On Sunday, the Giants and the Royals played Game 5 of the World Series, and an unusual thing happened. We’ll get to that. On Saturday, the same teams played Game 4, and in the bottom of the fourth inning, Yusmeiro Petit batted for some reason against Jason Vargas. Petit swung at the first pitch, maybe trying to catch the Royals off guard, as if the Royals even had a plan for effectively pitching to Yusmeiro Petit, who is a reliever. The bat hit the baseball and the baseball found the outfield grass. Remarked Andy McCullough:

Baseball!

— Andy McCullough (@McCulloughStar) October 26, 2014

“Baseball!” is the exclamation of those who understand that they’ll never understand the game. It’s an acknowledgment and an appreciation of the random by the learned, and classic Baseball! moments serve to underscore that there’s always a chance of anything, and baseball has a lot of repetitions. Weird things don’t usually happen, but there are enough events that the next one might be right around the corner. I mentioned that something strange happened yesterday, too. Madison Bumgarner didn’t need the help, but in the bottom of the eighth, Juan Perez faced Wade Davis and drilled a ball off the very top of the center-field fence for an RBI double. Perez is a player well-known for nothing and best-known for running better outfield routes than Michael Morse and Travis Ishikawa. Responded one David Cameron:

That was the most @cantpredictball play in history, maybe. — David Cameron (@DCameronFG) October 27, 2014

Basically, Cameron was calling it a Baseball! moment. So, which was the better Baseball! moment?

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Oscar Taveras died Sunday in a car crash in the Dominican Republic, at the age of 22. His girlfriend, 18-year-old Edilia Arvelo, also died in the crash. News was confirmed by Dionisio Soldevila, and according to the USA Today, Taveras had been driving home to the town of Sosua. The St. Louis Cardinals have released a statement, as have Bud Selig and Tony Clark of the MLBPA.

Two weeks ago, Taveras hit a dramatic pinch-hit home run in the National League Championship Series. As we’re confronted by the senselessness of untimely death, it’s within that fact that one might find the slightest hint of consolation. Taveras had long been linked to the words “great potential,” as a professional and as an individual. There was thought to be no limit to what Taveras might one day achieve. While his is a future that will sadly forever remain unwritten, Taveras lived a life of great achievement. At an extraordinarily young age, he reached and established himself within the highest level of his work, and he was recognized as one of the very best young talents in the world. Taveras achieved what most only dream of, the result of a lifetime of practice and discipline. A short life can still be a life fully lived.

Taveras, like all players, was also more than his job. We know him only as a player, reducing him to something unfairly one-dimensional, but we can’t know the details of his life beyond the field, nor are we entitled to such. We know only that two families are grieving, as Taveras died beside his partner. There is no way for that sentence to sufficiently sink in. It’s not just you; it’s a sentence we aren’t wired to understand. It’s a sentence that’s simply too mournful to fathom.

The news touches everyone differently. Your response is unique to you, and you cope however you see fit. Perhaps you feel shame, thinking more of Taveras than of Arvelo. Perhaps you ponder why these deaths should feel different from the rest of the world’s relentless death. Perhaps you wonder why you’re overthinking this; perhaps you wonder why you’re not. There is no established psychological routine for dealing with the sudden loss of a life that you know or know of. Dwell for however long you choose to dwell. Reflect for however long you choose to reflect. And when you have a moment — and you always have a moment — reach out to a loved one and share a hug or a laugh or a bowl of gelato. The point is to love and to do good things.

Oscar Taveras lived a life and left a mark, which is precisely what he always had the potential to do. May the families find warmth in winter.

With the World Series shifting to San Francisco for Game 3, the Royals have made some changes to their lineup. They’re not starting anybody as the designated hitter, because that would be against the rules. Ned Yost has elected to start Jarrod Dyson over Nori Aoki, which seems like the right thing to do. And Mike Moustakas has been bumped up to the fifth spot, with Alex Gordon soaring to second. It’s about as good a lineup as the Royals could have, under the circumstances, although there are two lefties back-to-back.

I’m not going to sit here and give you a prediction. However, there is one thing that might very slightly change the odds. You’ve seen broadcasts talk about x-factors before? Normally, they’re meaningless. Hell, maybe this one’s meaningless. But for this game, for this particular game, Moustakas should be one of the Royals’ best hitters. However small an advantage that presents, Moustakas has a couple of platoon factors working to his benefit.

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The Royals find themselves in an interesting situation. They’re in the World Series! Wow! And within that, with the series shifting now to San Francisco, the Royals are in an interesting sub-situation. Alex Gordon ought to start in the outfield, obviously. Lorenzo Cain ought to start in the outfield, obviously, as well. But then you’ve got Norichika Aoki and Jarrod Dyson. Aoki has been the starter in right field for a while, but now with the rules changing for three games, it’s time for Ned Yost to also make a change and keep Aoki on the bench at the beginning. Kansas City should go with the ultimate outfield.

This isn’t just a hypothetical suggestion, by the way. The matter is on Yost’s mind. Sometime Friday, he’ll make his call, and while it’s generally safest to bet on continuity, Yost’s been nothing if not unpredictable these last few weeks.

Ned Yost acknowledged possibility Jarrod Dyson might start tomorrow. Nori Aoki has more value off the bench than Dyson as a pinch hitter.

— Andy McCullough (@McCulloughStar) October 24, 2014

The ultimate outfield looks like this:

LF: Gordon
CF: Dyson
RF: Cain

Cain, defensively, is outstandingly good. So it tells you something that Yost likes to have Dyson in center field, with Cain shifting to right. Actually, it tells you a couple of things: Dyson, also, is outstandingly good, and Cain might well be more comfortable in a corner. Anyhow, the difference between the ultimate outfield and the ordinary outfield is that Dyson subs in for Aoki, and swaps places with Cain. The ultimate outfield is weaker at the plate, but is just stupid good not at the plate.

Dyson bats left-handed. Aoki also bats left-handed. There’s a strong argument to be made that the Royals should use the ultimate outfield against all right-handed pitchers. But that obviously wasn’t going to happen with the Royals playing by American League rules. Now, the National League rules change things up somewhat. They should provide enough incentive to pencil Dyson into the starting lineup.

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The only pitch that should literally never be thrown is a pitch aimed at a hitter’s head.

Anything else, totally fine. You don’t read MGL over the years without learning some things about game theory. Game theory explains that, optimally, you need to be unpredictable. You should bunt just often enough so that your opponent doesn’t know if you’re going to bunt. You should pitch out just often enough so that your opponent doesn’t know if you’re going to pitch out. And you should mix your pitches just enough so that your opponent doesn’t know what pitch will be on the way. It’s simple, if oversimplified: don’t tip your hand. It does your side a disservice.

Game theory is fascinating, and at the same time analytically limiting. When you get to talking about pitch sequences, any pitch, in isolation, is justifiable. Any pitch should/could be thrown more than zero percent of the time. Let’s say there’s a hypothetical that calls for, I don’t know, 60% fastballs in, 39% changeups away, and 1% hanging sliders. That describes no real situation, but anyway. If you see the pitcher throw a fastball, okay, yeah, that should happen sometimes. If he throws a changeup away, same deal. And if he throws a slider down the middle? It seems like a mistake, but every so often it does make sense to do that on purpose, in theory, because otherwise the hitter could just rule the pitch totally out. When a pitch gets totally ruled out, it slightly tips the balance. Part of being unpredictable is the willingness to sometimes do things that don’t seem so good. Surprising mistakes can be surprising successes.

Because of game theory, it’s almost impossible to reasonably criticize any given pitch or pitch sequence. A pitch comes with an n of 1, and stripped from context, you don’t know how many times that pitch would’ve been thrown in the same situation. Taking one pitch and only one pitch, you almost always have to conclude that, maybe it was fine. There’s no such thing as a pitch that absolutely should never be thrown, aside from the one noted at the beginning. This is frustrating, but sometimes sensibility frustrates. So the world can be.

And yet. I think this is against my better judgment, but there’s a pitch I want to criticize. It happened in Wednesday’s Game 2, and it was thrown by Hunter Strickland to Salvador Perez. I can’t declare absolutely that the pitch was a terrible idea, because of all the reasons, but this is about as close as I can get to believing that a pitch shouldn’t have been called. Perez, against Strickland, broke the game open. He did so against a pitch I think he knew damn well was coming.

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Harold Reynolds on Wednesday, a few pitches into Hunter Strickland’s appearance:

I think they figured out the problems with Strickland. He struggled against the Nationals and actually a little bit against the Cardinals, but, my goodness, against the right-handed hitters, we saw last night and these first two pitches, very impressive.

Harold Reynolds, a few minutes later:

[different words]

We don’t have enough information to say that Hunter Strickland is homer-prone. We do have enough information to say that Strickland has been homer-prone. With the Giants in the season, he faced 25 batters, and none of them went deep. With the Giants in the playoffs, he’s faced 23 batters, and five of them have gone deep. Or four of them have, Bryce Harper doing it twice. Before this month began, you didn’t know who Hunter Strickland was. Now you’ve got all kinds of opinions, few of them nice. It’s going to take a while for Strickland to repair this reputation. A while, or, one high-leverage World Series inning, if it’s clean. Fans have short long memories.

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If you watched Game 1, you know what was happening to James Shields. If you didn’t watch Game 1, you can figure out what was happening to James Shields, since he departed after 3+ and wasn’t exactly walking the world. James Shields got hit, and for that reason and others, the Royals lost, turning them into World Series underdogs. But I think just to drive the point home, it’s helpful to look at Shields’ full game log, plate appearance by plate appearance as recorded by MLB.com:

1. line drive
2. fly ball
3. line drive
4. line drive
5. line drive
6. line drive
7. strikeout
8. groundball
9. line drive
10. flyball
11. line drive
12. line drive
13. line drive
14. groundball
15. walk
16. line drive

Maybe you don’t know how many line drives are normal. That many line drives is not normal. That’s ten, out of 16 batters faced and 14 balls put in play. One of the non-line drives was a fly basically hit to the track. Here’s another of the non-line drives, from Hunter Pence in the fourth:

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Earlier today, in my chat, I noticed in the queue a bizarre question about the Royals and playing video games. It got my attention and I ran a quick Google search, but I couldn’t find anything so I moved on without issuing an answer. Then, when I was all finished, I happened upon this article from Andy McCullough, and he explained what the commenter had been referring to. A quick excerpt:

When Kuntz walked inside the room, he saw a scene that had become all too familiar in recent weeks: a collection of Royals with their heads down, eyes locked on their iPads. The game was called “Clash of Clans,” and for a period of time this summer, its excessive usage by members of this club exasperated the coaching staff.

After some talks and some meetings, the Royals found themselves re-focused. They sought fewer diversions and more productive off-field activity, and as you understand, the Royals’ season turned around near the middle. Using the convenient All-Star break split, the first-half Royals were 48-46, and the second-half Royals were 41-27. The first-half Royals were 12th in baseball in WAR, and the second-half Royals were fourth. This says nothing about the eight straight playoff wins; this just touches on how the Royals reached the tournament in the first place. There’s something that seems like it clicked.

And this is one of the reasons I’m not so concerned about a wild-card team like the Royals potentially winning the World Series. So you only want good teams to be eligible for the championship. The Royals, early on, weren’t so good. But they’ve been real good for months. Arguably — very arguably — they’ve been the best team in the American League for months. Doesn’t that make them deserving potential champs? It’s been a remarkable year for Kansas City, given the midseason turnaround, and I thought it could be useful to see what drove the change in fortunes.

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Hello there, Royals pitchers! Congratulations on reaching this point — you’ve done many proud. No matter what happens, your 2014 season has been a screaming success. The Royals are back on the baseball map nationally and, more importantly, locally. But of course you’re not done yet, as there’s one remaining step in the staircase: Looming in front of you are the San Francisco Giants. You’ll face many different Giants hitters; among them will be Pablo Sandoval. In case you’ve never seen him before, you’re in for an experience. I’d like to show you something. Actually, I’d like to show you two somethings. Here’s one of them:

• Pablo Sandoval: 45% out-of-zone swing rate
• Matt Carpenter: 46.8% in-zone swing rate

You’re going to face Sandoval; it could’ve been you would’ve faced Carpenter. Sandoval swings at about as many balls as Carpenter does strikes. For the sake of some perspective:

• Pablo Sandoval: 45% out-of-zone swing rate
• Salvador Perez: 44.1% out-of-zone swing rate

So that’s how aggressive this Sandoval character is. Now, you might be wondering, “Does that mean he’s as easy to get out sometimes as Salvy?” No, this Sandoval guy is a unique sort of challenge. To prepare you for the challenge to come, I’m going to provide you with some strategy tips. How should you pitch to Pablo Sandoval, if you want to get him out? Pay careful attention to my advice.

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