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ATLANTA – Weary is the pitching coach who has to deal with the depth and power of the Los Angeles Dodgers lineup. We think of slow rush hours, keeping a kid with colic and having persistent dental surgery, at least if you see the face of Atlanta Braves coach Chuck Hernandez after four games to try to stop them. Nineteen pitch changes and 624 throws were not enough.
"You have to be in the attack zone," said Hernandez, "because they will not want to come out of this zone. They make you work. They are like those old school Yankees and Red Sox teams that are just wearing you out.
"They are very good for the recognition of the field. And these lands that are just out of the way, they do not let themselves be hit. And when you make a mistake, they charge you. "
Next!
Derek Johnson of the Milwaukee Brewers, the Dodgers will see you now.
Los Angeles has acceded to its third straight series of National League championships, all under the direction of Dave Roberts, destroying the last elements of a courageous but brave Braves team, 6-2, in the fourth game of Monday.
The NL championship will be decided by the teams who finished 1-2 in the league in home runs. This is not a coincidence. That's the way baseball is played now. It's a game very different from the way it was played four years ago. And now, the Dodgers play as well as anybody.
"We want passive and aggressive players," said Dodgers vice president Andrew Friedman, "as well as the players who hit hard, we have a lot of guys in our lineup – and on our bench too – who do that. "
The Dodgers are so deep and powerful that they managed 108 circuits on their bench in the third game, only 25 less than the entire Marlins team. They scored 70% of their points in the home series (14 of 20). They posted a batting average of .210, which is increasingly becoming a meaningless statistic.
"It's hard to make a living trying to make music today," Friedman said.
The Braves tried to do that. Here's all you need to know: they've been overwhelmed, 8-2. End of the story.
"They obviously have a lot of firepower," said Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman. "They saw Yasiel Puig hit eighth with 23 homers!"
Hitting in the playoffs today, it's like facing a close player all night long. The game revolves around walks and home runs. If you play for exchanges, you will die while waiting.
The venerable "hitting with runners in a leading position" is overestimated in today 's race prevention environment (withdrawals and retirements). The Dodgers and Brewers ranked seventh and eleventh in the RISP championship.
You want rallies? You want balls in play and runners in motion? You want a game that is virtually extinct. The Braves and Dodgers had 69 innings in the series. Once in those 69 laps, either team managed three hits in one inning – the last Dodgers game, Monday's sixth inning, and the unlikely rally required a Puig bloop that was left behind. in the air for 4.9 seconds and carried only a four percent probability.
That is the specialization in MLB today that hits have never been so difficult to get in 46 seasons since the DH was added. Before the fourth game, Roberts talked about how the pitchers' match with the batters changed drastically and quickly. Managers are no longer competing for mere platoon benefits, but for matching elements against oscillating aircraft on an almost scientific scale. That's why teams build tables like 12 grain packs that you remember as a kid. You need specific launches with rotations and specific actions depending on the batter's profile. Stack-thrower pairings have become almost useless as there are so many pitch changes that the sample sizes are too small to make much sense.
Here is a story told by Walker Buehler, the young Dodger player, who was 12 when he had his first radar gun and grew up with metrics and pitch analysis. A study of his pitches revealed that one of Buehler's strengths is the "apparent hike" in his fastball. Not the perceived speed, but the perceived rise.
And what the data has revealed is that when he throws his fast four-sided ball into the area, the height of the pitch is more "perceived" than when he raises it in the area. In simple terms, when his fast ball is low in the zone, the batters are more likely to misunderstand where the ball will go through the end zone. He is holding his plane across the bottom of the area.
That led me to check the numbers, and of course he was right. I had seen Buehler throw so many good fast balls that I thought he was simply following the conventions by winning with his fast 90s ball at the top of the box. But Buehler's four batters hit bat, 279 when the pitch is in the upper third of the strike zone, .244 when he is in the middle third and just, 179 when he is in the lower third. Science is a wonderful thing.
In the playoffs, the antidote to pitching specialization is to increase the depth of strokes. The Brewers, along with Curtis Granderson, Jonathan Schoop, Domingo Santana and Dodgers, along with David Freese, Brian Dozier, Matt Kemp and others have such a left / right fortification. Both teams can face off the bench and off the bench, and that's what the NLCS is talking about.
Before the fourth game, Friedman had attended the meeting of the Dodgers hitters in the batting tunnel behind their canoe at SunTrust Park. They were facing Mike Foltynewicz, the powerful right-hander of the Braves with 98 mph and a nasty slider. Batters hit .253 against his fastball and .119 against his slider.
Intimidating? Not if you looked at his stuff like the Dodgers.
"Get him into the zone," was the message.
Foltynewicz, like any pitcher, is not so intimidating when his business is in the zone. It is easier to hit his fastball in the zone (0.253 to 0.159) and his slider is easier to hit by 119 points when you pass it over the plate (0.164 to 0.045).
"I was blown away by the level of preparation and the way they integrated it into the game," Friedman said.
Foltynewicz has only launched 58% of strikes. He walked four in four innings. The Braves accompanied 27 Dodgers in four games, representing nearly half a mile of rides.
It is worth repeating: this result was predictable. When you face the craziest league in the league (the Braves have created the most leagues in the league and launched the second lowest number of strikes) against the most ruthlessly patient compound (the Dodgers made the most steps and have seen the fewest strikes), it's not a fair fight.
Now, the Dodgers are Johnson's problem. The Brewers will try to manage them in the same way as the Colorado: to minimize the importance of the length of the throw while giving paramount importance to the balance between things and swings. Manager Craig Counsell will ask Roberts to start one of his platoon formations against his starter, then quickly bring in a replacement to test how fast Roberts is restoring his training, which would make it easier for Counsell to manage the final round. . Roberts will oppose this approach with hybrid alignments and piecemeal substitutions, rather than large-scale substitutions.
Milwaukee will be like Atlanta in this respect: pitchers will almost never face the same Dodgers hitter three times. The Braves pitchers faced 150 batters, but only one pitcher battled a batter a second time in a game.
Counsell has a pitch depth sufficient to annoy the Dodgers. But the key will be complete if Milwaukee launches enough quality strikes. And that's the biggest challenge for brewers. They are not a big team of strike-throwers – not as bad as the Braves, but below the league average of 12th. (Los Angeles pitchers, by the way, make the most strikes).
"I was thinking about it a little bit," Friedman said of how this Dodger team might be better equipped than the previous two to win the franchise's first title since 1988. "I think that's what it's all about. is a team deeper than last year, plus well balanced team. "
To eliminate the Dodgers, you'll have to take them out with slots in the area. And here the Brewers have a chance. In the second half of the season, they were the second-best league staff to bring the batters into the area (.261), behind the New York Mets. This is one of the best measures of pure matter, it's what you need against patients and powerful Dodgers.
And if the Brewers can not do it, we could consider a rematch of the World Series last year. Because the most difficult personnel to hit in the strike zone in the second half is Houston (0.254). Get ready for more games that quickly turn on the circuits at home, not slowly on the chains of blows.
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