Rest vs. momentum: What layoffs means for Rangers, D-backs

The Rangers and D-backs are red-hot, and they have momentum at their backs as they head into their respective League Championship Series. In the nearly three decades since the Major Leagues went to a Wild Card system in 1995, they’re two of just 11 teams to start their postseasons 5-0. Eight of the other nine went to the World Series -- and the only one that didn’t, the 2020 Braves, lost to one of the ones who did, the 2020 Dodgers. Therefore: their continued success is guaranteed.

• 2023 League Championship Series presented by loanDepot: Full schedule, bracket and more

But maybe the Rangers and D-backs are too hot. Texas swept Baltimore on Tuesday, giving them four days off before the ALCS begins on Sunday. Arizona swept the Dodgers on Wednesday, giving them an equal four days off before the NLCS begins on Monday. Layoffs are bad, right? Just ask the 104-win Braves, who just got bounced by the Phillies for the second straight year, or the 101-win Orioles and 100-win Dodgers, who combined to win exactly zero postseason games. On second thought, maybe Texas and Arizona are actually doomed.

It is, at its heart, a battle of narratives, and it’s easy to pick the one you prefer after we see how it plays out. But what actually matters?

Do layoffs matter?

Not if you ask Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos, whose recent comments about the 2022 playoffs -- “I don’t think [losing] had anything to do with the layoff. It’s just a matter of the Phillies playing well and deserved it and the guys in our rotation weren't at full strength” -- sound like they could be repeated verbatim about the 2023 playoffs, right down to the opponent. Considering how much rosters can change over the course of a season, upsets aren’t always what they seem.

Not, also, if you ask the 2022 Astros, who had layoffs of five, three, and four days between their various postseason series, which limited them to merely being victorious in nine of eleven games on their way to winning the World Series, or the 2019 Nationals, who had to wait six days for the Astros to arrive, then won the title anyway. In both 2013 and 2018, the champion Red Sox had three or more days before every single round, as did the 2010 Giants.

Looking back at the span of postseason baseball covering 2004-22 but excluding 2020, we find that 65 teams had more than four days of rest headed into a postseason series, as Texas and Arizona will. (That’s not just in the postseason; it also includes days following the end of the regular season.) Those well-rested teams are 28-37, which sounds bad, except that it ignores that sometimes both teams are rested, which was true as recently as last October, when both the Phillies and Astros advanced to the World Series on the exact same day, and thus had equal layoffs before the Fall Classic began.

It also ignores that there’s one thing worse than getting too much rest while receiving a bye in the current Wild Card format, which is that none of the teams who rested saw their season end in that round. If you asked the Rays, Brewers, Marlins or Blue Jays if they’d have preferred to "get their timing thrown off" while having a layoff before the second round instead of getting eliminated in the first, it’s not hard to guess what their answers would be.

So instead, let’s just keep it to the situation we’re seeing here. Let’s look only at the ALCS, NLCS or World Series, and only when one team has considerably more rest than its opponent, and …

… well, wait just one second.

ALCS: The Rangers have a long layoff ... but so do the Astros

Texas gets four full days off, time which they’ll happily accept to see whether injured starters Max Scherzer, Jon Gray, or both can heal up enough to rejoin the roster after sitting out the ALDS.

But Houston gets three full days, which isn’t much different. It benefits the Astros on the pitching side as well, because not having to play Game 5 against the Twins on Friday night gives them more spare time to fill, but it also means that they can start Justin Verlander in Game 1 against Texas as opposed to needing him to start the final ALDS game against Minnesota. It means it’s more likely he can start multiple times if necessary in the ALCS, too.

• Rangers-Astros ALCS Game 1 FAQ

“Four days off” and “three days off” barely seem different. It probably isn’t. Yet just to be sure, we looked back at LCS/WS games since 2004 in which both sides had at least three days of rest, but there was at least a one-day difference in rest – so not, in this case, series like the 2022 World Series in which both clubs were equally rested.

It’s only happened 11 times, and not since the 2018 NLCS, so we’re not exactly looking at large number of chances over the last two decades, nor accounting for player injuries that can easily flip a short series. Plus, we’re attempting to caveat all of this as much as possible before admitting that when two teams with decent rest met up in the LCS or WS, the teams with more rest went … 1-10. Yes, we’re as shocked as you are.

The lone winner there was the 2007 Red Sox, who finished off their ALDS series one day sooner than Cleveland did, giving them four days off compared to Cleveland’s three, and that’s it. The most recent non-2020 time this setup has even happened was in 2018, when it happened twice, as the more-rested Astros and Brewers (four days off) lost in the LCS to the slightly-less-rested-but-still-rested Red Sox and Dodgers, respectively (three days off).

This ultimately comes down to how you choose to look at “rest.” As FanGraphs found recently, teams with four-plus days of rest playing teams with two or fewer days of rest were highly successful (24-11 all-time). So rest, there, was great. Teams with equal rest are, by definition, .500 against each other.

This kind of thing absolutely should not matter – and it probably doesn’t, given how rarely the situation even surfaces. It’s probably noise, a fluke, given that it’s been five years since we’ve even seen it. But also: Wow! 1-10! How unexpected.

Given the similarities here, this ought to be a narrative-free zone, at least in terms of “rest vs. momentum.” Both teams have rest and “postseason momentum.” Both possess future Hall of Fame managers who have won titles before. They even finished with identical 90-72 records in the same division and have played .500 against each other for more than a decade.

But, of course, the story could turn to Houston’s far greater postseason experience, given its seventh consecutive trip to the ALCS. There’s always a narrative to be found.

NLCS: How much of a layoff actually matters?

Like the Rangers, the D-backs get four days off, some of which will be welcome before they go on the road for the NLCS because -- despite Brandon Pfaadt’s surprisingly good start in Game 3 on Wednesday night -- they really have only two starting pitchers who inspire a great deal of confidence, Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly.

• D-backs-Phillies NLCS Game 1 FAQ

That the D-backs stomped all over the Dodgers was partially about the tattered Los Angeles starting rotation, an issue which was well-understood entering the series, but also about the fact that Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman combined to go 1-for-21. That's a credit to Arizona's pitching -- and the fact that the club was able to line up those top two starters, Gallen and Kelly, to start the first two games. They can do the same again in the NLCS, simply because they didn’t have to use them again in two more games against the Dodgers.

With Philadelphia's Game 4 victory on Thursday night, it's the same situation as in the AL, in that it'll be a team with four off-days (Arizona) up against a team with three off-days (Philadelphia).

There’s another difference here, too, in that while the Astros and Rangers sport identical regular-season records, the D-backs had six fewer wins than the Phillies. In theory, that might be where you might find momentum; the lesser team that had to fight to gain entry to the playoffs never stopped fighting, while the superior regular-season team let up. (Indeed, the last three Dodgers playoff exits have featured three of the largest gaps in regular-season winning percentages by a losing team in history.)

There has only been one time in recent history when a team won at least five fewer games than its opponent and had at least one extra day of rest, which makes sense, given that teams that win more are more likely to get byes and to advance quickly. That would be the 2012 Tigers, an 88-win team that was swept by the 94-win Giants in the World Series, when San Francisco had a mere one day between the seventh game of the NLCS and the start of the World Series.

As the old saying goes, momentum is only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher. That might be less true than it used to be, in an age of increased bullpen use in the playoffs. It's true for the D-backs, as they get to reset Gallen and Kelly, but it's true for the Phillies as well, since they'll have their top two of Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola ready to go in response.

If layoffs were really damaging, then on Thursday, the D-backs might have been rooting for the Phillies to win, just to get that layoff started, even at the cost of setting up up their starting rotation. The fact that absolutely no one thinks that is true -- that the D-backs actually wanted the series to end, giving the Phillies rest and their own continued momentum -- might tell you all you need to know about these narratives.