Can’t spell October without O

🥳

Life update: Just graduated from Dartmouth!

Excited to announce that I have accepted a job with the Baltimore Orioles as their Coordinator of Baseball Operations! Thank you all for your support over the last 10 years. This is truly my childhood dream coming true. Let’s go O’s!

Go vote today!

Not that it matters, but I think we need to better distinguish between "opt-outs" and "player options." In my view, a player opts out of a deal if there is more than one year left on it, but he declines a player option if there is just one season to be decided.

After all of the wonderful playoff format discourse, let's not forget that a 100-win team did end up winning the World Series

Truly a great 2022 season. Thanks to all for following along this year. Always enjoy interacting with everyone on here, *especially* if Twitter's demise is more-or-less imminent.

Dusty has to retire, right?

I'm not sure that this search was totally comprehensive, but it appears that Oswaldo Cabrera on 10/4/22 was the last to successfully bunt with 3 infielders on one side of second base. Video:

"Kyle Schwarber" is now the answer to what I'm sure will be a great trivia question one day: "Who was the last batter in MLB history to try to bunt against the shift?"

Correa and Peña each played 136 games in 2022. Correa had 590 PAs to Peña's 558. Correa was the better hitter (140 wRC+ vs. 102), but Peña's fielding made up for it (7 OAA vs. -3). In sum, Correa was only worth one more win than the rookie Peña (4.4 fWAR vs. 3.4).

I will say that one thing that will make the Astros consistently great is their ability to develop top-end talent. They let Carlos Correa walk in FA and replaced him with almost virtually the exact same production (albeit with a different shape) in Jeremy Peña. That's enormous.

If the 2022 baseball season does end tonight, this will be the last game without a pitch clock and with infield shifts that include 3+ fielders on either side of second base. Pretty wild to think about.

Using FanGraphs + ZiPS win probability, Alvarez's home run increased the Astros' probability of winning the World Series from ~80% to ~94%. Just a massive swing, even for the already-heavy favorites.

The signature Martín Maldonado move. Wrote about this a year ago:

The best case for an automated strike zone, I think, is that — at minimum — at least it is consistent.

I get that Thomson doesn't want to change things now, which is fine, but still.

It didn't matter much when everyone was hitting, but the last couple of games have exposed the Phillies' lineup construction a bit, I think. Hoskins shouldn't be hitting second, and Harper shouldn't be hitting lower than third.

Zack Wheeler threw five four-seam fastballs in the first inning; all of them were at least 98.0 mph. In the postseason into tonight, only 40 of 184 of his four-seam fastballs had been at least 98.0 mph. Though, in the first inning, he was at 98.0+ for 31-of-45 four-seamers.