Cody Ross had a bit of a down year offensively, hitting .276 AVG/.333 OBP/.503 SLG between 2007 and 2009 with the Marlins while hitting .269/.322/.413 this season. His drop in power from 24 home runs in 2009 to 14 in 2010 is notable, leading to a career low in slugging percentage.

Yet it was the power and timely hitting of Ross, the eighth hitter in the lineup, which put the San Francisco Giants on the scoreboard en route to a 3-2 win over the Atlanta Braves to advance to the NLCS. Derek Lowe, a pitcher who has always been known to induce easy ground-ball outs with his sinker, had thrown five no-hit innings up to that point. Lowe unleashed a weapon that has mostly been his secondary pitch: the slider.

In his first at-bat against Lowe in the top of the third, Ross sat and waited for a pitch to hit. But after two called strikes, Lowe quickly struck him out swinging on the third, a breaking slider low and way out of the zone. To capture how deceptive Lowe’s slider was Monday night, Lowe had seven strikeouts and 14 swinging strikes, 10 of them on sliders before Ross’ next at-bat.

But in his second at-bat, Ross adjusted and came out swinging on the first pitch. His aggressive approach on his second chance against Lowe proved successful. He was able to capitalize on the only hanging slider that Lowe threw all day, hitting a first-pitch solo home run in the sixth inning. That was Lowe’s only mistake all night up to that point, and without run support from the Braves’ offense, Lowe could not afford such a mistake.

Taking a look at the game-changing plays of the day, Ross drove in the game-tying run in the sixth and what turned out to be the game-winning run in the seventh, an RBI single that came off an outside 96 mph sinker from Jonny Venters. Ross was able to get just enough wood on it to put it through the shortstop hole, driving in Buster Posey.

His ability to put pop on Lowe’s hanging slider gave the Giants a plus-18.2 percent increase in win probability added, while his single off the left-handed Venters gave them a plus-12.6 percent added chance of advancing to the NLCS. Ross led all players in the game, contributing a total of nearly plus-29 percent WPA to the Giants’ win.

Ross may have lost some power this season compared with last, but he apparently learned to hit sliders. According to FanGraphs’ pitch type values, Ross was below average against the slider every year until this season, when he was above average at hitting the slider in terms of runs.

Monday’s game showed just how tough baseball is: You can dominate for several innings just as Lowe did, but sometimes it’s the bottom of the lineup that gets to you. Ross did just that in Game 4, thrusting the Giants into the NLCS against the Phillies.

In what some have termed the Year of the Pitcher, this postseason has provided some singularly impressive pitching performances to continue the trend. Add Jonathan Sanchez to the list after his 7 1/3-inning, 2-hit, 11-strikeout Sunday afternoon that put his Giants in line to win the game and go up 2-1 in their NL Division Series with the Braves.

By keeping baserunners off the basepaths and pitching late into the game, Sanchez was the driving force behind the Giants’ win. He added 46.6 percent to his team’s win probability, and since 50 percent is the maximum, the statistic tells the story as well as any other. He got the Giants almost all the way there on his left arm alone.

Sanchez joined Game 1 starter Tim Lincecum as the only Giants in postseason history to strike out double-figure batters. Sanchez was, as usual, effectively wild (105 pitches, 69 strikes), but his bread and butter was the offspeed stuff away. The lefty got eight swinging strikes on 40 offspeed pitches, good for a 20 percent whiff percentage that blew his 4.69 percent on fastballs out of the water.

Traditionally, this is the case — offspeed stuff garners more whiffs across baseball — but Sanchez used the weapon almost artistically. He began all but three at-bats with fastballs, but he ended most at-bats with offspeed pitches: Ten of his 11 strikeouts were on sliders.

Fortunately for Sanchez, the Giants’ offense did just enough. Though the offense scored the fewest runs of any National League playoff team during the regular season and seemed as if it might continue to be this team’s Achilles’ heel, the Giants pushed across three runs with the help of some shoddy Atlanta defense. Two of Brooks Conrad’s three errors in the game helped contribute to Giants runs.

Coming through in the clutch was the key at the end of the game, which swung wildly in each direction. In the bottom of the eighth inning, pinch hitter Eric Hinske hit what most Atlantans may have considered the game-winning home run off Giants reliever Sergio Romo. Down the right-field line and barely fair, his home run was worth a whopping 57.8 percent in win probability added, as the game swung from 28.8 percent likely for the Braves to 86.6 percent in one big moment.

As an aside, a bit of gamesmanship from the retiring Bobby Cox may have led to Bruce Bochy taking Sanchez out of the game. After the Giants lefty gave up a single, Cox showed righty Troy Glaus as the pinch hitter. Bochy went with the right-handed Sergio Romo in relief in order to exploit the platoon advantage. Cox pulled Glaus and went with lefty Hinske. The rest is, as they say, history.

But the Giants were not done. Freddy Sanchez, 0-for-3 with a walk before coming to the plate in the ninth inning, faced fireballer Craig Kimbrel, closing for the Braves with Billy Wagner hurt. Sanchez was down to his final strike before lacing a single up the middle. Then Aubrey Huff, in the single most tense and important at-bat of the game, drove in the tying run and swung the pendulum back close to 50 percent by adding 34.9 percent of win probability with his bat. One batter later, Conrad’s error on Buster Posey’s grounder sent the Giants to within one win of taking the series.

Jonathan Sanchez got the team most of the way there, but without Mike Fontenot, Freddy Sanchez, Aubrey Huff, and — yes — Brooks Conrad, the Giants would have been a tough-luck losers.

The final score might not reflect it, but the Rays’ Game 3 win didn’t come easily. In four of the first five innings the Rays put six runners on base, but could not bring around any of them to score. Then, once they did start showing life in the later innings, they had to overcome a baserunning mistake and then an extra-wide strike zone before they could mount their comebacks. Twice in this game the Rays came from behind to force a Game 4.

John Jaso’s go-ahead RBI single might have rated the most significant play of the game, but the most important series of events came in the sixth. While the Rays had those six baserunners in the first five innings, they failed to get a hit after a man reached. In the sixth they got off to a good start with an Evan Longoria walk. Matt Joyce hit a soft grounder and avoided getting doubled up, but he still created an out with a runner on base.

Dan Johnson, the second lefty to face relief pitcher Derek Holland, took the first five pitches of his at-bat and worked the count full. Holland went with a fastball away on the sixth pitch, but Johnson reached out and pulled it into right field. The situation for the Rays appeared favorable. They had runners on first and second with one out, which would have given them a win expectancy of 40.1 percent, an increase of 5.9 percent on the play. But the play wasn’t over yet.

Joyce overran second and lost his balance trying to return. Nelson Cruz alertly fired back in, and Ian Kinsler applied the tag in time. That caused the Rays’ win expectancy to tumble all the way to 29.4 percent. The loss in win expectancy from having runners at first and second with one out to a runner on first with two outs is 10.5 percent. That was the single costliest WPA swing of the game, and it nearly cost the Rays another opportunity. Thankfully for them, Carlos Pena and B.J. Upton came through.

Pena had a poor year by his standards, but he was particularly poor against lefties. He struck out in 38.5 percent of his at-bats and hit for far less power than he did against righties. Again, the lefty Holland didn’t have to worry much. Holland delivered four straight pitches well out of the zone, which gave the Rays another chance with a runner in scoring position. Upton took advantage, lining an inside fastball down the left-field line for a double that tied the game. The walk and the double were worth plus-20.7 percent win probability added.

The Rays then threatened to take the lead in the seventh inning. Ben Zobrist hit a one-out double, raising the Rays’ chances of winning by 7.2 percent. The win probability stat is context-neutral, meaning it doesn’t take into consideration the hitters coming to bat. It might have been worth a bit more if it knew that Carl Crawford and Longoria each had a shot to bring home the go-ahead run. Unfortunately, a poor strike zone doomed Crawford. He fouled off the first pitch, but then saw two fastballs that appeared to be way outside. But the home plate ump called both a strike, costing the Rays 6.1 percent in win probability added.

A half inning later, Kinsler gave the Rangers the lead, but the Rays fought back with their big eighth inning. Unlike their previous scoring situations, this one went relatively smoothly. The Rays had to overcome some adversity — some of their own doing, some out of their control — to get there, but they forced a Game 4 on Sunday.

Chants of “Replay!” rained down on Tropicana Field in the fifth inning of the second American League Division Series game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Texas Rangers on Thursday afternoon.

Although we all know that home crowds can exaggerate at times, the controversy here was real. Michael Young was seemingly out on a half swing with runners on first and second and one out in the fifth. Instead, the umpires ruled that Young checked his swing, and on the next pitch, Young took Chad Qualls deep to center field to increase the Rangers’ lead from 2-0 to 5-0.

Top five plays (all percentages from Rangers’ standpoint):

Top 5th, 1 out, 2 on: Michael Young HR, +15.3 percent win probability (77.2 percent to 92.5 percent)
Top 4th, 2 out, 0 on: Ian Kinsler HR, +11.2 percent win probability (57.7 percent to 68.9 percent )
Top 3rd, 1 out, 1 on: Elvis Andrus single, Matt Treanor to third, +5.2 percent win probability (51.9 percent to 57.1 percent)
Top 2nd, 1 out, 0 on: Nelson Cruz double, +4.2 percent win probability (47.6% to 51.8%)
Top 3rd, 0 out, 0 on: Matt Treanor hit by pitch, +3.9 percent win probability (50% to 53.9%)

(No play in the Rays’ favor had a WPA > 0.038)

It’s hard to call this a turning point in the game, as the Rangers already held the lead and were threatening. Instead, this was more of the breaking point for the Rays. The Rays’ win expectancy entering the play was already low at 22.8 percent. The home run lowered the Rays’ win probability to 7.5 percent, putting the Rangers in cruise control both in the game and in the series, with two of the three remaining games coming at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

The play comes out to a total WPA of +15.7 percent. However, part of what makes this play so big and so important in the scope of this game is that, by some accounts, Young should have been out before it even happened. According to the WPA inquirer at The Hardball Times, the situation if Young is called out — two outs, runners on first and second, and a two-run Rangers lead in the top of the fifth — comes out to a 26.6 percent win expectancy for the Rays. That still wouldn’t put optimism into many Tampa denizens, but at least it gives the Rays a fighting shot with players such as Evan Longoria and Carl Crawford yet to receive two or three at-bats. This adds about 4 percent to the win probability difference of the play, as the combination of the check swing called for a ball followed by the home run cost the Rays about a fifth of a win.

It’s easy to say that the call and the play don’t matter at all, as the Rays didn’t even manage to muster a run against C.J. Wilson and then the Rangers’ bullpen. However, that’s a basic case of the fallacy of the predetermined outcome. C.J. Wilson may have been forced to pitch more carefully or under more pressure in the later innings, and perhaps the Rays could have pushed a couple of runs home. By that same token, it’s possible that Josh Hamilton, hitting after Michael Young, would’ve hit a three-run home run instead. We simply don’t know what would have happened, and the home run certainly changed the landscape of the game.

Young’s home run gave the Rangers an insurmountable lead and has pushed the Rays to the brink of elimination. That play certainly wasn’t the only reason the Rays lost — an anemic offense and constant pressure from Rangers hitters deserve blame and credit respectively. When it comes down to one moment in Game 2, though, the Young home run was the biggest moment of the game and of the season to date for these two teams.

Lost in the incredible drama of Roy Halladay pitching a no-hitter in his first postseason start is the fact that Halladay recorded a hit in his first playoff at-bat. In fact, his second-inning RBI single changed the win expectancy of the game more than any of the 104 pitches he threw. Halladay entered Wednesday’s game with 136 career plate appearances. He has never had an extra-base hit; he has drawn just one walk. And just eight times in his career, Halladay has hit a line drive. Before 2010, Halladay hadn’t hit regularly since he was an amateur in 1995. A game-changing hit was almost as unlikely for Halladay as a no-hitter. Almost.

Like a poker player with a tell, Halladay has one distinct approach at the plate: He goes up looking to swing. Five of his 13 hits this season, including four of his past six, have occurred on the first pitch. If he sees a fastball in the zone on the first pitch, there is a good chance he’s going to offer at it. So, if there was anything that Edinson Volquez should not have done with the first pitch he ever threw Halladay, it was throwing a 93 mph fastball on the inner half of the plate. By doing so, he allowed the ninth line drive of Halladay’s offensive career.

That should have been it for Volquez, though, because the ball hung up toward left field. It was a hit that left fielders should catch, that the vast majority of left fielders do catch. Playing left field on Wednesday for the Reds was Jonny Gomes, one of the worst defensive left fielders in baseball. In fact, using ultimate zone rating, the preferred fielding metric at FanGraphs, Gomes ranked as the fourth-worst defender at any position.

Matt Kemp: -24.3 runs.
Carlos Quentin: -22.9 runs.
Carlos Lee: -17.4 runs.
Jonny Gomes: -16.1 runs.
Trevor Crowe: -15.7 runs.

Gomes got a late jump on the Halladay line drive, and by the time he recovered, it was too late. He attempted a feet-first dive to catch the ball, but he couldn’t glove it, and had no chance to make a throw to home plate. The slow-footed Carlos Ruiz was running from second base, but with two outs, had a good jump toward scoring the game’s second run. When Halladay’s 17th career hit plated Ruiz, the Phillies’ win expectancy odds went from 64.7 percent to 74.3 percent. Before the inning ended, a two-run single by Shane Victorino pushed them to 85.2 percent.

Because Jim Edmonds‘ Achilles injury rendered him unavailable for the first round of the playoffs, the Reds decided Laynce Nix was healthy enough to earn a spot on their playoff roster. Nix returned from an ankle injury on Sept. 22, and made just one start between then and the playoffs, collecting two hits against the Astros on Sept. 29. The left-handed-hitting outfielder made only 31 starts this season, but in a predominantly reserve role, he had the best offensive season of his eight-year career. Generally, when Nix has been able to catch on to a major league roster, it’s because of the qualities he offers as a defender. In nearly 3,000 defensive innings in the outfield, Nix has a positive ultimate zone rating at each outfield position: +0.3 runs in right field, +11.8 runs in center, +8.1 runs in left. This season, in limited time, he was worth 7 runs above average, and 23.1 runs more than Jonny Gomes.

We don’t know if Nix playing left field instead of Gomes would have changed the outcome of Game 1. We don’t know if Nix, traditionally a worse hitter than Gomes (though left-handed), would have done anything to spoil Halladay’s no-hitter. But, given their histories and drastically different defensive abilities, it’s pretty likely that Nix would have caught Halladay’s line drive, and ended the second inning with the score still 1-0.

Umpires have been in the spotlight all season, from Joe West’s comments about the pace and style of games between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees to Jim Joyce’s blown call costing Detroit’s Armando Galarraga a perfect game. But on the 25th anniversary of Dom Denkinger’s controversial call in the 1985 World Series, the scrutiny of assignments and performance of umpires goes to another level in the postseason.

Perhaps the most interesting assignment for the League Division Series will see Jerry Crawford serving as crew chief for the Yankees’ series against the Minnesota Twins.

Crawford is considered to have the smallest strike zone in the major leagues; this season, among all umpires, he has the lowest strikeout to walk ratio at 1.55, well below the league average is 2.17 strikeouts per walk. Conversely, Brian O’Nora, who is on Crawford’s crew for the series, has an average of 2.50 strikeouts per walk.

While the stats tell one story, the graphic of an umpire’s strike zone can offer an enhanced look at exactly how umps see the strike zone and what that means for the two teams when specific men in blue are behind the plate.

The following images are the called strike zones of Crawford and O’Nora for right-handed hitters in 2010. The graphs were created from MLB Pitchf/x data using 255 separate buckets to represent his strike zone. The dark red area is where 100 percent of the pitches in that zone are called strikes, the green area is where 50 percent of the pitches are called strikes and the purple area is where none of the pitches are called strikes.

This is Crawford:

This is O’Nora:

O’Nora has a significantly bigger strike zone than Crawford, especially in the vertical direction.

The Yankees led the league with a strikeout/walk ratio of 1.81 and the Twins were second with a ratio of 1.88. Both of these teams know how to work a count in order to get players on base.

When Crawford is behind the plate, then, it’s going to be a marathon, and the season mostly bore that out: the Twins had Crawford behind the plate four times; their normal nine-inning game lasted 2 hours, 46 minutes, and with Crawford it lasted 2 hours, 49 minutes (not a huge gap). The Yankees played 3 hours, 5 minutes on average; in the two games they had Crawford calling balls and strikes, they averaged 3 hours, 31 minutes.

The main impact point for CC Sabathia, Francisco Liriano, Phil Hughes, Carl Pavano and others in this series is this: You don’t want to throw around the middle, obviously, especially with Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano, Jason Kubel and Joe Mauer in this series — but with Crawford, you either pound the zone or you walk a ton of guys.

Keep an eye on which game Crawford is behind the plate for; it could be the turning point of this series.

In the American League playoffs, all four teams have a lefty as their ace — CC Sabathia, Francisco Liriano, Cliff Lee and David Price — and using Pitch f/x, we can isolate data on one pitch that makes these southpaws so successful. Let’s start with Sabathia, who is relying on a new weapon this year.

Sabathia’s sinker

This year, Sabathia posted his lowest strikeout rate (7.46) and highest walk rate (2.80) since 2005. Those are still good numbers, but not the great levels he posted from 2006 to 2009. Sabathia has made up for it, though, by posting a 50.7 percent ground ball rate, the best of his career.

Sabathia’s Pitch f/x numbers can actually give us some insight into this change. Between 2007 and 2009 (the years covered by the Pitch f/x data), he threw his sinker just 9 percent of the time, but in 2010 he threw it more than 17 percent of the time. This came mostly at the expense of his four-seam fastball, which gets more strikeouts but fewer ground balls than the two-seam variety.

Here are the locations of all of Sabathia’s sinkers put in play coded for either grounder or non-grounder.

Against right-handed hitters, when the pitch is either low or away, it gets a high number of grounders. When he leaves it up and in or in the heart of the plate, righties can get the pitch in the air. Against lefties it is much tougher, and almost all balls in play off the sinker were grounders.

Liriano’s slider

Liriano has recaptured his pre-Tommy John magic and is pitching like it’s 2006 again. His 3.07 xFIP is the best in the American League, and nearly equal to Roy Halladay’s MLB-best 2.99 mark. Along with Jon Lester, he is the only starting pitcher to strike out more than a batter per inning while also getting more than 50 percent of their balls in play on the ground — the holy grail of strikeouts and grounders.

A huge key has been his amazing slider, which he is throwing more this year (34 percent of the time). Correspondingly, his fastball percentage has dropped; it is now below 50 percent, putting him in the bottom 10 among starting pitchers in fastball frequency. Sliders are typically thrown more often to same-handed batters, but Liriano’s is so good he can still throw it against right-handed hitters 30 percent of the time. When he does throw it, he gets an extraordinary 22 percent swinging strike rate, compared to just 11 percent for the average lefty’s slider to a righty. Here is how Liriano’s slider’s swinging strike rate varies by the pitch’s horizontal location compared to the average; shaded regions are standard errors of the estimate.

He can really handcuff righties with inside sliders. The amazing thing is that Liriano throws the pitch 65 percent of the time with two strikes, so even though it’s a predictable pitch in certain situations, hitters still can’t touch it.

Price’s fastball

Price throws a ton of fastballs. His reliance on the pitch — throwing it 74 percent of the time — is second only to Justin Masterson’s 78 percent among qualified starters. How can Price get away with throwing his fastball so often? Because it averages 94.5 mph; only Ubaldo Jimenez, Justin Verlander and Josh Johnson throw harder fastballs. As we all know, there is typically a positive relationship between fastball velocity and fastball success.

Below is a two-paneled graph that shows a comparison of the velocity of Price’s fastballs to league average, and second, the average number of swinging strikes per pitch on fastballs based on their speed for Price and for all fastballs.

Price throws his fastball nearly 5 mph faster than average — and he rarely throws a fastball slower than about 90 mph, roughly the league-average fastball speed. Looking below this, you can see that Price’s success is above and beyond the speed on his fastball. Even though he throws his fastball very often, batters have a hard time making contact with it, even compared with fastballs of the same speed. There may be something deceptive about his delivery or life on the pitch that makes it harder to pick up coming out of his hand.

Lee’s command

Lee has been throwing his fastball less often in recent years — as he throws his cutter more often — but it is still his best pitch. By FanGraphs’ pitch valuation system, it was the second-best fastball in the game, and over the past three years has been far and away the best.

This value comes from Lee’s amazing ability to command his fastball. His pitches are in the zone more often than anyone else’s, and he starts at-bats with a strike 70 percent of the time, again tops in the league. Here is a plot that shows the density of his fastballs in two inch by two inch squares, with darker color indicating more pitches in that area.

Lee is able to get his fastball in the strike zone frequently. There is remarkably little spillover out of the zone. Beyond that, he also does a good job keeping his pitches on the outer half of the plate. The result of that per-pitch command is Lee’s 0.79 walk rate. The last starter to post a BB/9 below one over a whole year was Carlos Silva in 2005; that year Silva had a 3.39 K/9, this year Lee has a 7.76. Lee combines his historically low walk rate with a respectable strikeout rate, and the result is dominance.