The Baseball Boys: How the Red Sox and Yankees Survived the Weekend

Then, on Sunday: The Astros were on the verge of leading 6-0 early in the third game of what had been a lopsided matchup with the Red Sox—Houston had taken Games 1 and 1 by the identical score of 8-2. With Houston leading 3-0 in the top of two, lefty Josh Reddick yanked a fly ball toward the short wall in right, just next to the 380-foot sign. But Mookie Betts, one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball to the naked eye and the advanced stats alike, reached into the crowd and snatched the hit away. The Sox offense eventually came alive to score 10 runs. The three-run blast Betts denied was the closest the Astros came to scoring again all game. Game 4 is Monday.

So is the case in the Indians-Yankees series. After a brutal collapse Friday night in Game 2, New York faced elimination at home. Starter Masahiro Tanaka dueled with Cleveland hurler Carlos Carrasco through five innings of a scoreless game. In the sixth, the Tribe nearly broke through off a deep fly from Francisco Lindor—whose grand slam two days earlier sparked a five-run comeback—but MVP candidate and giant person Aaron Judge hopped and robbed a two-run dinger. The contest remained 0-0 until the bottom of the seventh, when Yankees first baseman Greg Bird launched a moon shot past the foul pole in right for the evening’s only run.

Seven teams have to lose in the playoffs. Whichever ones do are going down swinging. And defending, obviously.

Lee Smith: Yes, I want to find a way in the next few days to describe why these games are so close, even the games that don’t seem that close, which is I think what you’re referring to in the Astros-Red Sox game yesterday. By definition playoff teams make fewer mistakes over the course of the year, or else they wouldn’t be playing in October—a little luck spread out over 162 games doesn’t hurt either. So winning in October often comes down to being able to make something out of the very few mistakes the other club makes.

Friday night I was in the stands at Nationals Stadium and couldn’t very well see if Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks made many mistakes the Nats missed. But since he limited one of the top lineups in the NL to two singles, I’m going to say he made very few. Hendricks had to be fantastic because Steven Strasburg was awesome. He struck out 10, including Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo twice before their back-to-back singles in the sixth put the defending champs up for good. Strasburg’s stuff was dynamic—as my friend the baseball writer Jason Epstein noted, Strasburg wasn’t even throwing that many pitches to get his Ks. The Cubs weren’t fouling him off. And then two good hitters jumped on two of the few mistakes Strasburg made, and the Chicago club won.

You probably heard the news coming out of the Nationals’ clubhouse this weekend about assistant hitting coach Jacque Jones, indefinitely suspended without pay for distributing intimate photographs of an ex-girlfriend. Had the Nats not won the next night with a very memorable eighth inning, it’s likely the Washington story would’ve been more about the possible distractions from Jones’ actions and then suspension. Just like the New York press would still be all over Yankees manager Joe Girardi for failing to ask for a review Friday night after the home plate umpire awarded Lonnie Chisenhall first base for being hit by a pitch. Replays show he wasn’t—rather, he fouled it off with the knob of the bat into catcher Gary Sanchez’s glove, which should have been the third out. Instead, Francisco Lindor hit a grand slam to bring the Tribe within one, and then they tied it in the eighth before going on to win in 13 with a walk-off single.

So instead of everyone talking about how Yanks reliever Aroldis Chapman liked a comment on his Instagram page, posted by an angry fan—“Let’s hope Joe [Girardi]’s contract is not renewed after the season. He’s an imbecile”—we’re instead talking about Chapman’s ninth inning last night, both dominant and slightly erratic. Yankees fans sounded like the crowd at a bullfight: 103 mph fastball for a strike, “Yaah!” Slider for a ball, “Ooh.” Swing and a miss at another 100+ fastball, “Yaah!” I think the crowd in the Bronx is still having trouble adjusting to life post-Mariano Rivera—throughout recorded history, leading 1-0 going into the ninth inning in a playoff game is usually not considered a lock.

CD: That’s right—lest we forget that Chapman surrendered a game-tying home run to Rajai Davis in Game 7 of last year’s World Series. Chapman was a Cub, and Davis was … an Indian. You have to wonder how much his blown save in that game, which Chicago won anyway, crept into his mind on Sunday. Girardi called on him to record the final five outs; he took 34 pitches to do it, casting doubt about his use in Game 4.

All other New York relievers will be fresh, though, meaning the Yankees have the assets to battle Cleveland’s Andrew Miller in the middle and late innings of a close game. Miller coughed up the homer to Bird on Sunday, but his role as a “super reliever” is still guaranteed.

LS: So, instead of coaching staff issues, we’re talking about baseball.

I met Jacque Jones briefly in the Nats clubhouse last month to speak about hitting. He didn’t have much time to talk—it was Bryce Harper’s first day back in the batting cage, but I just wanted to ask him about the launch angle stuff. (You can see I’m fixated on this.) I told him I wanted to see what it looks like in the hands—I mean, it’s a concept that comes from numbers, right? Check out the various stories and how people talk about it: “Here’s the kind of launch angle that has turned around so-and-so’s career”; or, “you need this degree of launch to drive doubles to the gap or else it’s all ground balls,” etc.

So I asked Jones how that translates physically: What does your body have to do to get that optimal launch angle? What does the bat look like in the hands? He shook his head and smiled. It’s not about that, he explained. That’s what I figured, I said. If you’re aiming for some kind of launch, you’re inclined to collapse on your back side. Try it at home—get in your batting stance and tilt your rear shoulder down like you’re positioning your bat to get under the ball and lift it. You’ve seen it before: All the beer softball heavyweights you ever played with, the guys who aren’t satisfied with whistling a single past the pitcher’s head but need to see how far a lifetime’s worth of French fries and pizza can drive the ball. That’s fine if you’re trying to hit a softball coming in like it was a re-entry angle plotted at NASA—but it doesn’t work when you’re trying to hit real heat, fastballs, for instance, at the top of the strike zone, say 96-98 mph.

The launch angle obsession is misdirection, Jones said. “You guys make a big deal out of it because people are hitting lots of home runs.” You guys? I thought to myself—and then it hit me: Everyone in every profession has a problem with their particular media apparatus. I’m accustomed to getting exasperated DMs from some foreign policy person who thinks I’ve totally misunderstood the administration’s Iran policy review. But Jones identified me as part of the baseball press—I was flattered. I swore to myself to try very hard not to purvey Fake News—in baseball.

Talk of launch angle, said Jones, is a way for ballplayers to talk about what they’re doing. “Nine different guys have 10 different ways to talk about how to do the same thing.” He told me he was watching a video of a ballplayer who was trying to explain his hitting mechanics to a commentator. “But if you look at what he’s actually doing,” said Jones, “it’s nothing like what he says.”

Here’s a video that makes Jones’ point.

Retired big-leaguer Carlos Peña is forced to use the concept of launch angle to explain the correlation between Yonder Alonso’s success early this season relative to last year. You can see Peña doesn’t entirely buy the whole launch angle stuff, but it’s his job. He compares the trajectory of one of Alonso’s swings from last year to one from this year, and you can see the issue immediately—Alonso’s timing is off in the 2016 clip. He’s on his front leg too early. Alonso’s solution, illustrated in the 2017 clip, was a short leg kick that keeps his weight back and his swing shorter. Another professional hitting tutor I know explains that’s basically the reason why Nats second baseman Daniel Murphy has become a monster the last two seasons—it’s not the improved launch angle that Murphy won’t stop talking about; rather his swing is more compact. And that gets the barrel of the bat in the zone more quickly.

Peña sensibly notes that “launch angle,” like “exit velocity,” is a statistic that documents results. It’s not something you aim for. The point, again, is to get the barrel in the zone where the ball is pitched. But if a big-league all-star steps up to the plate telling himself that the way to accomplish that feat is by envisioning a better “launch angle,” well, it’s not really Fake News.