The World Series is here! Well, not here. This is the internet. But the World Series is happening now, or soon, or… I refuse to continue covering up for how literally you are reading this opening. Point is, this is the time when baseball has the collective attention of the baseball-watching world and, possibly not coincidentally, this is also the time when fans of the teams that are still alive in the playoffs are cajoled into compelled to purchase World-Series-inspired items to World Series-ize themselves for the big games. Can a Royals fan really truly enjoy the Series without American League Champion beverage coasters? Can a Mets fan feel the tension without a World Series-themed oven mitt? I double-dog dare you!

It is in this vein that I present, here, now, to you, the internet baseball reader, the FanGraphs World Series Gift Guide to World Series Gifts.

The first item any self-respecting fan requires is a t-shirt. And boy does baseball have you covered there! Of course there are shirts for fans of the Royals and fans of the Mets, but that mere fact highlights a small problem with this sort of thing. As the World Series has yet to be played, we don’t yet know who the winner is. Thus, any fan who purchases a 2015 World Series t-shirt now is taking a chance. Who among us wants to wear a t-shirt commemorating that time our favorite baseball team lost the World Series? Or, even worse, blew the Series in horrific and excessively painful fashion! All you Rangers fans wear your 2011 World Series shirts to parties all the time, I’m sure. An even more recent example can be found here:

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The last week of October is here; the clocks are about to be turned back, autumn is in full swing, and there are two teams left standing in pursuit of the World Series title. This week, let’s take a look at the defining characteristics that have delivered the New York Mets and Kansas City Royals to the brink of the game’s ultimate goals. Today, it’s the National League champion Mets.

On the last day of July, the Mets ranked 30th and last in the majors in runs scored. Just a couple of days before, shortstop Wilmer Flores was nearly traded in a deal that would have delivered outfielder Carlos Gomez to the Mets, and he stood in tears at his shortstop position as news of the trade swept through his home stadium. October glory seemed far away indeed in those seemingly long-ago days.

We all know what has happened since. The Flores-Gomez deal fell through, and the Mets’ big trade-deadline move eventually netted them Yoenis Cespedes. He ignited the offense almost immediately, and Curtis Granderson and especially Daniel Murphy joined him to catalyze a stretch run in which their bats nearly kept pace with their ever-present young arms. The Nationals imploded, and the NL East belonged to the Metropolitans.

They outlasted the Dodgers, and outclassed the previously explosive Cubs, never trailing for even a single moment in the NLCS. For all of the ups and downs this club has endured in recent months, their heart and soul has been easily identifiable all along.

The Lethal 1-2-3 Punch at the Top of the Rotation
The Mets have won two World Series titles in their history, and both were built on the backs of young, dominant starting pitchers. The 1969 Miracle Mets rode Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry and Nolan Ryan, who started 112 of their 162 games. Koosman was the oldest of the group at age 26. Two more youngsters, Jim McAndrew and co-closer Tug McGraw, aged 25 and 24, started half of the remaining contests. They outdid themselves in 1986, when Dwight Gooden, Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez and Rick Aguilera, all 25 and under, started 118 of the club’s 162 games. Ace Gooden was all of 21 years old.

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We all learned something about Mike Trout last year. If you didn’t, that means you weren’t reading enough Jeff Sullivan, and that’s your first mistake. Trout’s natural swing plane carries through the bottom of the zone, making him one of the game’s best low-ball hitters. No swing is without holes, though, and so what we learned is that Trout had something of a vulnerability against the high heat. When the league began to figure this out, the league began to adjust, as it’s wont to do. Sullivan covered this league-wide adjustment to Trout at length last season. The nuts and bolts are as follows: at the beginning of 2014, Trout was getting high fastballs about 29% percent of the time — an entirely unexceptional rate. By the end of the season, he was seeing them around 40% of the time, by far the highest in the league. First came the information, and then came the subsequent approach. Pitchers were able to gain a bit of an edge against Trout, and any edge against the best player in the world is welcome, from the pitcher’s standpoint.

Here is a heatmap similar to one Sullivan used in the original Trout piece, from 2014:

Now here’s a heatmap of Yoenis Cespedes, from this season:

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The World Series begins tonight, but given that you’re on FanGraphs this morning, you already knew that. In fact, you’ve probably read one (or more) of the numerous series previews that has been published by any one of the many members of the online baseball community, and are well aware of the fact that this series is a match-up of one of the hardest throwing pitching rotations against an offense that makes an historic amount of contact. This is a clash of styles, a team built around athletes going up against a club that is starting three infielders who probably best fit at third base.

There’s no way around it; the outcome of this series is going to be treated as a referendum on something. If the Mets win, it will be seen as validation that velocity trumps all in October, with a dominating rotation being the key to victory in the postseason. If the Royals win, it will be hailed as evidence that old-school baseball is still viable, and there’s wisdom in loading up on athletes who don’t strike out, since speed never slumps and all that jazz. Because of the significant differences in team construction, and the big stage the World Series is played on, the outcome of the next four to seven games will be required to mean something.

As humans, we like to attach meaning to things, and it’s a more interesting story if the end result has some kind of lesson that everyone can learn from, but just because it’s easy to do and makes for a better narrative doesn’t mean we should fall into that trap.

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Television ratings can serve as a useful representation of interest in Major League Baseball, and in the playoffs, more attention is paid to the sport and more attention is paid to television ratings. Over the years, a decline in ratings has been used as an example of declining interest int he game of baseball. For the most part, the “Baseball is dying” motif is more of a silly meme than actual argument. Baseball games again dominated the last six months of programming on local television. On the whole, MLB drew more than 73 million fans, an increase compared to last season. Over a stretch of six months, there was a daily average of more 400,000 fans attending MLB games.

The first few rounds of the playoffs were a success on television, as well. The National League had the benefit of two great matchups in the division series, which featured the Los Angeles Dodgers against the New York Mets and the Chicago Cubs versus the rival St. Louis Cardinals. Three out of the four division series games went the full five games. The National League Championship Series set itself up for incredible ratings, with the Mets bringing the New York Market and the Cubs bringing not only the Chicago market but also a 100-year championship drought. The television schedule set up well for the series, putting all of the weekday games in a prime time slot on TBS, relegating the Toronto Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals to the daytime on FS1.

The ratings were good for the Cubs and Mets, but the four-game sweep robbed the executives at TBS of the higher ratings a longer and more competitive series would have brought. The Blue Jays-Royals series on FS1 did not produce great ratings, but given certain factors — an afternoon time slot, a fledgling cable cable channel, and a Canadian team — the result was an expected one. Despite the perhaps slightly disappointing factors present in the LCSes, ratings are up overall against last season by close to 20%, with an average of 4.6 million viewers over the first two rounds, which figure doesn’t even account for the millions of viewers in Canada tuning in to watch the Blue Jays.

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After Edinson Volquez last pitched, the Jays batters had a fair amount to say about his stuff. Yes, his velocity boost has been third-best this postseason, but Jose Bautista and Chris Colabello told Jordan Bastian that his movement was different from how they remembered him.

From Bastian’s piece at MLB.com:

“His fastball is playing with a little rise, rather than sink,” Blue Jays first baseman Chris Colabello said. “When he’s lower 90s, I think he has a tendency to sink a little bit more. Right now, it’s more of a lateral movement, or an upshoot.”
…
“His fastball wasn’t running that much,” Bautista said. “I think he was trying to throw a little harder and it was straighter. I kept hitting the bottom of the ball. I was expecting to see more sink.”

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There’s this thing about the World Series: It’s the only baseball left. There are two teams, and they need to finish before the offseason can begin. This is the most meaningful baseball on the calendar. After all, the World Series is the whole point. So you’ve got everyone focused on at least four games — and maybe as many as seven. There are days off in the lead-up, and there are days off in the middle. During that time, almost every single thing is analyzed. Every stone in the stony field gets turned in the World Series, which is also funny because it’s one series — and it’s baseball — which means we might as well not do any analysis at all. The long and short of this paragraph is this: There’s no harm in talking about how Salvador Perez and Travis d’Arnaud receive pitches.

By the numbers at StatCorner, and by the numbers at Baseball Prospectus, d’Arnaud is a better receiver than Perez. Perez seems to be somewhere in the area of average, while d’Arnaud is one of the better receivers. I could just leave the point here, but what might be more interesting are the juicier, more granular details. Like, with hitters, you could stop at wOBA, but why not look at sub-components like walks and power? I’m going to borrow from an excellent post-ALCS article by Tom Verducci. There’s a lot in there that’s worth your time, but I’m drawing from just one section.

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J.P. Ricciardi is part of the Mets’ collaborative process. A special assistant to general manager Sandy Alderson, Ricciardi is one of the decision makers, and the decisions have been savvy. New York – a club with a cleverly-sculpted roster — is in the World Series.

Ricciardi’s role is multifaceted, and in his own words, he brings a “more old-school” voice to the table. That may seem surprising to some. The 59-year-old was viewed as a Moneyball protege when he worked under Billy Beane in Oakland, and later when he was handed the GM reins in Toronto. He joined the New York front office in 2011.

Ricciardi shared his thoughts on team-building, and how the Mets go about it, during the NLCS.

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Ricciardi on the Mets front office: “What’s good about the group we have is that it’s all-inclusive. I don’t think any one person can take all of the credit for anything we’ve done, either the good or the bad. Sandy Alderson involves the people he brought in – Paul DePodesta, Dickie Scott, John Ricco, and myself. We’re all involved in the decisions. It’s never one person saying, ‘I was in charge of that.’

“We all bring something a little different to the table, Sandy is very analytical. Paul is analytical as well. I’m probably the least analytical – the most old-school – of the four. My background is probably more… I wouldn’t say I’m a gut-feel guy, because that can be a very misleading term. I’m a little more of a throwback in the sense that if I like a player, I’ll fight for him, even if the numbers don’t add up to X, Y and Z. Of course, if the numbers show that he’s clearly not the player we think he should be, I’m not stupid enough to say that we’re going to put a square peg in a round hole.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam preview the 2015 World Series.

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