SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Time and again, the past couple of decades have shown that best teams in the regular season — even ones as dominant as 104-58, National League East-winning Atlanta was this year — are guaranteed nothing in the playoffs.
A year ago, for instance, the 111-51 Los Angeles Dodgers were bounced in the division series by the San Diego Padres, falling in four games, just like Atlanta did against the Philadelphia Phillies last month.
In 2021, an 88-73 Atlanta team upset the 106-56 Dodgers in the NL Championship Series en route to a World Series title, after L.A. had knocked off the 107-55 San Francisco Giants in the divisional round.
In 2015, the 100-62 St. Louis Cardinals fell in the first round to the 97-65 Chicago Cubs. The 106-60 Phillies lost in five to St. Louis in 2011. The 100-62 Los Angeles Angels were knocked out in four by the Boston Red Sox in 2008.
There was a double-upset in the 2003 divisional round when 101-win Atlanta and 100-win San Francisco both lost. Perhaps most telling of all is how, in 2001, the 116-46 Seattle Mariners needed five games to escape the division series before falling in five to the New York Yankees in the AL Championship Series.
So, as unexpected as Atlanta’s loss to the Phillies was, especially after matching the single-season team home run record of 307 and establishing a new slugging mark at .501, it shouldn’t have come as a complete shock.
More teams and more games in the expanded post-season structure creates additional degrees of randomness, even if teams are reluctant to accept that.
“I’d love to chalk it up to randomness,” says Alex Anthopoulos, Atlanta’s president of baseball operations and general manager. “The problem is, the feeling is so awful and it stays with you for such a long time, that you don't make yourself feel any better by just saying it’s random, so you're always going to look for reasons. We have ideas, thoughts. Specifically, we had four extra-base hits (against the Phillies). We’re a team that clearly slugged, set all kinds of offensive home run totals and so on. I don’t take that sample and say, 'Well, we had four extra-base hits in four games, we need to go get slug and extra-base power.’ We have it. That's not going to make us change. Our position-player core is pretty much set. We really like those guys. That being said, you need to play well. I don't think you're doing your job if you just chalk it up to randomness or shrug your shoulders.”
The challenge, then, is in how to adapt without overcompensating, something Anthopoulos concedes that he “definitely” did after the 2020 playoffs, when Atlanta lost the NLCS in seven games after going up 3-1 on the Dodgers.
That off-season, “I absolutely was caught up in … what wins in the post-season, and this is what we need to do and it cost us for a large majority of 2021,” he says. “We were able to adjust on the fly, add a ton of players at the trade deadline. That's not a model I think is sustainable and something we want to do each year. I definitely took away from that you still have to remember you need to get there and you can't lose sight of that.”
And therein lies the push and pull between depth for the 162-game grind and having the impact necessary for the October sprint. Atlanta thought it had the right mix this year and, really, it’s hard to argue that it didn’t. But the Phillies beat them and so some tweaks, if not more significant changes, are coming to try to combat the post-season’s inherent randomness.
"You have to be careful that you don't overweigh a four-game sample size, but I don't think you can ignore it, either,” explains Anthopoulos. “I know that's kind of two answers in one, but we have general ideas and thoughts. It likely will influence what we do this off-season, which is why I'm probably not going to get into it, I don't want people to know what we're trying to do, other than we want to make the team better.”
VOUCHING FOR VARSHO: Here’s the perspective on Daulton Varsho from Mike Hazen, the Arizona Diamondbacks GM who traded the outfielder to the Toronto Blue Jays for catcher Gabriel Moreno and now free agent Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
“Daulton’s going to be an exceptional player,” says Hazen. “He is an exceptional player, in my mind. He is dynamic. He is one of the best defensive players in the entire game. He’s got a ton of power and I think he’s still very much that player. I haven't watched him day-to-day, so I don't really know (what was different in 2023 versus 2022). But those are all the things that he did for our team.”
The outlook on the trade has certainly been skewed by the post-season, where Moreno and Gurriel helped lead the Diamondbacks to the World Series while Varsho and the Blue Jays got bounced in two games by the Minnesota Twins.
Moreno batted .284/.339/.408 with seven homers and 50 RBIs while playing Gold Glove defence in 111 regular-season games, then hit .238/.304/.444 with four homers and 12 RBIs in 17 playoff games, delivering several key hits.
The extra power he showed in the post-season suggested some sort of breakthrough for the 23-year-old, but Hazen brushed off that notion, saying that “during the season, he only had seven home runs for us, so I wouldn't say that we necessarily unlocked anything during the course of the season.
“Much like a large part of our roster, we hit some home runs in the post-season,” said Hazen. “It was a shorter sample. We think those guys are going to have pop, but I don't know specifically that we did anything to change anything with regard to his swing.”
As for Varsho, his batting line from 2023 is almost identical to that of 2022, the key differences being nine fewer hits (125-116) and seven fewer homers (27-20). That perhaps correlates to a dip in the percentage of balls he barrelled, down to 7.3 per cent from 10.2, and a dramatic shift in launch angle, to 20.5 degrees from 14.9.
A few adjustments to help him better handle high fastballs and off-speed pitches, which he didn’t hit as hard or as effectively this year compared to last, along with an expected shift to centre field in place of free agent Kevin Kiermaier, should help him max out his value in 2024.
"Daulton Varsho had an incredible year overall, but a slightly down year offensively," says Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins. "We expect that to return, back to the offensive player that he was the year prior, if not somewhere in between those two. That's an incredible outcome."
VOTTO VALUE: Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins raised some eyebrows with how far he went in praising free agent Joey Votto this week, noting the “massive impact in the community if he were” to sign in Toronto and adding, “definitely something that we would have to consider if that was something he wanted to pursue.”
The market is still young, but some who know Votto believe that he’d be more interested in playing at home now than he would have been earlier in his career. How much the 40-year-old can contribute next year is a reasonable concern — he hit .202/.314/.433 with 14 homers in 242 plate appearances with the Cincinnati Reds this year — but there’s little doubt about the intangibles he’d offer, something Atkins acknowledged that “our team would embrace.”
Nick Krall, president of baseball operations for the Reds, praised the first baseman’s contributions in helping a young team to an 82-80 record this year, saying, “I’ve never seen a player work as hard as Joey Votto.”
“He's a guy that really cares about being the best he can at his craft,” Krall continues. “He is an awesome person to be around. He's got very insightful things with how he approaches his game, his preparation, what he does every day. He's just a tremendous person.”
Of particular utility to the Blue Jays may very well be Votto’s remarkable hitting acumen and how he can pour into his teammates in terms of how to think through the approach to different pitchers, an element that Brandon Belt brought to the table this year.
The way Votto understands hitting is “way above what I can articulate,” Krall quips. “He's one of the best I've ever seen at it. Just being able to watch him go about it over the last 22 years, whether it was in the minor leagues, in the big leagues, and how he's made adjustments and how he's adjusted his swing, adjusted his approach is incredible to watch.
“He's a player that's going to end up being in the Hall of Fame with a Reds cap on,” adds Krall. “That's going to end up being his legacy. Hopefully, he continues to work in the game for a long time and be an ambassador after his playing days end, as well.”
