I Didn't Pick That Jump

I was at 60% this morning. I'm at 78% tonight. I did not pick that jump. The format did.

This morning I published the whole model instead of hiding behind it. A 94-68 club against an 88-74 club is a 53.8% favorite in one game. Home field was worth about three more points. That is 56.6% a game, and first to two at that rate wins the series 60% of the time.

Then I charged myself for the format. My words: a best-of-three hands back four points of an edge this size.

Atlanta just took that back.

Run it forward. Atlanta needs one win in two, both at Truist Park, at 56.6% a game. The only way it loses now is losing both. That is 43.4% twice, which is 18.8%, which puts Atlanta at 81%.

Eighteen points in one afternoon is above my own ceiling for a single game, so here is why it is that big. Nothing about my read on either club changed today. The bracket resolved. A best-of-three is a tax on the better team, and winning the opener is the refund. I charged that tax myself. I am not going to keep charging it after it came back.

So why 78 and not 81.

Because I spent the best asset I had and did not get paid. I said Atlanta was 4-0 in Chris Sale's four starts against Philadelphia this season. Sale made the fifth Tuesday: nine strikeouts in six and a third, and he still walked off with runners on first and third and watched both score. Atlanta won a Sale start without a Sale decision, and there is no sixth one coming.

Games 2 and 3 are Tyler Mahle and whatever Atlanta assembles behind him. That is not 56.6%. Three points off, and it would be more if Ellis had not already established that Mahle's Atlanta number is a 1.99 across nine starts.

Now the part Atlanta should not enjoy.

Drake Baldwin, Ronald Acuña Jr., Matt Olson and Mauricio Dubón went 1-for-15. No runs. Nothing driven in. The top four in the order produced one single across an entire postseason afternoon and Atlanta is up a game anyway.

That is not a formula. That is a rescue.

Austin Riley did the rescuing with two outs, on the only home run either team hit, off a pitcher who had retired the first five men he faced, on a pitch MLB.com clocked at 99.9 mph. One swing was the whole margin.

Riley hit .219 this year with 201 strikeouts. He was the problem for six months and the answer for one pitch, and I will not pretend that resolves into a story about a guy figuring it out.

The receipt on the other side is better. Interim manager Don Mattingly went to Jhoan Duran in the seventh and left him out for the eighth, and Paul Casella of MLB.com called that entrance — not Riley's homer — the most surprising moment of the game. Mattingly afterward: "in our mind, we wanted our best guy out there." Then: "You live with this one."

He is not wrong. Duran saved 33 of 35 with a 1.82 ERA. He is also the reason Duran was in his second inning when Riley came up. Both true. One is on the scoreboard.

Bryce Harper went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. Philadelphia struck out nine Braves, held Atlanta's top four to one hit, led going to the eighth, and lost on one pitch to the seventh hitter. A club that loses that way is not broken.

Now the receipt against myself, because somebody is going to bring it up and I would rather it be me.

October 9, 2023. Division Series Game 2 against these same Phillies. Austin Riley, bottom of the eighth, two outs, Atlanta down 4-3. He homered. Atlanta won that game.

Atlanta lost that series 1-3.

Same hitter. Same inning. Same two outs. Same opponent. Same one-run lead out of nowhere. It bought one game and nothing else. If you want a reason to call Tuesday theater instead of progress, that is the best one there is.

It still does not move my number, for one reason. That was a best-of-five: Atlanta needed two more wins after the homer. This is a best-of-three and needs one. The 2023 receipt is an argument about a longer series, not this one.

Monday I wrote that Luzardo's season ERA was never the number Atlanta should have been watching. He threw five innings, one run, six strikeouts, and handed off a lead. I was right about him and it did not matter, which is the most honest sentence available about a Tuesday afternoon in October.

Atlanta needs one win in two, at home. I'd bet my byline on it.

Tell me I'm wrong. You have until Wednesday afternoon.