You are the champions of baseball, and you just completed one of the most miraculous comebacks in the history of sports.

Source: FanGraphs

During the Sportscenter running before the start of yesterday’s World Series game, ESPN did a segment on some trends associated with cold weather* baseball. The numbers discussed ranged from biometric data (your grip strength and reaction time ability both decrease dramatically in cold weather) and some of the resulting baseball numbers such as that batting average drops and errors increase in cold weather.

*Link goes to one produced about football, but the same biometric data applies.

I do not think any of the above should surprise you. I found it fairly intuitive. I can recall with great clarity that my fingers do not seem as dexterous when suffering from cold. What I hadn’t done before though was make the explicit connection between the biological nuisances of cold and the dynamics of a baseball game. Think about how reduced grip strength can impact a pitcher. Some of his control is going to be diminished, but probably not evenly so as offspeed pitches require more of a grip than a fastball does. And writing of fastballs, think about how an increase in reaction time affects a hitter trying to distinguish between pitches and then make contact with a 90+mph pitch.

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Before Game Four, Rangers manager Ron Washington was caught on camera giving pitcher Derek Holland a pep talk right before first pitch. He may want to do the same tonight with Matt Harrison, as the Rangers need a good outing from him tonight.

For the World Series, the Rangers’ cumulative bullpen WPA is -1.065. The four relievers Washington has used most — Alexi Ogando (five appearances), Neftali Feliz (four), Scott Feldman (four) and Darren Oliver (three) all have a negative WPA. Ogando has been the most egregiously bad, and also the most frequently used. He has compiled a negative WPA in four of his five appearances, and in his one positive outing he probably would have been tagged with runs — and a negative WPA — if Albert Pujols had not forgotten about the hit-and-run he had apparently called for. Feliz had been fine until last night, but even when he has performed well enough, he has been treading on thin ice, as he has walked at least one batter in all four of his World Series appearances.

It’s not just that the Rangers bullpen is failing — they’re also failing in the clutch. Eleven of the 23 appearances by the Rangers’ bullpen have come with a pLI higher than two — in those 11 appearances, the ‘pen has totaled a WPA of -1.086. Most of the ugly in that came last night, and it will be interesting to see if Washington has a short memory and goes to his trusted guys again — no one threw more than 23 pitches so they should all be ready to go — or if he is going to seek alternatives.

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There was a moment, as the Cardinals and Rangers somehow dragged themselves through the middle innings of Game Six, when David Freese was the goat for the Cardinals. Freese was 0-for-2 through the first five innings, but it wasn’t like he stranded the bases loaded or struck out looking twice. It wasn’t the bat. It was this one moment here that induced cringes (and laughs) nationwide, captured by SB Nation’s Jeff Sullivan:

When it comes to pitching, the pop-up is the next best thing to a strikeout. Batters reach on pop-ups around two percent of the time. There it was, already inside Freese’s glove. And then, there it was again, on the ground, as one of the Cardinals’ biggest postseason heroes committed one of the most egregious errors a Major League baseball player can ever commit, whether it’s Game Six of the World Series or a 6-0 sixth inning in the 66th game of the season. Of course, the error would be punished, as a mere two pitches later Michael Young drilled a double to the left field gap which plated Hamilton, the go-ahead run.

The stage was set, should the Rangers just hold on, for Freese’s mistake to be the one that ended the Cardinals’ season. But, as Jonah Keri reminded us in his fantastic recap for Grantland, without the constraint of a clock, as long as there remains an out to be made, any scenario is possible.

Like going from the goat who blew the Little League play to putting together one of the greatest games in World Series history.

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Chris Carpenter is starting tonight on only three days rest, while Matt Harrison hopes to do better than the shellacking he took in Game Four. Both pitchers will need to change up how they’re attacking hitters if they want to be successful.

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Earlier this week we published our first Top 15 prospects list teaser with player profiles on Washington Nationals’ Matt Skole, Los Angeles Angels’ Chevez Clarke, and San Francisco Giants’ Jesus Galindo. Today you receive another three prospect reports on some players that I really like – and feel could be valuable big league players – but they fell short of their teams’ Top 15 prospects lists.

We’re also offering a challenge today. Below, you’ll find a direct quote from a professional scout that I talked with about an Arizona Diamondbacks Top 15 prospect. The first person to correctly identify that prospect will win bragging rights.

Scout Quote: “[Player X] was a polished high school hitter. He had power to all fields, but had the advanced look of a hitter. Since he signed, he has not disappointed in his production in the minor leagues. He is continuing to improve in all aspects and his make up is second to none.”

Let’s hear your guesses!

And now onto the prospect profiles…

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Former Red Sox GM Theo Epstein received a hero’s welcome in Chicago on Tuesday as he took the reins of the moribound organization. Epstein’s exploits in Boston – most notably two World Series rings – have Cubs fans hoping that Epstein will end the curse of the goat and deliver the Cubs’ first World Series championship since 1908. The parallels between the Cubs of 2011 and the Red Sox of 2002 that Epstein inherited are numerous. Both are large markets, with high revenues. Both play in revered, but decrepit and small ballparks. Both are allegedly cursed, with excruciatingly painful postseason scars – Bartman, Buckner, Bucky “Bleeping” Dent – intermingled with decades of mediocrity or worse.

Unfortunately for Cubs fans, the parallels between the 2002 Red Sox and the 2011 Cubs end when comparing the talent on hand. The 2002 Red Sox won 93 games and finished 10.5 games behind the New York Yankees in the A.L. East and missed the wild card by 6 games. As the table below indicates, Epstein inherited a roster that included a trio of starting pitchers – Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe, and Tim Wakefield – that combined for 17.6 WAR in 2002, and a core of offensive players led by Manny Ramirez (5.4 WAR), Nomar Garciaparra (4.8 WAR), Johnny Damon (4.1 WAR), and Jason Varitek (2.5 WAR). Out of this group only Garciaparra (0.5 WAR) failed to make a significant contribution to the Red Sox 2004 World Series winning team.

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The last day of the regular season was perhaps the best evening of baseball I’ve ever seen. It was the kind of unbelievable night that justifies the “once in a lifetime” tag. And yet, exactly one month later, we’re sitting here recovering from a World Series game that might just have been the most exciting game in the history of the sport.

There were 108 plays in last night’s game – 46 of those occurred when the leverage index was at least 1.50. Perhaps more staggeringly, there were 18 plays where the LI was above 3.00 and 11 of those came with an LI of 4.00 or higher. When you think about some of the great World Series games of all time, we think of specific moments – Kirk Gibson‘s home run in 1988, Joe Carter‘s in 1993, Luis Gonzalez’s bloop single in 2001 – but most of those were isolated instances within that game. Those games offered one great, unbelievable moment – last night offered us about a dozen of them.

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While the upcoming Free Agent crop isn’t the deepest in recent memory, there are a few sexy names at the top of the list. One of those names is of course Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Prince Fielder. Looking at his stats, we see a player who has accumulated 15.3 WAR over the last three seasons and is a perennial threat to launch 40 home runs and get on base over 40% of the time. However, due to his less than slim body type, it is not prudent to assume that he will age like most other Major League players.

In order to attempt to predict what Fielder will do over the life of his next contract, we should compare him to players with similar body types. Jeff Zimmerman has put together a list of 205 players who weigh more than 3.25 lbs per inch of height in order to construct an aging curve. To put that in perspective, a 6’0″ tall player would have to weigh a minimum of 234 lbs in order to be included in the sample.

Below is a graph that shows the aging curve of the heavy players we identified, and the curve for average sized players. Across the x-axis is age, and the y-axis runs (batting, positional, UZR), with 0 being the peak year. The y-axis shows how many runs below the peak year they are at a given age.

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