The nation finally got to know Ben Zobrist last year. Six years after the Rays utility-man-turned-superstar emerged as one of baseball’s best players, he got to play on the game’s biggest stage, and he became a champion. His previous three postseason appearances never made it past the first round; his World Series in 2008, he was still a part-time player. Last year, Zobrist was a key cog, a player for whom the Royals traded at the deadline, a player who they potentially might not have won the World Series without. But he wasn’t the story. The story was Eric Hosmer’s mad dash, the story was Ned Yost, the story was Wade Davis and the bullpen, the story was the Royals defense. Ben Zobrist was a secondary player, as he’s unfairly been his entire career.

This time around, Zobrist is no longer a secondary player. This time around, Zobrist is the Most Valuable Player. Zobrist finally had his moment, and baseball’s longtime most underrated player will never be underrated by the history books again. These two championships, and this MVP, are here forever.

Zobrist slashed .357/.419/.500 over 31 plate appearances in the World Series, and led the Cubs with 0.72 Win Probability Added. With the bat, context included, no Cubs hitter did more in the World Series to contribute to this championship than Zobrist. His biggest hit of all came in Game Seven.

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Chris Coghlan embraced the challenge of a Game Seven. To the Cubs outfielder, a winner-takes-all affair against a formidable opponent is the ultimate for any athlete.

“You want it as tall as you can stack it,” Coghlan said after Game Six. “You look back at the road, and the adversity faced. You have to stay in the moment, but as a player, you don’t want anything else. Bring it.”

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Were many of the players nervous? That’s hard to know, although I did observe a few different demeanors prior to the game. I saw some smiles, particularly from Francisco Lindor. There were some businesslike expressions and less-casual-than-usual postures. One Indians player struck me as being a little on edge when I encountered him in the dugout prior to batting practice.

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One big story leading into the game concerned the prospect of Corey Kluber facing the same team for the third time in nine days. That meant a lot of familiarity — on both sides — and myriad questions about adjustments. In terms of pitch mix, the Cubs saw a different Kluber in Game Four than they did in Game One.

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The thing about hype is it makes the expectations almost impossible to meet. Hype is what makes you excited for an event, but then it’s up to the event itself to live up to the billing, and the standards can be impossible. Game 7 of a playoff series? That’s a high bar. Game 7 of the World Series? Higher bar still. Game 7 of a World Series featuring the two teams with the longest active title droughts? The hype spirals out of control. The game couldn’t possibly be what you’d want it to be.

That game was what you’d want it to be. Even if you weren’t rooting for the Cubs, you might never see a better baseball game. Maybe you’ve seen games that were as good, but you couldn’t top that, not for the drama, and not for how very Baseball it was. It was a one-run game that went to extra innings. The winning pitcher was the world-class reliever who blew a three-run lead. The losing pitcher wasn’t even supposed to have to pitch. The Cubs jumped out against the Indians’ unhittable ace, who for the first time was left in too long. The Indians clawed back with a two-run wild pitch that got by a catcher inserted specifically to help the pitcher on the mound. That same catcher, who’s now retired, then hit a home run off one of the only relievers who might be better than the Cubs reliever who later blew the save. Both teams used starters in relief. There was a rain delay and a bunt for a strikeout. The last out of the game was made by Michael Martinez. The final go-ahead run was scored by Albert Almora.

Almora scored on Ben Zobrist’s double. That made it 7-6, and Cubs fans were once again able to breathe. In a game packed full of moments, that might have wound up the moment, the moment that set the Cubs on their course. Before that moment, there was a different one. Almora scored on the double. He first had to get himself into position to do so.

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The Chicago Cubs just won the World Series, their first in 108 years. The way this team is constructed, though, they might not have to wait long for another one.

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By the time a pitcher gets to October, his body and his mind are headed in different directions. The head can’t stop racing, but the body is battered by six months’ worth of battle. That probably seems intuitive, but it’s actually relevant tonight in a very concrete way: Cleveland right-hander Corey Kluber is once again going to climb the mound on short rest, with body and mind at odds. Here’s the good news for Indians fans, though: while the results of postseason short-rest starts isn’t great, the process — which is to say, the movement and velocity recorded on pitches — suggests that adrenaline trumps all when it comes to postseason ball.

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It was an ugly night for Cleveland for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, they lost Game Six of the World Series. Second, they allowed nine runs. Nine.

Third, Tyler Naquin happened. In a variety of ways. What does that mean, exactly? First, there was this Bull Durham-esque snafu in the first inning.

Kris Bryant had already gone yard with two outs in the first inning. Anthony Rizzo and Ben Zobrist had followed with singles. Addison Russell, as shown above, then poked a very catchable fly ball out to right-center field. We may never know what temporary madness possessed Naquin at this moment. We do know that he didn’t grade out as a very good center fielder this year, nor did possess the most sterling defensive reputation before his ascension to the big leagues.

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The biggest play of last night’s Game Six was a defensive one, but not in a positive manner: a miscommunication between Tyler Naquin in center field and Lonnie Chisenhall in right failed to result in a catch. Two runs scored for Chicago, and the Cubs took a 3-0 lead in just the first inning. The biggest strategic decision, meanwhile, concerned the use of Aroldis Chapman by Joe Maddon, as Chicago’s manager went to his closer in the seventh inning of a 7-2 game. It’s hard to discount the the implications either of Cleveland’s defensive misplay or Maddon’s bullpen management on the outcome of this World Series.

However, Game Six of the World Series also featured an unimportant strategic decision that facilitated some unimportant defensive plays. Even though he scored no runs and recorded zero hits, the decision to start Jason Heyward was likely worth several runs for the Cubs. And even if those runs didn’t ultimately represent the difference between a win and a loss, Heyward’s presence in the game nevertheless revealed how an offensively struggling but defensively forceful player can impact a result.

In the fourth inning of last night’s contest, right after Mike Napoli singled in Jason Kipnis to make the game 7-1, the Chicago Cubs possessed a 94.8% chance of victory. The leverage index was a fairly low 0.47, so even a positive result for Cleveland was unlikely to influence the game greatly. Facing Jake Arrieta, Jose Ramirez struck a ball that lands for a hit 56.8% of the time and goes for extra bases 20% of the time.

Here’s the end of that play:

At first glance, the play appears challenging for Heyward but hardly impossible. As mentioned above, batted balls with similar exit velocity and launch angles were caught around 43% of the time. Nearly half, in other words. What that figure doesn’t account for, however, is Heyward’s position at the start of the play relative to the location of the ball in the field. We can go a little further with the Statcast data.

Jason Heyward’s catch in 4th. Ball off Jose Ramirez’s bat = 97.9 mph. Hang time = 2.9 seconds. Distance = 35 feet. H/t: @mike_petriello

— Dan Hayes (@CSNHayes) November 2, 2016

By doing a few calculations, we can determine that, if he were running in a 40-yard dash in this case, Heyward would have recorded a time of roughly 9.9 seconds, which is really slow for a 40-yard dash. Of course, when Jason Heyward hears the ball off the bat, he doesn’t simply get to sprint straight forward in a line. He has no idea in which direction he might have to run — backwards, forwards, left, right. He decides where to run by looking at a small white object that begins its trajectory roughly 300 feet away while also traveling at 98 mph.

We rarely see an outfielder’s first step when watching the game because both our own eyes and also the cameras themsleves are focused on the batter-pitcher matchup. Heyward is very good at making quick decisions, though: the first step on his acrobatic play near the wall in Game Five occurred within 0.17 seconds.

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Unofficially, Game 6 was over in the blink of an eye. Officially, it wasn’t complete for three and a half hours, but from close to the start, most fans were thinking ahead to Wednesday. Even while Game 6 was going, Game 7 was on everyone’s mind, as we prepared for the most anticipated showdown in, what, at least 15 years? You’re on this site right now to read about baseball, but you’re not looking to read about the game in the books. You want to read about the finale. Nothing is ever as important as it is in the finale.

Game 7 presents a funny situation. It’s one game, so it could turn on almost literally anything. In Game 6, after all, the biggest point according to win expectancy was Addison Russell’s routine fly ball that somehow dropped between two outfielders. Who would’ve guessed? You can’t predict any one-game scenario. At the same time, it’s never more critical to maximize the odds. Strategic calls are at their most important. Bullpen usage is at its most important. Lineup construction is at its most important. There’s nothing after Game 7 but gray clouds and winter. Half of the players will have a happier winter than the others.

As that lineup construction goes for the Cubs — look, I don’t want to deceive you. This isn’t that critical. What I’m writing about probably won’t make the biggest difference. But I see a case for starting David Ross over Willson Contreras. It has a lot to do with a guy supposedly available out of the bullpen.

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In order to keep their season alive, the Cubs had to win Game Six. They won Game Six. Tomorrow, they play for all the marbles, with one more win bringing the franchise their first championship in 108 years. From that perspective, tonight was a success. Full stop.

But that perspective is a particularly binary view of the world, with only good and bad outcomes, and no room for the shades of gray that make up real life. In this world, things can be somewhat good, or very good, or painfully awful, or just kind of not great. In this world, we have not two possible outcomes, but thousands of them, with differing levels of magnitude. And from a perspective that accounts for the different magnitudes of outcomes, this Cubs win isn’t quite as great as it could have been. This win came with a cost, and probably unnecessarily so.

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Yesterday I slapped together an InstaGraphs post about a Jon Lester strikeout of Brandon Guyer. It was a called strikeout on a pitch off the plate, but it was also a strikeout Lester has recorded several dozen times before. That part, I found interesting. But the call was also important in the moment. It changed the Indians’ odds of winning Game 5 by 10 percentage points, and during the game I tweeted that out with a screenshot. I didn’t expect the tweet to blow up like it did.

This isn’t supposed to be boastful. Wow, retweets, all right. Nobody cares. What happened as a consequence of that tweet going around was that countless different people started showing up in my mentions. And wouldn’t you know it, but those people had opinions about the strike zone! Some people were convinced the umpires were in the tank for the Cubs. Other people were convinced the Indians didn’t have any right to complain after calls they’d gotten earlier. More people still accused me of whining for some reason, as if a screenshot and a fact are opinions. The overall response was emotionally charged. Maybe not a surprise, in a World Series elimination game, but people were stirred the hell up.

Guess what! The zone’s been even. The Indians have gotten calls in their favor. The Cubs have also gotten calls in their favor. The World Series isn’t over yet, of course, but through the five games we’ve watched, neither team has really gotten a more favorable zone to pitch around.

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