Ben and Sam discuss the breaks that went the Royals’ way in Game 6, then preview the final game of the 2014 season.

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So! Tonight, there’s going to be a Game 7 of the World Series. Your cheering allegiances aside, that’s a rare and wonderful thing. Appreciate it, because now we’ll have the most possible baseball before the long stretch of no baseball, and this isn’t an occasion that comes around all that often. We had a Game 7 three years ago between Texas and St. Louis, but it had been nine years since it’d happened before that, the longest stretch in big league history. Sometimes, you get classics like Curt Schilling & Randy Johnson against Roger Clemens & Mariano Rivera in 2001; sometimes, you get John Tudor allowing eight runners in 2.1 innings on the way to losing 11-0 in 1985. What’s important is that we’re set up for history, and often the biggest impediment to that is simply the opportunity for it to happen. Not tonight.

Jeremy Guthrie against Tim Hudson doesn’t really sound all that exciting, and maybe it won’t be. It’s difficult to imagine either pitcher going more than five innings, and perhaps it won’t even be close to that. It won’t be the worst-ever matchup of Game 7 starters — 1997’s Jaret Wright against Al Leiter probably still tops that list — but it will be the oldest, thanks to a combined 74 years of age. Or at least it will be for a few innings, since both managers are likely going to dig into their bullpens early, since it doesn’t get more “all hands on deck” than this. On the other hand, maybe that makes it more exciting. This could be baseball unlike baseball.

Obviously, any Game 7 is fascinating, but this one might just be moreso, if only because of the way the postseason has gone so far. You’ve heard in more than a few places that this is “the best postseason ever,” and while that’s probably a bit hyperbolic because of the effects of recency, you certainly understand the sentiment. To merely name a few of the lasting impressions — the AL wild card game madness, the divergent Octobers of Madison Bumgarner & Clayton Kershaw, an 18-inning NLDS game, Lorenzo Cain and the Royals defense, literally every single thing Ned Yost has done — is to unfairly neglect so many others. For a postseason like that to end with a Game 7, well, it seems like a fitting capper. Read the rest of this entry »

For the Royals, Game Six could not have gone any better. Not only did they claim the necessary win to setup a winner-take-all contest tonight, but by blowing the Giants out early, they were able to acquire an extra day of rest for their vaunted bullpen trio of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis, and Greg Holland. Meanwhile, while the Giants can’t be too thrilled with their performance, the lopsided loss did allow them to avoid using Madison Bumgarner, and you can be sure that Bruce Bochy will use his ace tonight.

So, with one game to decide the World Series, let’s see if we can plot out usage patterns for both team’s pitching staffs in order to give each side the best chance of winning the championship.

The Royals side of things is somewhat straight forward; Jeremy Guthrie is the de facto starter, but there really is no such thing as a traditional starting pitcher for the Royals, and Guthrie will almost certainly be on a very short leash tonight, because the Royals just don’t need a significant number of innings from their starter.

Since recording the final out of the ALCS on October 15th, Greg Holland has thrown just 24 pitches. 24 pitches in two weeks. He hasn’t taken the mound since last Friday, and even that came in an outing that only took him eight pitches to complete. During the regular season, Holland threw 25 or more pitches in a single game on six different occasions; there’s no reason why he couldn’t be asked to stretch that to 30 or 35 pitches in the final game of the season, especially given his recent workload.

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Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series — which competition, barring some unforeseen circumstance, is likely to end today. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs once again facilitated this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2014-15 free-agent market.

Below are the results of same. For each player, respondents provided estimates of the years and dollars he’s likely to receive. Also, in such cases as a player is a candidate to receive a qualifying offer from his club, readers predicted whether he would or not — and whether, having received a qualifying offer, that player would accept it. Answers to other questions — regarding options, for example — also appear below.

In terms of how the projected contract values below are likely to relate to reality, a comparison between last year’s crowdsourced estimates and the actual contracts received reveals that the crowd typically missed by 37% on overall contract value and is most likely to underestimate the overall contract figures of the most high-profile free agents. It’s not unreasonable, in other words, to expect that Hanley Ramirez will receive more than the 5 years and $90 million he’s projected to receive. Of note, however, is that most of last year’s top free agents were hitters, while Max Scherzer and Jon Lester are the most formidable names among this year’s free-agent class. Whether this same principle of underestimating the contracts received by top free agents applies to pitchers, as well — for whom length of contract is an issue, given the possibility of injury — is a question that remains.

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Later this morning, FanGraphs will publish the results of this year’s contract crowdsourcing effort, a list of the top-55 free agents (more or less) in order of total contract value as estimated by the wisdom of the crowd that is FanGraphs’ readership.

The projected contract values in that post will likely not precisely match the actual contracts received by this offseason’s free agents. To understand what biases the crowd might exhibit (if any), I’ve published below the results from last year’s crowdsourcing effort, alongside the actual contracts received by the relevant free agents.

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Here’s a post that probably doesn’t need to exist, but then, what post about baseball analysis does need to exist? If everything’s pointless, nothing is pointless, so let’s get to the subject! The Royals are shortly going to host the Giants for Game 6 of the World Series, and Kansas City is hoping to play again tomorrow, probably. If you imagine the whole baseball season as a baseball game, then we’re at the very end with an uncertain conclusion, meaning the leverage is enormous. If the purpose of every event is to help win a championship, well, now a championship hangs directly in the balance.

The Giants are up 3-2, but however much baseball remains will be played in Kauffman Stadium. And if you’ve been poking around today, you’ve probably seen some mentions of how that puts the Royals in a pretty decent position, all things considered. Not only do the Royals get to play at home — they get to play super-important games at home, with a super-frenzied atmosphere, and recent history might be on their side. I could cite any number of examples, but I will just cite this one:

And it’s the Jake they’d love to ride to a Game 6 victory, because a Game 7 would give the Royals a distinct home-field edge. (Giants fans can blame All-Star Game MVP Mike Trout for that possibility.) The home team has won each of the last nine World Series Game 7s. The last road team to win a Game 7 was the 1979 Pirates.

The Giants’ best bet, then, is to wrap this up in six.

What’s implied is that home-field advantage might get more significant as the stakes get higher and higher. Think of it as kind of a clutch home-field advantage factor. So can the Royals at least look forward to an extraordinary lift? No. I mean, no, probably.

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When Game Six of the World Series kicks of tonight, Jake Peavy will be on the mound for the Giants. Perhaps the biggest question of the night, however, will be how long he stays out there. Because if you’ve read FanGraphs for any length of time, you’ve probably heard us harp on the times-through-the-order penalty. By the time a line-up rolls over a few times against a starting pitcher, there are almost always more effective relief options than letting that starting pitcher remain on the mound.

More than any other strategy suggestion, the go-to-your-bullpen-early theory is probably the biggest area where the numbers and the traditional way of managing differ. Teams generally ride their starting pitchers until they get in trouble, removing them for a reliever after a rally has started. The data suggests that managers would do better to remove starting pitchers before the rally ever starts, though this would require managers to replace pitchers who haven’t yet failed. And for the most part, they don’t yet seem willing to do that.

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