2016 MLB thread. THE CUBS HAVE BROKEN THE CURSE! Chicago Cubs are your 2016 World Series champions

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The question here is can the royals go 4-1 in the games bungardner isn't pitching.

I was pretty certain the giants would win tonight. Didn't think they would take control that early though.

The giants are 9-1 in the World Series since 2010 though. That's pretty damn impressive.
 
Cedric Ceballos said:
The question here is can the royals go 4-1 in the games bungardner isn't pitching.

I was pretty certain the giants would win tonight. Didn't think they would take control that early though.

The giants are 9-1 in the World Series since 2010 though. That's pretty damn impressive.
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The real question is: can the KC starter do better than 3 innings and 5 runs?

They didn't even give themselves a chance.
 
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This has probably been answered/talked about already, but why hasn't Tim Lincecum played this post-season? I remember he threw a no-hitter late June and he disappeared out of no where.

Was/is he hurt? What's the story?
 
Because Tim Lincecum has not been a very reliable starter since the 2011 season and they refused to put him in the bullpen up until the tail end of this year. It's worked out well for them but that's a John Smoltz situation begging to happen. But they honestly don't need that right now. His biggest struggle is pitching out of the stretch. you bring him in to the game in middle relief, you're asking to lose a series. I am hoping that they do that next year. Make him the closer, put him in the best position to succeed (no men on base/starting the inning) and maybe they have a good odd numbered year :lol:
 
Alcides Escobar and the Worst At-Bat of the Playoffs.

The Giants beat the Royals 7-1 last night, and in any game that lopsided, it’s going to nearly impossible to say that any one play was the cause of the outcome. The Giants just did too many things well, and the Royals too many things poorly, to pin the loss on a single play. But if we were going to isolate one mistake by Kansas City that might have had more of a difference on the outcome than any other, it may very well have been Alcides Escobar‘s trip to the plate in the third inning.

Already down 3-0, the Royals entered the bottom of the third with just a 21% chance of winning, by Win Probability, and likely a bit less than that in real life, given that Madison Bumgarner is better than the average starting pitcher. But thanks to a Brandon Crawford error and a Mike Moustakas double, KC got their first two batters into scoring position, bringing up the top of the batting order with three shots to get on the board. Those two players reaching base moved the Royals win expectancy all the way up to 36.5%, so the change in WPA (.155) from the start of the inning was nearly as large as the change in WPA (-.169) on Hunter Pence‘s first inning home run.

With runners at second and third with nobody out, the Royals run expectancy for that third inning was 1.91 runs. Both runners should have been expecting to score, and even great pitching by Bumgarner would probably result in at least one run. The hallmark of the Royals offense is making contact, and that’s all they really needed to do in that situation. Hit the ball up the middle or to the outfield and you get a run, most likely. Do it twice and you might get two, even without needing another base hit.

Alcides Escobar stepped to the plate. Escobar’s not a great hitter by any stretch of the imagination — he probably shouldn’t be hitting leadoff in the World Series, but the Royals offense is bad, so there aren’t many better alternatives — but he more than held his own against lefties this year, posting a .319/.342/.442 line against them that was good for a 119 wRC+. His career splits aren’t as dramatic (83 wRC+ vs LHPs, 73 vs RHPs), but Escobar isn’t totally helpless against southpaws, and his primary offensive skill is the one the Royals needed the most; make contact.

Of course, Bumgarner would be trying to counter Escobar’s contact skills, because a strikeout (or an infield fly) was the best possible result he could get in that situation. And with a runner on third base, there’s a bit of an incentive to avoid breaking balls in the dirt, lest one get away from Buster Posey and allow the run to score without the Giants even needing to swing. As Jeff noted last week, Bumgarner has lately been leaning very heavily on his fastball, and his pitch location charts note that he strongly favors throwing high fastballs, because high fastballs get a lot of swinging strikes.

Alcides Escobar, though, is very good at making contact at pitches at the top of the strike zone. Here’s his Contact% vs LHP heatmap from 2014.

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Up-and-in, Escobar almost never swings and misses. Up-and-away, it happens, but still not a lot, unless you get it to the very outer edge of the zone. For reference, here’s Bumgarner’s Contact% vs RHB heatmap for 2014.

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Very high contact rates up-and-in, much lower up-and-away. Bumgarner certainly knows these trends, and the approach was pretty obvious; go up-and-away with high fastballs.

First pitch

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94 mph fastball in the up-and-in corner, but still in the zone. Almost a perfect pitch, really, and Escobar was only able to foul it off. Tip your hat to Bumgarner; he didn’t hit the spot where Posey was setting up, but he missed into a very tough location to hit. If you’re going to miss your spots, miss them like this.

Second pitch

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88 mph cutter at the very top of the strike zone. This pitch is probably not called a strike, and Escobar probably shouldn’t have swung at it, but it was in that very tempting slice of the zone that hitters have a tough time laying off. This was just another tough location for Escobar, especially since it had some appearance of a hanging breaking ball, but never really dropped enough for him square up.

Third pitch

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94 mph fastball about as high as a pitch can be thrown and not end up at the backstop. PITCHF/x recorded the height of this pitch at 4.5 feet off the ground, or about a foot higher than the the top of the strike zone. Let’s put this in some context.

This year, Escobar was thrown 51 pitches with a recorded height of at least 4.0 feet, by PITCHF/x via Baseball Savant. Two of those hit him, three of them were pitchouts, and two more were thrown when a pitcher was issuing an intentional walk, so we can throw those seven out as non-swing-chances. That leaves 44 pitches where Escobar had to decide whether to swing or not. 37 of those times, he chose not to, and on all 37 of those takes, the pitch was called a ball.

Seven times, he swung at a pitch of that was at least 4.0 feet off the ground. Here’s how those swings went for him:

April 15th: Whiff (4.17 feet)
April 16th: Foul (4.06 feet)
April 17th: Foul (4.00 feet)
April 26th: Foul (4.56 feet)
May 2nd: Foul (4.12 feet)
July 5th: Whiff (4.15 feet)
July 18th: Foul (4.28 feet)

Seven swings, seven bad outcomes. I don’t know what his deal was in mid-April, but after some reckless swings in the first part of the season, Escobar hadn’t gone after one up here since right after the All-Star break. There was improvement at this particular weakness, at least, even if he didn’t get better overall in the second half.

But he picked a pretty lousy time to pull that old trick out of his hat. Yeah, he managed to make contact and foul it off, but a take there pushes the count to 1-2, and at least begins to move things a little bit in his direction. For his career, Escobar has a .400 OPS after 0-2 counts, but a .503 OPS after 1-2 counts. Not swinging at that pitch doesn’t make it likely he’d get a hit, but it makes it a little tougher for Bumgarner to go out of the zone again, and increases the likelihood that he could at least avoid the strikeout. But he swung, and it remained 0-2. Credit to Bumgarner for testing the limits of Escobar’s aggressiveness, but this was just an awful swing decision by the Royals leadoff hitter.

Fourth pitch

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93 mph fastball, just slightly lower than the previous pitch.

If he swung at the last one, might as well try again until he proves he won’t swing, right? This one wasn’t quite as high — only 4.3 feet off the ground this time — but was just as definitely not a strike, and just as definitely not a pitch Escobar should have swung at. He hadn’t swung at a pitch this high in three months, and then he did it on back-to-back pitches in an 0-2 count when a strikeout was the absolute worst outcome he could muster.

Here’s the plot of pitches in the entire at-bat.

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Yuck.

We can’t lay all the blame on Escobar here, because Nori Aoki also struck out, and then after a walk to Lorenzo Cain, Eric Hosmer bounced weakly to second base. Escobar wasn’t the only one who failed that inning, and even if he had driven in two runs, there’s still a strong chance they lose anyway. Plenty of things went wrong for the Royals besides Alcides Escobar’s atrocious third inning strikeout.

But that was one really awful at-bat. This postseason has had plenty of bad process/good result plays, but Escobar’s approach in that match-up was so bad that the possibility of a good outcome was almost non-existent. Bumgarner deserves a ton of credit for pitching out of that inning, but the Royals certainly didn’t have to help him as much as they did.

Why Didn’t Nori Aoki Bunt?

When Nori Aoki came to the plate with runners on second and third with one out in the third inning against Madison Bumgarner, fans on Twitter called out for the slap-hitting outfielder to bunt. Instead he struck out and the rally fizzled. With the game over and the Royals offense stymied but for one Salvy Perez home run, the question remains: should Aoki have laid one down, a safety squeeze or something similar from the Royals vast small ball playbook?

Aoki has 70 “official” bunt attempts over his three-year career, reaching safely more than 30% of the time. Just 20% of those attempts came against left-handed pitchers, as Bumgarner is. Among those attempts, six could be classified as squeezes and four successfully plated runners, according to the Baseball Reference Play Index.

It’s a low-percentage play, all things considered. But Nori Aoki versus Madison Bumgarner is a low percentage play in relative terms. Playing for one run so early in the game is a bit much, even for the Royals, especially in a situation offering a run expectancy of 1.2 runs. It’s a high floor/low ceiling play when jumping on a struggling Bumgarner was probably the right choice.

No Royals scored, so looking back with hindsight makes the decision look bad automatically. Kansas City blazed their trail to the World Series by making questionable decisions and “putting pressure on the defense.” With a strong bunter and an ace still looking for his groove on the mound, the decision is never an easy one. Consider some of the possible outcomes should Aoki have squared to bunt in the fateful third inning.

Best case scenario – everybody’s safe

In this alternate universe, Aoki gets down a great bunt and Infante dashes home to score. Now the Royals have runners at first and third with one out for their number three hitter. This raises the Royals probability of winning by 8% to nearly 40%, which is nice. Again we must the question of the likelihood of this outcome. Can we say with confidence that Aoki gets this job done 25% of the time? 20% 15% Judging by the actions on the field, Ned Yost and Aoki himself agree that it was a longshot.

Acceptable outcome – Aoki out at first, Infante scores

This is where the run expectancy tables and the realities of Royals life divert. Cashing the runner but losing an out in the process drops the Royals odds of winning slightly (1.2%.) But they’re on the board! Kansas City hardly operates with one eye on the game chart. They scored two runs in their last playoff game while attempting to give up an out. They still have a chance to score with a runner on third and Cain coming to the plate.

One cannot discount the value of a great pitcher on the ropes, which is where the Giants found Bumgarner through the first two innings on Tuesday night. There was no lack of hard contact in the first inning and Mike Moustakas just hammered a double to the right field corner to produce this run scoring opportunity. Antithetical to The Royals Way as it may seem, playing for the big inning here is a great idea, truth be told. Giving a struggling pitcher a free out is, in a word, inadvisable.

Unacceptable outcome – runner cut down at the plate, runners on the corners

With a good fielding pitcher and good pitching pitcher on the mound, this is an entirely possible outcome – Aoki manages to bunt the ball directly to Bumgarner and Infante is either dead to rights at the plate or caught in no man’s land. Such poor execution lowers the Royals win expectancy by 9% as well as giving a free out to the opposition in addition to taking the air out of Kaufman Stadium. It gets you coming and going, in other words.

Below is Madison Bumgarner’s spray chart against left-handed batters

There are seven bunts mixed in there, one from Aoki himself in 2012! (He was thrown out by Joaquin Arias.) Bumgarner himself successfully field four of them. Does that mean anything? He’s acquitted himself as a reasonable enough fielder to this point of his career, so the chances that he competently pounces on a bunt remains high. This is not helping our cause (bunt-induced chaos is our cause here.)

Worst case scenario – inning-ending double play

Begin the rending of garments and the gnashing of teeth! Not only because the Royals are out of the inning, but because the Yost rolling on twitter and elsewhere would hit a fever pitch and most of baseball humanity gets wiped out in its wake. Some kind of line drive bunt or pop up that hangs the runner on third out to dry. It lowers the Royals win probability by 14% as well as signalling the death of hope across the vast Midwest. This is not an acceptable outcome. No way, no how. It isn’t likely but the chance everything goes to pot lurks in the back of even the most bunt-addled mind.

This isn’t who the Royals really are, but it is how they’re perceived after a magical run through the American League. This remains a team that loads the top of their order with Alcides Escobar, Nori Aoki and Lorenzo Cain. It’s a team that sac bunted with their number three hitter in the first inning just six days ago. These players didn’t become prolific offensive contributors overnight, they are who they are.

Bunts catch a lot of scorn but, if anything, this represents an opportunity for a “good” bunt, not just moving runners up but a genuine attempt to score and perhaps register a hit. But it is never so simple. Not with Ned Yost’s Royals and not when we consider the myriad options at play. Swinging away was likely the best play but sometimes you need to dance with the one who brought you.

WHERE DOES BUMGARNER'S 2014 POSTSEASON RANK AMONG THE ELITE?

Tuesday night, Madison Bumgarner took the mound in Game 1 of the World Series, and he did exactly what Giants fans expected; he dominated the Royals and gave his team a leg up on their quest for another championship. This is becoming old hat for Bumgarner, who is putting together a fantastic postseason track record, especially with his performances this year.

Game 1 was Bumgarner's fifth start of the 2014 postseason; he has pitched at least seven innings in all five of them, totaling 38.2 innings overall. In doing so, Bumgarner became just the seventh pitcher in baseball history to have five starts of seven innings or more in a single postseason. Let's see how he stacks up against the other six who have done it.

Pitcher Season Innings Runs Allowed
Madison Bumgarner 2014 38.2 7
Cliff Lee 2009 40.1 10
Randy Johnson 2001 40.0 7
Curt Schilling 2001 48.2 6
Greg Maddux 1995 38.0 12
Orel Hershiser 1988 42.1 7
Deacon Phillippe 1903 44.0 19

You'll notice that all of the pitchers -- excluding one, who pitched five of the eight postseason games his team played -- are from the modern era, as the expanded postseason makes it possible for a pitcher to make five starts in a postseason, something that generally wasn't true before the addition of the wild card. Bumgarner has even an extra advantage, as the play-in game set him up to make six starts if the World Series goes at least five games; only Schilling in 2001 and Chris Carpenter in 2011 have made six starts in a postseason previously.

But being handed the ball in critical situations this often is, by itself, a marker of a pitcher's greatness. There's a reason you don't see any mediocre hurlers on the list above, and the fact that they were able to consistently complete seven innings weeds out pitchers who weren't dominating when they were given the ball. Bumgarner has placed himself in some seriously elite company.

But we can go a little further than just looking at the raw numbers. After all, the game changed a lot from 1988 to 2001, and has changed a lot again since, so rather than looking at just innings and runs allowed, we should want to evaluate a pitcher against the norms of the era in which he was pitching. On FanGraphs, we have several metrics that do just this, scaling performance to the league average for that year.

For this exercise, we'll focus on two of these metrics: ERA- and FIP-. In both cases, the metric is an index stat, where 100 represents an exactly average performance, and each point above or below that is how far from the average the player performed. For instance, a pitcher with an ERA- of 50 would have posted an ERA exactly half of the league average, which is spectacular. FIP- is the same principle, but instead of judging a player on earned runs allowed, it measures the three outcomes that we are reasonably confident that the pitcher has a great deal of control over: walks, strikeouts, and home runs.

Let's look at those seven amazing postseason runs through the lens of ERA- and FIP-.

Pitcher Season ERA- FIP-
Curt Schilling 2001 25 43
Orel Hershiser 1988 32 68
Randy Johnson 2001 34 43
Cliff Lee 2009 37 44
Madison Bumgarner 2014 41 89
Greg Maddux 1995 67 98
Deacon Phillippe 1903 94 61

The primary takeaway, for me, is just how good Curt Schilling's 2001 postseason run was. One could make a case that it was the best single postseason any pitcher has ever had. It was just complete and utter domination, and the Schilling/Johnson combination put up performances that we may never see from another pair of teammates in October again.

But notice that by ERA-, Bumgarner isn't that far off the pace here. Okay, he's not having a Schilling-in-2001 postseason, but that's an unreasonable bar to clear. He is, however, nearly keeping up with all the guys not named Schilling, at least by ERA. His FIP is a bit worse, thanks primarily to the three home runs he's allowed, though giving up solo bombs when your team has a comfortable lead isn't really a big deal. Based solely on walks, strikeouts, and home runs, Bumgarner isn't as dominant as the Schilling/Johnson tandem or the 2009 version of Cliff Lee. Even Hershiser's 1988 season stacks up a bit better when you focus only on plays that don't involve the defenders behind the pitcher, where credit for outs made can be a little complicated.

So, this isn't the best postseason pitching performance we've ever seen, and Bumgarner isn't quite pitching at unprecedented levels. But this is still a great run, one of the best we've seen, and worthy of all the adulation you want to throw his way. Madison Bumgarner is one of the main reasons why the Giants are three wins away from the World Series title. If he gets a shot at a sixth start and keeps pitching the way he has so far, this will go down as one of the best postseason pitching performances in baseball history.
 
^^Hope its a close game tonight so I don't have to hear Lincecum's name being brought up.

Love the match up tonight. Ventura the thrower can get rocked just as he did against the Angles. The Giants have proven this postseason to not help pitchers out who can't locate and are doing a good job capitalizing on mistakes. If he has command on the curveball it could be a different story though.

If Peavy get though 6 I love our chances.

Had no idea the Giants were hitting a league best 284 against a 95+ fastball. :smokin
 
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Proshares said:
Because Tim Lincecum has not been a very reliable starter since the 2011 season and they refused to put him in the bullpen up until the tail end of this year. It's worked out well for them but that's a John Smoltz situation begging to happen. But they honestly don't need that right now. His biggest struggle is pitching out of the stretch. you bring him in to the game in middle relief, you're asking to lose a series. I am hoping that they do that next year. Make him the closer, put him in the best position to succeed (no men on base/starting the inning) and maybe they have a good odd numbered year
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Been saying this for a couple seasons now.  Try him out as a closer.  Maybe his velocity will come back having only to prepare for one inning at a time.  With a 94+ MPH fastball, his location is quite as important as it is when he is throwing 89. 

I think he could make a really good closer.
 
@ESPNStatsInfo  
KC's Yordano Ventura led MLB w/ avg fastball of 96.8 MPH this season.

Giants led MLB with .284 BA vs 95+ MPH pitches. (incl. playoffs)
 
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