baseball history, a pitcher like Lively would have been on the playoff roster, maybe even in the rotation, out of inertia. Now, he’s just watching.
We knew the Guardians weren’t a good offensive team, but these last few days have been a hard watch. They have three barrels the entire series, just one in the last two games. Their hard-hit rate of 33.8% is second-worst of any playoff team, and the ones at #1 and #3 are long gone. (#4? The Tigers, who have just six runs themselves in the ALDS.)
The Guardians’ first five batters of this playoff series scored. Since then, they have sent 97 men to the plate and plated just two. They have been shut out in consecutive games by the Tigers, who allowed five runs in the first inning Saturday and five runs across the entire rest of their playoff run. A.J. Hinch used six pitchers to get 27 outs yesterday, and he’ll aim to do the same today to continue this incredible Tigers story.
Mets 4, Phillies 1
AB R H BI
Lindor SS 5 1 2 4 HR
When the Mets traded for Francisco Lindor four GMs ago, this is exactly what they did it for. A fall evening, the bases loaded, the crowd on its feet, and a Hall of Fame talent rising to meet the moment. Lindor, who has spent a good part of his four years in Queens being held at a distance -- and sometimes treated even worse -- by Mets fans, is now being embraced as a hero. I suspect we’ll get plenty of retconning of his first few years in New York as time goes by, but Lindor was getting booed at Citi Field as recently as May.
The Mets advance thanks to a week of obliterating opponents’ bullpens. The Brewers’ and Phillies’ bullpens were both top-ten in FIP, and of course, you’re only seeing the good relievers in October. The Mets have beaten those bullpens to the tune of 26 runs in 26 innings in seven games. Of the five Mets wins in these playoffs, four have been credited as losses to an opponent’s reliever. They trailed 4-3 after four, 2-0 in the ninth, 1-0 in the eighth, and 1-0 in the sixth in four of those five wins. (To get into the playoffs, you may recall, they made two late comebacks against the Braves.)
There’s already retconning of the 2024 Mets, some of it in my inbox. I wish we didn’t do this based on a good team going 5-2, but I’ve lost that battle. Stop looking for signal in the playoffs. It’s all noise. In New York today, that noise is joyful.
IP H R ER BB K
Hoffman, L (1-2) 1 1 3 3 1 1
We’ve been beating up Rob Thomson in Slack a bit, mostly for his decisions to leave Aaron Nola and Ranger Suarez in their games too long. The Phillies didn’t lose this series because of the manager, not at all. Their relievers allowed 17 runs in 12 2/3 innings. Every relief pitcher who got into a game allowed at least one run. I’m not sure I have ever seen that before. There is no bullpen mismanagement short of shooting your pitchers as they come into the game that will account for a 12.08 RA/9.
The Phillies scored seven runs in the last four innings of Game Two...and five runs in the other 32 frames. They scored two runs, two runs, and one run in their three losses. Of the dozen Phillies who batted, just three -- including Kody Clemens in five PA -- had an OPS above 700. In two games in New York, they went 9-for-61 with no homers and two doubles. The Phillies are done because they didn’t hit and their bullpen tanked against a good offense.
This isn’t something to pin on the Phillies themselves, but the coverage of this team in 2022 and 2023 was all about how they had an ineffable quality, how even though they repeatedly finished far back of the Braves, they knew how to win in October. Well, now they’re the team, with the same roster from the last couple of seasons, that is caught on the other side of a bad week.
I find the 2022-24 Phillies to be a teachable moment in how nonsensical these annual playoff narratives are. The Phillies weren’t special the last two years, and they’re not bums today. They’re just a good baseball team playing short series.
Yankees 3, Royals 2
AB R H BI
Stanton DH 5 1 3 2 HR, SB
Coming into this series, we all expected a right-handed hitter to be a big part of it with his power and speed. Bobby Witt Jr. has yet to show up, but last night Giancarlo Stanton ordered up a combo meal (hey, 06010) that included a game-winning homer off Kris Bubic.
Stanton is not nearly the player he was with the Marlins, unable to take the field or even play out a full season as a designated hitter. His OBP hasn’t cracked .300 since 2021. The only thing he can still do is hit a baseball hard. More than half the balls off his bat this year were measured at 95 mph and higher, seventh in baseball. One in eight were deemed “barrels,” fourth-most in the game. Stanton, even in his decline and playing just 2/3 of the season, was second in baseball in most balls hit 110 mph or harder, with 60, and he laps the field in the rate of balls hit that hard.
Last night, the one-trick pony did his trick, crushing a Kris Bubic slider 113 mph off the bat for the decisive run in a game neither team will hang on the wall, one loaded down with pitching changes and replay reviews and RISP failures and this nonsense. (In a series in which both teams have scored 11 runs and both Yankee wins are by one run, Umpire Scorecards calculates that the Yankees have gotten the better end of ball/strike calls in all three games for a total of +1.5 runs in their favor.)
The Yankees should have the edge tonight, putting ace Gerrit Cole on the mound with a chance to end the series. Cole was strong down the stretch before struggling in Game One against the Royals. He’s not the guy he was at his peak, less because he can’t reach that ace ceiling and more because he hits his floor more often. He mixes in the bad and occasional disaster start, usually when he’s giving up the long ball.
The Royals’ path to beating Cole is through short-sequence offense, especially against the hard stuff. Ten of the 11 homers Cole allowed this year were on four-seamers and cutters, and MJ Melendez hit a four-seam fastball for a homer Saturday. I’m slicing this a little thin, but against all fastballs 94 and up, the Royals were fourth in expected batting average, fourth in expected slugging, and tenth in total barrels. If they win tonight, it will likely be because they turned around some Cole power pitches.
Dodgers 8, Padres 0
AB R H BI
Betts RF 5 1 2 2 HR
Postseason narratives are stupid. Two days ago, the story was Mookie Betts being 0-for-his-last-22 in the postseason, where “postseason” means “three games a year ago and two games this year” thrown together as if they’re a coherent set. Betts is 4-for-9 with two homers since those Monday stories. He might have three hits tonight or none, but whatever he does won’t be because it’s the playoffs.
Everything was set up for the Dodgers to fail last night, down their star first baseman and with a bullpen game planned in what has been their house of horrors. They jumped on Dylan Cease in the first -- a Betts homer -- and were up 5-0 before the Royals game ended. Eight pitchers combined for a shutout, and the Dodgers won a game in which they could have been eliminated for the first time since 2021.
If you believe the Dodgers lack some sort of character, if you need evidence that they’re mentally tough, last night should have provided it. The Dodgers, under pressure, didn’t fold. In fact, they played their best game of the series. L.A. could win Friday or lose, and it wouldn’t change how well they played last night.
This isn’t how I evaluate baseball teams, but if you are someone who looks to the scoreboard to judge baseball players as people, Dodgers 8, Padres 0 on the road in a back-to-the-wall spot should be very meaningful to you, no matter what follows.
