Momentum is Your Next Day's Starting Pitcher, and Ours Was Cristian Javier
Cristian Javier held the Phillies without a hit for 6 innings thanks to an outstanding and deceptive fastball. The bullpen shut the door and the World Series is now tied at 2.
It’s an old expression and we do not know the origin of it. But my personal guess is that is was used by a member of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club the second time they took a boat from Manhattan to play under Alexander Cartwright’s rules at the Elysian Fields Park just across the Hudson in Hoboken, NJ.
Momentum is your next day’s starting pitcher.
And by that standard, the Astros had great momentum going into Game 4 last night. They had Cristian Javier pitching.
Javier anchored the second no hitter ever thrown at a World Series, combining with the team’s top three relievers—Bryan Abreu, Rafael Montero, and Ryan Pressly—to keep the Phillies from getting a hit.
More importantly, the four Astros hurlers kept the Phillies from getting a run, leading the Astros to a 5-0 win in a game that I described at “extremely pivotal” after the loss in Game 3. The World Series is now tied at 2 games.
An Outstanding Performance by Javier
Cristian Javier faced 20 Phillies last night. Obviously none got a hit. The performance was not a fluke, aided by lucky plays or the defense making unlikely plays. It was all Javier.
Javier struck out 9 Phillies. It’s hard to get a hit when you can’t even make contact with the ball. Two batters walked. Three hit flyballs to the outfield. Three hit grounders. And three hit pop flies to infielders.
None of the air balls had much chance, if any, of being a hit. The outfield flies had an expected batting average of .090, .030, and .030. The infield pops were even less deadly; they have expected batting averages of .070, .010, and .000.
It is not surprising that Javier got so many weak fly balls that were almost certain outs. During the regular season, Javier had an infield fly ball rate of 13.4%, which was the 10th best among all major league starting pitchers. Javier always gets a lot of weak pop flies, especially when he’s on like he was last night.
How does Javier get so many pop ups? A big reason is that the fastball that Javier throws has a great deal of “ride.” This used to be called a rising fastball before logic and high speed cameras ended that usage. But Javier’s fastball falls less quickly than that of the average pitcher, which makes batters feel that the ball “rises” as it nears the plate.
The scatterplot below comes from Baseball Savant and shows the horizontal and vertical movement from all major league pitchers on their 4-seam fastball. It shows you that Javier’s fastball is an outlier because it has very little “vertical movement vs. average.”
The Statcast numbers show that Javier has the 8th lowest amount vertical movement of any 4-seamer among major league pitchers. Among starting pitchers, Javier’s fastball ride ranks second behind Nestor Cortes.
Because the high spin on the ball keeps it from dropping as quickly as most pitchers, batters tend to swing under the fastball. Javier does not blow batters away with velocity. He fools them with deception. They cannot pick up the ball well enough to hit it on the barrel of their bat.
Last night, Javier relied heavily on that 4-seam fastball, throwing it on 70 of his 97 pitches. He threw 49 of them for strikes, including 27 foul balls, 8 called strikes, and 6 swing-and-misses. They Phillies put 8 of them in play, inducing contact that never endangered the no-hitter.
Dusty Baker pulled Javier after 6 innings, prioritizing winning this game and keeping alive the option of using Javier for “2-3 innings” in Game 7. Javier’s pitch count was high, so this was the right move.
The bullpen finished the job, striking out 5 of the 10 batters they faced and only allowing a 9th inning walk. Bryan Abreu was particularly effective, striking out all three Phillies he faced in the 7th. And if you need a shot of energy this morning (or any time in life), may I suggest watching a replay of Abreu blowing away Bryce Harper on a 100 MPH fastball.
The Bats Get It Done
They seemed close in the early innings. They got 1 on in the first and 2 on in both the second and the fourth. Were they blowing their chance to get a run or was it just a matter of time before they got to Aaron Nola, the Phillies best pitcher?
In the fifth, the dam broke and the runs poured out. They got 5 hits and scored 5 runs, all they would need and then some thanks to the pitching staff’s dominance.
Two plate appearances stand out to me. The first was Alex Bregman’s with the bases loaded and no out. The Astros had gone ahead when Phillies reliever Jose Alvarado hit Yordan Alvarez. Alvarado needed to limit the damage and needed a strikeout. He got strikes on his first two pitches, and Bregman looked like he was not seeing ball well out of Alvarado’s hand.
But Bregman saw enough of the ball to take a fastball on the outside corner the opposite way and doubled home two. It was a great piece of hitting by a hitter down in the count.
Two batters later, Bregman was at third when Yuli Gurriel was at the plate. Gurriel has not struck out this postseason. He has made contact in every plate appearance, and his contact skills were critical here. A strikeout would have kept a run off of the board.
Alvarado again got two strikes on the batter, raising the possibility of a strikeout. But Gurriel once again would not strike out. Instead, he hit a ball sharply, if on the ground, toward shortstop. Normally, this ball would be gobbled up for a 6-3, but the Phillies had to play the infield in and shortstop Bryson Stott did not have enough time to get to the ball. The single made the lead 5-0.
Game 5: Verlander vs. Syndergaard
The Series is now tied 2-2, and the attitude for the Astros and their fans is vastly different than it was last night. First of all, there is the principle expressed by Nuke LaLoosh that “winning is better than losing.”
The second is that the Astros have a clear advantage on the mound in Game 5. They throw Justin Verlander, who is all but certain to the win the AL Cy Young Award this season. The Phillies throw Noah Syndergaard, whose innings they have chosen to limit this postseason because they think he is a mid-level pitcher at this point in his career.
Will that advantage manifest itself in the game tonight. It should, but so far this series, the worst pitchers have been some of the best pitchers in the regular season.
But over the long haul, quality should win out. Verlander was lousy in his first start of the playoffs, but was excellent in Game 1 of the ALCS against the Yankees, looking the pitcher we saw in the regular season. We have reasonable hopes to see that again tonight.
With that being said, the Astros bullpen has been excellent this postseason and again in the World Series. They have given up only 2 runs in 14.1 innings on the hill. They have struck out 19 while allowing only 6 hits and 6 walks.
Dusty should be willing to turn to them at the first sign of trouble tonight, especially as the Phillies enter the third time through the order. Let’s hope does.
Brian
It’s 1980 all over again