One proven formula for navigating the MLB playoffs and reaching the World Series is to ride your best pitchers as much as you can. Countering the best opposing hitters the league has to offer with your best arms just makes sense. The 2019 Washington Nationals took it to the most memorable extreme, squeezing every inning possible out of Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg. Usually, the extra days off in the October schedule make it a feasible strategy if your aces are comfortable making some dramatic jogs in from the bullpen.
Key word: Usually.
The 2022 postseason schedule is not arranged like those that came before it. The lockout that dragged into the spring pushed the regular season further into October and condensed the playoff slate. Travel days that would usually slot in after Game 4 of the Division Series and Game 5 of the Championship Series have been removed. That means teams could play three days in a row to decide the matchups that begin Tuesday, or five days in a row to decide the pennant next week.
Make no mistake, it’s still a huge advantage to have aces. The Philadelphia Phillies just swept the St. Louis Cardinals out of the wild-card series in large part because Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola were on their side. But to prevail in the longer battles ahead, they will need other pitchers to step up. In 2022, the pitching staffs with the best supporting actors may be the ones best positioned to win the World Series.
How many pitchers do you need to lean on to win a World Series?
The images that stick in our minds are understandable. Clayton Kershaw emerging from the bullpen, Madison Bumgarner closing out the Kansas City Royals, a dominant closer trotting in in the 7th. Those are the extraordinary moments that playoff baseballs calls for.
Playoff baseball also calls for significant contributions in less glamorous moments. It seems the All Aces, All The Time approach that dominated for a stretch — culminating in that 2019 Nationals team that faced the Justin Verlander-Gerrit Cole Astros — may be waning. You can see in the chart below how the last teams standing in the post-COVID 2020 and 2021 postseasons leaned on their most prominent pitchers less.
Where the three most-used arms were expected to combine for at least 95 or 100 innings in October five years ago, the 2021 Astros required only 70, and the champion Braves won with 89 innings from Max Fried, Ian Anderson and Charlie Morton.
The shift isn’t just about whether top starters contribute out of the bullpen on their throw days. That risk may indeed be less palatable to teams — Scherzer missed his NLCS start after closing NLDS Game 5 against the Giants last season — but there are also more pitchers than ever accustomed to operating on five days rest, not the traditional four. Nearly every top starter expected to pitch in this postseason made at least half their starts this season on five or more days rest. Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, the starter on the most traditional schedule, made 17 starts on four days rest and 16 starts on five or more.
More innings were already going to be entrusted to the second line of the staff, so to speak. Last year’s champion Braves got outs from then-swingman Kyle Wright, Jesse Chavez and Luke Jackson. For the AL-winning Astros, it was Ryne Stanek, Cristian Javier and No. 4 starter José Urquidy.
This season, the excised off days will only accentuate the importance of those crucial reinforcements.
Who has winning pitching depth in 2022 MLB playoffs?
So who has the abundance of arm talent to cover the crunch of important innings? Well, there are a lot of ways we could measure that. I’ve picked one way as a rough guide.
I used Fielding Independent Pitching, a metric that uses strikeouts, walks and homers to give us a slightly more predictive picture of a pitcher’s performance than ERA. I wanted to see which teams in the Division Series had the most available (read: healthy) pitchers who posted second-half FIP marks of 3.30 or lower, which is roughly 20% better than average, in 20 or more innings.
The answer is what you’d expect: The Astros, whose rotation depth is the envy of the league, have the most, with eight. Dusty Baker’s usage of stellar arms like Cristian Javier, Luis Garcia and Hunter Brown — capable starters who nonetheless rank behind Verlander, Framber Valdez and Lance McCullers Jr. — could give Houston a major advantage.
The Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Guardians each come into the playoffs with seven of those arms, bolstered significantly by deep bullpens. We already saw Cleveland’s in action in the Run Prevention-palooza that was AL wild-card Game 2.
The San Diego Padres and New York Yankees enter with the weakest units, at four such pitchers apiece. The Yankees are here not because they failed to accumulate the talent, but because so many of their best arms are injured. The injury bug, and the post-trade struggles of Frankie Montas, have taken a huge bite out of manager Aaron Boone’s depth. That leaves a lot of weight on the shoulders of the expected starters — Cole, Nestor Cortes Jr. and Luis Severino — and potentially on Jameson Taillon to pivot seamlessly between relief work and occasional starts.
Several regular season starters could be doing that delicate, but potentially advantageous, dance. Mariners rookie George Kirby produced an excellent 3.39 ERA in 25 starts, then wound up closing Seattle’s clinch against Toronto. If the Phillies plan to overcome the depth and rest edges the Braves carry into their series, they may need similar help from Zach Eflin — who already leapt into the closer role over the past week — as well as Bailey Falter and/or Noah Syndergaard.
One or more of these pitchers will find themselves in major moments this month. Their readiness might determine the outcome of one or more series. And almost assuredly, when the victor hoists the World Series trophy in November, it’s going to be on the strength of more arms than usual.