The drama of the World Series — and perhaps this World Series, in particular — renders everyone a little prone to hyperbole. Under the influence of the present moment, one has a tendency to forget the great moments of the past. In the wake of a crucial play or big game, it’s not uncommon to make declarations that, upon further examination, fail to hold up to scrutiny.

Having acknowledged all of that, I would like to use this post to explain why tonight’s baseball game is the single-greatest matchup in the history of baseball.

Before 1961, Major League Baseball featured just 16 teams, separated into two leagues. Each team’s regular-season schedule consisted of games against just the seven other teams in their respective league. The team with the best record in each league at the end of the year moved on to the World Series.

Because of the way in which the schedule was constructed, it was easy for teams to beat up on the dregs of the league and come away with a strong record. It also meant that the good work of the regular season couldn’t be undone in the playoffs: because winning the league meant an immediate spot in the World Series, the notion of a “playoff upset” didn’t really exist.

By 1969, there were 24 teams in the majors. Another round, the Championship Series, was added to the postseason at that time. Expansion brought the league to 28 teams by the early 90s. The 1995 season marked the debut of the Division Series. Then, a few years later, Arizona and Tampa Bay joined the league. The degree of difficulty for reaching the World Series was greater than ever. Even teams that excelled in the regular season had to navigate a gauntlet.

That degree of difficulty is, in part, what makes the matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros in the World Series so rare. Add to that the prospect of a Game 7, and you’re left with a decent argument for the greatest World Series matchup of all time.

Since 1903, the World Series has featured 39 winner-take-all games. Not all of these matchups took place between regular-season titans. In fact, two matchups of recent vintage — in 2002 between the Anaheim Angels and San Francisco Giants and 2014 between the Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants — both featured a pair of clubs that had failed to win their respective divisions.

This season, on the other hand, we have two juggernauts. The Dodgers won an MLB-best 104 games. As for the Astros, their 101 wins ranked second in the American League, although that maybe doesn’t fully account for their accomplishment. Consider: in the 10 years before the 2017 season, the 101-win threshold had been reached only three times.

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HOUSTON — Game 5 resided at an extreme pole along the baseball entertainment spectrum. It’s not a game you want to experience every night, but it’s something about which we’ll be talking and of which we’ll be trying to make sense for a while. At least until Game 6.

That said, the aesthetic appeal of the game can certainly be debated: the way fly balls were leaving Minute Maid Park gave the night something of a College World Series feel during its peak-offense period. If you recall, that was an environment that forced the college game to make adjustments to its bats and balls to suppress run scoring, to provide sanity.

One of the overriding themes of the sport this season is the speed at which it has changed, how extreme it has become so quickly. The game continues to evolve even in the postseason, where the average launch angle is 11.9 degrees — up a fraction of a degree from the 11.8 mark during this year’s regular season and 10.8 degrees in 2015 regular season. The average air ball is traveling 291 feet, up from 287 feet in the regular season.

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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In terms of significant, game-changing moments, no World Series game in history compares to Wednesday night’s epic between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros. In the sixth inning, Corey Seager hit a two-run homer off of Justin Verlander to break a 1-1 tie. In the top of the ninth, Marwin Gonzalez hit a solo shot to tie the game 3-3. In the 10th, Jose Altuve broke the tie with a solo shot. In the bottom half of that same inning, Enrique Hernandez’s RBI single tied the game, and then in the top of the 11th, George Springer hit a two-run homer that would put the Astros up for good. Each of those five plays increased the scoring club’s chances victory by 25% according to Win Probability Added. That’s never happened before in a World Series game.

Since 2002, only one in three games have produced plays with at least one play with a WPA of .25 or greater. To put that in greater context, consider: there have been only 18 plays total this posteason that produced a WPA of .25 or greater.  Here they are, in order of impact on win probability:

Of the eight biggest plays in the postseason this year, four occurred in Game 2. Hernandez’s single in a losing effort produced the highest WPA of any play in this postseason.

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Being expressive is half of Yasiel Puig’s whole thing. The Dodgers would love for him to be great, and the fans would love for him to be great, but if Yasiel Puig were great, he’d be just another great baseball player. That is, if he were great and great only. But there’s more to him, for better and for worse. Puig’s own expressiveness might be linked to personality traits that make him, shall we say, draining company, but fans don’t have to be around Puig for hours on end, every day of the week. They just get to watch him entertain. Puig is a highly-skilled professional entertainer.

He goes about his business with uncommon flair, eschewing baseball’s standard and pervasive stoic self-seriousness. It’s not that Puig is in any way lacking for intensity; it just has a different way of bubbling to the surface. Over these past few weeks, we’ve grown acquainted with Yasiel Puig’s tongue. Sometimes it’s hanging out of his mouth, and sometimes it’s licking the end of the barrel. Puig is also notorious for his bat flips, regardless of whether the ball’s leaving the yard. Puig has his own style of playing defense. He has his own style of running the bases. You know, in short, when it’s Puig that you’re watching even if you can’t see the name on his jersey.

Puig has even brought his own flavor to patience. You might not think there’s such a thing as taking a pitch in a particularly expressive way. Puig would disagree with you, and there’s a mountain of evidence from just these playoffs alone. Puig has shown some demonstrative takes for years, but this month, he’s reached a new level, as he’s been more patient than ever. Puig has one of the lower swing rates in the playoffs. He has one of the higher rates of pitches per plate appearance in the playoffs. Though he went 0-for-3 last night, he worked two counts to 2-and-0, and the other to 3-and-0. Puig has swung at the first pitch just three times in his last 54 opportunities since re-joining the Dodgers lineup in late September. One of those was a check-swing foul where the bat met the ball by accident.

This might be a bit of a slog. You’re welcome to leave at any time. But, I watched every pitch that Puig has seen this year in the playoffs. I’ve identified 16 different forms of demonstrative takes. This ignores the regular, boring, featureless take. There have been some of those. There have been many of the others. Watch as Yasiel Puig makes a show of doing nothing.

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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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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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No one is lifting and launching like the Yankees this postseason.

More specifically, no one is lifting and launching like the Yankees at their home park, where the club is 6-0 this postseason after enjoying a sizable home-field advantage during the regular season (51-30), as well. If they can win Friday or Saturday at Houston, New York will be guaranteed at least two more home games at Yankee Stadium II, a launching pad in the year of launch angle.

According to Baseball Savant’s “barrel” and “solid contract” metrics — figures derived from Statcast data — the Yankees have a sizable lead on the playoff field in terms of quality contact on fly balls and line drives this postseason (see table below). And while their totals are higher than some other clubs’ simply for having advanced deeper into the postseason, they still have a sizable edge on their LCS contemporaries.

Nor is it just that the Yankees are driving more balls into the air with authority, it’s where they are engaging in this work: at their home ballpark.

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Last night represented the sixth game of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ postseason run. Over the club’s first five playoff games, the left-handed trio of Andre Ethier, Joc Pederson, and Chase Utley recorded one start combined — specifically, Chase Utley’s in Game 3 of the National League Division Series against the Diamondbacks. That arrangement appeared to work: Roberts and company entered Tuesday with five consecutive wins. That’s what made the manager’s decision on Tuesday slightly unusual. Against Kyle Hendricks in Chicago, Roberts started all three players.

The gambit worked. All together, the trio went 3-for-10 with a double and home run. At one level, the decision was simple, logical. Because of the stage, however, it would have been easy for Roberts to go in a different direction. We often talk about how the postseason is different from the regular season, that it requires a different style of management. That’s no doubt true, particularly when it comes to the bullpen. There are instances, however, in which it’s also important to keep managing like the regular season. Roberts did that last night.

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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