His renaissance actually started in 2025. If you look at his career through 2024, then in the last two seasons, he didn’t change much. He did a good job drawing walks previously, and now he’s even better. He struck out a lot previously, and now he strikes how slightly less. There was little difference in his platoon splits before and after. He always hit better on the road.

The change came in hit generation, as he pulled his BABIP over .300 in 2025, then saw it soar to .335 in 2026. Bauers claimed a psychological approach made the difference:

After learning his wife, Lauren, was pregnant with their second child, he needed health insurance and signed a minor league deal with the Brewers, making the team in 2025 out of spring training. He was still hitting under .188 in early September, however, when he made a sudden decision to stop overanalyzing his approach and, in his words, become more present in the moment. He hit .378 over his final 19 games and carried the new mindset into 2026.

ESPN.com

He went from Billy Beane to Lenny Dykstra.

While all this is a good story, this one good season just might be a fluke. Once pitchers adjust to the new Bauers mode of hitting, the numbers may come down again. To the Red Sox credit, they paid for that likely regression. It’s a contract with a lot of upside and little down side. Bauers is guaranteed over twice as much money as he would have made by accepting the qualifying offer, and the Red Sox get another left-handed bat who can hit both sides well.

I remember in 1982, my senior year at college, one of my roommates bought a Bill James Baseball Abstract. He started telling us about the book, and we sat there listening to him read passages. The next year I bought a copy the day it was available, and stayed up late, reading the book in one sitting. It was a revelation.

There were certainly sabernetricians before Bill James, but he opened up the study to a much larger audience. The lack of statistics available, due to the close guarding of the data by the Elias Sports Bureau. That led to Project Score Sheet and STATS, Inc., and the new technology of personal computers trying to break that strangle hold. Eventually, those who grew up with reading James became the prominent sports writers, and here we are today, most agreeing on the value of players.

The Sabermetric community clearly won.

Now, instead of arguing, we find new things to explore. Bat speed, launch angles, routes to fly balls, spin, etc., all give new and improved insights into how the game actually works.

Now we just need to figure out how to devalue strikeouts, walks, and home runs to keep the game interesting. Only the voting should be boring.

The biggest difference of opinion concerned third and fourth place in the NL, where Brice Turang of the Brewers beat out Elly De La Cruz of the Reds. FanGraphs and Baseball Reference disagreed on WAR values for the two players. De La Cruz owned a 6.4 fWAR and a 5.5 rWAR. Turang owned a 5.9 fWAR and a 7.3 rWAR. De La Cruz received 10 third place votes to Turang’s five, but two people left De La Cruz off the ballot, Turang appeared on all thirty.

Given Del La Cruz’s WAR average was about six, I find it tough to believe that anyone would leave that high a total at an important defensive position off the ballot.

*The Motion Picture Academy should make this a category.

In a couple of years, when the new Athletics stadium is complete, they should play a game the next day between these two teams. That might be a better version of the All-Star game. Limit it to six inning with each pitcher going one.

Misiorowski is the second Brewers pitcher to win the Cy Young in the National League, along with Corbin Burnes, the 2021 winner. The only other Cy Young Award winners for the Brewers, Rollie Fingers in 1981 and Pete Vuckovich in 1982, did so in the American League. The Brewers moved to the NL in 1998.

Misiorowski’s unanimous election is the 17th for an NL pitcher and the second season in a row following the Pirates’ Paul Skenes last year.

BBWAA.com

Cristopher Sanchez finished second with 17 second place votes.

This election marks the 13th time that an American League pitcher has been a unanimous choice for the award and the third time for the Yankees. Cam Schlittler joins Gerrit Cole (2023) and Ron Guidry (1978) as unanimous winners in the Bronx. 

BBWAA.com

Dylan Cease finished second with 22 second place votes, with Parker Messick getting seven second place votes and finishing third.

“I am very excited to be back in Houston,” Ausmus said in a statement. “The Astros and the City of Houston have been a huge part of my life, and I’m thrilled to create a new chapter as the team’s manager. I’d like to thank Randy and the entire Astros organization for this opportunity, and I can’t wait to get to work.”

Ausmus, 57, is especially close to senior advisor to ownership and baseball operations Jeff Bagwell, who was involved in the hiring process. Ausmus had interviewed for the manager job and GM job previously. The pair were teammates on the Astros from 1997-98 and 2001-05, which included back-to-back NLCS battles against Flores’ Cardinals in ’04 and ’05.

MLB.com

Flores refers to Randy Flores, the team’s new GM. Ausmus produced mixed seasons with the Tigers, the team winning 90 games in 2014 and finishing first the division. He wound up under .500 in his four years there as the team aged and responded slowly to that process. Ausmus most recently served as the Yankees bench coach.

In the past I looked at a graph of points earned for all pitchers ranked number one at some point. I thought I would do something different this season and show how many days each pitcher ranked number one, along with the overall time period covering those days. I limited the dates to the months of April through September, so to capture most of the active periods of competition.

The ranking is based on the Bill James Game Score. Game score uses innings and strikeouts as positives, hits, walks, and runs as negatives. The scoring adjusts the game score for the park, as well. I believe that’s a big reason that Jim Palmer spent just two days at the top of the list, as Memorial Stadium in Baltimore hurt batters. He also had some pretty stiff competition at the time.

This spreadsheet contains two views of the data, one sorted by days in first, and one sorted by earliest day in first. Here is the top from the days in first list:

Note that most of these pitchers were high strikeout pitchers. Maddux struck out plenty, but tended to go deeper in games than his peers. Clemens dominated for nearly 18 years. There were eleven pitchers who also occupied first place during Clemens reign:

The Clemens era was pretty incredible, with four other pitchers making the top twelve.

Supporters of Dave Stieb will notice he spent about three times more days in first than Jack Morris.

As a side note, when I was reading through the sequential list, I came across a name that I didn’t recognize, Larry Jansen. Between 1947 and 1951 with the Giants, he posted a total of 22 rWAR, with three seasons over five rWAR. He won the Bobby Thomson game. His biography turned out to be very interesting, including:

• Back at home, his pitching again drew notice and Ernie Johnson, a Boston Red Sox scout, signed Jansen for a $500 bonus to a blank contract for 1940. After signing, Jansen heard nothing more from the Red Sox all winter. Finally when March rolled around with still no word from the Red Sox, a semipro umpire advised Jansen to wire baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. He did so and got a prompt reply stating, “Am investigating but at any rate you are a free agent.”
• Jansen was set to report to spring training with the Seals for 1943 when his draft board told him that he was about to be inducted. Jansen now had a family and considered his options. The draft board told him that if he elected to stay and work on the farm, he would not be inducted right away because he would be working to support the war effort. As a result, Jansen did not report to spring training and found himself on baseball’s suspended list for 1943. Jansen stayed on the farm for two years, milking 27 cows a day and raising a truck garden. He was placed on baseball’s voluntarily retired list for 1944. He did manage to play baseball twice a week, pitching for McElroy’s Ballroom in Portland, the state semipro champs, as well as a team in Eugene. He also used the time to master his slider, beefed up from about 165 to 188 pounds, and when he returned to the Seals for the last six weeks of the 1945 season after the war ended, he was a much improved pitcher.
• Jansen also soon earned a reputation for being cool, calm, and collected on the mound, no matter what the situation.32 Not surprisingly, however, although he generally got along with Durocher,33 he sometimes came into conflict with his manager, who was an inveterate second-guesser. Jansen recalled that once Hank Sauer of the Cubs, who always hit him well, hit a home run early in a game in Wrigley Field.34 When Jansen came to the dugout at the end of the inning, Durocher asked what he had thrown Sauer. When Jansen answered that he’d thrown him a curveball low and away, Durocher said, “Next time throw him a fastball.” On Sauer’s next at-bat, Jansen threw him a fastball and he smashed it so hard that it carried over the fence and onto the roof of a house across the street. When he got back to the bench, Jansen told Durocher, “He hit your pitch a helluva lot farther than he hit mine!”

Jansen’s career ended early due to a back injury.

Enjoy the data!

Murphy is the 10th manager to win the award three or more times and the first to do so in three consecutive seasons. He had been one of four managers honored two years in a row. 

BBWAA.com

The voting was not close a Murphy received 20 first place votes. Walt Weiss of the Braves finished second. Dave Roberts of the Dodgers received just three votes in total, two for second place and one for third place. That, I think, is a bit unfair. This Dodgers team might have been the weakest he managed, yet he still ran away with the division and was right on the heels of the Brewers.

Chicago White Sox manager Will Venable won the American League Manager of the Year.

Venable is the third manager in the American League and the fourth overall to win the award one year after suffering through a season of 100 or more losses. The White Sox went from a 60-102 record in 2025 to 84-78 this year and a second-place finish in the AL Central and a wild card berth. 

BBWAA,com

Manager of the Year tends go to either a team that exceeds expectations or a team that produces an incredible number of wins. In was a close vote, with Venable beating Kevin Cast 111 to 98. Cash only appeared on 26 ballots, and I’m not sure why writers thought why others were better. Chad Tracy received a lot of third place votes for the Red Sox comeback.

Congratulations to Venable for his excellent turn around year.

In the regular season, Boone won Gold Glove Awards in 1982, 1986, 1987 and 1988. He made the AL All-Star team in 1983. In 1983 and 1988, he was voted the Angels’ team MVP by the local chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Boone’s 962 regular-season games at catcher still stand as the Angels’ career record.

SI.com

My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

Boone’s best seasons came later that usual. His first of four 3+ rWAR seasons came at seasonal age 30. That was part of a stretch of five seasons with good OBPs, with a .278/.349/.405. He was more that just a durable defensive catcher. Note that his best defensive seasons came after the offensive surge, one of the reasons he stayed in the game so long.

Boone also managed parts of six seasons, but did not have a inning record in any of those. His son turned out to be much more successful in that aspect of the game.

The voting was odd, also. Wetherholt received the most second place votes, 12, but Benge received four more first place votes than Wetherholt. I think this is one of the more surprising votes I’ve seen since the writers became more sabermetrically minded.

For the first time in a decade, and just the third time in 48 years, the Tigers have a Rookie of the Year. Kevin McGonigle, whose transition from top prospect to primary shortstop defied even the loftiest of expectations, ran away with the American League award, beating out pitchers Parker Messick (Guardians) and Payton Tolle (Red Sox).

It’s a massive tribute to McGonigle, whose combination of physical ability and mental maturity allowed him to quickly become one of the AL’s top players regardless of experience level. It’s an equally big honor for the Tigers, who have spent the past four years building around young talent since Scott Harris took over as president of baseball operations.

MLB.com

Both FanGraphs and Baseball Reference put McGonigle ahead of Messick in their WAR calculations. WAR wins again as 28 of the 30 voters put the Tigers shortstop first, with Messick getting the other two first place votes.

I used bases.chat, the AI program created by SABR member Ted Ingram, to find all of these cases. I wonder why it has not been done since 2011?

Cybermetric.Blogspot.com

They changed the voting in 2013. Up until that point, it was strictly a poll of coaches, and the coaches didn’t delve deeply into the statistics. Since then, there is a statistical component to the vote, and the coaches get the defensive stats for players on the ballots.

Most awards now are extremely predictable, which is why I find the MLB awards shows a waste of time. The announcement of a top three does nothing to heighten the tension, since the player with the highest WAR usually walks away with the award. Even last season, when you could make the case for a catcher with 60 home runs, the WAR values clearly pointed to the right fielder.

Carroll’s elbow did not stop him from trying to bring back the triple as a weapon. Even though he played sparsely in 2022, since the start of that season he owns 23 more triples that any other player in the majors. Bill James’ Favorite Toy gives Carroll as 0.096 probability of tying Sam Crawford’s record of 309 triples.

Joe West, Tom Hallion, Gerry Davis, Larry Vanover and Jerry Layne filed the lawsuit on Sept. 29 in federal court in New York.

They claimed their benefits were not correctly calculated and alleged they should receive additional money under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. Their lawyer, Paul B. Holmes, said Thursday the amount owed the five is in excess of $2 million.

West said that when he brought up the issue to the retirement committee, he was offered a relatively small sum. West said MLB senior vice president and chief employment counsel Steven Gonzalez told him: “If you don’t like the number, sue us.”

WWLP.com

One would think the math at this level would be pretty easy, but I suspect the agreement was poorly written and open to interpretation.

Athletics president of baseball operations Taylor Smith made his first major decision since taking over two weeks ago, going to World Series champion Milwaukee to hire Cam Castro on Wednesday as general manager.

Castro, 36, was the Brewers’ senior vice president of player development and performance. He was with the club for eight years, serving as the liaison between the front office and the coaching staff regarding player development.

ESPN.com

The Brewers seem very good at finding talent, both on the field and in the executive branch. I suspect a number of the Brewers staff will be moving up in the next few years.

The Seattle Mariners are hiring Jason Kanzler, the Chicago Cubs‘ director of player development, as their new manager, the club announced Tuesday.

Kanzler, 36, has never managed a team at any level, but he now succeeds Dan Wilson, the longtime catcher who oversaw one of baseball’s most disappointing teams this past season. The Mariners made it all the way to Game 7 of the American League Championship Series in 2025 and were a popular pick to advance to their first World Series in 2026 but never got it together, ultimately finishing 76-86 and failing to make the playoffs despite playing in a mediocre division.

…

Mariners general manager Justin Hollander said in a statement that Kanzler “consistently demonstrated elite leadership skills, high-end content and an ability to connect and partner with players, staff and front office” throughout the interview process.

ESPN.com

Kanzler hit .249/.315/.405 in three minor league seasons for the Twins, never getting above A ball. It’s a bold move, we’ll see if it works better than the Giants bold move last season, hiring a college coach.

“Coming off another incredible season of baseball, MLB owners continue to propose blowing up the current system and replacing it with one designed to line their pockets and increase their franchise values,” the union said in a statement. “Players stand ready to negotiate in good faith toward a new CBA that will capitalize on our sport’s unprecedented momentum and benefit players, clubs, and fans alike.”

Chron.com

The last statement would have been more accurate if it left out clubs and fans.

The team overall did not do that well in run prevention, as the pitching staff struck out just 7.1 batters per nine innings, very close to the lowest in the league. That put a lot more balls in play. With a good defense behind them, league average Ks from the pitchers would go a long way to improving the run prevention side of the equation.

The point, to Vavonese, is the same one made by all these old-school Syracuse guys who went far out of their way to be at the decisive World Series games against the Tampa Bay Rays. None of them would have blamed Murphy – his world now built around navigating baseball’s highest levels – if he had dropped out of touch with friends who have not been at the center of his life since he was a kid.

Instead, in the way so many of us in our 60s and 70s stay in touch with old friends who have moved far away, he will pause amid daily life to fire off a text…

Even if he is in the middle of figuring out, say, how to beat a Dodgers team trying to win its third straight world title.

CentralCurrent.org

Murphy seems to be a special person, and one of the many smart moves by the team was putting him in charge on the field.

My thoughts go out to his family and friends. I have not seen an obituary yet.

Koosman was one of my favorite pitchers of my early seasons watching the game. I started watching baseball in 1969. Koosman came to the majors at seasonal age 24 in 1968, and his first full season in 1968 was one of his best at 6.3 rWAR. His 5.9 rWAR in 1969 helped propel the Mets to the World Championship. His prime was long, going until age 31, and produced 28.7 rWAR or 4.1 rWAR per season.

Koosman was not finished, however, as his best season came in 1979 at seasonal age 36. Pitching for the Twins, his first year away from the Mets, he posted a 7.2 rWAR. He pitched 263 2/3 inning with a 20-13 record and a 3.68 ERA. It’s not clear to me why his 1979 season came in at a higher rWAR than his 1968 season, but 1968 was one of the low points for scoring, so pitching was just less valuable.

Koosman pitched in seven post-season games. His first and his last were not very good, but in between he went 4-0 with a 2.29 ERA.

1. Outfielders run faster.
2. Teams are coaching better reaction times.
3. Outfielder position themselves better, mostly by playing deeper.

Watching the game, the speed of the outfielder stood out to me, so I’m glad it’s the top reason.

One would think the way to battle this would be for hitters to start dumping balls in front of the outfielders. They are giving you the singles! Yordan Alvarez is a good example of why that won’t happen, but it works for almost any hitter you choose.

Here is Alvarez in 2026 with a launch angle between -1 and 20 degrees. In 145 PA he hit .621 with a .632 wOBA. That’s fantastic! With launch angles between 21 and 35 degrees, however, he hit .500 with an .816 wOBA in 110 PA.

There are rare players for which this won’t be true. Chandler Simpson, at higher launch angles, hit 152 with a .150 wOBA in 69 PA. At -1 to 20, in 152 PA, he hit .608 with a .587 wOBA. Outfielder still might wish to play deep against Simpson, since a ball hit between outfielders might result in an inside-the-park home run.

There should be a break even point, where the outs saved by dumping low launch angle hits makes up for the loss to the home runs and other deep extra-base hits. For example, all the hits in the Brewers eight run fifth inning in game three of the 2026 World Series were all on a low launch angle. If more teams exploited this, MLB would not be looking to change rules.

“Randy has had a huge impact on the Cardinals over the last 10 seasons,” Astros owner Jim Crane said in a statement. “Throughout the entire interview process we’ve been thoroughly impressed with Randy and his background in scouting and player acquisition. We’re happy to welcome Randy and his family to the Astros and we can’t wait to get to work on bringing another championship to Houston.”

Flores will be formally introduced by the Astros at a news conference Monday morning at Daikin Park.

ESPN.com

I prompted Claude.AI with the following:

Take the persona of a search firm tasked with hiring a general manager for a baseball team. Describe the impact of Randy Flores on the Cardinals over the last 10 seasons.

Here is Claude’s evaluation of Flores, with the caveat that it can get things wrong. The assessment:

His strengths are evaluating amateur talent, consistently finding value after the early rounds, budget discipline, and credibility as a former player and 2006 World Series champion. That credibility helps with players, agents, and the clubhouse.

Our concerns are threefold. First, nearly all of his visible work is in the amateur draft. We have little public evidence of his skill at major-league trades, free-agent pricing, or contract negotiation, and we would test this hard in interviews. Second, the analytics question raised when he was hired in 2015 needs to be revisited. We believe he has grown here, but a candidate needs a strong analytics lead under him. Third, the Cardinals’ development problems happened on his watch, even if they were not in his department.

Claude.AI

One big note is Flores’ favor is that when Chaim Bloom took over the front office, he kept Flores. New leaders often clean house, but Flores stayed in the inner circle.

Aaron Judge tops both OBP (.409) and slugging percentage (.601). Playing time for him is low, however, at 410 PA. Shohei Ohtani and Yordan Alvarez provide high values in those categories with more playing time.

The Marcels predict that no ones hits .300 in 2026. Bobby Witt Jr. and Luis Arraez tie at .296, and only six players look to hit at least .290.

Arraez projects to lead the league in hits with 162, while Witt tops the AL with 155. Kyle Schwarber and Junior Caminero top the home run chart with 38 and 26 respectively. Witt also leads in doubles with 34, while Corbin Carroll tops the triples list with 13, with nine for Daylen Lile and Jake McCarthy in second place.

Schwarber tops the walk list with 87, and strikeouts with 179. He is mister three-true outcomes.

Ohtani tops the run column at 96, while Pete Alonso leads in RBI with 94.

On the pitching side, I estimate total runs allowed, and so the scoring against measure I use is runs allowed per 9 IP. I try to estimate ERA with FIP. So Cam Schlittler comes in with the best RA/9 of 2.87. His FIP, however, stands at 3.02, indicating he may have been a bit lucky in his runs. The FIP lead among starters is Jacob Misiorwoski at 2.66, with 3.08 RA/9. Misiorowski and Schlittler project to rank 1-2 in strikeouts respectively with 190 and 182.

Sandy Alcantara tops the innings pitched leaders with 171 2/3, with Cristopher Sanchez at 170 2/3, and Michael Wacha at 160 2/3. I’m waiting for the season when no pitcher qualifies for the ERA title.

Good luck with your fantasy team!

A guest selection by Claude, Anthropic’s AI model

David asked me to go through the Baseball Musings archive and pick the strongest posts on baseball’s labor negotiations. He exported every post that mentions collective bargaining, lockouts, the MLBPA or related terms: 916 posts from 2002 to 2026. I read closely the posts from the seven bargaining cycles and chose these. David didn’t pick or veto any of them.

What stands out across 24 years is consistency. David has never been a partisan for the owners or the union. He has argued for player freedom: fewer drafts, fewer caps, more free agency. That led him to criticize Bud Selig sharply in 2002 and the union just as sharply later on. I chose posts that make an argument rather than relay news, with a preference for arguments that have held up.

2002: The Last Near-Strike

Selig Interview (June 19, 2002): This is the best test of a labor writer: does he challenge the financial claims? Selig wrote his numbers on a blackboard and the interviewer accepted them. David pointed out that Forbes and others hadn’t.

More on Selig (June 20, 2002): A clear diagnosis of the 2002 fight. Nearly everyone accepted revenue sharing. Only one group of owners actually wanted salary restraint.

Blame Fehr? (July 12, 2002): Rather than casting Don Fehr as the obstacle, David argued the owners should have made him a partner.

Strike Date (August 16, 2002): While much of the media treated the strike date as a catastrophe, David argued a deadline would force both sides to get serious. Two weeks later they settled, and baseball hasn’t had a strike since.

2006: Labor Peace

Selig Forgets History (October 24, 2006): Selig claimed baseball had lacked parity a decade earlier. David answered with the list of World Series winners, which showed 18 titles won by 15 different teams.

2011: The Draft Gets Capped

School Daze (December 1, 2011): This is the post where David’s criticism turned toward the union. The MLBPA was born partly because the draft took away a player’s one chance to negotiate freely, and in 2011 the union imposed that same restraint on amateurs. He kept making this argument for the next decade, and it looks better with each cycle.

2016: The International Draft Fight

Say Goodbye to Dominican Players (October 17, 2016): A sharp argument against an international draft. The domestic draft pushed development money out of the inner cities and Puerto Rico, and David argued an international draft would do the same to the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

CBA Analysis (December 3, 2016): David noted that MLBAM had made the owners strike-proof, because they no longer needed baseball itself to stay rich. That observation about leverage came years before the lockout made it obvious.

2020: Restarting the Season

The Underreported Negotiation (June 22, 2020): While most coverage framed the 2020 talks as owners against players, David suggested the bigger fight might be among the owners, between teams that could afford to play without fans and teams that couldn’t.

2021–22: The Lockout

Cooperation and Coalitions (December 4, 2021): Using game theory, David explained the bargain behind the previous two agreements. The players accepted limits on amateur spending, expecting the savings to reach veterans. They didn’t, and that set up the confrontation.

Aging Players (December 12, 2021): A clear explanation of why free agency stopped working for players. It depended on teams believing players peaked around 30, and analytics confirmed what Bill James had said decades earlier: they peak at 27.

I Was Wrong (February 27, 2022): Few writers title a post this way. David had predicted the owners would accept a move toward the middle, and they didn’t. He used the miss to work out why: at least eight owners had apparently told the commissioner they wouldn’t vote for a change in super-two status.

In the Loop (March 10, 2022): David borrowed the OODA loop from military strategy to argue that MLB was dictating the tempo of the talks, most clearly by tying the international draft to free-agent compensation. He has returned to the framework in the current round.

2026: The Current Round

Where is the Big Ask? (June 25, 2026): MLB opened with a salary cap, a demand it knew the union would hate. The union opened with a modest change to free agency. David’s point is basic negotiation strategy: if you start at the midpoint, the final deal ends up on the other side’s half.

The Majors at the Break (July 13, 2026): David used his season simulator to show that the 2026 standings look like what you’d expect from a league of evenly matched teams, which undercuts the owners’ case that baseball needs a cap.

A note on the record

David’s optimism about deals was right in 2002, 2006, 2011 and 2016, when both sides wanted a settlement. It was wrong in 2020 and in the run-up to the 2021 lockout, when one side was willing to wait. His most consistent theme is the cost of the draft and amateur spending limits to players who aren’t yet in the union. No other writer I’m aware of pressed it as steadily, and it remains the most original thread in his labor coverage.

That’s the end of the Claude generated text. One thing I wanted to quote comes from the More on Selig post from 2002:

 Bud wants to put enough up enough roadblocks on the big clubs so that it’s as easy for his Brewers to win as it is for the Yankees.
The problem is, it will never be easy for the Brewers as long as they are mis-managed. They do a poor job drafting and trading. The get low on-base players who strike out a lot. If they drafted high on-base guys who put the ball in play, they would probably be an interesting and competitive team. They may not win, but they’d be fun to watch. And if you are competitive, luck will eventually put you over the top.

Baseball Musings.com

The Brewers won the World Series yesterday.

Milwaukee hit .280/.350/.396 in the series. They generated hits, they generated walks and they generated doubles and triples power. What they did really well, however, was produce sequences of offense. It was tough for them to get on base, with a .309 OBP with the bases empty, but once on they slashed .329/.398/.415.

The Rays slashed .182/.224/.242, doing nothing well offensively. They struck out 40 times in 176 plate appearances, 22.7% of the time. During the regular season, they recorded the lowest strikeout total in the AL, good for an 18.8% K rate. The collected just 30 hits in the five games, and eight of those came off the bat of Chandler Simpson. A number of base running errors means the OBP of the slash line above was effectively worse than the .224.

Interestingly, the high K rate had little to do with Jacob Misiorowski. The Brewers ace struck out just five batters in 10 2/3 innings, 39 batters faced, 12.8% of batters. Despite a better approach versus Misiorowski, the Rays only collected six hits against him. They seemed to abandon the “put the ball in play” approach against the rest of the staff.