Analyzing the Starting Pitching in This Year’s Postseason

Sunday night’s NLCS Game 6 offered quite a contrast in its starting pitcher matchup. With a chance to push the series to a decisive Game 7, the Mets started Sean Manaea, a 32-year-old lefty who made a full complement of 32 starts during the regular season, set a career high for innings pitched (181 2/3), and had already made three strong postseason starts, allowing five runs across 17 innings. On the other side, with an opportunity to close out the series and claim their fourth pennant in eight seasons, the Dodgers tabbed Michael Kopech, a 28-year-old righty who started 27 games last year but hadn’t done so once this year, instead pitching out of the bullpen 67 times in the regular season and four more in the playoffs. The unorthodox choice owed to the Dodgers’ injury-wracked rotation. Los Angeles has barely been able to muster three workable starters for October, let alone four, and so manager Dave Roberts has resorted to sprinkling in bullpen games, with mixed results.

The ballgame turned out to be a mismatch, but not in the way you might have imagined. Kopech struggled with his control, throwing just 12 strikes out of his 25 pitches, walking two, and allowing one hit and one run. If he set a tone for the rest of the Dodgers staff, it was that this was going to be a grind, the outcome hinging on their ability to navigate out of traffic — which they did, stranding 13 runners while yielding “only” five runs. Meanwhile Manaea, who had limited the Dodgers to two hits and two earned runs over five innings in NLCS Game 2, lasted just two-plus innings and was battered for six hits while walking two. He was charged with five runs, four of which came off the bat of Tommy Edman in the form of a two-run double in the first inning and a two-run homer in the third.

The Dodgers weren’t expecting Kopech to go any deeper, leaving Roberts to follow a script that allowed him to utilize his remaining relievers to best effect (such as it was). The Mets harbored hopes that Manaea could at least pitch into the middle innings so that manager Carlos Mendoza could avoid deploying some of their lesser relievers, but the starter faltered so early that they didn’t have that luxury. As it was, the fifth run charged to Manaea scored when Phil Maton, already carrying an 8.44 ERA this October, was summoned with no outs in the third and didn’t escape before serving up a two-run homer to Will Smith. Faced with a 6-1 deficit, the Mets refused to go quietly, but went down just the same in a 10-5 loss that included 14 pitchers combining to allow 22 hits and 12 walks. It was excruciating viewing, and with a pennant on the line, one couldn’t help but wish instead for starters battling deep into the game. Alas, this was hardly atypical October baseball.

Indeed, the collective work of starting pitchers during this postseason should come as no surprise to anyone who’s tuned in over the past decade. With regular season starting pitcher usage already on the wane due to workload concerns and an understanding of the three-times-through-the-order penalty, the average postseason start slipped below five innings in 2017, and while it has poked its head back above that line a couple of times since, those seasons have been the exceptions. This year’s postseason starters are averaging fewer innings per turn than in any season but 2021, and the drop-off from their regular season average — which was actually the highest it’s been since 2018 — to their postseason average is the second largest in that span:

Despite that postseason average of 4.25 innings per start, the starters have performed respectably, at least relative to recent standards:

This year’s starters have thrown fewer pitches than ever, and lasted at least six innings less often than in any of these seasons save for 2021. Nonetheless, their collective ERA is still the second-lowest mark of the past half-decade, and as you can see, they’ve allowed fewer runs per start — not per nine innings — than at any other point in that span. Managers are using their hooks sooner, for reasons both general and specific to their particular situations.

The Dodgers were well below that average of 4.25 innings, but their starters did tend to work deeper than another LCS participant:

The Guardians got even fewer innings per turn out of their starters than the Dodgers. All season long, manager Stephen Vogt and company struggled to find effective starters, having lost Shane Bieber to Tommy John surgery early in the season. Their rotation’s 4.40 ERA and 4.51 FIP both ranked 24th in the majors; they had the highest ERA among the postseason teams, while in FIP they were just one point better than the Brewers, who nonetheless had the better park-adjusted FIP- (110 to 1…