The final four teams remaining in the 2024 MLB playoffs are battling for a spot in the World Series, and that means every performance will be analyzed -- and overanalyzed -- based on who does, and doesn't, come through in the highest pressure spots of the season.
But this is also a chance to appreciate the absolutely ridiculous skills of some of the most gifted players in the sport on the biggest stage. From sluggers with top-of-the-charts power and fielders with jaw-dropping defensive ability to pitchers with the nastiest stuff, here is a look at the Statcast standouts of the ALCS and NLCS and how these numbers explain why these players are finding success in October.
Giancarlo Stanton, OF, New York Yankees
The skill: Absurd raw power
The numbers to know: 81.2 mph, 8.6 feet, 120.0 mph, 5.06 seconds
Let's start with one of the OG Statcast stars in Stanton, an ALCS Game 1 hero with his 114.3 mph exit velo home run coming off a strong ALDS against Kansas City. He's a man of extremes that become easy to understand with Statcast's measurements. His average bat speed is 81.2 mph (best in baseball, by a lot) while his average swing length is 8.6 feet (longest in baseball, by a lot). You can intuitively understand how a hitter might have to make a long runway for his bat to reach the highest speeds. The Game 1 homer against Cleveland was impressive, but Stanton's hardest hit ball of the season was 120.0 mph off the bat (on a single in July), second in baseball behind Oneil Cruz.
Stanton isn't just a player of extremes with the bat in his hand, either. He was a solid runner earlier in his career but is now posting the slowest average run time to first base in all of baseball at 5.06 seconds.
Steven Kwan, OF, Cleveland Guardians
The skill: Maximizing limited physical tools
The numbers to know: 105.6 mph, plus-4 runs
Now let's look at the other end of the Statcast spectrum, coming from a star hitter on the Yankees' ALCS opponents. Kwan is physically much smaller than the average player (5-foot-9, 170 pounds) and hits for batting average over power (career high 14 homers this season) despite playing a corner outfield spot. His 105.6 mph maximum exit velo is the lowest in baseball among regulars.
How has he posted 12.1 WAR in his first three seasons? In short, he's good at a lot of things and great at some others.
Kwan posted the best performance throwing among all infielders and outfielders at plus-4 runs despite only solid average pure arm strength. He also has above-average range in left field (plus-2 more runs) despite slightly below average top speed. Kwan also created plus-4 runs taking an extra base on the basepaths (not including stolen bases) using instincts more than speed. He's in the top 25 in baseball hitting the ball at ideal launch angles (i.e. line drives and non-popup fly balls) and Kwan has the lowest whiff rate in the sport.
It's an uphill climb, but a player can be elite with almost no above-average physical tools. Though that lack of standout skills is why Kwan lasted until the fifth round out of Oregon State and didn't start appearing on top 100 prospect lists until he was in Triple-A, or in some cases already in the big leagues.
Freddie Freeman, 1B, Los Angeles Dodgers
Mookie Betts, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers
The skill: Extreme precision with the bat
The numbers to know: 43.1%, 18.2%, 41.7%
We've covered two guys on the extremes at the plate: Stanton trying to turn the ball into dust and Kwan's combination of finesse and instincts. Now let's look at two stars in the Dodgers lineup who have mastered the middle ground.
Both Dodgers stars have below average bat speed, but Betts makes up for it by ranking third in baseball in squared-up rate at 41.7%, or rate at which he hits balls that are at least 80% on the sweet spot.
Freeman excels at launch angle sweet spot, his 43.1% led the majors, which essentially means the percentage of his balls in play are line drives and non-popup fly balls (Betts' is 10th in baseball by this measure). He hit 22 home runs this season but ranked last in MLB (minimum 20 homers) in percentage of homers that would be a home run in all 30 parks, or no-doubter rate at 18.2%. This means that while he isn't punishing the ball, he is being controlled and efficient.
These two aren't often tops in the sexiest Statcast categories, but they end up in the top 25 of the ones that matter, like the all-encompassing metrics such as xwOBA and WAR.
Francisco Lindor, SS, New York Mets
The skill: Basically all of them
The numbers to know: plus-12 runs, .382, plus-4 runs
Another way to find success is to be above average at literally everything Statcast measures. Lindor posted the sixth-highest WAR in the majors by doing exactly that. He ranks second among shortstops (Dansby Swanson) in runs saved on defense at plus-12 runs, completely driven by his excellent range. He is second among shortstops (behind only Bobby Witt Jr.) and eighth among all players in an all-encompassing offensive statistic called xwOBA, which includes everything a hitter does at the plate (like OPS), but also adjusts for luck using likely outcomes for hits using exit velo and launch angle (i.e. a bullet hit right at the shortstop or 410-foot out to center field). Lindor also excelled on the basepaths, finishing 16th in baseball at plus-4 runs when advancing on balls put in play.
Aaron Judge, OF, New York Yankees
Juan Soto, OF, New York Yankees
Shohei Ohtani, DH, Los Angeles Dodgers
The skill: The greatest hitters of their generation
The numbers to know: Pick your favorite from a very long list
Now that we've taken you on a quick tour of the metrics available for position players through the hitters above, here are the three superstars who are near the top of everything that can be measured in the batter's box.
Judge leads baseball with 61% of his balls in play coming off the bat at 95 mph or higher. He also leads in barrels (i.e. balls hit at 95-plus mph and at ideal launch angles or very likely to be extra base hits) with 105, barrels per plate appearance at 14.9%, and barrels per ball in play at 26.9%. Judge is also tops in wOBA and xwOBA. Statcast measures performance by part of the strike zone and Judge is in the top eight in all four sections, led by him dominating the heart of the strike zone at plus-39 runs.
Soto is second behind his Yankees teammate in xwOBA at .463 but was the least lucky regular hitter in baseball, with an actual wOBA of 42 points lower. Yes, you read that correctly. Soto produced a .288 average with 41 homers, more walks than strikeouts and 8.1 WAR during the unluckiest season compared to expected results in the entire sport. He is good by almost any hitting measure, but he stands out the most in the Statcast's new bat-tracking area. He's a solid 13th in baseball in average bat speed at 75.5 mph (behind Stanton, Judge and Ohtani) but his efficiency with one of the faster swings in baseball is incredible. He is 11th in squared-up contact rate at 39.7%, the only above-average swing speed ranked that high; it's mostly Kwan and Luis Arraez type hitters in that rarified air. He is top in baseball in Blasts (measured the amount of squared-up contact on swings over 75 mph) by a lot, at 20.8% of swings. Soto also has the second-shortest swing (7.3 feet) among the top 15 fastest swings. He's also tops in baseball at 95-plus mph batted balls per swing (23.8%) underlining how Soto has elite pitch selection with elite swing quality, elite power, and elite batted ball quality, even if he isn't necessarily first in that many categories.
Ohtani also, unsurprisingly, stands out across the board. He has the eighth-fastest swing (76.3 mph), the fourth-best rate of blasts (25.3%), the second-best wOBA (.431), the third-best xwOBA (.448), second-most barrels (103), second-best barrel rate (14.1% of plate appearances), most balls hit 95-plus mph off the bat (288), fourth-longest home run (476 feet), and is in the top five of any exit velo based metric I can find.
His exploits on the basepaths go beyond his gaudy stolen-base total, too. Ohtani is also ninth in baseball (plus-5 runs) in taking extra bases on balls in play and second in FanGraphs' all-encompassing baserunning metric (plus-9,8 runs).
Sean Manaea, LHP, New York Mets
The skill: Finding the ideal release point for a dastardly sinker
Numbers to know: plus-15 runs, 5.07 feet, 4.22 feet
Manaea was a standout in the Mets' NLCS Game 2 win, dominating with his funky, low-slot, crossfire delivery and sinker. He already had the best left-handed sinker in baseball at plus-15 runs, (a number calculating the fractions of a run created by the outcome of every pitch whether strike, ball, single, flyout, etc.).
What makes Manaea's sinker so good? His evolving release point for one. His vertical release point (think the height, relative to the infield, when he releases the pitch) peaked at 5.81 feet on April 24 and fell all season to 5.07 feet in his last regular-season start, making his release height one of the five lowest in baseball among lefties. His extension (how far down the mound he gets) was pretty steady throughout the season, so his tweak was about a lowered arm slot, not getting to a lower spot on the mound. According to Statcast, his arm slot peaked at 30 degrees in April, then reached a nadir of 13.9 degrees in September (0 degrees would be sidearm while 45 degrees is a three-quarters arm slot).
While he was lowering his slot, Manaea also created more crossfire by getting closer to third base on top of his arm dropping to also get closer to third base. One June 26, he threw 2.25 feet from the middle of the rubber and on Sept. 21, he was throwing 4.22 feet from the rubber. Manaea's season average distance from the rubber is one of the bigger ones in baseball, but if he held that 4.22 feet figure over a full season, it would be the most in the big leagues by almost a full foot. Here's a visual of his evolution:
Sean Manaea's Mechanics (April/Dark Jersey vs. September).
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) October 14, 2024
More than just lowering his arm angle...he's also cross-firing a lot more. pic.twitter.com/Sf0xPCeXz6
Emmanuel Clase, RHP, Cleveland Guardians
Luke Weaver, RHP, New York Yankees
Jack Flaherty, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers
The skills: Mastering a dominant pitch
I'll run through some other intriguing pitchers from the other three teams in lightning-round fashion.
The Guardians are in the ALCS in large part due to their dominating bullpen, which is first in bullpen WAR by a large margin, led by Clase and Cade Smith. Smith has the single most valuable pitch in baseball in his four-seam fastball, but I want to focus on the second-best pitch in baseball, Clase's cutter. Clase's cutter has slightly above-average movement on the leaderboard, but that's OK because it's thrown harder than any cutter in baseball at 99.5 mph -- more than 10 mph harder than the average cutter. Keep in mind that Mariano Rivera lived on a low-90s cutter and for a contemporary example, Kenley Jansen has thrown roughly 80% cutters for his illustrious career, never averaging more than 93.7 mph with the pitch in any season. The only other pitch Clase throws more than 1% of the time is a low-90s slider. On a per pitch basis, it's the best slider in baseball at plus-3.8 runs per 100 sliders thrown, even better than his cutter.
Weaver has the 20th-best fastball in the game and second best in the playoffs behind Smith, despite standing at a lean 6-2 and being a backend starter his whole career. Weaver's velo is up in short stints as a reliever this year, with the quality of his four-seam fastball (up 1.7 mph and 2.7 inches of lift) and cutter (up 1.0 mph and 1 inch of cut) improving since last season. He also has changed the seam orientation of his changeup grip to help add 2 inches of sink and 2.5 mph of velocity. He is essentially a different pitcher with a new arsenal in a new role, but with the same command from his first eight years in the bigs. You could say he's a dream Weaver.
I wrote about Flaherty's transformation during the NLDS and the main adjustment he made this season. Essentially, he's throwing a better-shaped fastball in the zone more, getting ahead, and then throwing his slider and curveball out of the zone more, inducing more chases and misses on both. That's a winning formula, but it can also be explained in one key number. On a per-pitch basis, Flaherty had the best curveball in baseball this season (plus-2.1 runs per 100 curveballs thrown) while last season it ranked 51st (plus-0.1 runs per 100 curveballs thrown or almost exactly league average). It's not always velocity and movement driving a gaudy Statcast number: These metrics can also measure success from doing the things you were taught in Little League.