Had It All The Way: Braves 6, Phillies 5, 11 innings

Offense in the Playoffs? Roger that.

We have not yet vanquished the Phillies, nor even made the playoffs at all yet. But with Roger screaming about offensive woes, I decided to take a look at one of the oldest baseball controversies. Does pitching win playoff games, or does the ability to hit good pitching?

One of the things that makes this an evergreen topic is the fact that it is as unresolvable, ultimately, as the economics question: what’s more important/ Supply or demand? Good pitching beats good hitting, and astonishingly, good hitting beats good pitching. But I’ve got a database, a computer, and some statistical skills, so I’m not going to let a little thing like futility stop me.

First, the data. I am going to look at this on an individual playoff game level. I took every playoff game from 2000-2025, less 2020, as my sample: that’s 892 playoff games. I created a model that estimated the probability that the team whose name comes first in alphabetical order wins the game. That model is:

Pr(Alpha1 team wins) = f(alpha1_home,alpha1_potential_series_win,alpha1_potential_series elimination,alpha1_offense,alpha1_defense,alpha2_offense, alpha2_defense)

For the offensive and defensive inputs, I used normalized runs scored and runs allowed, normalized for that season. Thus, for example, the 2023 Braves scored 947 runs and gave up 716. The mean and standard deviation across all teams for 2023 was 747.7 runs scored (and allowed) with standard deviations of 82.8 for runs scored and 82.1 for runs allowed. So the Braves offense and defense was rated as (947-747.7)/82.8 and -(716-747.7)/82.1. Note that I switched the sign of defense so that positive numbers meant both above-average offense and above-average defense. This is purely a labeling convenience and doesn’t affect the model at all.

Running the standard model (a so-called logit model), we get the following results:

	coef	std err	z	P>|z|	[0.025	0.975]
const	-0.6435	0.231	-2.788	0.005	-1.096	-0.191
first_home	0.3510	0.136	2.583	0.010	0.085	0.617
pot_first_clinch	0.2051	0.168	1.220	0.222	-0.124	0.534
pot_first_elim	-0.1680	0.166	-1.014	0.311	-0.493	0.157
first_runs_scored	0.1759	0.089	1.983	0.047	0.002	0.350
first_runs_allowed	0.1904	0.116	1.644	0.100	-0.037	0.417
last_runs_scored	0.0600	0.094	0.635	0.525	-0.125	0.245
last_runs_allowed	0.1242	0.136	0.916	0.360	-0.142	0.390

Just a quick lesson in applying these results. Take Game 2 between Atlanta and Philadelphia on October 9,2023. First, you take the crossproduct of the data and the coefficients:

logit = -.6435 + 0.3510(1) + 0.2051(0) -0.1680(0) + 0.1759(2.4) + 0.1904(.386) + 0.06(.582) + 0.1242(.594) = 0.312

Now, to get the probability, you take 1/(1+exp(-.312)) or just over 57%. And the Braves won that game 5-4.

But there is something strange about this model. The coefficients on the other team’s office and defense should be negative, not positive. If you were take this model seriously, it would mean that a better opponent’s offense would increase your chances of winning a game, although the effects are small, though the effect for the other team’s pitching (0.1242) isn’t that small. I think I know what the problem is, though… more tomorrow.

9/11

Everyone else is talking about 9/11. And it’s important. My brand of goofy humor means that I would have to awkwardly transition to discuss it seriously. So remember the day, and read everyone else about it. Just didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten. I was in a meeting on 9/6 with three people who lost their lives 5 days later. I won’t be forgetting Chuck, Mike, or Jim… ever.

Lane Thomas

He is, I suspect, done for the season with a batting cage intercostal strain injury. I went to summer camp on the intercostal waterway in 1968, but I don’t think it kept me from any camp activities. Thomas, as expected, has not provided anything that Eli White wouldn’t have produced had he remained. However, Thomas’ absence allowed the Braves to bring up speedster DaShawn Keirsey Jr., filling a gap that Jorge Mateo left. Keirsey should prove helpful in the playoffs.

The Game

Matt Olson. Remember him? He dumped an oppo wall-scraper off Aaron Nola to make it 1-0 in the first. One thing about this season is that there is no period at which everyone has been hot at the same time. Just as Riley and Murphy began to come around, Olson went into a funk. There are still two weeks to get everyone clicking at the same time. My strategy is to hope that happens. (See? Hope is a strategy.)

If I were to hope that 1 run would hold up, well, it won’t, even with Chris Sale on the mound. Sale had an episode™ in the top of the 2nd, culminating in a two-out bases-clearing double to 9th-place hitter Derek Hill.

The next five innings saw the Braves get lots of chances and the Phillies get none. But none of those Braves’ chances panned out. (I trust I don’t need to bore everyone with tales of frustration. But the Braves were making contact, just not effective contact.) Timothy Miller’s 9/11 God Bless America and the extra rest from the stretch got Austin Riley to hit a homer to pull it to 3-2. Yaz followed with a single on a long at bat. A long Murphy flyout ended the night for Nola. It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, except for Nola. José Alvarado struck out Baldwin and Acuña, though, doing what Nola wasn’t able to do: strike out guys with men on base.

Dylan Lee worked a quick 8th but was brought back out for the 9th and Bryce Harper led off with a double. A flyout by Arraez led to an entrance by Mederos the Magnificent. A base-running blunder by Harper and a strikout of Stott brought us to the bottom of the 9th.

Mattingly elected not to use his closer: Jhoan Duran. He had been used the last two days and it was no más. He was clearly much less hungry than the wolf. Instead, Donnie Baseball went with Jonathan Bowlan, who even beyond his very suspicious first name, has had some problems lately. But he struck out Riley to start the inning. Yaz then singled, which meant that Atlanta had at least one baserunner in every inning. Keirsey came in to run for Yaz. Murphy then singled up the middle and Keirsey used his speed, scoring from first when the ball was bobbled in the outfield, tieing it up. Ha-Seong Kim ran for Murphy at second. Bowlan then hit Baldwin to bring up RAJ. A flyout brought up Olson who hit a hard liner up the middle to no effect. Free baseball.

Iggy took the 10th. Justin Crawford brought in the Manfred Man on the first pitch. But no further damage, although Brandon Marsh hit a slightly scary drive to the base of the wall in right.

The bottom of the 10th was taken by Chase Shugart. Harris got the Manfred Man to third on the first pitch. Brewer Hicklen, running for Olson, came home on a VERY shallow sac fly by Dubón. Credit Walt Weiss with the decision to pinch-run for Olson.

Didier Fuentes got the bump for the 11th. Trea Turner fouled out to third on the first pitch. The decision to remove Olson bit back when Dominic Smith couldn’t quite field a smash from Harper. An Arraez single brought home the Manfred Man. A Bohm strikeout and Stott walk loaded the bases for Crawford. No problem.

Shugart got the first batter of the 11th. After Riley grounded out, we got ex-Met Brooks Raley facing ex-Met Dom Smith. Smith popped out on the first pitch, and it was down to Ha-Seong Kim. What happened? What do you think? (Everyone but ONIO, anyway.) A single brought in Ozzie and we were tied again, and we had achieved the Roger minimum: 5 runs. A Drake Baldwin double scored Kim from first. Easy Peasy, right Roger?