First, Eat Your Vegetables
We’re at an exciting time in the season, but I wanted to get some statistics out of the way first. What was wrong with the statistical model of playoff success I posed yesterday? The answer, i think, is pretty simple, but it’s an important baseball lesson, and a moderately important statistical lesson as well.
When we use regular season offense and pitching to make estimates of playoff success we make a number of errors — some big and some small. Start with the fact that large blocks of a six month regular season are simply irrelevant to the playoffs — different players, different patterns of travel and injury, different strategies. Take the Braves 2021 season: Rosario, Pederson and Soler weren’t even around until the deadline. Will Smith was a powder keg. The team sleep-walked April through July. Aggregate statistics for the year were, at least in that case, just misleading.
In some ways, though, that’s not a problem for a statistical model. We’d like the data to be fully predictive, but a statistical model has an error term to account for this stuff. Some guys get hot in the playoffs… some guys get cold. That’s all in the error term and shows why you have to play the game to know who’s going to win.
But there are a couple of things about the playoffs that are just different. The most important is pitching. No team pitches in the playoffs as if they are pitching in the regular season. They use fewer, better starters. They might have to throw a bullpen game because they run out of starters, but that bullpen game will never consist of the low-leverage guys they’d throw into a game in June: every playoff game is too important. Regular-season pitching statistics aren’t just poorly predictive — they’re biased. And we can see this in the statistical model yesterday. Regular season batting statistics may be wrong, but so long as the personnel isn’t too different, they are roughly indicative of the relative offensive ability of the team. Regular season pitching statistics, on the other hand, has too many Cookie Carrasco and Danny Young innings in it to be meaningful. Chris Sale has been pitching once a week for the last month-and-a-half. God willing, he’ll be pitching a lot more than that in the playoffs.
Brewer Hicklen
Statcast calls Brewer Hicklen the 52nd fastest guy in MLB. I watched the film of Dubón’s sac fly about a dozen times. I am not a fabulous experimentalist, but from the time the ball hit Crawford’s glove until Realmuto tags Hicklen, I estimate barely 3.5 seconds elapsed. Assuming he didn’t leave early, and crediting him with about three feet of extension, that 87 feet in 3.5 seconds, for an average speed of 25 feet per second. From a standing start, that is outstanding.
So this led me to the literature, in particular, this article by Kato and Yanai (2025). Using the Savant ratings, they calculate the distance a ball is hit which gives a 50% chance of scoring on a sac fly as a function of arm strength and running speed. Savant credits Crawford with a subpar arm strength rating of 81.8 mph (but Savant credits him with about 86 mph on this throw, so that’s what I used) and Hicklen with a sprint speed of an outstanding 29.1 feet/sec. (Note: does Hicklen look fast? No, but neither did Mike Trout at his peak.) To input into the Kato and Yanai results, I have to turn these into metric values because they made me. The using their equation, the 50% distance for a sac fly is a little over 290 feet. If he didn’t leave early, that was a really low-percentage send.
Philadelphia and Atlanta and Elsewhere
After last night’s game, I watched the Phillies postgame show. I watch a lot of different game-announcing crews, and while there are lots of style differences, there really aren’t many important differences, though what I think is important may not match what you think is important. Every announcing crew is an enthusiastic supporter of the home team, albeit couched in some pseudo-objectivity that does a lot of opponent cap-tipping; each seeks to leaven sober baseball analysis with dollops of putative humor and disquisitions on non-baseball things; each strives for some criticism of the home team to maintain their own pseudo-objectivity, but not so much as to seem mean. Some broadcasts are better at these things than others, but that’s because some have Chip Caray and some have Gary Cohen.
The pregame shows are all pretty similar as well, but I don’t pay much attention to them so I may be missing some nuance.
The postgame shows, however, are very different, particularly after home team losses. The Braves crew of Nick Green and Peter Moylan are essentially never critical. They acknowledge failure, but it’s all in the “baseball is a hard game” mode. The Mets postgame show is a litany of disaster… a sort of Rodney Dangerfield bedraggled review. The Phillies, postgame show, which I confess to only watching in the last few weeks, so I may not be getting a fair sample, is of another order. It is so different from the Braves postgame show, that I think of reviews of school plays in the school newspaper (Braves) versus reviews of Broadway shows in tabloids (Phillies.) Those guys are brutal in losses on their own team.
Last night’s loss was a source not just of anguish, but of laceration, led by Ricky Bottalico. I remember Bottalico as a pretty good, never great pitcher. But his criticism is not just the sort of back-in-my-day stuff that Joe Simpson or Tom Glavine specialize in (and note that we see less and less of each of them as time has gone on) but just outright disdain. It’s not analytical, or generational… it seems personal.
It is hard to imagine the differences in these shows being reflective of anything other than the respective fanbases of the two teams, in a way that the game broadcasts themselves are not. If you are a fan of the Braves opponents, you might tune in the Braves postgame show to see Nick Green heap praise on your boys for besting the Bravos. If you are a Braves fan, you watch the Phillies like you’d watch a particularly brutal Love after Lockup episode, a show I confess to never having watched, but I know people who are addicted, and not for tales of post-carceral redemption.
It is not that the Braves don’t have fans who love some anti-Braves schadenfreude (looking at you ONIO) particularly directed at management. But it is clearly a minority taste. I would say the same about Mets fans, who approach life with resignation. (“Sure we’ll mostly fail… it is our lot in life.”) And the Phillies fans have a history of occasionally booing their own players in a way that Braves fans never have. is But I put the accent on occasionally. The Phillies postgame show caters to those guys. I got a little squeamish last night at the piling-on… and I don’t do squeamish.
This not new. Here’s a postgame review from five years ago. Now picture Nick Green and Peter Moylan acting like this.
The Game
As I have said before, I don’t get the whole Bryce Harper hate thing. So when he hit a homer off Tyler Mahle in the first inning and took three weeks and 8 hours to round the bases, I have to say I get it and even approve. It’s all show business, I guess.
Jesus Luzardo has a sore shoulder and missed his start. Some guy on X said something like “he looks dead now, but he’ll be back in three days.” (Don’t crucify me… I just report what I see.) This led to a bullpen game from the Phillies. I know Luzardo is really, really good, but the Braves have not exactly covered themselves with glory in bullpen games. I defined a bullpen game as a game in which the starting pitcher lasts three innings or less giving up 2 runs or less. The Braves were 2-6 in such games last year, 2-1 in 2024 and 2-4 in 2023. That’s probably a better percentage than we could expect against Jesus Luzardo, but it isn’t good.
In any case (for those wondering what the heck today’s graphic is) of the many glories of Philadelphia cuisine, scrapple is the red-headed stepchild. Scrapple is a mid-Atlantic breakfast meat composed of the meat scraps unusable in a regular meal: scrapple is the bullpen game of cuisine. Few call it delicious.
Tim Mayza started and went three scoreless innings, aided by two double plays. But when a bullpen game fails, it fails because someone just isn’t ready. Last night’s pitching goat, Brooks Raley, promptly gave up a homer to Ronald Acuña Jr. to tie it up. later in the inning Raley gave up a walk and a single and was pulled for Grant Holman, making his 2026 debut, indeed, his first MLB action since June 2025. After a steal, Mauricio Dubón hit a two-run single. Riley followed with a single. Then Stott made a throwing error for another run. Kim walked to load the bases. A wild pitch scored the fifth run. A Baldwin double scored two more to make 7 two-out runs. Acuña’s second hit of the inning made it 8-1. Olson flew out to end the madness.
Holman has been on the Phillies staff for two weeks, but hasn’t been put into a game. CJ said “When you come in a game like this, the manager just needs to tell you he has faith in you.” But, obviously, he doesn’t, and couldn’t, except in the superficial sense that someone decided to put you on the roster, so you must be a major league pitcher. Holman has been with Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Tigers and Phillies this season without a single MLB appearance before tonight. But I can say this: he is the second-best pitcher of all time whose name begins “Grant Holm.”
Charter member of the All-Constellation team, Orion Kerkering, worked the fifth. (I won’t say my attention wandered, but I’m pretty sure the only other MLB members are Hercules Burnett and all the Leos (Durocher, Mazzone, Cardenas, etc.) Unless you count Ozuna as Ursa Major.
Bohm made a fielding error in the 6th, leading to another sac fly run. When the Phillies got Arraez, i thought that messing up your defense by moving three players to new positons was to add Luis Arraez was a mistake. Apparently, Mattingly claims that the moves improved the Phillies’ defense. I thought: If true, that’s weird, because they had been free to move Stott to 3rd, Bohm to 1st and Harper to right as soon as Adolis Garcia went down, playing Sosa at 2nd. If that move improved the defense, why didn’t they do it then? What the last two days have taught me is that Mattingly was lying.
Catcher Garrett Stubbs came in with two outs in the seventh to complete the scrapple. A three run homer by Harris completed the scoring,
Mahle pitched 7, and Brent Suter came in for the last two, yielding a homer to Justin Crawford.
Chance for a sweep tomorrow afternoon.
One more point: the Braves are 6 ahead of the Phillies for the season and they are 6 games ahead head-to-head. (9-3) So other than their games against each other, they are dead even against everybody else.
Nothing beats fun at the ol’ ballpark!
Also, I never would’ve suspected that our second-best pitcher down the stretch would be Tyler Mahle, but as Joaquin Andujar sagely observed, you never know. The dude has been absolute nails.
Last night must have been the part where Luzardo descended into Hell.
I love watching the Braves win big and it seems like it’s been long time since the last big win. HOWEVER. Not including Harris’ 3-run HR off a position player, the Braves scored 3 earned runs. Barely enough to win. I’m glad to see them finally taking advantage of the Phillies porous defense but they are not exactly scorching the ball.
The Braves are a scrappy bunch and do much better against relievers than starters, so that gives me hope. Seems like every game we need to hold our breath for a few innings. This team is never out of it and the pitching is great (starters and bullpen). It’s nice to have a blowout where you don’t have to hold your breath.
And, yes, the offense was great at the beginning of the year. But, as was pointed out, they have been terrible for several months. If Acuna and Olson get hot in the playoffs, watch out……
Not counting the games where the Braves win, all they do is LOSE LOSE LOSE.
Did you know Matt Olson has a .000 AVG in games he doesn’t get a hit?
Similarly, Raisel Iglesias has zero saves in games he doesn’t finish.
How can a team with those kinds of stats expect to compete in the playoffs against teams with better numbers in those situations?
As shown yesterday, we scored 4.1 runs per game over an 82 game span until last night, and we went 42-40 over that stretch. Folks pile on Roger like he’s hallucinating, but it seems like gaslighting to me. He’s right. It’s been a half season of tepid offense with good enough pitching that we’ve been a .500 team. It’s frustrating to waste so many good pitching performances because the team can’t scratch across a couple of runs.
I hope that this offensive outburst is the inflection point and we get back to scoring 5 runs per game like we did during our hot start. If HSK actually turns into a .700 OPS offensive player and Acuna and Olson start hitting in the neighborhood of career norms, and Riley isn’t a total black hole, I think we can do it and make the playoffs awfully interesting.
I don’t think are really piling on Roger… mostly just playful jostling. One of my many jobs here as bartender is shaking and stirring. Roger’s point, that producing in the playoffs offensively like we produced offensively in August will ensure a very short playoff season, is correct, but it doesn’t put him above a little teasing when we win a 1-0 game.
Similarly, a gentle jab in the ribs to those who think the Braves are throwing in the towel because AA can’t or won’t make splashy deals is sorta required when discussing Tyler Mahle.
The only thing above criticism is the argument that the decision to exile Mateo was dumb. That’s because it’s my argument. (BTW: the argument that it was fine to exile Mateo because (a) Keirsey is ready; and (b) Hicklen is plenty fast enough are both appropriate criticisms of my argument about Mateo. But my argument is still above criticism — except from me.)
Set Grant Holmes up for away games in the postseason.
2.43 ERA on the road; 4.67 ERA at home.
That’s an interesting stat, and it may have a bearing on the question who starts game three of a playoff series. I have a hard time believing, though, that this split is anything but random variation. It always reminds me of the decision in the 2019 NLDS re Soroka. Holding him back for a road start cost the opportunity to give Mike two starts. Given Folty’s start in game five, it’s always seemed one of the more foolish decisions.
I haven’t been watching–I’ve been admiring how the Falcons appear to be a well-coached team with an absolutely washed-up, former backup QB who can’t throw the ball further than 5 yards.
Anyhow, 6 hits and 4 walks in 4 innings and you get 1 run?
Amazing escape by Ray Kerr there. And Kudos to WW for pulling the trigger.
Dylan Lee: Still broken.
Little worrisome…
Still tipping his pitches?
Recapped.