The final moments of preparation are underway as the Dodgers and Astros get ready for tonight’s Game 1 of the World Series. On the one hand, it represents baseball’s biggest stage. For the players, however, it’s also the game they’ve been playing forever. When it comes to getting ready, do they prepare like usual? Or is it a contest that requires greater planning than any other?

We went to the players (and a coach) to ask if their routines had been altered at all and if they’d been poring over the data before tonight’s game.

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Dave Hudgens, Astros Hitting Coach: “I was thinking about that earlier in the day, and I was thinking, ‘I want to do the same thing everyday as I do for this game.’ That’s what I try to do. You don’t want to do anything different. Okay, now it’s important so I’m going to do more? I’m going to do the same thing, these guys are doing their same routine, going about their jobs the same way.

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I know some of you are disappointed not to be seeing The Hottest Pitcher in the Game (Justin Verlander) face perhaps The Best Pitcher in the Game (Clayton Kershaw) in tonight’s World Series opener.

We’ll have to settle instead for the 2015 AL Cy Young winner, Dallas Keuchel, against the Dodgers’ three-time Cy Young winner.

Many eyes will be trained on Kershaw to see if he can improve the one blemish on his resume — postseason performance — and produce a legacy-building outing on the game’s greatest stage.

But the Game 1 undercard, Keuchel versus the Dodgers, is fascinating matchup in its own right.

For starters, it will largely represent a meeting of strangers. Keuchel has never faced Los Angeles. Of the Dodgers most likely to appear on the club’s World Series roster, only three have ever faced Keuchel, for a total of just 27 career regular-season at-bats versus Keuchel. Logan Forsythe is responsible for 20 of those due to his experience with Tampa Bay. He’s recorded seven hits. Chris Taylor has faced him three times (0-for-3), though as a different player with a different swing, and Chase Utley has one hit in four career at-bats versus the left-hander. (The current Astros squad has 81 collective at-bats against Kershaw.)

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This should be a great World Series in large part because it’s so hard to separate the two pennant winners. The Dodgers won 104 games, but the Astros won 101. The Astros outscored their opponents by 196 runs, but the Dodgers outscored theirs by 190. The Dodgers have the possible advantage of rest, but the Astros have the possible advantage of momentum. The Astros got a midseason bump from adding Justin Verlander, but the Dodgers got a midseason bump from adding Yu Darvish. Say, the Astros might have found something by using Lance McCullers out of the bullpen. But the Dodgers have also found something by doing the same with Kenta Maeda.

When I rated all the playoff teams three weeks ago, I found the Dodgers looked the best, but the Astros were right on their heels. There’s just not much of a gap, no matter where you look. As such, I don’t think one could pick a clear favorite. Maybe you give the edge to the Dodgers, just because they could play one extra game at home. Or maybe you give the edge to the Dodgers, just because they could get the better strike zone. That’s one of the only real differences here. Technically, such a difference shouldn’t even exist, but we know that zones aren’t perfectly called or consistent, and the Dodgers have a history.

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The Dodgers have won two playoff series, but they aren’t undefeated. Remember that the Cubs beat them by a run in NLCS Game 4. Other teams have somewhat recently advanced to the World Series without having lost. Back in 2007, the Rockies swept the NLCS, after they swept the NLDS, after they took a one-game playoff over the Padres. And in 2014, the Royals swept the ALCS, after they swept the ALDS, after they took a one-game playoff over the A’s. The Dodgers are one of six teams in the wild-card era to make the World Series by going 7-1.

And it’s not like the Dodgers have even made every win a laugher. Their most recent game was kind of the exception. In Game 2 of the NLDS, they fell behind the Diamondbacks early. In the NLCS, they trailed the Cubs by a couple runs in Game 1, and in Game 2 Justin Turner won it in the bottom of the ninth. Some nails have been bitten. The Dodgers haven’t looked completely invincible.

On the other hand, they have looked completely invincible. When you look at the numbers overall, it seems like the Dodgers have coasted. They’ve turned this postseason into a statistical mismatch.

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On Saturday night, the Astros ended the Yankees season with a 4-0 shutout. For New York, even reaching Game 7 of the ALCS was a surprising accomplishment, as this was a team widely considered to still be in rebuilding mode heading into 2017. As a young team who became a good team faster than expected, the easy comparisons are to teams like the 2015 Cubs or the 2008 Rays, and expectations for the 2018 Yankees are now going to be particularly high given the team’s success this year.

And the Yankees are certainly setup well for the future. With Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, and Greg Bird, they have three enviable offensive building blocks for the middle of their order, and plenty of quality all-around performers like Didi Gregorius and Aaron Hicks, plus the potential upside of Clint Frazier and Gleyber Torres. And that’s just the young hitters. Few organizations in the game have a similar kind of talent base to build off of going forward.

But, similar to the Cubs, there are some legitimate questions on the pitching side of things, and a winter of inaction while counting on the kids to develop further and carry the team to the 2018 World Series is unlikely. The Yankees are both extremely well positioned for the future, but also need to do some real work this winter.

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Kenley Jansen certainly hasn’t been ignored around here. Back in June, for instance, Travis looked at how Jansen’s reliance on a single pitch compares to Mariano Rivera’s. And yet, I still feel like we don’t really appreciate just how great Jansen really is. Throughout this postseason, so much of the focus seems to go to Clayton Kershaw and Justin Turner. Or if not them, then colorful characters like Yasiel Puig or feel-good stories like Chris Taylor. Often, Jansen feels lost. Now, maybe that’s just a case of me miscalculating the extent of the coverage he receives or just being far too tired to think straight by the time Jansen gets into games, but I feel like the big righty is a little underappreciated. But if he performs the way that he’s been performing, that may change for good this week.

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It would be easy to assume that the Dodgers bullpen is just another part of the club bought and paid for by means of the organization’s massive and unrivaled resources. With the team’s payroll and competitive-balance expenses coming to roughly $250 million this season — itself a substantive decrease over the $300 million outlays of the 2014-16 campaigns — the Dodgers clearly have the capacity to spend with little restraint. And they’ve certainly utilized some of that financial might to the end of bullpen construction: the club, for example, brought back free-agent closer Kenley Jansen by guaranteeing him $80 million over five seasons.

For the most part, however, the Dodgers haven’t built their bullpen on high-salaried free agents or top prospects. Instead, they’ve mostly cobbled it together with a series of low-risk trades and signings, addressing needs in-season when needed without giving up prospects of significance.

Los Angeles opened up this season with a payroll of about $235 million. Close to $50 million of that total was designated for players no longer on the roster. Of the remaining money, half went to the starting rotation. Another 40% was earmarked for Andre Ethier, Adrian Gonzalez, Yasmani Grandal, Yasiel Puig, and Justin Turner. As far as the bullpen, there was Kenley Jansen and his big salary, of course. The second-highest salary in the bullpen at the start of the season went to Sergio Romo, though, who was guaranteed $3 million by the club in February. That figure was the third-highest guarantee the Dodgers have made to a reliever since Andrew Friedman took over operations after the 2014 season. That’s three full offseasons, and the second-biggest free agent guarantee the team has made to a reliever was the $4 million for Joe Blanton a few years ago.

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Please pardon this break from playoff-related content.

Writing for Baseball America earlier this month, longtime baseball scribe Tracy Ringolsby reported there’s “building consensus” that MLB is soon headed toward expansion and a 32-team structure and perhaps a 156-game schedule.

There have been rumblings of expansion for some time.

As a guest in the Rockies’ broadcast booth back in August, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred was asked about expansion. He again suggested that the stadium issues in Oakland and Tampa must first be resolved. But once those situations are put to rest, MLB seems committed to expansion. Manfred has said baseball is, ultimately, a “growth industry.” Manfred then, during the broadcast, mentioned other incentives for expansion that this author hadn’t previously heard the commissioner address.

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Collin McHugh wasn’t consumed with worry, but he was concerned. The Astros right-hander had shoulder/biceps tendinitis in the spring, and then his elbow tightened up during a rehab outing in April. Tests didn’t raise any red flags, but it’s hard not to ponder worst-case scenarios when your livelihood is at risk.

Tendinitis is mostly an inconvenience. Tightness can be a prelude to surgery.

“I wouldn’t say it was scary, but I guess you do get a little bit nervous,” admitted McHugh. “Tommy John is so prevalent that I think everyone thinks about that when they feel some tenderness. I’d never had an elbow problem in my life.”

The relationship between his shoulder and elbow maladies was talked about “ad nauseam,” and while McHugh isn’t sure — “everything is so minuscule in your delivery” — he assumes the latter was related to effort level and trying to come back too soon. Opting for caution over expediency, the Astros subsequently kept him on the shelf until July.

My conversation with McHugh turned to mechanics, and to how many feel that continual max-effort makes a pitcher prone to elbow issues more than does increased velocity. Read the rest of this entry »

Astros, Yankees, Game 7. This should be fun. This has been a pretty terrific ALCS already, and with a winner-take-all contest to decide it tonight, this could end up being one of the best league championship series we’ve seen in a while.

For the Yankees, the plan seems pretty obvious. CC Sabathia is going to start the game, and given how he’s pitched so far this postseason, Joe Girardi will probably ride his veteran until he gets in real trouble. And then the Astros will deal with Tommy Kahnle and Aroldis Chapman, probably for at least a couple of innings each, with David Robertson around to try and redeem his disastrous Game 6 performance if Sabathia-Kahnle-Chapman isn’t enough to get through nine innings. If anyone besides one of those four take the mound for the Yankees, it will probably be because one of the two teams turned it into an early blowout.

The Astros, though, head into a potential season finale without as much clarity.

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