HOUSTON — Yu Darvish left the visiting clubhouse at Minute Maid Park in a white T-shirt, a black baseball cap pulled low, and flanked by an interpreter by his side late Friday night. Down one corridor inside the bowels of the stadium was an exit route packed with guests and family of the Dodgers. He glanced at the crowd briefly and then walked in the other, less obstructed, direction.
| 7:36 |
: I’ll be back in a few minutes, but feel free to get the queue going.
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| 7:56 |
: What’s the O/U for innings for Darvish and McCullers? 4.2 for both?
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| 7:57 |
: I think that’s right, but we will see if either manager is a bit more conservative knowing there are three games in three days here in Houston.
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| 7:57 |
:
Who pitches more innings tonight?
Yu Darvish (80.0% | 64 votes)
Lance McCullers, Jr. (20.0% | 16 votes)
Total Votes: 80
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| 7:59 |
: I’m functioning on very little sleep but hey I can catch up in the off-season
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| 7:59 |
: hibernate in january or february. you don’t want to miss any of that hot stove action.
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The stat wars are over, and the bodies are buried. Some teams still run more numbers than others, and not every organization has made the same analytical investment, but by and large, the baseball industry has embraced the analytical revolution. We don’t need to go into this. I don’t want to go into this. Baseball has leaned so hard into the numbers that, if anything, it’s created an accidental problem of homogeneous thought. Intellectual diversity might currently be at a relative low. Did you hear about the new GM? He’s just like every other GM. That’s a stupid joke that doesn’t refer to anyone, but it could also refer to almost everyone. This entire paragraph is old hat by now.
Every baseball team has numbers coming out of its ears. Every baseball team has employees with ideas of how the team could be better. The new separator is buy-in. Let’s say you’ve got a player. Let’s say the team thinks it could help the player improve. Will the player be responsive? Does the player trust the people delivering the message? We’ve entered an era of middlemen, of organizations concentrating on finding or developing better communicators. Everyone has the data. The best teams get the players to listen.
At the end of July, right up against the deadline, the Dodgers traded for Yu Darvish. The Dodgers had ideas. Yu Darvish listened.
Well, that was one of the craziest baseball games anyone has ever seen. A would-be triple that hit the bill of Chris Taylor’s cap and then bounced right to Joc Pederson, a pickoff at second base that looked like Laz Diaz got challenged to an impromptu game of dodgeball, and finally, an extra inning home run derby led to a 7-6 Astros victory, tying the series at one game apiece. If we get any more baseball games like that one, this series will be a classic.
But before most of those crazy things happened, Dave Roberts made a decision that seemingly set the wheels in motion. In the top of the fifth inning, the Dodgers’ manager summoned Kenta Maeda from the bullpen to take over for Rich Hill.
| 7:55 |
: Welcome to the Game 2 Live Blog, everyone.
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| 7:56 |
:
I am rooting for
Houston (57.9% | 131 votes)
LA (42.0% | 95 votes)
Total Votes: 226
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| 7:56 |
:
I think
Houston will win (56.1% | 127 votes)
LA will win (43.8% | 99 votes)
Total Votes: 226
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| 7:57 |
:
Rich Hill goes
1-3 innings (5.5% | 12 votes)
4+ innings (44.9% | 97 votes)
5+ innings (41.6% | 90 votes)
6+ innings (5.5% | 12 votes)
7+ innings (0.9% | 2 votes)
8+ innings (0.4% | 1 vote)
9 innings (0.9% | 2 votes)
Total Votes: 216
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| 7:58 |
:
The Better Justin Tonight
Verlander (82.3% | 182 votes)
Turner (17.6% | 39 votes)
Total Votes: 221
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| 7:58 |
:
Too Many Polls, Dave
True (31.5% | 72 votes)
False (68.4% | 156 votes)
Total Votes: 228
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Last night, the Dodgers’ domination of the postseason continued. Winning a World Series game by two runs isn’t exactly steamrolling your opponent, but given what Clayton Kershaw, Brandon Morrow, and Kenley Jansen did to the Astros offense, the game never really felt in doubt. Houston got their only run on an Alex Bregman solo home run and never really threatened again.
The rest of their offensive production consisted of a pair of singles, but neither runner would get past first base. The Astros didn’t put a single runner in scoring position all night long. There were no rallies, no trouble out of which a Dodger pitcher had to work. Just outs, and most of them quick outs.
It took Los Angeles just 107 pitches to face 30 batters. Usually, when you see low pitch counts and quick innings, it’s because a team was overly aggressive, swinging at pitches early in counts and making quick outs. In Game 1, though, the Astros seemingly made it easy on the Dodgers by just not swinging at strikes.
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.
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.
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 »
The Astros are going to the World Series for a number of reasons.
Saturday night marked the culmination of a lengthy, creative, bottoming-out rebuild gone right, a rebuild so extreme it had earned the club the “Disastros” moniker. No one is laughing now.
The Astros are going to the World Series because of the accumulation of hirings, signings, draft decisions, development and strategies executed well. Not everything went perfectly, but this is a game of probabilities, not certainties, and a lot of things went right.
That’s the big picture view. The smaller-sample truth is they needed a Game 7 to win Saturday night to have such a happy narrative be written, to advance to a second World Series appearances in franchise history. The Astros needed to match the moment and they did. Read the rest of this entry »
