#80 Paranoia, important tech, and supportive cats

The state of the Division Series(es?) after two games apiece

The Opener

1. The Texas Rangers hired Skip Schumaker to be the new manager, replacing Bruce Bochy. MLB Trade Rumors said the move had been “telegraphed for almost a year” after Schumaker joined the organization as a senior advisor last November, making him the “heir apparent to Bochy,” according to ESPN. Schumaker previously managed the Marlins, winning manager of the year in 2023.

2. Brett Phillips who, respectfully, has not played a big-league game since 2023 has officially retired. Before you click: picture Brett Phillips. Yep, that’s the picture they used. Has anyone ever been more associated with a single play?

3. A correction/update: I criticized the Dodgers for their “BUILT FOR FALL” hoodies. But apologies to the Dodgers, apparently all the teams (that’s just Philly, but I’ve seen them in other dugouts as well) are sporting the same needlessly negative-seeming slogans! I don’t like it for two reasons: 1. Falling is bad, unconducive to athletic pursuits, and being uniquely suited to falling is suboptimal. 2. It’s inaccurate; all but one of these teams will fail this fall after they were all successful in summer. Built for summer, fall still pending.

Yankees-Blue Jays

Blue Jays lead series 2-0

⚾️ What a fantastic shot from this FOX camera person on Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s back-breaking grand slam. The swing, the bat flip, the zoom to recently departed Yankees starter Max Fried.

This would feel too perfect if it were a sports movie instead of a live sports broadcast. –ZC

⚾️ The Yankees are down 0-2 in the series for a range of reasons, including the performance of Trey Yesavage, a 22-year-old who made his fourth major-league start on Sunday. The final score (13-7) doesn’t capture just how good the rookie was — 5.1 innings, no runs, no hits, one walk, 11 strikeouts.

Yesavage deserves most of that credit, but — especially in light of a seeming spate of shutdown starts from pitchers with barely a big-league cup of coffee to their name — this note from SNY’s Andy Martino and the implied confirmation from SportsNet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith really intrigued me:

Zach and I were among the first to write extensively about Trajekt back in 2022. At the time, only six teams were using the sophisticated BP machine and they were so secretive about it that we only named the ones that had been reported elsewhere. We were able to confirm the identity of others, but they were squirrely and circumspect, eager to cling to whatever sliver of advantage there was to be gained from learning the technology before the rest of the league caught up.

I’ve been wondering ever since about whether the efficacy of such machines — which don’t travel with the team — would be reflected in home/road splits, especially now that their use is more widespread. And whether rookie pitchers’ stuff is able to be programmed in immediately.

The anecdote above is an interesting high-stakes example of how both of those things could come into play. The rookie angle is something I should try to look into myself and I’d love for someone more spreadsheet-inclined 👀 to run the numbers on home/road batting splits league wide compared to previous seasons and prior eras.

But also, if this is true even to a degree — that the gulf between their ability to prepare on the road versus at Yankee Stadium resulted in a lineup that led MLB in runs scored getting no-hit into the sixth — how has an adaptable solution not been developed? Market inefficiency: a portable Trajekt! –HK

⚾️ Maybe this is an anti-strategy or anti-innovation thought, but I wonder how much more widespread usage or how much evidence of a homefield edge MLB would need before it takes over Trajekt purchasing and installs two in each park, regulating and equalizing their use like the video on dugout iPads. I don’t think we have real tangible proof of this being a performance differentiator yet, but I could see that moment arriving in the next three years. –ZC

⚾️ But back to Yesavage for just a second. The 6-foot-4, 22-year-old right-hander made more starts for the Single-A Dunedin Blue Jays than the Toronto Blue Jays this year, rocketing through the minors and arriving in the big leagues with serious strikeout stuff — a powerful fastball, splitter, slider combination that he throws from an angle best described as way, way over the top.

Only two pitchers in MLB this season threw from a higher angle than Yesavage’s 63 degrees, per Statcast (Padres reliever Jeremiah Estrada and Dodgers reliever Alex Vesia).

Calling back to what I wrote earlier this year about over-the-top Astros ace Hunter Brown, Yesavage likely gains something from that in a league where lower arm angles have become something closer to the norm recently. Put that weirdness in a blender with that splitter and his overall newness and yeah, the Trajekt might have been necessary to give the Yankees a shred of hope. –ZC

⚾️ I’m putting this here because Yankees and Blue Jays pitchers both get quoted in the story although it’s a more general baseball bit/bob:

A month ago, I wrote about my suspicion that batters were sometimes pretending to have a tell on a pitcher as a way of getting in his head and making him self conscious of his own mechanics. Or, to use the buzzy words: paranoid about pitch tipping. Logan Gilbert of the Seattle Mariners confirmed my theory, saying “If they can make you paranoid, they’re going to try to.”

Now, The Athletic has a feature out about this whole broader phenomenon — the reality of prevalent pitch tipping, the fake-out signaling from the hitting team to give the impression of pitch tipping, and (an element of this all I hadn’t even considered) pitchers attempting to thwart this by faux tipping to lead batters astray!

Incredible stuff. And you (sort of) heard it here first. –HK

Tigers-Mariners

Series tied 1-1

⚾️ You remember Matilda, Andrés Muñoz’s cat, right? If not, a quick refresher:

Here’s Matilda:

A cat who, apparently and in stark contrast to any cat I’ve ever met, goes places:

Like All-Star and away ballparks:

Anyway, despite her decidedly unfeline flexibility when it comes to being in new and even loud environs, Matilda did not attend the Mariners’ playoff games this past weekend. But don’t worry, she was following along at home.

“Every time we leave the apartment, we leave the game on so she can watch it,” Muñoz explained when someone (thankfully) thought to ask if Matilda was supporting him from afar. -HK

⚾️ After Seattle lost the first game of this series in a low-scoring battle that went to extra innings, I started to worry that they were doomed to only ever play disappointing, almost Sisyphean games at home in the postseason — years of build up, capped by hours of angst that ultimately ended in crushing but close defeat. Versions of this, the best game I ever saw live. Game 1 wasn’t quite that extreme, but a loss is a loss is another day in the 24 years since the M’s won a playoff game at home.

On Sunday that changed.

That’s Jorge Polanco hitting his second homer of the night off Tarik Skubal.

The Tigers later tied it up, but the Mariners took an eighth inning lead that would hold on a couple of doubles from Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez. On the precipice of their first postseason win since 2001, Mariners fans — and one in particular — were emotional:

That’s Saul Spady, who told local news: “[I]f you’ve been a Mariners fan, like there’s crying in baseball. There is so much crying.”

Cubs-Brewers

Brewers lead series 2-0

⚾️ Remember when longtime Brewers manager and current Cubs manager Craig Counsell responded to a story about the Milwaukee-area hamburger chain George Webb offering free burgers to celebrate the Brewers’ 12-game win streak by saying he’d never seen a George Webb and then that claim was immediately fact checked and oops he’d actually talked about George Webb numerous times on the record while being famously from and of the general Milwaukee milieu?

Well, Brewers fans do.

That is a perfect sign, no notes, and also it serves as a peg to talk about the Counsell of it all. As his former team was knocking around his starter pushed into service on short rest (and then the reliever they reverted to), Counsell was shown emoting in the Cubs dugout. How do the Brewers do it? I thought.

This is not a new or original thought — literally, Zach did a meta analysis of all the stories that aimed to answer that question toward the end of the regular season — and I never really thought the manager was the silver-bullet answer. But the Cubs kind of did! They made him the highest paid manager in baseball when they poached him away from the Brewers — who were reportedly also willing to make him the highest paid manager in baseball — after 2023. And the Mets thought it was president of baseball operations David Stearns, who they hired that same offseason.

Now, the Mets are probably on a beach somewhere (but, like, not in a good way) and the Cubs, well they might be just fine ultimately but currently they’re down two games to none to the team with the best record in the regular season. –HK

⚾️ Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski did not leave much doubt about whether postseason adrenaline was flowing. He proved it qualitatively …

… and quantitatively.

He wound up going three crucial innings in the middle of the game as Milwaukee powered ahead of Chicago. A good reason to be pumped. –ZC

Dodgers-Phillies

Dodgers up 2-0

⚾️ My siblings and I banded together to get my parents tickets to the Game 1 of the Phillies’ postseason effort as a joint birthday present because both of their birthdays are in September and this year, it was my dad’s 70th. He’s reading this so hopefully he doesn’t mind having that information entered into the public record.

Here is an overview of how that game went according to the family chat:

(longtime readers will note that my mom is primarily a Mets fan, but she’s been in Phillies territory for decades.)

I asked her for a vibe review (before things got “sooooo sad”).

Still jealous they got to see Shohei Ohtani’s first MLB postseason start. –HK

⚾️ You would think that now, living in New York City, I would have access to the best version of basically any food. Or, at least as good a version as I had growing up in South Jersey. This is not true in two very important ways. 1. Scrapple (but if you are also seeking scrapple in Brooklyn: Shelskey’s, the Fourth Ave location.) And 2. Fresh pasta. Nothing I’ve found in New York is as good as what I can get at Severino when I go back to my hometown.

If the hat quality is half as good as the ravioli, I gotta get this Phillies/Pasta hat. Or the shirt? I loooove unofficial team merch that is also food themed. –HK

⚾️ OK, so, the Dodgers are up 2-0 and headed home. That’s obviously a wild success. Let’s talk about that Game 2 bullpen decision, though.

It seems apparent, at this point, that Dave Roberts should be attempting to use as few pitchers as possible who began the season as relievers. It also seemed apparent before Game 2! Just … apparently not to Dave Roberts. In their Game 1 victory, they had their smoothest bullpen experience in months (I don’t think I’m exaggerating) because they didn’t really use bullpen guys. They got five outs from Tyler Glasnow and three dominant outs from Roki Sasaki with one Alex Vesia out wedged in between.

In Game 2, the path was clear. After Blake Snell’s excellent six frames, Roberts went to Emmet Sheehan (a regular season starter), for two solid innings. With just the ninth inning to cover, he could have gone right back to Sasaki on a day’s rest. Instead, he went to Blake Treinen, who continued to be a debacle. Then to Alex Vesia again. Then finally Sasaki came in to get the final out.

If it needs to be spelled out: The Dodgers should be dodging their actual relievers and using the starter stockpile. If they do, they will be tough to beat. –ZC