ALCS Preview: Toronto Blue Jays vs. Cleveland Indians
The current paradigm in Major League Baseball is the postseason is a crapshoot; the smaller sample sizes of five- and seven-game series are fertile for flukiness more than the 162-game season grind. Lesser teams can often ride a little luck all the way to the title. This American League Championship Series, however, features the two teams with the highest odds of reaching the World Series for much of the 2016 season — the Toronto Blue Jays and Cleveland Indians. On September 1, Fangraphs had the Blue Jays and Indians odds at 11.2 percent and 9.5 percent, respectively; those numbers were first and second in the American League. Despite the Blue Jays having to win a Wild Card game to get here, the postseason has played out more like blackjack than craps.
The Offenses
The Blue Jays offense has a higher profile because it features some of the game’s most prodigious bats in Josh Donaldson, Edwin Encarnacion, Troy Tulowitzki, and Jose Bautista. Those names are enough to unfairly sleep on the Indians offense which features wunderkind Francisco Lindor and lesser-known profiles in Jason Kipnis, Jose Ramirez, Carlos Santana, and rookie Tyler Naquin — guys who, for the most part, don’t strikeout much and get on base.
The two teams had fairly parallel season when it comes to team batting lines:
Indians: .262/.329/.430, .326 wOBA, 102 wRC+
Blue Jays: .248/.330/.426, .327 wOBA, 102 wRC+
There is one glaring separator, however; the Blue Jays hit the ball out of the park — a lot!. 221 times the Jays turned balls into souvenirs compared to the Indians’ 186; the divergence in team power was also reflected in .178 and .168 team ISOs for the Jays and Tribe, respectively.
The story hasn’t been any different this postseason. Encarnacion, Bautista, and Tulowitzki have already combined for six homers and despite not having a single dinger, nobody is having a better October than Josh Donaldson: .375/.474/.938. For Cleveland, the long-ball has been more of a team effort. They have strung together five homers despite no one with more than one and Jason Kipnis has done his best to match Donaldson by leading the team with his own .364/.417/.636 line.
There’s more to offense than smashing hardballs. The Indians separate themselves from the Jays on the bases like Usain Bolt separates from the field in the last 50 meters. Sure they led the AL in stolen bases, but there’s more to squeezing value out of base running than being a thief. Hustling from first to third on a single to right and scoring from second on a base hit with less than two outs are a couple of examples. Cleveland was second in MLB in runners advancing an extra station on base hits and led the league in scoring from second on singles. That kind of acumen on the base paths, led by Rajai Davis and Jose Ramirez, contributed to adding an additional 17 runs of which the club otherwise wouldn’t have banked.
For the Indians to be successful they’ll have to continue to get contributions up and down the lineup and take that extra base when they can. The Blue Jays have a little more margin for error as any one of their power bats can carry them for a game.
Starting Pitching
The pressure will be on the Indians to keep the Jays in the yard and cool down reigning AL MVP Josh Donaldson. Both teams managed to slay their ALDS rivals in the minimum amount of games — continuing their theme of similarities — so neither squad has the advantage of rest and preferred rotation as they square up like this:
Game 1: Marco Estrada (9–9, 3.48 ERA) vs. Corey Kluber (18–9, 3.14 ERA)
Game 2: J.A. Happ (20–4, 3.18 ERA) vs. Trevor Bauer (12–8, 4.26 ERA)
Game 3: Josh Tomlin (13–9, 4.40 ERA) vs. Marcus Stroman (9–10, 4.37 ERA)
Game 4: Mike Clevinger (3–3, 5.26 ERA) vs. Aaron Sanchez (15–2, 3.00 ERA)
These two staffs led the American League regular season in ERA (Jays 3.64, Indians 4.08) and FIP (Indians 4.05, Blue Jays 4.07) and were first and third in xFIP (Indians 3.85, Blue Jays 4.09). Ranking at the top of the AL in ground ball % (47.4), the Jays rotation lean on worm-burners finding infielders, while the Indians staff prefers hitters swing to air instead of leather as their 8.50 K/9 was good enough for second in the AL.
The Indians feature the best pitcher in the series with Corey Kluber. Kluber is the only pitcher who finished top ten in WARP at 5.9; the next closest is Marcus Stroman who ranked 20th at 4.50 and he won’t toe the rubber until game three despite not pitching since the Wild Card game nine days ago.
Tonight’s game features hurlers with a couple of the best postseason performances to-date in 2016. Kluber was scintillating in his first postseason performance; he threw seven innings and give up just two hits while striking out seven, failing to allow a run. Though Marco Estrada didn’t keep the Texas Rangers off the board, he only allowed a run on four hits while striking out six, going seven-and-a-third innings.
The Defenses
The 2016 postseason has been a fireworks show of sparkling defensive plays; these two clubs can flash leather with the best of them. Both teams ranked top four in the AL in UZR (Indians second, Jays fourth) and feature two of the league’s best defenders in Indians shortstop Lindor and Blue Jays center fielder Kevin Pillar. In fact those two were the best in the AL, ranking first and second in Fangraphs’ Def rating, respectively.
The story defensively may be behind the plate. The Indians running game can put pressure on any starting pitcher; it’s up to Toronto’s backstop, Russell Martin, to keep the waters calm. That’s not something Jays catchers did well this season. They were near the league worst in most caught-stealing categories; Martin personally only managed to throw out runners at a 15 percent clip, far below the league average of 28 percent.
The catching situation isn’t dire, however. Martin, as a receiver, is a magician. His bag of tricks steals strikes from unsuspecting umpires enough for him to rank as the fourth best framer in the league according to Baseball Prospectus’ FRAA statistic. Roberto Perez is no slouch crouching behind the plate either. FRAA ranks him ninth in stealing strikes, though in less than half the chances of Martin.
The Bullpens
Indians manger Terry Francona is getting quite a bit of recognition for “reinventing the bullpen” and it might be deserved. The conventional wisdom is for managers to save their best relievers for the ninth or perhaps the eighth inning of a ballgame to close it out. That leads managers to rely on lesser arms if and when the game is on the line in the fifth, sixth, or seventh. The Indians have one of the best relievers — if not the best reliever — in the game with lefty fireballer Andrew Miller. Miller was Acquired in a trade from the New York Yankees at the deadline for a reason:
Andrew Miller is elite and comes with a reasonable contract that makes him controlled through 2018 at $9 million per year — making him even more desirable when compared to Chapman’s few months of control. He sports a sparkling 1.31 ERA, supported by a 1.30 xFIP — a number most pitchers would take as their WHIP. He is striking out batters at an unreal 15.24/9 clip and only granting free passes 1.52/9. Miller is the typical fastball-slider late-inning guy with the fastball sitting 94–95 mph, but atypically he brings it from the left-side. He is equally as dominant against right-handed batters as he is lefties. Andrew Miller, though a reliever, should command a useful return the Yankees can rely on for years.
Francona doesn’t see Miller as a closer, he sees him as fireman who can can be dispatched to extinguish the heat of any high-leverage moment. When the Indians needed outs in the fifth inning of the ALDS, Francona wasn’t afraid to pull the starter and hose down the Boston Red Sox’ rally. He did it again in game three, this time in the sixth — the game in which the Indians ultimately managed to bury the Sox.
Francona owes some of that luxury to right-handed reliever Dan Otero. The 31-year-old put together one of the best seasons of his career. In 70.2 innings Otero fended off baserunners by only walking 1.27/9 innings; his 0.91 WHIP, 1.53 ERA, and 2.33 FIP played Robin to Miller’s Batman.
The Blue Jays don’t feature the same pedigree in the later innings, but closer Roberto Osuna has been very effective. He strikes our nearly 10/9 innings and isn’t very charitable with a 1.70/9 walk rate. In his two 2016 postseason opportunities, the sophomore has been nails; Osuna has given up one hit and hasn’t allowed a run in three appearances spanning 4.2 innings. Supported by veteran Jason Grilli and rookie Joseph Giagini, the Jays bullpen has only coughed up two runs in four postseason games (all by converted-starter Francisco Liriano).
The Blue Jays and Indians are two deep evenly matched teams perfectly constructed to perform in a long series. The Blue Jays enter this series as -145 betting favorites in a postseason which has thus far rewarded the better teams. The Jays separate themselves in terms of power, but the Tribe takes extra bases and are rethinking the bullpen. With a World Series berth on the line, the stakes are high and look for both teams to roll the dice when an opportunity arises.
