Jose Altuve went yard thrice, and Trevor Bauer was not so nice to the Yankees in a dominant Game 1 performance on Thursday. The first day of the MLB Divisional Series round now gives way to a full slate of games Friday—here’s TWS’s Lee Smith and Chris Deaton to break it down.
Chris Deaton: Ten times in playoff history a player has hit three home runs in a game. The list of those who have done it, as you may expect, is esteemed: It includes Babe Ruth, Reggie Jackson, George Brett, and, of course, Babe Ruth again. But let’s look at the pitchers responsible for surrendering the long balls in those instances (in chronological order):
Flint Rhem, Hi Bell, Pete Alexander, Bill Sherdel, Steve Hamilton, Ron Bryant, John Cumberland, Charlie Hough, Burt Hooton, Elias Sosa, Catfish Hunter, Johan Santana, Joe Mays, Jeremy Hellickson, Matt Moore, Mike Gonzalez, Darren Oliver, Alexi Ogando, Justin Verlander, and Al Albuquerque.
Those were the ones involved the first nine times a batter cracked three dingers in a postseason game; it’s mostly a who’s who of sports trivia. The 10th such occurrence came Thursday night, when Jose Altuve smacked three round-trippers to lead Houston past Boston 8-2 in game one of their divisional series. The victims on the mound?
CHRIS SALE. TWICE. (And reliever Austin Maddox.)
Sale just concluded one of the most dominant seasons for a hurler in recent memory. He struck out more than 300 batters, the first guy to do so since some hoser named Pedro Martinez accomplished the feat in 1999. He walked fewer than two men per nine innings. He had a sub-3 earned run average. He and Cleveland’s Corey Kluber are 1a and 1b, in some order, for the American League Cy Young Award.
And Jose Altuve took him deep two times in the first game of the 2017 playoffs. Yeah, I’d say this has gotten off to a pretty impressive start.
Lee Smith: And tonight the Yankees have to pick it up where you left off—Corey Kluber. Trevor Bauer’s pitching performance Thursday night was the mound version of Altuve’s day at the plate. The Indians’ right-hander took a no-hitter into the 6th, retired the first 17 batters he faced, and struck out 8 in 6 2/3 innings before handing the ball over to Andrew Miller. It’s one of the ace pitching performances in playoff history. The Yanks are down 1-0 and now they face one of the game’s most dominant pitchers in Kluber.
Let me talk about Aaron Judge for a second: He looked lost in Game 1, whiffing four times. It’s hardly surprising the best pitching staff in the big leagues attacked the holes in his swing, which are big enough that Judge could step through them.
The presumptive rookie of the year and MVP contender (if not for Altuve) has had a tough time since the All-Star break, which some people attribute to the Home Run Derby. (These are the same people who believe in the Great Pumpkin and the SI Jinx.)
The issue is simply that everyone in the league knows that Judge has a huge hole in his swing. Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz discussed this in late summer here. The terminology they use is interesting—A-Rod explains that a guy with arms as long as Judge’s hits balls in the strike zone east to west. Judge’s slump, says A-Rod, is a product of the fact that pitchers are attacking him north-south, or up and down the strike zone. You saw Judge get tied up last night with fastballs upstairs.
What Big Papi said is equally interesting, though a bit misleading. He noted that both he and A-Rod started with the Mariners, and Edgar Martinez (wow, do I miss seeing him hit) emphasized top hand and swinging down on the ball. Judge, as Ortiz and A-Rod explain, has a Ferris wheel approach—a big looping swing.
You don’t, in fact, swing down on the ball. (I’ll come back to the whole launch angle thing in the next week.) But I’ll just leave it at this: What Ortiz and A-Rod are really talking about is how you get behind the ball and stay in the zone long enough to make good contact. Judge didn’t do that last night. He had a great September—with 15 home runs—not because he fixed the holes in his swing that pitchers attacked after the All-Star break, but because the pitchers he faced last month (all of whom with catchers and pitching coaches that have invariably mapped the holes in his swing) did not execute. Judge hit their mistakes.
Last night, Indians pitchers executed. They exploited Judge’s mistakes so he couldn’t target theirs. And that’s what happens when you get to October—the best pitching in baseball is going to show. Unless, of course, you’ve got Jose Altuve 60 feet away, because that guy is unconscious.
CD: He’s a phenomenal player—and a useful segue into this talk of north-south strike zones. Fangraphs’ Jeff Sullivan did the research in 2013, and at the time, Altuve appeared to be the shortest big-league player, by official measurement, in decades. He was listed at just 5’5”. (Now he’s listed at 5’6”.) Intuitively, you’d think it’d be tough to attack a player of that stature; how do you throw called strikes against a guy who’s essentially a shoebox chest-to-thighs? But Sullivan found that the opposite was true the first few years of Altuve’s career:
I’d be curious to know if that’s held up in recent years. Because if it has, it makes what Altuve’s doing that much more incredible; the dude is a pint-sized power hitter, which is unheard of. His on-base-plus-slugging percentage this year was .957, which is good enough to win MVP most seasons. Like this one. Because he’s going to win the award.
Contrast all that to Judge, who, at 6’7”, appears to face a disadvantage at the bottom of the strike zone—more borderline pitches thrown there are called strikes against Judge than the average major leaguer by a bunch. It’s no mistake that pitchers love to pound the slugger low. A key difference between him and Altuve? The Astros infielder is one of the best contact hitters in the game, and Judge, as you noted yesterday Lee, led the MLB in strikeouts this year.
LS: Should we preview the Cubs-Nats some? I’ll be out there tonight to see Stephen Strasburg, the NL’s most dominant pitcher in the second half, take on the defending champs. Some of our hometown teams have acquired a reputation for underperforming in the postseason. I like the Nats’ chances this series: Their batting order of Turner, Murphy, Harper, Zimmerman, and Rendon matches up with any other team in the playoffs, and if staff ace Max Scherzer is okay to go for game three, then their rotation, with Gio Gonzalez likely going Saturday afternoon, is right there with Cleveland, Houston, and Los Angeles.
It’s going to come down, naturally, to the bullpen, which is much stronger since late season trades for Brandon Kinzler, Ryan Madson, and Sean Doolittle replenished the staff. Still, I don’t want to see Alex Ovechkin anywhere near that ballpark.
CD: Ouch. But fair.
This series is the toughest one to call. I think Houston entered theirs with Boston a hefty favorite; same with Cleveland against New York; and the Dodgers, despite posting a losing record against the Diamondbacks in the regular season, still possess baseball’s best record. Arizona may win that series, but there’s no way the D-Backs are favored to do it. Cubs-Nats, on the other hand, seems like a coin flip. Chicago was the NL’s best team after the All-Star break. Washington has been good from day one—but they competed in the league’s weakest division and have pitching issues entering the playoffs, with Scherzer banged up and Gonzalez, whose numbers are way better than the advanced stats say they should be, possibly on the hook for two starts if the series goes the full five games. I don’t put all my stock in such numbers—but when that duo is two-thirds of your rotation’s three-headed monster, I have questions.
It’s yuge that the Nationals have a healthy batting order, though. There were times this year they looked SOL: Veteran Howie Kendrick was called in to provide relief to an outfield missing Harper and offseason acquisition Adam Eaton, and he was a terrific fill-in. But with Bryce and budding star shortstop Trea Turner ready to go, they definitely have the bats to go deep in October. Harper will just need to get it going quickly after having only 18 at-bats between his stint on the disabled list and Game 1 Friday.
LS: Howie Kendrick is without doubt my favorite hitter in the big leagues and has been since he first broke in with the Angels. That short, compact right-handed stroke—man, he’s one of those professional hitters, like Julio Franco, who could roll out of bed on a cold January morning and drive a fastball into the gap in his pajamas. With him, Rendon, and Zimmerman, the Nats have three of the sweetest right-handed swings in baseball. But Howie Kendrick, man—professional hitter.
