Nearly eight months ago, I asked you to predict the future. Here are the words I used to introduce that piece:

In 2017, the fastball rate fell again. It’s been falling for some time now, but in 2017 it fell again, from 56.7% in 2016 to 55.6% last year. There’s some reason to think that the drop in the fastball rate is linked to the increase in baseball’s increasing swinging-strike rate, which in turn is linked to the rise in strikeouts and hit batsmen, and on and on and on. Baseball is a complex system of action and reaction, and small changes can grow large quickly.

So this year, I want to know: what do you think will happen to some of baseball’s key stats, league-wide, in 2018? Maybe you think home-run rates will go up and strikeouts will fall. Maybe you think if home-run rates go up then strikeout rates have to fall. Maybe you think it’s the other way around. I don’t know. But I want to hear from you, and most of all I want to hear why you think certain changes are linked, and others aren’t.

Below are a series of tables featuring 10 years’ worth of data for a few key metrics. I’ve also included percentage changes year over year. Below each table is a poll which asks you to indicate whether you think a given statistic will increase or decrease — and, if so, by how much. Answer each poll, if you wish, and then also indicate in the comments why you voted the way you did on one statistic and not others. In a year or so, I’ll come back to this and we’ll talk about it as a group. Maybe it’ll be interesting. Maybe it won’t! We’ll see.

A lot has happened since I wrote those words: I’ve gotten married, my wife and I moved from Boston to Seattle, and I became a telecommuter (in my day job; this one has always been virtual-only). Oh, and the 2018 season came and went. The future I asked you to predict is now a part of the history books. Let’s see how good you were at reading ahead.

Note: a reader of the March post suggested he/she was unsure if answers should be submitted in percent or percentage point. It’s possible, as a result, that a few ballots could distort the overall results. Because I presented all the original deltas in the form of a percent, however, that is how I have once again presented them here. Fortunately, none of this matters at all!

Fastball Rate

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Ron Darling, Jack Morris, and Tyler Thornburg — on how they learned and developed their change-of-pace pitches.

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Ron Darling, Former All-Star

“When I first started throwing a split, I was one of those pitchers who could never develop a changeup. I was in the minor leagues with Al Jackson, who was a crafty left-hander in his day, and he taught me a screwball. He used to throw one. I got very adept at it, but it made my arm hurt. I had to develop a change-of-pace pitch that didn’t hurt my elbow, and that’s how the split-finger came to be.

“It was an era where the pitch was popular. Roger Craig taught it to a lot of pitchers, but it was a split-finger fastball for those guys. For me it was more of a forkball. It was something soft that I could combine with my fastball and hard curveball.

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In Game Five of the World Series on Sunday night, behind a stifling seven-inning, three-hit effort from David Price — on three days of rest, even — and a pair of home runs by Steve Pearce, the Red Sox completed their dismantling of the Dodgers with a 5-1 victory and a four-games-to-one Series win. Like the other games in the series, this one was close for a while. Ultimately, though, the Red Sox pulled away late, with the Dodgers unable to produce a run beyond David Freese’s leadoff homer in the bottom of the first inning. On top of their franchise-record 108 wins, the Red Sox went 11-3 in the postseason, losing just one game in each round of the playoffs. They’ll take their place among the most dominant championship teams of recent vintage, and have a claim as the best in franchise history.

To these eyes, the World Series turned on eight factors, areas that set the Red Sox apart from the Dodgers in what was, at times, a fairly close series that will nonetheless look rather lopsided in the history books.

Two-Out Damage

Continuing what they did against the Astros in the ALCS, the Red Sox scored the majority of their runs against the Dodgers with two outs. In fact, the totals and rates in the two rounds match up almost exactly: 18 out of 29 runs scored against Houston (62.0%) and 18 of 28 against Los Angeles (64.3%). In the World Series they hit .242/.347/.484 in 72 plate appearances with two outs and put up video-game numbers — .471/.609/.882 in 23 PA — with two outs and runners in scoring position. Their OPS in that latter situation set a World Series record:

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In our never-ending quest to put a FanGraphs logo on everything, mugs are the logical next step. So, here they are!

They come in both black and white to match your preferred aesthetic and, at 15 oz., are also on the large size. These have quickly become the go-to mugs in my own household, to the point where certain unnamed spouses have attempted to monopolize them.

They are available now for $25, which includes shipping and handling. Supplies are currently limited. Quite honestly, these may be the first and last mugs we make, so get them while you can!

Wobbly Dodgers starter pitches his way into a jam. Red Sox lineup turns over to the third time through the order. Manager Dave Roberts summons reliever Ryan Madson. All runners score, Red Sox take the lead for good. You could be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu regarding the basic template of the first two games of the 2018 World Series.

The Dodgers beat the Braves in the Division Series and the Brewers in the and League Championship Series in part because Madson, an August 31 acquisition from the Nationals, came up very big in a few key spots, but they’re down two games to none in this World Series because he’s failed to replicate that success. But whereas one could point to at least half-a-dozen other mistakes the Dodgers made en route to losing Game One, particularly in the field — to say nothing of Roberts’ ill-fated summoning of Alex Wood, who surrendered a game-breaking three-run homer to Eduardo Nunez — the Madson move stood out in Game Two, in part because the Dodgers played a cleaner game and in part because it cost them their only lead in this series thus far.

The Dodgers traded for Madson not only because they needed additional bullpen support due to myriad injuries but because the 13-year veteran is about as battle-tested as they come. His numbers at the time of the trade weren’t good (5.28 ERA, 4.36 FIP, 21.0% strikeout rate, 0.0 WAR in 44.1 innings), but he’d made 47 postseason appearances (fifth all-time) in six previous trips (2008-11 with the Phillies, 2015 with the Royals and 2017 with the Nationals), winning World Series rings with the Phillies and the Royals. “The numbers aren’t indicative of the stuff,” Roberts said at the time. “For us, we’re betting on the stuff and the person.”

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Who we choose to be when we know someone else is watching is very revealing. It isn’t necessarily who we actually are; researchers have long fretted over the corrupting influence of observed observation. People pick their noses in their cars alone; they remember Kleenex when Grandma is near. But who we decide to be when we can feel another person’s gaze does tell us something about who we think we should be, or perhaps who we wish we were. Someone who sat up straighter, or who knew the right, snappy thing to say. Someone who was kinder. Someone like ourselves, only different. A not-a-nose-picker.

Most people go through life without inspiring much sustained notice, save for the odd grocery-store lurker. But a funny thing happens during October baseball, when the stakes are high and we all find ourselves watching the same games. The drama in front of us serves to make us aware of strangers’ keen notice.

And so I thought we might look back on a few moments from the playoffs thus far, when we saw people seeing us, so as to learn who it is they are when they know we’re watching.

Ryan Braun Enters the Panopticon

It’s a small moment. With Travis Shaw up to bat in the third inning of Game One of the NLDS, the broadcast pans over the Brewers dugout. Ryan Braun is putting away his batting helmet and gloves (he has just struck out), and makes ever-so-brief eye contact with the camera. He notices us noticing him and shouts, “GO TRAV!”

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Neither the Red Sox’ four-run margin of victory, nor the ease with which Craig Kimbrel finished off the ninth, really do justice to the intensity of Game One of the World Series. Despite the final score, only 10 of the game’s 80 plays took place with a run differential greater than two runs. There were 11 high-leverage plays overall, and the average leverage index was 1.14, which is higher than normal. It was a game with important, exciting moments — and none were more important than certain moments of the seventh inning.

In terms purely of win expectancy, Eduardo Nunez’s three-run homer in the bottom of the seventh off Alex Wood was the game’s top play. When Nunez stepped to the plate with runners on first and second, two outs, and a one-run lead, the Red Sox’ chances of winning the game were 77% — which is to say, good but far from from certain. After his three-run homer — which came off the bat with a launch angle just under 20 degrees but managed to clear the Green Monster, anyway — Boston’s win probability increased to 96%. The game was pretty much over.

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The World Series begins later this very evening, and I don’t know who’s going to win. Nobody knows who’s going to win. It is impossible to know who’s going to win. It’s even almost impossible to know which team ought to be favored. Yeah, the Red Sox finished with baseball’s best record. But the Dodgers added Manny Machado in the middle of the year. The Dodgers finished with baseball’s second-best BaseRuns record. The Red Sox finished in third. Each team deserves to be where it is, and each team would make a deserving champion. Whatever happens over the next four to seven games will mean both everything and nothing.

Given that this is literally the World Series, though, everyone’s looking for edges. We’re all just looking for edges. Potential x-factors, if you will, that could conceivably give one team a leg up. And there’s one statistical area I’ve seen discussed in plenty of spaces — the Red Sox’s seeming vulnerability against left-handed pitching. It’s a good lineup, but it’s a lineup that had a big platoon split. Perhaps that could be enough to put the Dodgers over the top. Handedness could effectively neuter Boston’s bats.

But it seems to me there’s not anything there. The headline already gave this post away. You don’t need to keep reading in case you’re in a rush. For those of you still sticking around, I’ll take a few minutes to explain myself.

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On a recent podcast episode, Eric Longenhangen and I discussed the premise for this article, which is another way of asking which organizations are healthiest in the short-to-medium term. The factor that goes furthest towards answering that question is present on-field talent, although salary, controlled years, the presence of impact minor leaguers on the horizon, and front-office quality are all relevant — as is payroll ceiling, which serves as a proxy for margin for error. With the World Series starting tonight, it seemed like the right time to look ahead at the favorites for the five World Series beyond this one.

I’ve experimented with some objective ways of measuring organizational health. I think it’s ultimately possible to produce an algorithm that would do a solid job, ranking teams objectively in a number of key categories. It would also require considerable time. Eager to arrive at some kind of answer, I’ve settled for subjective assessment for this version of the post, but I intend to work on something more systematic in the winter.

Here are the criteria I’ve considered to produce these rankings: short-term MLB talent, long-term MLB talent/upper-minors prospects, lower-minors prospects/trade capital, payroll ceiling, MLB coaching/front office, and amateur signings (draft and international). You could quibble and combine or separate a few of those groupings, or argue some of these can’t be quantified properly. You may be right, but we’ll keep tweaking things until they are.

I had originally intended to limit this list to five teams for purposes of symmetry, but the top tier looked like seven teams to me, and the sources by whom I ran this list agreed. In the same way that the I approached the Trade Value Rankings from the point of view of a medium-payroll, medium-term-focused team, I’ve undertook this exercise by asking which team would be most attractive to a prospect GM if his or her only interest is to win the most World Series possible (and not have low state income tax, run a childhood team, or live in a cool city) over the next five seasons.

Without further explanation, here are the organizations most likely to win the 2019-23 World Series.

1. Los Angeles Dodgers

The top-three teams on this list all have some reasonable claim to the top spot, but I ultimately went with the Dodgers, as they have a little more certainty in terms of on-field personnel than the Yankees possess, while both clubs feature similar built-in financial advantages. (Houston lags behind on the second count.)

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Given that the Dodgers have won 20 pennants and the Red Sox 13, and that the two teams have combined to make 25 trips to the postseason during the Wild Card era, it seems improbable that this World Series will be just their second meeting in the Fall Classic — and more than a century since their first. Both franchises have endured ups and downs over the decades, but in general have been among the majors’ most successful, with the Dodgers owning the third-highest winning percentage since 1901 (.526) and the Red Sox the fifth-highest (.519).

What follows is an exploration of nine shared aspects of the two teams’ rich histories, listed in vaguely chronological order. Not all of them will come to bear directly upon the action, but for a sport and an event where the present is always linked to the past, it’s worth keeping these relationships in mind.

1916: The Original Matchup

The Red Sox were one of the nascent American League’s most successful teams, winning six pennants in the Junior Circuit’s first 18 years and going undefeated in five World Series during that span: 1903 (the inaugural one, against the Pirates), 1912 (against the Giants), 1915 (against the Phillies), 1916 (against the Dodgers), and 1918 (against the Cubs). (John McGraw’s Giants refused to play them in 1904, and so there was no World Series.) As for the Dodgers, they began life as the Brooklyn Atlantics in the American Association in 1884 and were known variously (and unofficially) as the Grays, Bridegrooms, Grooms, Superbas, and Trolley Dodgers. They enjoyed some success in the 19th century, winning the 1889 AA pennant and the 1890, 1899, and 1900 NL ones, but they didn’t win their first of the 20th century until 1916, when they were known as the Robins in honor of manager Wilbert Robinson (a moniker that bore special significance to this scribe and expectant father a century later). Not until 1932 did they officially become the Dodgers, though a program from the 1916 World Series did bill them that way:

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