Starting analysis of Game 4 of the Luis Gil World Series

Sometimes it is not entirely clear what the story of an upcoming game or duel will be. Sometimes a good team competes against another without any clear approach to “what to look for.”

This is not one of those moments.

Tuesday's World Series Game 4 at Yankee Stadium, New York, will start rookie Luis Gil, who led the majors in walks despite pitching the most innings at No. 64. He's succeeded in part because, despite excellent performances, he simply can't get batters to chase (15th percentile in this metric). He'll face a Dodgers lineup that craves walks (9.6%, third-lowest in the majors), doesn't hunt (25.7%, second-lowest in the majors) and is No. 1 in at least one more advanced game is swing decision metric, Robert Orr's “SEAGER”.

A pitcher who has a hard time limiting walks against one of the sport's most demanding lineups? Now There are a catch.

Over the past four years, only two starters who have thrown at least 180 innings have had a walk rate higher than Gil's 12.5%. One of them, Miami's Edward Cabrera, finished with a 4.95 ERA this year and was demoted to the minors last season expressly to try to throw more strikes. The other one is actually also in the 2024 World Series and was dominant, but he's no longer a starter – Michael Kopech from Los Angeles. It's not exactly a traditional recipe for success.

On the other hand, despite higher quality pitching, the Dodgers' chase rate of 25.7% in the regular season has remained exactly 25.7% in the postseason. Since Statcast went live in 2015, four of the seven postseasons with the lowest team chase rate (at least among teams that stayed long enough to see 750 pitches) were Dodgers clubs, namely the 2017, 2018, '20 and '24 . It's not a coincidence. It's what she Do.

Of course, that doesn't mean Gil can't be effective, because of course we saw him have an All-Star caliber first half (even if he wasn't selected), and the Yankees won Game 4 of the ALCS, its first previous launch this month. It also helps that he shares some qualities with one of the best starters in baseball (as we'll get into in a moment).

It goes without saying that you can't start the World Series against a lineup that isn't dangerous, but that's not exactly an ideal matchup, is it? Here's what to look out for on Tuesday evening.

1) It's actually not that Gil can't throw strikes.

That's the first thing you would think, right? “Pitcher gives a lot of walks, so he must have terrible lead.”

But it's not that Gil can't throw strikes; his in-zone rate of 49% is only slightly below the major league average of 51%. When he enters the zone, he produces a league-average swing rate on these pitches and a better-Above average error rate. Where the hikes come from is actually a combination of two things:

A) He's bad at giving chase. When he leaves the zone, he only manages to make a swing on 25% of those throws. The Major League average is 29%, and starters who are really good at it, like Cristopher Sanchez or Shota Imanaga, can go as high as 40%. Generally, you want to get hitters to bid on “bad” pitches, and Gil doesn’t do that.

B) He's really bad at first pitch shots. Among starters, of which there are nearly 200 and who have thrown 180 innings over the last four years, Gil's first-pitch strike rate of 55% is the third-lowest. There is really a mixed picture in this area. There's Kopech again in the bottom five, as well as the largely ineffective Zach Davies (5.43 ERA at the time), but also Cristian Javier, who has been pretty good when healthy. You probably don't want to do this, but it's not fatal either.

You end up with a lot of deep counts because only four qualified pitchers use more pitches per plate appearance than Gil, and a requirement for a walk is that you can't give out a ball until the count reaches three balls. More than 10% of Gil's pitches feature a three-ball count, and you won't be surprised that this is one of the highest rates of any regular pitcher this year. The Dodgers lineup has the fifth-most pitches per plate appearance, so expect plenty of deep counts on Tuesday.

So how does a pitcher survive if he doesn't limit walks, doesn't get much chase, and gets high pitch counts? By otherwise generally being unbeatable. Part of Gil's success early in the season was simply limiting hit; His .171 goals-against average was one of the lowest first-half points in the last 70 years. It could never have fully lasted on this scale, but it gives you an idea of ​​what he's doing, which is “throwing away ugly stuff and daring people to damage it, and if that involves a walk, then so be it.”

Wait a minute: why does this sound so familiar?

2) There is a way to be – or was – so successful.

Last year, Blake Snell won the National League Cy Young Award, becoming the first winner to take home the trophy since 1959 and leading his league in walks. Previously we said that Gil worked three-ball counts more than almost anyone else. Otherwise, Snell was one of the “almost everyone's” names this year. Gil sees a swing rate of just 45%, one of the 15 lowest among regular starters; he is essentially tied to Snell. How did Snell win that Cy last year? Because it was his third entry into the top 10 for “lowest batting average against” seasons since the Wild Card began in 1995.

You get away with it when you just can't get hit, and in the first half Gil did his best Snell impression.

In his first 22 starts through August 7:

But he lasted just four innings against the White Sox on August 12th and then left his start early on August 20th with a mild back strain. When he returned in September, Gil allowed just two earned runs in his next three starts, but the underlying metrics were worse. His last two starts against Oakland and Pittsburgh were somewhat disastrous, capping a difficult home stretch.

Walking speed, believe it or not, has barely changed. What happened was that the pitches became more hittable, especially the four-seater, which allowed a .337 slugging percentage in front of one in the first half .548 mark in the second half.

All of this seems problematic, although it's interesting to see how he tried to hold his own against the Guardians in the ALCS. Ten of the 14 sliders he threw in Game 4 of that series were in the zone, his highest slider zone rate of his entire career. Eleven of his 21 changeups were in the zone, the fourth-highest rate of all starts in which he threw at least 10. Meanwhile, his four-seater had one of the lowest zone rates of any start of his career.

3) He's already had a good start against the Dodgers in 2024.

It is worth noting that we already saw this duel this season on June 9th. Gil was beyond great, allowing three runs in 5 2/3 innings, but more importantly, he only allowed one batter, Freddie Freeman.

Gil didn't do it by taking shots – it was just the opposite: his zone rate was one of his lowest of the season. What he did was entice the Dodgers to swing (in fact, his fourth-highest swing rate of all starts in his career) and chase (his eighth-highest chase rate of all starts in his career). In particular, he got Shohei Ohtani to hit six of nine shots and go 0-2 against him.

But that was Gil in the first half, right? His success in Game 4 will certainly be all about keeping traffic off the bases. But it will be at least as much about preventing damage to the fastball. He can and has developed well, even if he allows walks. He can't last when the four-seater is damaged – and for all the great work this Dodger lineup has done, they've actually been underperforming against right-handed four-seaters this year.

There is a path to success here, even if it is narrow.