Biggest Studs and Duds of the 2016 MLB Postseason Thus Far
The 2016 Major League Baseball postseason has featured studs, duds and everything in between.
But since nobody cares about that last part, this discussion shall focus strictly on the first two.
With the World Series set to start Tuesday, there are sizable lists of good and bad postseason performances to choose from. We're going to narrow things down to a half-dozen each by focusing on stars who have either lived up to or fallen short of expectations. But here's a spoiler warning that you didn't hear from me: There might be a couple of players to a slide here and there.
In no particular order, we'll begin with a stud and then alternate studs and duds until the end.
Stud: Andrew Miller, RP, Cleveland Indians
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Andrew Miller as a postseason stud? You don't say.
Shoot, you've seen what he's done. It's hard to miss a guy who's appeared in six of the Cleveland Indians' eight postseason games, and he's tackled just about every situation in logging 11.2 innings. He's struck out 21 of the 41 batters he's faced and permitted only five hits and two walks.
Best of all: Nobody's scored on him yet. Not in this postseason, and not in any postseason.
As Miller's legend has grown, so has the legend of his slider. According to Brooks Baseball, it's accounted for 62.2 percent of his pitches and collected 18 of his strikeouts. That combined with excellent control and a mid-90s fastball that plays up because of the 6'7" lefty's reach make him downright unfair.
"[His slider] is in a different category because he's so tall and he's a side-armer and he has a funky delivery and he's deceptive," Toronto Blue Jays right fielder Jose Bautista told MLB.com's Anthony Castrovince on Monday. "All of those things combined with a great plus pitch. ... It's at the top of the league. I wouldn't compare it to anything else, because he's so different."
Miller's dominance has already earned him the American League Championship Series MVP and inspired numerous think pieces on how he's changing the perception of dominant relievers. If he keeps it up in the World Series, his next achievement could be the postseason strikeout record for a relief pitcher.
Duds: Dodgers Relievers Not Named Kenley Jansen
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On the other end of the spectrum from Miller, you have almost the entire Los Angeles Dodgers bullpen.
Dodgers relievers have put up a 4.29 ERA this postseason. Only the Baltimore Orioles and New York Mets have done worse, and each played just one game.
Not entirely without fault in pushing that number skyward is Kenley Jansen. The stud closer had a terrible outing in Game 3 of the National League Division Series, serving up four earned runs while collecting only one out.
That appearance aside, Jansen has done his job and then some by logging 8.1 scoreless innings in five games. Other Dodgers relievers haven't had as easy of a time, though.
Pedro Baez and Luis Avilan put the Dodgers' season on the brink when they self-immolated in Game 4 of the NLDS. Joe Blanton has served up two huge home runs in the National League Championship Series. Ross Stripling let a close contest get away in Game 4. Most recently, Baez allowed five runs to cross the plate in Game 5.
This all looks horribly out of character for a bullpen that was quietly good in 2016. Or does it? As good as this pen was, one scout opined to Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times that it was "more about depth than a massive jump in quality."
That was supposed to be a compliment. Now it sounds like a warning.
Studs: The Good Starters
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Miller's dominance is allowing him to occupy October headline space normally reserved for dominant starting pitchers. By and large, they simply haven't earned it this postseason.
Well, except for a select few. Namely Jon Lester, Corey Kluber, Clayton Kershaw and Marco Estrada.
I'd love to reward each of them for their service individually. But since space is limited and your time is valuable, we'll settle for recognizing that the four of them are the exception to the rule in a postseason marred by bad starting pitching. The breakdown looks like this:
- Lester, Kluber, Kershaw and Estrada: 1.90 ERA in 80.1 IP
- All other starters: 4.83 ERA in 197.1 IP
And even that 1.90 ERA doesn't do the outlier foursome proper justice.
Included in there is Kershaw's start against the Washington Nationals in Game 4 of the NLDS. He technically gave up five earned runs, but three of them came after he left the game and put the ball in the not-so-capable hands of Baez and Avilan. The man himself gave up only two earned runs in 6.2 innings and struck out 11. And on three days' rest, to boot.
These starters alone only do so much to push back against the nagging suspicion that maybe starting pitching is only good for so much in October. But they're trying, man. They're trying.
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Duds: Texas Rangers and Boston Red Sox Starters
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Starting pitching in general hasn't been good this postseason, but the really bad stuff can be narrowed down. Most of it took place in the division series, and there were no worse offenders than the Texas Rangers and Boston Red Sox.
Red Sox starters put up a 9.26 ERA against the Indians. Rangers starters put up a 13.94 ERA against the Blue Jays. These are the two worst marks of the postseason so far.
All the more baffling is that this was largely the work of normally good starting pitchers.
After combining for a 3.35 ERA in the regular season, Rangers aces Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish put up an 11.88 ERA in the American League Division Series. For their part, the Red Sox duo of Rick Porcello and David Price went from a 3.58 ERA in the regular season to an 11.74 ERA in the postseason.
Maybe it was the matchups. Hamels and Darvish aren't aggressive strike-throwers, so it makes sense they would struggle against a patient Blue Jays lineup. Porcello and Price are the opposite, a virtual death threat against a relatively aggressive Indians lineup.
Otherwise, what happened with these four starters is a reminder: Postseason baseball is a different animal that even the best pitchers can fall prey to.
Stud: Josh Donaldson, 3B, Toronto Blue Jays
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The Blue Jays are no longer standing, having been knocked out of the ALCS in five games by Miller and the Indians. But if nothing else, this postseason reaffirmed something they've known for two years now: Josh Donaldson is a gosh-darn baseball superhero.
Donaldson followed up his AL MVP season in 2015 with a relatively quiet regular season in which he had "only" a .953 OPS and hit "only" 37 home runs. But the menace was loose again in October. Donaldson hit .417 with a 1.128 OPS in nine games.
There was one game in particular where Donaldson really shined. With the Blue Jays looking to climb out of a 3-0 hole in Game 4 of the ALCS, Donaldson willed them to a win on both sides of the ball with a solo homer and a key defensive play.
"There was no way that I felt like I was going to try to leave—if we were to lose today, there was no way that I was going to leave this series and not feel like I had an impact on it," he told Jesse Spector of Sporting News. "The fact of the matter is, I'm not ready to go home."
All for naught in the end, but at least Donaldson left behind something awesome to remember him by until next season.
Dud: Russell Martin, C, Toronto Blue Jays
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Donaldson was awfully good, but he didn't get enough help from his peers in Toronto's lineup. Russell Martin least of all.
The veteran catcher's trip through the AL Wild Card Game, the ALDS and the ALCS wasn't pretty. Altogether he hit just .091 with a .348 OPS in nine games. If it felt even worse than that, there are good reasons why.
One: Martin struck out 14 times in 33 at-bats. That's the most strikeouts of any hitter this postseason.
Two: Martin came up empty every time he had a chance to do major damage. He went hitless in nine at-bats with runners on base.
Three: Martin didn't commit that last sin at the bottom of the lineup. Toronto skipper John Gibbons put him in the No. 5 spot in eight of nine games for reasons that even he seemed unsure of.
"Because...we've been playing good baseball...it's been working," Gibbons said when pressed by CBSSports.com's Jonah Keri after Game 1 of the ALCS. "You start screwing with things sometimes when there's not a need."
Would a change have saved the Blue Jays? Maybe not. But at the least, it would have been a good way to hide a badly struggling hitter.
Stud: Justin Turner, 3B, Los Angeles Dodgers
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Donaldson doesn't have the market for veteran third basemen owning October all to himself. He's sharing it with this guy.
Although Justin Turner has been kept largely quiet by the Chicago Cubs in the NLCS, he still boasts outstanding overall numbers for the postseason, such as a .313 average and a 1.051 OPS in 10 games.
This is not to mention that Turner was at his best in big moments against the Nationals in the NLDS. His two-run homer was the difference in Game 1. A few days later, his two-run triple was the difference in a tense Game 5.
That was Turner being Turner. He's a .296 hitter with an .856 OPS in his three seasons in Los Angeles, and he is coming off a season in which he blasted a career-high 27 home runs.
What he's done this postseason is also par for the course. Turner is a .377 hitter with a 1.134 OPS in 17 career playoff games. Both figures put him among the best postseason hitters to ever walk the earth.
Dud: Jason Heyward, RF, Chicago Cubs
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A couple of days ago, an entire slide could have been dedicated to struggling Cubs hitters. In particular, Anthony Rizzo, Addison Russell and Ben Zobrist were falling painfully short of expectations.
But then the last two games happened. Rizzo has collected five hits. Russell has collected five hits of his own, including two dingers. Zobrist had two hits in Game 4 and three walks in Game 5.
Just like that, the list of painfully bad Cubs hitters is down to just Jason Heyward. He has two hits in 28 at-bats for an .071 average and a .312 OPS to go with it. If his regular season (.230 AVG, .631 OPS) was him diminishing, this is him disappearing.
For whatever reason, Heyward hasn't had his swing all season long. That alone would be discouraging for him in October. Alas, he's making matters worse by pressing. Per Baseball Savant, he swung 41.3 percent of the time in the regular season. In the postseason, he's up to 51.1 percent.
Fortunately for the Cubs, they haven't needed anything out of their $184 million right fielder to put themselves one win away from the World Series. But at the same time, they have to be wondering how much longer it will be before his missing bat finally hurts them.
Stud: Javier Baez, 2B, Chicago Cubs
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On the bright side, at least the Cubs have Javier Baez. It's not just that he's hitting .371 with a .966 OPS this postseason. It's also how much he's made that production count.
The Cubs might have been upset by the San Francisco Giants in the NLDS had it not been for Baez. It was his homer off Johnny Cueto that won Game 1, and his ninth-inning RBI single was the difference in Chicago's comeback in Game 4. In the NLCS, he stole home in Game 1 and contributed three hits and three RBI in Game 5.
Baez has also made his presence felt on defense. The 23-year-old has shown off both his physical tools in making several tough plays and his smarts on the craftiest double play of the postseason.
"He's probably the most exciting player in baseball right now," Cubs catcher David Ross told B/R's Scott Miller. "He's energetic. He's not scared of the moment. And the flair he has...he's very, very exciting to watch."
Anybody who's watched Baez play this October should be hard-pressed to disagree. It's taken him a while to figure things out, but he's finally showing why he was once widely considered one of the 10 best prospects in the sport.
Dud: Hunter Pence, RF, San Francisco Giants
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The silver lining for right fielder and Wildling lookalike Hunter Pence is that he got hits in four of the five postseason games the Giants played in before their even-year magic finally ran out.
But that's about it.
Those four hits were all singles, and they came across 22 at-bats. That's a .182 average that accompanied just a .364 OPS. Quite the departure from his .289 average and .808 OPS in the regular season.
And just as Martin struggled to do damage out of the No. 5 hole, Pence struggled even more to do damage from the cleanup spot. He came to bat with runners on 10 times. Each time, he failed to produce any hits. That was no help to a Giants offense that hit .237 with 16 runs scored.
But while this performance is out of line with what Pence did while healthy in the regular season, it's not that out of line with his past postseason performances. He owns just a career .639 OPS in October. 'Tis the season when teams obsess over scouting reports, and it's no secret that the book on Pence says he has a hard time laying off breaking stuff down and away.
Stud: Francisco Lindor, SS, Cleveland Indians
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Finally, a proper coming-out party for Francisco Lindor.
Cleveland's 22-year-old shortstop arguably should have won the AL Rookie of the Year award in 2015 after hitting .313 and playing tremendous defense in 99 games. He carried on as a cult hero in 2016, hitting .301 and collecting 17 defensive runs saved in relative obscurity.
The postseason has upgraded Lindor from cult hero to regular hero. In eight games, he's hit .323 with a .924 OPS and a pair of home runs. One of those was a virtual game-winner, as his two-run shot in Game 1 of the ALCS accounted for all the scoring in a 2-0 Cleveland victory.
Meanwhile, Lindor has also done his thing on defense. He made a couple of nifty plays in the hole and even turned a near screw-up into a slick double play.
Nobody should be surprised by any of this. The argument of who's the best shortstop in baseball today is a good one, but Lindor may be the best answer. Baseball-Reference.com puts him at the top of the charts in wins above replacement over the last two years.
This postseason is business as usual to that extent, only more gratifying.
"It's a dream come true," Lindor told Scott Gardner of USA Today. "I always wanted to play in October, and I always wanted to help my team win."
Dud: David Ortiz, DH, Boston Red Sox
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Most of the Red Sox's hitters share in the blame for going cold in the team's short stay in the ALDS. What really hurt, though, was that their biggest bat was also one of the coldest.
David Ortiz, a man so used to showing up in October, was missing against Cleveland. He had just one hit in nine at-bats in the series. Included in there was an 0-for-4 showing with men on base.
This wasn't for a lack of pitches to hit. Per Brooks Baseball, Ortiz saw an uptick in fastballs in the ALDS. Per Baseball Savant, he also saw an uptick in pitches in the strike zone from 31.3 percent in the regular season to 37.5 percent in the ALDS.
That Ortiz failed to make a dent in the series is shocking in light of what he had done throughout the regular season. All he did was hit .315 with an MLB-best 1.021 OPS.
But then again, maybe we should have seen the sad ending coming. Ortiz struggled in the final week of the regular season. And this was a full month after the 40-year-old had opened up to Ken Powtak of the Associated Press (via Boston.com) about being "a little worn out" from his farewell tour.
Oh well. When everyone looks back on Ortiz's postseason legacy, suffice it to say what happened in 2016 won't be the part that sticks out.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com, FanGraphs and MLB.com unless otherwise noted/linked.
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