Red Pinstripes: How did Atlanta get good?
Looking at how Atlanta revamped its outfield and answering some burning playoff questions
Good morning,
The World Series and a 2021 champion creep ever closer. After the Dodgers’ win last night, both series are 3-2 and Atlanta and Houston both have two chances at home to advance. The Astros have a chance to punch their ticket tonight if they can beat the Red Sox.
Meanwhile, the playoff storylines are serving as a preview of what’s likely to be a hot-button issue this winter: robot umps. The playoffs have also highlighted issues with pace of play and the number of relievers being used in games. And should pitchers pitch to contact, whatever that means?
Back to Cobb County
Atlanta’s baseball team will have two more chances at home to beat the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers to advance to the World Series. It looked like Atlanta might finish the deal after they took a quick 2-0 lead in Los Angeles last night, but Chris Taylor and the Dodgers stormed back to force the series back to Georgia. Atlanta still has the advantage with two games at home, but these Dodgers are starting to look dangerous again. The winners in Atlanta will face the winners of the Astros/Red Sox. (I’ll get to them in a bit.)
How is Atlanta in this position? Good pitching and timely hitting have been part of the recipe. Max Fried was good in his first start (but just OK last night). Charlie Morton gutted out a strong performance in what turned out to be a comeback Dodgers win in game 3. Drew Smyly was an unexpected plus as the bulk reliever in game 4, a performance that might have kept that game, and ultimately the series, in Atlanta’s grasp. Finally, the bullpen has been great. Outside of game three’s win, which came after Cody Bellinger hit a fastball at his eyes out of the ballpark, the Atlanta bullpen has also been stellar, especially Tyler Matzek and A.J. Minter.
The revamped Atlanta outfield has also starred in this series. They began the season with Marcell Ozuna, Christian Pache, and Ronald Acuna Jr. as their outfield. Ozuna was arrested for domestic violence and is out for the season. Pache, a rookie, was ineffective. Acuna tore his ACL right before the All-Star break and is out for the year.
Rather than give up on the season, Atlanta quickly overhauled the outfield in July. They acquired Joc Pederson, Eddie Rosario, Jorge Soler, and Adam Duvall, all for essentially nothing. It has led to a popular refrain these playoffs that a) Atlanta went out and got their guys and that b) any other team could have done the same thing.
Yes, these players were all available to any team (although we don’t know what individual trade discussions for each team could have looked like, it’s fair to say almost anyone could have beat the price of Pablo Sandoval and cash for Eddie Rosario). But I think they also were proof of concept for an Atlanta franchise that prides itself on its scouting department.
Pederson was the first to be acquired. He was hitting .230/.300/.418 with 11 home runs for the Chicago Cubs, good for a 90 wRC+. So he was a slightly below-average hitter. In Atlanta, he hit .249/.325/.428 with 7 home runs, good for a 101 wRC+. He was almost an exactly average hitter. He also spent most of the stretch run as Atlanta’s fourth outfielder because the other three outfielders acquired ended up playing better. Now, Pederson has turned on the jets in the postseason, a role he’s played well over his career in Los Angeles.
Adam Duvall is a career journeyman player who has always had 30-homer power but could never find a steady home. That seemed like it would change once he got to Atlanta in 2018. Over the next three years, he went from fourth outfielder to star. His wRC+ improved to 120 in 2019 and he had a 115 wRC+ in the pandemic-shortened season last year. But he wanted a chance to start and Atlanta thought they had their starting outfield written in permanent marker, so Duvall settled for a one-year, $5 million deal with the Marlins. He hit .229/.277/.478 with 22 home runs, good for a 102 wRC+. Then Atlanta came calling once again and, suddenly, Duvall was their center fielder. He hit .226/.287/.513 with 16 home runs, leading to a 106 wRC+ with Atlanta.
Eddie Rosario has always been able to hit. He was a good hitter for the Twins his entire career, posting wRC+ of 97, 86, 117, 114, 104, 111, and 98 from 2015 to 2020. So it was kind of surprising that the Twins non-tendered Rosario after the pandemic-shortened season was his worst season in five years. Cleveland snapped him up on a one-year deal, and Rosario flopped, both physically and at the plate. He hit .254/.296/.389 with 7 home runs, totaling a 86 wRC+ for Cleveland. He was on the injured list when Atlanta acquired him at the end of July. He came back at the end of August and hit .271/.330/.573 with 7 home runs, good for a 133 wRC+.
All three of these players were fine acquisitions. Pederson and Duvall are average hitters. But when you need to replace stars on the cheap, it turns out that average hitters can help a ton. Imagine if the Phillies had decided to replace Alec Bohm, Didi Gregorius, and Odubel Herrera with average hitters. Think Matt Duffy and Myles Straw, two hitters right around 100 wRC+ this year. Adding those two might have meant the Phillies won the NL East and Atlanta was sitting at home. Turns out, those small moves make a big difference and can be done cheaply. Rosario was acquired for Pablo Sandoval, who was serving as the designated pinch hitter in Atlanta. These guys were available if teams wanted, I don’t disagree at all with that.
It’s the fourth acquisition that was the game-changer. And it’s that acquisition that I think demonstrates Atlanta’s scouting savvy and their faith in their coaching staff to help make adjustments. That acquisition was Jorge Soler.
Soler has been a good hitter for the Royals. A lot of that is tied up in his power. His 48 home runs in 2018 set what was then a team record. He’s also had a ton of swing-and-miss in his game. He hit .192/.288/.370 with 13 home runs, a 79 wRC+ over 94 games with Kansas City this season. You can forgive a lot of teams for thinking that what ailed Soler was not fixable over one season. It would be better to wait for him to hit free agency and see if you can rebuild him on a cheap deal, right?
But Atlanta was desperate. They were trying to replace Ronald Acuna Jr.! This man could have won the MVP this year. He’s one of the five best players in baseball. So while the Pedersons and the Duvalls and the Rosarios are decent hitters, Soler has a chance to be an impactful player. And Atlanta, to their great credit, pulled the trigger. And it paid off. Over 55 games, Soler hit .269/.358/.524 with 14 home runs, good for a 132 wRC+.
What’s remarkable in Atlanta is that all four of these bets paid off. Just two hitting would have helped the team. But it’s a combination of scouting, coaching, and luck that all four have been as impactful for Atlanta as they have been.
As I wrote with the Phillies, it’s also important to look at how much just doing something can help a team. Atlanta saw a need and patched it. But I don’t think every organization could have done the same thing. We don’t know, for example, what Cleveland would have asked the Phillies to send them for Rosario. And some teams don’t value the same things. But too many teams focus on major or minor makeovers come the July trade deadline. Hopefully, if teams learn anything from Atlanta, it’s that average players could be difference-makers, too.
Elimination games in Houston
I spent a lot of words talking about the NLCS, and especially Atlanta. I think that has been the much more interesting championship series. This ALCS, on the other hand, has been weird. Just about every game has ended as a blowout, although that’s deceiving for game 4, which swung on a missed called strike by the home plate umpire (more on that later).
It has mostly been a strange series of pitchers not pitching well, a ton of home runs, and some strange managerial decisions. Predicting baseball is normally a loser’s game, but I think it’s especially hard to guess what will happen Friday night or Saturday night, if necessary. If you made me bet, I’d guess the Astros end up moving on to the World Series because they have two chances at home to punch their ticket. They have a huge advantage in that they can afford to lose tonight and still have the chance to win the whole series. The Red Sox don’t have that luxury. But this has been such a weird series, I feel like anything can happen.
Pitching, pace of play, and robot umps
The playoffs have inspired a lot of talk about three issues, and I think they’re all connected. The first, as outlined in this FanGraphs article is the decline of the starting pitcher in playoff baseball. In six games this postseason, the starter didn’t make it out of the first inning, the TBS broadcast said Thursday night after Joe Kelly couldn’t get through the first as the opener for the Dodgers.
For pitchers, this has also coincided with a discussion of whether or not pitchers are pitching to contact, whatever that means. It was a discussion started by Alex Rodriguez, so you have to take that for whatever it’s worth, but it’s out there now.
Second, there has been a lot of talk about how long these postseason games are taking. The championship series games have routinely gone more than four hours. If your playoff games are taking an hour longer than an Avengers movie, you have a problem.
And third, inconsistent home plate umpiring and some missed calls in some big spots have increased calls for there to be an automatic strike zone, better known as robot umps.
These are all connected (though the length of games also has a lot to do with the extra minute baseball adds to every commercial break so the networks can sell more ads). If starters can’t go deep into games, that means more pitching changes. More pitching changes mean more commercial breaks. Inconsistent umpiring can also hurt pitchers, causing them to leave games earlier. It all builds on each other.
I think the schedule is hurting the starting pitcher situation. First, the long season after the pandemic-shortened season has left pitchers hurt and all four of these pitching staffs are shallow right now. The playoff schedule also means more days off and teams are trying to take advantage by using more bullpen games and using starters out of the bullpen. It seems like a sound strategy, but you can tell that these pitchers are getting punished right now. The Dodgers, especially, have run into issues with Max Scherzer and Julio Urias being ineffective after being used in relief.
Maybe this tweet encapsulates part of the issue:
What’s not a problem? The idea that pitchers aren’t “pitching to contact,” as A-Rod advanced Wednesday night. First, hitters are so talented that pitching to contact is a really bad idea. When that happens, you give up a bunch of home runs.
Instead, today’s pitchers pitch for weak contact. The best pitchers throw sinkers, cutters, and breaking balls designed to land in the zone or just out of the zone. If a hitter swings and misses, great. If a hitter swings and makes weak contact, that’s also great. But pitching to contact is a really basic concept that doesn’t work in today’s game.
Finally, we have the issue of the umpiring. And it has been bad in some cases. It turns out that many of the home plate umpires this postseason have been some of the worst during the regular season. Some of the best home plate umpires during the regular season haven’t had the plate during the playoffs. It’s a weird reward system you’ve got there, MLB.
The call in the 9th inning of Tuesday’s Red Sox-Astros game has poured gasoline on this fire. A called strike three on Carlos Correa would have ended the top of the ninth tied at two. Instead, the call was missed and the Astros scored 7 runs and won the game.
So what would happen if we had lasers and computers calling balls and strikes instead of human umpires? The good news is we actually have some data because the system was used in low A this season and is currently being used in the Arizona Fall League. Here’s how it went in the former Florida State League this year:
The Athletic’s Keith Law wrote about how it’s working in the AFL:
The Saturday night game at Salt River Fields, the spring home of the Diamondbacks and Rockies, exemplifies the entire problem. The game used the automated strike zone, a variable pitch clock and a ban on shifts. The result was a game that was called after seven and a half innings over three excruciating hours because the teams ran out of pitchers. Why did they run out of pitchers in just seven and a half innings, you ask? Because the pitchers they did use walked 22 guys.
I’m an advocate of moving away from a human-called strike zone, which is going to be biased by its very nature, to an automated one, but this year’s experiments in what was once the Florida State League, and now here in the AFL, have shown that simply turning on HAL 2021 isn’t going to be enough. It turns out that the real strike zone is a lot smaller than what umpires called, especially on the horizontal axis (inside or outside). A whole lot of pitches that were probably 1 to 3 inches off the outside corner and had some chance of being called strikes from a human were, of course, called balls — and while that wasn’t solely responsible for the game’s three-walks-per-inning pace, it didn’t help matters. (Some guys just couldn’t find the plate that night if you’d drawn an arrow from the mound right to the dish.)
An automatic strike zone could be beneficial. But it won’t be a perfect solution. It might even --gasp-- make the games go longer. More walks, more hits, more pitching changes could all be the result of a robot umpire. And who knows how often MLB would tweak the parameters of the strike zone.
I guess what I’m saying is, be careful what you wish for.