Skill and Luck: The Two Essential Elements of Winning in October
Yankee Luis Severino said that the Astros "got lucky" in Game 2 of the ALCS. He's right. They also showed great skill in striking out tons of Yankees. Both are needed in the playoffs.
In Game 2, Aaron Judge launched a ball 111.7 MPH off his bat at a 18 degree launch angle. The ball was—in the parlance of Statcast—barreled. And it had an expected batting average of .810.
But the ball not pulled at all. It was hit toward the deepest part of the ballpark, and 389 feet later, Chas McCormick pulled in the liner. And that proved to be a particularly key out. Instead of a home run, Judge was the second out of the inning. The Yankees really could have used that run, as the Astros won 3-2 that night.
Or were you thinking I was talking about another ball that night?
Of course you were, because Judge’s ball in the 8th inning that night off of Bryan Abreu got more attention. It was not struck as hard as the shot in the first inning (the 8th inning ball was hit at 106.3 MPH), but it had a higher launch angle and thus a better expected batting average at .910.
But Judge sliced the ball. And the slice reduced the distance the ball traveled.
The ball of course landed in Kyle Tucker’s glove pressed up against the right field fence. Just another out, like Judge’s shot in the first.
The eighth inning ball was a big focus of postgame comments. Aaron Boone blamed the wind saying “the roof open kinda killed us.” And Luis Severino, who had started Game 2 noted the difference in exit velocity between Judge’s eighth inning shot and the 3-run pulled shot that Alex Bregman hit off him in the 3rd inning. “I don’t know, they got lucky,” said Severino.
Severino and Boone were harshly criticized for the statements, as losers are not supposed to make excuses for losing.
But here’s the think about Severino’s quote—he was right; the Astros did get lucky that night.
In the Division Series against the Mariners, Astro pitchers struck out 27.9% of the batters they faced across those three games. In the ALCS, they did even better—striking out 35.2% of the batters they faced. Put together, the Astros have struck out 31.6% of the opposing batters they have faced this postseason, the highest rate for a playoff team since 2019.
And as the tension of the game increased, so did the performance of the Astros pitching staff. According to Chris Gilligan at Fangraphs, “of their 23 highest-leverage plate appearances, the Yankees went a remarkable 1-for-23 with 13 strikeouts and no walks, scoring just twice.” That’s a 56.5% strikeout rate in those at bats.
It takes great skill for a pitcher to strike a major league hitter out. For example, Ryne Stanek struck out all three batters he faced in the ALCS. He threw a fastball at an average of 98 MPH while breaking horizontally 9 inches from his hand to the plate. And he paired that with splitter that had 32 inches of vertical drop (that’s over two and half feet). You try hitting that; professional hitters couldn’t.
The Astros got lucky to defeat the Yankees and advance to the World Series.
The Astros showed great skill to defeat the Yankees and advance to the World Series.
Both statements are true.
It’s baseball; these statements are always true.
I have not studied the Phillies games this postseason in great detail, but I fell confident in saying that the Phillies got lucky to get to the World Series, and that the Phillies showed great skill in doing so.
Every good baseball team does. It is inherent in how the game works. A round bat hits a round ball and neither the thrower or the hitter has much control over whether the ball “finds the glove” of a fielder or if it’s a “bloop, a bleeder, a ground ball with eyes” of some other expression for a soft contact hit.
Severino’s comment that the Astros “got lucky” earned him and his team lots of criticism. Talking about luck is “making excuses,” and those who have some control over the outcomes of baseball games are not supposed to do that. They are supposed to focus on maximizing their skills.
Which is something that Alex Bregman has done. Bregman has worked his swing over time to hit more fly balls to his pull side. Why? Pulled fly balls travel further than those hit the opposite way, and pulled fly balls for right handed batters are particularly valuable in Minute Maid Park where the Crawford Boxes turn pulled fly balls from deep fly outs into game changing home runs.
Bregman’s homer reflected his skill. He also go lucky. His ball had an expected batting average of .060.
Luck met skill on Bregman’s homer. And frankly luck met skill on Judge’s deep flyout. Kyle Tucker is one of the best defensive right fielders in baseball and he had that ball all the way. Don’t believe me, ask Harrison Bader. He was at first base and read that Tucker would definitely make the catch, so he tagged up to get to second rather than go half way so he could score if the ball hit the fence.
Both luck and skill matter in baseball. Which is another way of saying that luck matters a lot in baseball.
Luck especially matters in small samples in baseball. While luck does not necessarily even out over a 162 game regular season, its effects are muted and the results much more reflect the skill of the players involved.
But in a short series…the role of good fortune increases.
Take this season’s games between the Astros and the A’s. The Astros are a better team than the A’s, which we know because the Astros won 46 more games in the regular season. And the difference was clear in the 19 games the two teams played this season—the Astros won 12 of them.
So if the Astros and A’s faced off in this World Series, the Astros would be heavily favored. How much would they be favored? At the request of a Twitter follower, Dan Szymborski of Fangraphs ran his ZiPS proection system for a theoretical 7 game matchup between the Astros and A's earlier this week.
I have posted his results below. His model says that the Astros would win 87.1% of them time in this theoretical World Series.
Which is what we saw in the regular season. Well, except for one exception. In July, the Astros dominance over the A’s was interrupted by 2 series losses that occurred over a 2 week period in July.
They Astros lost the rubber game of a 3 game stand at Minute Maid Park the day before the All-Star break. A week and a half later, they followed up a five game winning streak over the Yankees and Mariners by getting swept in a three game set in Oakland.
Why did the Astros lose this set of games to the A’s? There is probably no real explanation other than that’s baseball. Which is another way of saying that luck matters.
So does skill. The Astros are undefeated in seven games this postseason in large part because of a dominant and deep pitching staff. Over those seven games, they have collectively pitched like prime Pedro Martinez.
And that is why they are favored over the Phillies in the World Series. The Astros won 19 more games than did the Phillies during the regular season. The skill gap is clear. The two offenses are similar, but the Astros run prevention is much better, thanks to a deeper staff of high-quality pitchers and a yawning gap in defensive quality.
The ZiPS odds run by Szymborski give the Astros a 58.2% chance of winning the World Series. Those are good odds. And they are close to coin flip.
Skill matters in baseball, and the Astros have an edge here. Luck matters in baseball too, and no one has every figured out how to end the role of luck in short series baseball. It’s part of the game.
We know this as Astro fans. Our team lost the World Series in 2019 in large part thanks to a wonder-swing by Howie Kendrick, who inexplicably homered off one of the best relievers in baseball to turn the game around and propel his team to an upset win over the favorite.
But of course, our team has won a World Series too. And in many ways, our boys won it on a wonder-swing too; this one by Marwin Gonzalez off of one of the best relievers in baseball in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the 2017 World Series. It looked like the Astros would go down 0-2 before Marwin’s swing.
The Astros have shown great skill in winning 106 games this season and in going 7-0 in these playoffs. They got a number of breaks in their two postseason series, and they have been able to take advantage of those breaks.
They need skill and they need luck. Here’s to seeing both over the next four victories.
Well, it would be a big surprise to everyone, but work with me here.