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Post by kaybli on Sept 29, 2024 12:40:59 GMT -5
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Post by ill636 on Sept 29, 2024 12:50:06 GMT -5
Weather???
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Post by chiyankee on Sept 29, 2024 12:57:25 GMT -5
No Soto or Wells.
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Post by kaybli on Sept 29, 2024 13:02:54 GMT -5
Looks like intermittent rain through out the afternoon. Not sure if they'll play through, delay till night, or cancel the game. |
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Post by qwik3457bb on Sept 29, 2024 13:03:33 GMT -5
Cloudy with light showers off and on through the afternoon, game time temperature 63. |
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Post by qwik3457bb on Sept 29, 2024 13:04:06 GMT -5
In the final game of the series and the regular season, the Pirates start a tall lefty, but not a power pitcher. Bailey Falter tries to win by deception. Falter was drafted by the Phillies in the 5th round of the 2015 June Amateur Draft, and the sent him to rookie-ball to make 8 brief starts later that year, with he pitched well. They kept him in instructional camp for the first 2 ½ months of 2016, then sent him to summer-A ball, where he made 13 somewhat longer and effective starts. He spent all of 2017 in low-A, making 21 very good starts, going 8-7 with a 2.99 ERA. He was at high-A most of the 2018 season, except for a couple of weeks on the IL, and a 2-start rehab in rookie-ball. He pitched very well in his 17 A-ball starts, 8-4 with a 2.69 ERA. The Phils sent Falter to AA in 2019, where he was 6-5 with a 3.82 ERA in 14 starts before suffering an injury to his UCL. It wasn’t a complete tear, so he opted to rehab rather than face Tommy John Surgery. Instead of going to developmental camp with the other prospects in the COVID season of 2020, he stayed home, continuing to rehab and build muscle for his return in 2021. He made his first major league appearance in relief, not pitching well, so they sent him to AAA, where he was dominant in 6 starts and 1 relief appearance. They called Falter back to the majors and put him in the pen, which he pitched well in 7 out of 8 games with one 5-run blowup. At that point he missed a month after getting COVID. When he recovered, his made one relief appearance in AAA, then was promoted back to the Phillies’ pen, but pitched poorly in 9 games. In 2022, he bounced back and forth between AAA and the majors no less than 6 times. In his major league appearances, he was 6-4 with a 3.86 ERA in 16 starts and 4 relief games. He opened 2023 in the Phillies rotation, making 8 starts and going 0-7 with a 5.13 ERA. They demoted him and he made 11 starts in AAA and a pit stop start in A-ball, and pitched fairly well, so the Phils decided to cash Falter by trading him to Pittsburgh for a young middle infielder of some potential named Rodolfo Castro. The Pirates put him right in their rotation, but after 7 starts and 3 relief games, his record for the season was abysmal: 2-2 with a 5.58 ERA.
He's been in the Pirates’ rotation almost all this season, making a pit stop in AAA right around the All-Star Break to stay stretched out. On the season, he’s achieved a minor breakthrough as a back-of-the-rotation type starter. In 27 starts in the majors, he’s 8-9 with a 4.26 ERA. In 139 1/3 innings, he’s allowed 134 hits, 68 runs, 66 earned, and 42 walks with 97 K’s. His WHIP this year is a mediocre 1.263. This is Falter’s first start against the Yanks.
Repertoire: Falter is a 4-pitch lefty: 4-seam, slider, curve, sinker. He also has a splitter he’s thrown 10 times for the whole season. The 4-seamer gets above average rise, but well below average run in on lefties. The slider gets well below average drop and average break away from lefties. The curve gets well below average drop and well below average break glove-side; it’s almost but not quite 12-to-6. The sinker gets well below average drop and well below average tail away from righties. The few times he’s used the splitter, it too gets below average drop and tail. I haven’t seen such poor movement on pitches across-the-board on any pitcher I’ve looked at: bottom 10% on 4-seamer “run”, on slider “drop”, 5th lowest drop and 4th lowest tail on the sinker in about 290 pitchers who throw a sinker, bottom 5% drop and bottom 10% side-break on the curve. There are 65 pitchers who throw a splitter, and Falter doesn’t have enough pitches to make the table, but if he did, he’d have least amount of drop and bottom 10% of tail. His chase rate is average, the FB velo is bottom 20% in MLB, the spin rate is bottom 10% and spin rate on the curve is among the lowest in MLB. He does get fantastic extension, top 2% in MLB, which makes all of his mediocre stuff play as MLB average. In run values, the 4-seam is a small plus, the sinker a slightly bigger plus, the slider is a small minus, the curve is a big minus, and the splitter has been terrible per pitch, which is why he’s thrown just 10 of them. His average exit velocity is a bit high, the barrel rate is high and the hard-hit rate is above average. The line drive rate is pretty high, the ground ball rate is low, the flyball rate is above average and so is the popup rate. He hasn’t pitched enough innings to qualify, but if he did, he’d have the 7th lowest swinging strike rate among 59 MLB starters, and the called strike rate is average, so his CSW is well below average (it would be 54th among the 59). His BABIP is average, the strand rate is somewhat below average, but the HR per flyball rate is very low. The low HR/FB rate indicates some luck, the ERA indicators think his ERA should be more like 4.65 than 4.26. The pitch mix this season: 4-seamer averaging 92 about 49% of the time, slider 86 about 21%, curve 78 about 16% and sinker averaging 92 about 14%, plus those 10 splitters.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Sept 29, 2024 13:07:46 GMT -5
Playing the Name Game: We conclude the season with a somewhat weak name game. Bailey as a first name is very recent, only 3 of them in MLB history, all starting their MLB careers in the last 4 seasons. The best of them is Twins starter Bailey Ober, 25-20 with a 3.74 ERA and 8 bWAR from 2021 through this season. There are no hitters with that first name.
For the last name Bailey, there have been a few successes: Catcher Ed Bailey who played 14 seasons, almost all of it in the NL, and made 5 All-Star teams, even getting a down-ballot vote for MVP in 1956. He started the 1961 season with the Reds, but they traded him to the Giants that year and didn’t get to face the 1961 Yanks in the World Series, but he was the starting catcher for the Giants team that faced the Yanks and took them to the edge: 1-0 in game 7, with Willie McCovey hitting a vicious line drive right at second baseman Bobby Richardson with the bases loaded and 2 down for the final out. Ralph Terry had much better luck with that pitch than he did with the HR ball to Mazeroski that won the 1960 Series. Bob Bailey played mostly 3rd and left across 17 MLB seasons, as with Ed, almost of it in the NL. He never made an All-Star team, but did hit .287-28-84 for the Expos in their 2nd season, 1970 and .273-26-76 for Les Expos three years later. That doesn’t sound like much today, but both were nearly 5 WAR seasons in the lower hitting environment of the early 1970s. In his declining years, he got traded to the Reds for pitcher Clay Kirby, and sat on the bench in 1976 when the Big Red Machine swept the Yanks for their 2nd straight title, his only postseason “experience”. The best pitcher with last name Bailey is Andrew Bailey, who was a good starter prospect who failed as a starter and became a quality reliever for a few years, winning Rookie of the Year in 2009 as the A’s closer and backing it up with a 2nd All-Star selection in 2010. He hurt his arm a couple of years later and his career slid downhill. He seems destined to become much more famous as a career modern-analytics type pitching coach, which is what he’s doing for the Red Sox now. Bailey is the only Falter in MLB history.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Sept 29, 2024 13:09:09 GMT -5
Clark Schmidt makes the last start of the regular season for the Yanks. He was on his way to establishing himself as a solid #3-4 starter when he went down with a lat injury in June. It took him 3 months to get back, and he’s pitched OK in 4 starts in his return, but hasn’t won any of them: 0-2 with a 2.61 ERA, 21 K and 6 walks in 20 2/3 innings. On the season, Schmidt is 5-5 with an ERA of 2.55. In 15 starts, he’s pitched 81 1/3 innings, allowing 68 hits, 27 runs, 23 earned, 8 HR, 26 BB and 88 K’s. His WHIP is a very good 1.156. Today is his first ever game against the Pirates.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Sept 29, 2024 13:09:44 GMT -5
Yankees' lineup vs. Falter: He’s never faced them, but 6 Yankees on the roster have faced him:
1. Torres (2B)
2. Judge (CF)
3. Dominguez (LF)
4. Stanton (DH)
5. Berti (3B) is 1-2
6. Verdugo (RF) is 1-2 with a double
7. Volpe (SS)
8. Rice (re-called for the game today to play 1st)
9. Trevino (C)
EDIT: Late change to the Yanks' lineup; they've smartly benched Judge in the rain, no sense of him getting injured slipping and falling. Trying to beat the Brewers, Padres and Phillies for homefield for the Series takes a back seat to keeping Judge off the IL. The revised lineup:
1. Torres (2B)
2. Grisham (CF)
3. Stanton (DH)
4. Dominguez (LF)
5. Berti (3B) is 1-2
6. Verdugo (RF) is 1-2 with a double
7. Volpe (SS)
8. Rice (re-called for the game today to play 1st)
9. Trevino (C)
On the bench: Chisholm is 2-4 with 1 HR, 5 RBI and 1 K; Soto is 3-8 with 3 RBI; Rizzo has face him once and been HBP
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Pirates’ lineup vs. Schmidt: He’s never faced them, and only one player on their roster has ever faced him: Grandal is 0-2 with 1 HBP. Here’s their starting lineup for today:
1. Gonzales (2B)
2. Reynolds (DH)
3. Cruz (CF)
4. Bart (C)
5. Palacios (LF)
6. Triolo (3B)
7. Yorke (RF)
8. Cook (1B)
9. Peguero (SS)
On the Bench: Just Grandal, as noted above.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Sept 29, 2024 13:10:42 GMT -5
Yesterday: The Pirates played HR derby with a sub-par Luis Gil, his 2nd poor start in a row. Reynolds, Grandal, Triolo and Gonzales all took him deep, and the Yanks had no chance against Skenes, but he pitched just two innings. The Yanks tried to make something of a fight of it; Chisholm hit a HR for the Yanks and they had multiple late inning rallies but scored just one run in each; the Pirates put it away with 3 in the 9th off of a still Not-Read-for-Prime-Time Will Warren, and won 9-4. The loss dropped the Yanks to 25 games over .500 at 93-68 with 1 game left on the schedule.
In other games significant to the playoff chase:
The Mets continue their Final Week collapse as the Brewers kicked them aside for the 2nd straight day, 6-0. Tobias Myers threw 4 scoreless innings of 1-hit relief, striking out 5 as the bulk inning “follower” and got the win, ending the regular season at 9-6. Four Brewer relievers gave up just 1 BB combined, throwing one inning each. Milwaukee got a 2-run single from Joey Ortiz in the 2nd and put the game away with 4 in the 8th, Quintana gave up the Ortiz hit in 4 1/3 innings, taking the loss to end the year at 10-10.
The Braves took over the 2nd Wild Card spot by beating the Royals again, another tight game, 2-1. Seth Lugo threw only 2 innings in a post-season tune-up, but the four relievers that followed gave up just 4 hits and 1 unearned run in 6 1/3 innings, with the winning blow a walk-off HR by backup catcher Travis d’Arnaud (ex-Met, naturally) with 1 out in the 9th off of Sam Long. Iglesias pitched the 9th in relief for his 6th win of the season against 2 losses; Long dropped to 3-3.
In Arizona, the Padres put another major dent in the chances of the Diamondbacks defending their NL title, shutting out the Sneks, 5-0. Ex-Yankee Randy Vasquez threw 6 innings of 1-hit ball, walking 1 and striking out 4, but didn’t figure in the decision. Ex-Yankee Wandy Peralta pitched a scoreless 8th and got the win, because the Padres hit 3 HRs in the 9th, a 2-run shot by ex-Yankee (I'm sensing a theme here...) Kyle Higashioka, and a solo shot by Brandon Lockridge off current closer A.J. Puk in a non-save situation, and another 2-run bomb by Donovan Solano off of Scott McGough. Peralta is now 3-2 on the year, Puk drops to 4-9.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Sept 29, 2024 13:13:03 GMT -5
In the AL, the only thing not quite settled is which of the two teams, Tigers or Royals, is the 2nd Wild Card and which is the 3rd. The Royals are 1 game back, and can only rise to 2nd Wild Card if they win and the Tigers lose. Otherwise the Tigers stay in the 2nd Wild Card and play the Orioles, while the Royals get the Astros. The Yanks and Guardians have a bye.
It's hard to believe given that they led the Wild Card by 2 games to start the week, but the Mets are now in serious danger of missing the playoffs altogether. The Braves now lead both the Mets and D’backs by 1 game, and hold the 2nd Wild Card, while the other two teams are tied with Mets ahead by a fraction of a percentage point because they’ve won and lost 1 game less than Arizona. If Arizona avoids the sweep today, the Mets will have to win two of their last 3 to make the playoffs, as they hold the tie breaker over the D’backs. The Mets can still claim the 2nd Wild Card by tying the Braves if they sweep the double header on Monday, otherwise, they have to settle for the 3rd Card if they can get it. The Braves Magic Number for clinching any wild card is 3 over the Mets and 2 over the D’backs. The Mets Magic number is 3 against Arizona and 5 against the Braves. The D’backs Magic Numbers are 3 against the Mets and 4 against the Braves because they have one more win than the Mets.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Sept 29, 2024 13:14:57 GMT -5
In other games today with playoff implications…same three as yesterday…but all three start at 3:05 pm, as do all MLB games today.
The Mets’ try to avoid being swept in Milwaukee: David Peterson, whose hot streak came crashing down with two bad starts in his last three, throws for New York. He’s 9-3 with a 3.08 ERA. Colin Rea (12-5, 4.17) goes for the Brewers.
The Royals’ might not care if they avoid the sweep in Atlanta; they face a road Wild Card series no matter what they do. They’ll start 5th starter Alec Marsh (8-9, 4.65) against the Braves’ Charlie Morton (8-9, 4.08)
The D’backs desperately need a win, not merely to avoid the sweep, but to avoid getting knocked out of the playoffs. The Padres will start Martin Perez (5-5, 4.25) against Brandon Pfaadt (and not ex-Yankee and post-season hero Jordan Montgomery, how the mighty have fallen…that’ll teach you to miss spring training for a ‘better’ contract). Pfaadt is 10-10 with an ERA of 4.80, which shows you how little the D’backs trust Monty right now.
And at 3:05 pm at the Stadium, it’s Falter vs. Schmidt. See you then.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Sept 29, 2024 13:16:12 GMT -5
And now, The Final Sunday Standings™ for the final day of the season
In MLB and the AL overall: the Dodgers have the best record in MLB and have homefield as far as they go in the post-season. The Phils are #2 unless they lose and the Yanks win, in which case the Yanks have the tie-breaker. The Yanks won homefield for the AL playoffs because the Guardians lost yesterday and the Yanks hold the tiebreaker by winning the season’s series against them.
In the East:
The Yanks are 93-68, and lead the O’s by 3 games. The Red Sox and Rays have to win their games today just to make it to even .500; they’re tied at 80-81. The Jays are 74-87 and have clinched the basement.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Sept 29, 2024 13:16:58 GMT -5
In the AL Central:
The Guardians have the division crown at 92-69, the Tigers have a wild card and are 6 back at 86-75, the Royals have a wild card and are a game behind Detroit. The Twins' sole consolation is that they can’t fall below .500; they’re at 82-79. The White Sox have the modern record for most losses, but avoided the disgrace of being the first team in 89 years to fail to win 40 games in a season by shutting out the Tigers yesterday, 4-0, they’re 40-121. They can avoid having a winning percentage under .250 by beating Detroit again today.
In the West...
The Astros have the title at 88-73. The Mariners are 4 back at 84-77, andthe dethroned Rangers are 77-84. The A’s can get to 70 wins if they beat Seattle today, and the Angels are playing as bad anyone in MLB right now, even the White Sox, who took 4 of 6 games from them in two series in the last week or two to avoid being the worst team since 1900. The Angels have lost 14 of their last 17 and are only barely going to avoid losing 100 games.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Sept 29, 2024 13:19:15 GMT -5
Over in the NL...
The Phillies are the division winners at 94-67. The Braves have passed the Mets both in the Wild Card chase and into 2nd place at 88-71, the Mets are a game behind in both at 87-72. The Nats lost their 90th game yesterday but have better years ahead of them, and at least they’re not the Marlins, who have lost 100 games, and are in last.
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In the Central: The Brewers are the Central champs at 93-68. The Cubs and Cards made it over .500 for the season, and Chicago at 83-78 leads St. Louis at 82-79 for 2nd place. The Reds and Pirates are tied for 4th and 5th at 76-85. If the Yanks win today or the Brewers lose, the Yanks clinch homefield against them for the World Series if both get there because the Yanks took 2 of 3 from the Brewers in Milwaukee early in the season.
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