Christian Vázquez against a righty is not a place you wanted to end up ... unless the alternative is Julien against a lefty.

Hitters age 25 and under, by OPS: 1. Ronald Acuña Jr.: 1.002 2. Juan Soto: 0.894 3. Royce Lewis: 0.885

Kevin Gausman is primarily a two-pitch pitcher: fastball and split-finger. In 2023, his best pitch was the 4-seam fastball to right-handed hitters. When opponents got to him, it was lefties sitting on the split-finger or righties jumping on the rare slider.

Here are the Twins platoon splits to keep in mind should Toronto bring lefties out of its bullpen.

It's not hard to make the case that the Twins have a better lineup than the Jays, especially if you look strictly at 2023 numbers.

Twins whiffed on only four of Gausman's split-fingers. That's a low number, but not unheard of against Gausman. He pitched in 31 regular season games. He got four or fewer whiffs on his split-finger in five of those games. One of the five was against the Twins.

For what it's worth, here's Sonny Gray's OPS Against pitching to each catcher... Jeffers: 0.578 Vázquez: 0.635

Will be trying out some new data viz today. Smash that follow button.

Twins and Astros both surged offensively in the second half after slow starts. Biggest difference? Twins still strike out a lot (and walk a lot) and the Astros do not.

Starts with negative run value (i.e. giving up fewer runs than expected over duration of the start) ... Verlander: 19 of 27 Ober: 19 of 26 However, Verlander's starts skew more toward excellent. The distribution has no left tail: excellent is the expectation.

Astros top hitters: Alvarez, Altuve, and Tucker (combined 811 postseason PA) Twins top hitters: Lewis, Wallner, Jeffers, Julien (combined 32 postseason PA)

Framber Valdez is a great pitcher. His starts have also been volatile in 2023. Take Pablo López's worst start (by the number it was against CLE). Valdez had four starts worse than that. López's median start was half a run better than Valdez's median start. Slim advantage: Twins.

Astros lineup has been formidable since the All-Star Break. An outing like Pablo López had is not a given. They have six guys with an OPS above 0.850 since then!

Cristian Javier's profile, solely on 2023 data, is very interesting. He has one great (and I mean really great) pitch: his 4-seam fastball to righties. It saved 20 runs! Everything else is merely average. And the fastball didn't play at all against lefties.