ALCS Preview: Six players to watch as Baker, Bochy renew playoff rivalry

Lone Star Series. Silver Boot Series. Meh. As far as I’m concerned, the American League Championship Series is the Barker Bowl — since my Blair & Barker colleague Kevin Barker played for both Dusty Baker and Bruce Bochy.

The two managers also sent him down to the minor leagues, with Bochy taking him out for a consolatory beer after breaking the news. That’s how decent people relate to each other regardless of the push and pull of competition and the realities of the Major Leagues. True story.

You could also call this the Smelly Old Ball Writers Series … since for a lot of us, these two managers have provided endless hours of copy, anecdotes and humour. It’s not a reach to call them beloved.

It’s one for the aged, if not one for the ages.

Baker, the 74-year-old manager of the Houston Astros, brought a tear to many an eye when he finally won a World Series in 2022. The Astros won’t shed their cheaters label until Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman retire … but Baker makes it impossible to hate them entirely. The 68-year-old Bochy, famous for having one of the largest hat sizes in baseball history – at 8 ½, it eked out Kevin Mench’s 8 ¼ - is attempting to become the first manager to ever win a league championship series with three teams.

He has of course won three World Series with the San Francisco Giants (2010, 2012 and 2014) and won the NL pennant with the 1998 San Diego Padres and is 13-1 in his last 14 post-season series. Bochy’s .598 winning percentage in the playoffs is third among managers with at least five post-season appearances. His 45 wins are fourth all-time behind Joe Torre (84), Tony La Russa (70) and Bobby Cox (67.)

Head-to-head — pun intended — Baker has won 119 games of the 205 meetings between them.

The excellent Sarah Langs has a fun piece on this matchup on MLB.com, noting that Bochy and Baker — who met in the 2012 NLCS when Bochy’s Giants beat Baker’s Cincinnati Reds — are the fourth managerial duo with 10 years between their most recent post-season matchups. That includes the legendary Dick Williams and Sparky Anderson and Baker and La Russa, who hooked up in the 2002 NLCS and the 2021 ALDS. It’s the second post-season matchup between managers who have faced each other at least 200 times in the regular season. Baker (2,183 managerial wins) and Bochy (2,093) are two of the 12 MLB managers to reach the 2,000-win mark. Baker has managed 101 post-season games; Bochy 82.

Baker was asked on Saturday how knowing an opponent's tendencies factors into strategy in the analytics age.

“Well, I think overthinking is better than underthinking, number one,” Baker responded. “Number two, I’d rather have a foe that I know versus one that I don’t know. And I’ve always said it’s harder to manage against the person than it is against analytics or a computer, because a lot of times the computer and analytics will tell you … just like when we played Minnesota, they’re going to change their whole lineup early in the game, where another person might not. I respect Bruce. I don’t know what his record is. But he’s got a lot of brains in the head up there.”

The Rangers have been the poor Texas cousins to the Astros in recent years. They were 4-9 against the Astros this season, lost seven of the last eight games between them and haven’t won the Silver Boot (emblematic of a season series win) since 2016. I mean, back then that garbage can near the Astros dugout was little more than just that: a garbage can, as opposed to a crime scene. The Rangers winning percentage against the Astros is .331 — third lowest among their opponents — and their futility was perhaps best summed up in a three-game series in Arlington from Sept. 4-6 when the Astros slugged 16 home runs and became the first team in MLB history to score 12-plus runs and hit five-plus homers in each game of a three-game series, out-scoring the Rangers 39-10.

With that in mind, here’s our six players to watch for in the Lone Star State Series.

Bryan Abreu, Ryan Pressly, RPs, Astros

Look, as much as we all love the guy, we know that Baker is a better manager when he can utilize what my friend Barker calls “no-brainers.” That, of course, makes him identical to every other manager in baseball history, but in an era when creative bullpen use has become de rigueur it’s kind of refreshing to see the non-drama that is Abreu setting up Pressly, the latter of whom is a perfect 14-for-14 in the post-season and was strong in the ALDS after logging the most innings he’s had since becoming a full-time closer. He has not allowed an earned run in his last 17 post-season appearances, over 18 2/3 innings.

The Rangers bullpen has been just fine this post-season but there’s no way Bochy’s comfort level matches that of Baker. Abreu carries a 31-inning scoreless streak, stretching back to July 18, during which time he has allowed 13 hits and struck out 40. He has a 14 2/3-innings scoreless streak over his last 14 post-season appearances, including all 11 of them in 2022. But R.J. Anderson of CBS Sports has a little nugget that might be of concern for the Astros: the Rangers hammer breaking pitches, and Pressley and Abreu each threw close to 60 per cent breaking balls during the regular season…

Jose Abreu, 1B, Astros

We’ll save listing Yordan Alvarez as one to watch until the World Series. But with numbers backing up the notion that power wins in the playoffs — through the first 21 games, teams that have out-homered opponents are 14-1 (seven games saw teams hit the same number of homers) — it seems smart to remind ourselves how good Jose Abreu can be — especially since the guy he replaced this season, Yulieski Gurriel, rebounded from a disappointing 2022 regular season to hit .347 in the post-season with a pair of homers as the Astros went on to win the World Series. Abreu’s 442 and 440-foot homers in Game 3 of the ALDS represented the first time a player had clubbed two 440-foot-plus homers in the Statcast era. 

Given a three-year, $58.5 million contract to replace Gurriel, Abreu found his stride in September, leading the AL with 28 RBIs, with six homers and seven doubles, dragging his lagging hard-hit rate closer to 50 per-cent and jacking up his average exit velocity, and he has continued to crush in the post-season, hitting three homers in the ALDS — two off four-seamers; one off a sweeper — and collecting eight runs batted in. With Kyle Tucker and Bregman going 5-for-29 in the ALDS, Abreu’s bat was hugely significant and even though his regular-season numbers weren’t what was expected, he was a beast in the clutch: ranking fifth in the AL with a .387 average with runners in scoring position and two out and was second in RBIs in that situation with 44. Carlos Lee (45 in 2008) is the only other Astros hitter with more …

Evan Carter, OF, Rangers

Talk about taking a job and running with it. MLB Pipelines No. 8 prospect was in the top three in the AL in slugging and OPS from the date of his Major League debut (Sept. 8) until the end of the regular season and hasn’t slowed his roll in the post-season, slugging .857, hitting .429 with four extra-base hits and three RBIs. All those numbers mirror exactly the stats put up by Corey Seager this post-season. Carter introduced himself to the Majors during the Rangers' four-game series at the Rogers Centre from Sept. 11-14 when he went 4-for-10 with five runs scored and hit his first career homer off Chris Bassitt while throwing out Kevin Kiermaier at the plate.

The second-youngest player to appear in a post-season game in Rangers history, Carter was promoted after Adolis Garcia went on the IL and has become a fixture for Bochy. His barrel rate is solidly in double-digits, and and since his call-up, his chase rate has been among the lowest in baseball. Don’t think a rookie can have an impact? Remember: it was Astros rookie shortstop Jeremy Pena who won both the ALCS and World Series MVPs in 2022 …

Nathan Eovaldi, SP, Rangers

Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer will swallow up much of the pitching oxygen in this series — if, as expected, Scherzer’s outing in a simulated game is enough to take him off the IL — but without Eovaldi’s remarkable October renaissance the Rangers aren’t here. Pitching health and bullpen depth were supposed to be the impediments to a deep Rangers run but so far that has not been the case, as starts by Eovaldi and Jordan Montgomery have set the tone for a staff that has allowed 12 runs in running the table against the Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Orioles — and eight of those came in the Rangers 11-8 win over the Orioles in Game 2 of the ALDS.

Eovaldi and Montgomery are a combined 3-0 with a 2.19 ERA and 22 strikeouts in four starts this post-season and Eovaldi, of course, authored one of the most heroic performances in playoff history when he was with the Boston Red Sox in 2018, pitching eight shutout innings in Games 1 and 2 and then logging six innings of relief in Game 3’s 18-inning loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Eovaldi, who was scheduled to start Game 4, essentially helped first-year manager Alex Cora keep his pitching in order en route to a World Series win.

Eovaldi had a 9.63 ERA over six starts in September after missing six weeks with a right forearm strain. There was no rehabilitation assignment for him: instead, he worked his way back against Major League opposition, finishing the regular season with three starts of over 80 pitches … and 15 earned runs in 13 1/3 innings. But Eovaldi hit 96 miles per hour in the Rangers' 7-1 win over the Orioles in capping off the sweep, his top velocity since before the IL stint. Scherzer’s return would be big …. but there’s a chance Eovaldi, who has pitched both clinching games this post-season, gets the two biggest starts of the series.

Adolis Garcia, RF, Rangers

En route to producing career highs across the board in 2023, Garcia was yet another Rangers player forced to come back from a September stint on the 10-day injured list (right patellar tendon strain) and hit the ground running. Garcia, a two-time all-star, increased his walk rate to a career-high 10.3 per cent in 2023 and he owns Globe Life Field: his 25 homers there were second only to the Atlanta Braves Matt Olson (28) for bombs hit at home. We’ve already talked about the spin-masters in the Astros bullpen and Garcia is one of three Rangers with an OPS over .800 against that pitch. If the Rangers win this series, he’d be my pick for ALCS MVP …

Martin Maldonado, C, Astros

Boring old Martin Maldonado probably won’t come up with a big hit — heck, he might not even get a hit — but this could be a swansong for the 37-year-old catcher who has started 55 of the Astros 62 post-season games since 2018. To explain his importance, I could probably just direct your attention to Tom Verducci’s terrific read on the Twins being Maldonado-ed in Game 4. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what I will do.

Maldonado, however, could figure into some of Baker’s significant in-game moves because of the presence of Yainer Diaz, Maldonado’s heir apparent and a rookie who finished the season tied for second among all catchers in wRC+, hitting 23 homers and batting .282 in 104 games. His work behind the plate has been tremendous, with top six rankings in several key defensive metrics. If things go pear-shaped in this series, Baker’s faith and reliance on Maldonado and the return of veteran Michael Bradley as DH could impact Diaz’s playing time, and raise all those old criticisms of Baker’s preference for older players over young players …

JEFF BLAIR’S PICK: Houston def. Texas 4-2