Another Way This is a New Era in Baseball

The Houston Astros are the runaway best team in the American League this year. They clinched their division in February* behind the league's best hitting, top three baserunning, sixth best pitching and middle of the pack defense.

*Caution:  may be slightly hyperbolic.

Their avalanche of offense has six regulars sporting WAR of 2.0 or more, best in the majors by far.

Yet when Houston brass tinkered around the edges at the trade deadline, landing just left-handed bullpen piece Francisco Liriano, many 'Stros' fans were disappointed. Staff ace Dallas Keuchel spoke for many of them.

"I'm not going to lie. Disappointment is a little bit of an understatement."

What's going on here? We would never have heard this 10 years ago or probably not even five. Fans of the team with the best record and a 14-game division lead would be psyched about the approaching playoffs.

But at some point, teams realized that Billy Beane was right: "My shit doesn't work in the playoffs." And now we have a new game.

Front offices unbound from the old playoff traditions started recognizing that some of the elements of success during the marathon regular season -- a deep rotation and a solid closer -- were the wrong concoction for the sprint of the post-season. Once they determined that the key to playoff success is three aces and a stacked, two-handed bullpen, they started turning the non-waiver trade deadline into Relieverfest.


You may have noticed that the flow of everyday players during this year's dealmaking was a trickle. J.D. Martinez was the only significant hitter (unless you're counting Lucas Duda) to change hands. But a flurry of flamethrowers, both in the rotation and the pen, changed uniforms, many at high cost.

After the Yankees nabbed Sonny Gray, the Dodgers picked up Yu Darvish and the Cubs swapped for Jose Quintana, the parade of bullpen moves took off. Tommy Kahnle and David Robertson headed to the Bronx. Ryan Madson, Sean Doolittle and Brandon Kitzler joined Washington. Milwaukee added Anthony Swarzack and Cleveland claimed Joe Smith. Addison Reed joined the Red Sox and Justin Wilson, the Cubs. And so on.

Today, there are two parts to the baseball campaign: the regular season and the post-season. A team's first goal is punch its ticket to the post-season. Once there, the fourth and fifth starters lose their relevance as the best pitchers take all the starts. Meanwhile, as managers aim for every 1% advantage in short series, bullpens pitch an average of nearly four of the nine innings per game.

Don Larsen would have come out after the sixth.

The trend began slowly with the 2001 Diamondbacks, who rode Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling to the title. But it really took off after the 2015 Royals won the World Series behind a mediocre starting staff and a trio of bb-throwers out of the pen.

Combine the two and you get today's situation, which appears to be only the front end of an increasing trend.

This may be the new normal. The best teams win their divisions with five starters of diminishing quality and a recognizable bullpen while targeting a couple of aces and bevy of relievers stashed during the season on weaker teams. And if that's the formula, the Houston Astros may find themselves, after bowing out in the playoffs, quoting Mr. Beane.

A Game That Was Just Waco

Dallas Keuchel faced off against Austin Pruitt last night in an AL tilt between Tampa and the hometown Astros.

It was the sixth time in baseball history that the two starting pitchers' names represented cities in the state in which the game was played.

Three of those games involved pitchers named Dennis (Martinez, Leonard and Eckersley) squaring off in Boston. 

The Rays blanked Houston, handing Keuchel his first loss of the season. Score one for the state capital. 

Keep Austin Weird! And pitching well.

The Too Close To Call

As a young adult, I felt it was my civic duty to investigate every policy issue facing our country and have an informed opinion on each. As I've aged, this need has ebbed, and I'm now perfectly comfortable not having an opinion on some complex issues. I can continue to cast informed votes on representatives and referenda without possessing exhaustive knowledge of every issue upon which they must rule.

When it comes to baseball awards, however, that's exactly the demand we make of voters. They must have a definitive opinion on who is the MVP or the Rookie of the Year, etc. But this year, there is one race in which it's just impossible to distinguish between a couple of candidates.

The AL Cy Young contest pits David Price's Blue Jay brilliance, following a trade from Detroit, against Astro ace Dallas Keuchel, whose season-long excellence stumbled a bit in September.

For the season, Keuchel's 20-8, 2.48 is Cy-worthy. Price is right too -- 18-5, 2.45.

Accounting for ballparks, Keuchel leads in ERA+, 162-161. In other words, the two pitchers allowed the same number of runs.

Price's 4.70 K/BB ratio is slightly superior to Keuchel's 4.24. Pitchers can't control anything as much as they can control walks and strikeouts. So that's a relative feather in Price's ball cap.

Keuchel owns a small edge in WHIP, 1.017-1.076. He's allowing fewer base runners. Because they keep the ball in the park at the same rate, that's one for Keuchel.

Keuchel has pitched 12 more innings, 232-220, which partially accounts for his superior WAR of 7.2 versus Price's 5.9.

The various defensive metrics generally like Houston's defense behind Keuchel better than Detroit and Toronto's defense behind Price. That might partially explain why teams scored 10 unearned runs against Price and only four against Keuchel. Those runs don't show up in ERA. That would seem to tilt towards Keuchel.

But fielding independent pitching measures -- about which you should be a little leery -- suggest Price has "earned" a 2.78 ERA; Keuchel has earned a 2.91.

Now, you make sense of all that. About the only thing we can say about the best pitcher in the American League this year is that it's Dallas Keuchel and David Price. (Oakland's Sonny Gray, 14-7, 2.73, is next best, but he tailed off by summer's end and pretty clearly fell out of the race.) Writers who split their votes are disdained for their indecision, or lack of guts, but in this case I think it's not just defensible, its indicated.

Wait, What?

Nelson Cruz has scored 15 runs this year. He's smacked 13 home runs. Who says runs scored is a team event?

D. J. LeMahieu, that's who. The Rockies' catcher is batting .423 in 72 at bats and his teammates have pushed him home five times. Five.

The NL team leader in scoring is...the San Diego Padres. That's despite the Majors' lowest Park Factor of 91. (In other words, you can expect the Pads and their opponents to score 9% fewer runs at Petco than at an average ballpark.)

In his first 37 innings, Astros hurler Dallas Keuchel has already garnered 2.3 wins against replacement this season. In his 15-year Major League career, Randy Wolf has earned 2.3 or more wins for his team over an entire season just four times.

The St. Louis Cardinals pace the Majors with a 2.28 team ERA. That's better than all but 21 individual pitchers with at least 24 innings pitched. And two of them are Cardinals.

Adam Wainwright's record right now looks like this: 2-1, 1.44 in 25 innings. Three walks, 18 strikeouts and no home runs allowed. Dang fine work. And that will be his line for the year.

The Yankees are in first place in the AL East thanks to the hitting of ARod and the back end of their bullpen. Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller have pitched 27 innings and allowed nine hits while fanning 46 batters. I'd tell you their ERA but they don't have one. 

Bruce Chen has delivered a 2.78 ERA for the Orioles in 23 innings so far this year, which leads us to conclude, Bruce Chen is still in the Majors? Oh wait, that's Wei-Yin Chen.

My eyes tell me the Kansas City Royals, whose right fielder is someone named Paulo Orlando, are batting .306 as a team and have scored the second most runs in the Majors. And the Houston Astros have the second best record in baseball and a six game lead in the AL West. I have got to stop taking those pills at night.

Miguel Cabrera is on pace to hit .360 with 32 homers and 110 RBI. Okay, I feel better.

The leading Rookie of the Year candidates at the 1/8th pole are Blue Jays' second baseman Devon Travis, Cubs' rightfielder Jorge Soler and third baseman Kris Bryant, Dbacks' starter Archie Bradley, and Dodgers' center fielder Joc Peterson. Each is older than Bryce Harper.