Fresh from the unpleasant surprise department, the Washington National announced Sunday afternoon that Max Scherzer would be scratched from his Game 5 start. Scherzer has suffered neck pain in recent days and in the words of Nationals GM Mike Rizzo, is in “ungodly pain.” In for Game 5 is Joe Ross, whose only appearance so far this postseason was when he threw two shutout innings of relief in Washington’s Game 3 loss to Houston.

Considering that at times this postseason Scherzer has looked as if he would have to be dragged from the mound by a full SWAT team, I would imagine there’s not a great deal of hyperbole involved in the description of his pain. The Silver Hammer’s replacement, Joe Ross, fared well in 2019 when used as a starter, allowing a 3.02 ERA and 3.86 FIP in nine starts, all in the second half of the season. Ross, who once assisted shortstop Trea Turner in making the Wil Myers three-way trade look like a disaster for the non-Washington teams, has otherwise had his career waylaid by injuries.

The larger question, of course, is just what this means for Washington’s bottom-line playoff odds. Initially coming into Game 5, ZiPS projected the Astros to have a 61%-39% edge to win the series. But what scenario are we exactly projecting now? The answer depends on what actually happens with Scherzer’s injury, which is speculation at this point.

Ross’ start is essentially forced by the Nationals’ relief corps. Washington doesn’t have the arms to make a bonafide bullpen game a palatable scenario to the team, and with Austin Voth off the roster, they can’t start him without ruling another pitcher out due to injury. In any case, the Nats certainly don’t want to rule out Scherzer’s return unless they absolutely have to, and one would imagine the league looking very closely at the situation if Fernando Rodney or Tanner Rainey were to “suddenly” suffer injuries that necessitated them being replaced on the roster.

For the ZiPS World Series probabilities, I’m going with the happy scenario for now: Ross starts tonight, with Stephen Strasburg going in Game 6, and Scherzer left for a return in a possible Game 7. If you look at the probabilities right now, you’ll actually see the Nationals’ championship probability get a small bump to a 40%/60% deficit. ZiPS is a noted Aníbal Sánchez skeptic, and projects Ross as a minor improvement, by about two-tenths of a run per nine innings.

That, of course, doesn’t mean that this is welcome news for the Nationals, only that it’s beneficial in one very specific scenario, one the Nationals are far from guaranteed to see. To get an idea of the probabilities in some of the scenarios that are far uglier for the Nats, I re-ran the probabilities with a few of the possibilities, and condensed them into one pretty little chart!

Losing Scherzer for the rest of the World Series would be the worst-case scenario for the Nationals, but not one that dooms them. People tend to drastically overrate the dependability of a great starter’s excellence or a lousy starter’s ineptitude in an individual game. As terrific as Scherzer is, even in his best season, he was “only” worth 0.23 WAR per start, and was “just” 0.17 WAR better than the average pitcher. You want your best pitchers in the actual games, but even without Scherzer, who wins the series will come down to a lot more than his attendance.

The Houston Astros evened up the World Series in convincing fashion Saturday night, defeating the Washington Nationals 8-1 in a game that was only in doubt for a few, relatively brief moments. With this win, the Astros reset the World Series into a best-of-three in which they have home-field advantage. By forcing a Game 6, regardless of the outcome of tonight’s Game 5, Houston guarantees that their last game of the year will be in front of their fans.

If there’s one thing that no one should be surprised about, it’s baseball’s ability to surprise. If you were talking to a friend who hasn’t been following the World Series, and told them a tale of a clutch Astros starter throwing five shutout innings on the sport’s biggest stage, they might think you were referring to the team’s 225-win, future Hall of Famer. Or maybe the Cy Young favorite who went undefeated for most of the season, or at least the ace pitcher picked up from the Diamondbacks in a blockbuster July trade.

Your friend in this theoretical may be extraordinarily well-informed and name Jose Urquidy, but three months ago, few would have expected Urquidy to be Houston’s firewall to prevent the team from falling to a 3-1 World Series deficit. The 24-year-old rookie not only isn’t an established veteran; he can’t even claim to be a phenom prospect making good on unlimited potential. Urquidy was barely on the prospect radar (he is currently 19th in the org on THE BOARD), a pitcher with a decent fastball and changeup, and good command, but little dazzle and an injury-shortened minor league career.

With their rotation ranking fourth in baseball in WAR, the Astros didn’t envision having fourth-starter questions in the playoffs. The acquisition of Zack Greinke appeared to make Wade Miley one of the game’s best fourth starters, completing the team’s playoff rotation. But Houston also didn’t envision that Miley, who sported an ERA under three as late as August, struggling immensely down the stretch. Miley pitched himself out of the rotation and then the playoffs entirely, leaving the Astros with something of a situation. A fourth starter wasn’t needed in the ALDS with its ample off-days, and any awkwardness in the ALCS was compensated for by the fact that the Yankees had the same worry. Read the rest of this entry »

In a technical sense, Game 3 wasn’t a must-win for the Astros. In a practical sense, the odds of Houston winning four straight games against the Nationals are under 10%. The Astros needed the win, and they got it with a 4-1 victory. For those purists of the game who enjoy pitchers batting, Game 3 of the World Series highlighted one of the big differences in strategy between the American and National Leagues: pitchers as hitters.

Greinke’s Bunt

The first potentially important pitcher plate appearance occurred in the top of the second inning. Zack Greinke came to bat with one out and runners on first and third. Greinke’s season wRC+ of 123 doesn’t really represent his true hitting talent, but his career 60 wRC+ also understates his value in this situation. Greinke got down a successful bunt and advanced the runner to second, but the Astros’ win expectancy went down about five percentage points. If Greinke had done nothing, it would have only gone down a single percentage point more. While a double play would have dropped the win expectancy by about 10 percentage points, a sac fly would have moved the Astros up four percentage points, while a single would have moved them up six.

Greinke’s career wRC+ indicates he isn’t a particularly good hitter, but it’s mostly due to his inability to walk or hit for power. With a .225 lifetime average, he hits a decent number of singles, which is what the Astros needed in this situation. With a runner already on third, moving a single runner to second doesn’t help much when there are two outs. The expected situation is a Greinke out, which drops win expectancy by six. The bunt is only one percentage point so we’re really dealing with the chances of a double play versus the chances of a single. Given the large bump from a single compared to the expected out, versus the small drop from the bunt to a double play, the double play would have to have been much more likely than the single to make bunting the right choice. That isn’t in the case here, particularly with Aníbal Sánchez giving up a bunch of loud contact in the first few innings. George Springer followed the bunt with a groundball out to keep the game at a one-run deficit for the Nationals. Read the rest of this entry »

The great starting pitching of these two teams was the headlining feature heading into this edition of the World Series. The matchup of two historically good rotations promised a fiercely competitive series with runs at an even higher premium than they already are in the postseason. We are two games in and the Astros’ two best starters have allowed a combined nine runs while the bullpen has allowed an additional eight. It’s been an ugly start for the Houston pitching staff.

The Astros will hand the ball to Zack Greinke in Game 3 while the Nationals counter with Aníbal Sánchez. ZiPS gives the Astros an overwhelming 58.3% chance to claw their way back into the series in Game 3. After his relief appearance in Game 1, Patrick Corbin draws the start on Saturday in Game 4. While Sánchez doesn’t approach the level of the Nats’ top three starters, his presence on the roster gives them the flexibility to rest their best pitchers should the series stretch longer than five games. And to Sánchez’s credit, he held the Cardinals scoreless and nearly hitless in his Game 1 start in the NLCS.

After Greinke, the Astros’ plan is a little less clear. When Houston needed to call on a fourth starter in the ALCS, they instead leaned on their bullpen, using seven different pitchers in the deciding Game 6. At that point in the series, they held a 3-2 advantage over the Yankees and were coming off an off day in the schedule. If they had lost Game 6, they had a rested Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole available for Game 7. They don’t have that luxury in the World Series. Read the rest of this entry »

As the World Series shifts to Washington, the Astros already find themselves in a two-games-to-none hole, and now they have to contend with another loss, namely that of the designated hitter slot. While Yordan Alvarez hasn’t been able to replicate the impressive regular season showing that’s made him the presumptive favorite to win AL Rookie of the Year honors, he’s shown signs of emerging from a slump by getting on base a team-high five times in the series’ first two games. Given his defensive limitations, playing him in the field is no trivial concern, but the Astros — whose offense in October has rarely resembled the juggernaut it was during the regular season — probably need his bat more than they do a better outfield defense.

In Thursday’s media session, manager A.J. Hinch conceded that he was wrestling with the problem:

I do like the at-bats he’s had specifically in the last game or two. The balance of where to play defense, where to keep your weapons on the bench, playing a National League game where you anticipate a few pinch-hits, having some resources on the bench in order for a big at-bat. I put Tucker in that at-bat yesterday with first and second with Strasburg at the end of his outing.

I’m weighing all of that. This is a really big left field, and I’m taking that into consideration… I can probably talk myself in and out of every scenario. I don’t think we play all three games here without him seeing the outfield. I’m not sure that will be tomorrow. Right now I’m kind of leaning against it. But I’ll make that decision when I have to.

Since arriving in the majors in early June, Alvarez has been one of the game’s most productive hitters. From his debut on June 9 — during which he homered off Dylan Bundy, the first of nine longballs in his initial 12 games — to the end of the season, his 178 wRC+ (via a .313/.412/.655 line) was virtually tied with Nelson Cruz for third in the majors, behind only Ketel Marte (183) and Alex Bregman (182); his slugging percentage ranked fourth in that span, his on-base percentage fifth, his 27 homers tied for 10th, and his 3.8 WAR tied for 11th — and that’s with the positional adjustment penalty that comes with regular DH duty. Read the rest of this entry »

I thought that with the advent of the World Series, the intentional walk beat was probably done for. The Astros famously didn’t intentionally walk anyone all year, and Dave Martinez seems to use intentional walks sparingly, albeit at wild times — his intentional walk of Max Muncy was one of the worst of the playoffs.

Imagine my surprise, then, when both managers intentionally walked players last night. The Nationals are always a threat to do that, sure, but the Astros?? If the Astros are intentionally walking someone, you know it’s serious. Let’s dive in.

First, the Nats walk. This one was a classic spot — Yordan Alvarez was at the plate in the sixth with a man on second in a tie game. With Carlos Correa on deck, it’s not as though it got a lot easier, but intentionally walking someone with first base open to switch the platoon matchup is a tactic as old as time.

Being as old as time doesn’t mean a tactic is good, though. Intentionally walking someone with only one out is almost never a good decision — there are just so many ways the inning can go wrong. Indeed, the walk bumped Houston’s win percentage from 60.5% to 62.8%. That 2.3% of a win is a lot to give up with a walk — could it possibly be worth it?

Alvarez has only a tiny platoon split, but with so few plate appearances, he looks like a basically average hitter when it comes to the platoon advantage after regressing his stats. He’s a good hitter overall, though, regardless of handedness. How good of a hitter? Well, Depth Charts doesn’t quite buy the hype; it projects him as a .363 wOBA hitter overall, which works out to .372 against righties. Pretty solid, if not quite Alvarez’s .437 wOBA against righties this year.

How about Correa? He’s a good hitter in his own right; a .355 wOBA per our projections. After applying platoon splits, that works out to .350 against righties. This decision doesn’t look merited unless Strasburg has huge platoon splits — and he emphatically does not. Strasburg has a huge sample of split-less pitching — so much of one, in fact, that even after regressing his line, he’s hardly worse against lefties than righties. Overall, he projects to allow a .278 wOBA to righties and .282 to lefties — basically a scratch. Read the rest of this entry »

With one swing of the bat, it appeared that Alex Bregman and the Astros had turned a corner. In the bottom of the first inning of a World Series Game 2 in which his team already trailed the Nationals 2-0, the 25-year-old third baseman pounced on a poorly located Stephen Strasburg changeup, sending it into the Crawford Boxes for a game-tying home run. The shot offered the promise of a fresh start — the superstar snapping his slump, and the powerhouse club washing away the memory of its opening night loss, if not the unending debacle that is the team’s handling of the Brandon Taubman case.

The rest of the night did not go so well, either for the Astros, who only managed to score a single run more, or for Bregman, who did not collect another hit and whose suddenly shaky defense figured prominently in a six-run seventh inning rally by the Nationals. The Astros now trail the Nationals two games to none as the series heads to Washington, and Bregman, whose play during the regular season might well garner him the AL MVP award, is still among the Astros whose offensive output this postseason has left something to be desired.

Bregman spent the past six months as merely the AL’s best player this side of Mike Trout, and thanks to the combination of his durability and versatility — he played 156 games overall, including 65 at shortstop while Carlos Correa was on the shelf — as well as the Astros’ success relative to the Angels, he may take home MVP honors. In his fourth major league season, he set across-the-board career bests with a .296/.423/.592 line, a 168 wRC+, 41 homers, an 8.5 WAR. Among AL qualifiers, his on-base percentage, wRC+, and WAR all ranked second, his slugging percentage and home run total third; he also led the league with 119 walks. While he started the postseason on a tear, hitting .353/.450/.647 with a homer in 20 PA against the Rays during the Division Series, he slipped to .167/.423/.222 in the ALCS against the Yankees, walking a series-high seven times but doing little else.

In Tuesday night’s World Series opener, Bregman went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts, two against Max Scherzer and one against Sean Doolittle, plus a walk against control-challenged Tanner Rainey. “I’ve got to be better,” he told reporters after the game. “Starts with me. I was horrible all night.” Read the rest of this entry »

I had a recap half-written in my head after six innings of last night’s pivotal Game 2. It focused, as expected, on the pitching matchup of Stephen Strasburg and Justin Verlander; on how, perhaps more unexpectedly, both struggled in the first inning, each giving up two runs; and how they both settled, despite a tight strike zone and a steady stream of baserunners, into the familiar, soothing rhythms of solid-but-not-dominant pitching performances. (There was a little meditation, too, on the already-iconic Verlander leg throw.) Strasburg struck out seven, and Verlander, with his six, cleared the record for the most postseason punch outs of all time.

In the sixth, Verlander pitched his first clean inning of the game, and Strasburg escaped unscathed from a Yuli Gurriel double and an intentional walk of Yordan Alvarez. Through six, and the two teams were knotted at 2-2; Strasburg, with 114 pitches, was surely done for the night, and Verlander would just as surely be coming in for the top of the seventh.

As the broadcast faded to commercial, I settled into my nest of blankets. I know what this game is, I thought, like someone who doesn’t know what’s about to hit them.

***

The seventh inning, for whatever reason, always carries with it a sort of mystique. It’s the time when you rush to grab your last beers, when everyone stretches and you hear the creaking of your sad, aging joints, when the strange little ritual of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is performed. It doesn’t have quite the tension of the eighth and ninth, but the mood is clearly distinct from, say, the fifth; if you’re at the game, you’re probably a little tired, a little out of it, getting a little chilly. On midsummer nights, it’s around the time the sun fades away. And ever since I witnessed the life-changing devil magic of the Jose Bautista Bat Flip Inning, I’ve been unable to stop myself from paying a little more attention when the seventh rolls around. It’s usually normal, just another inning in another baseball game. But you never know. You never know when the fabric of the game will begin to rip — or when it might be rent asunder. Read the rest of this entry »

In 1911, the city of Houston finished construction on a $5 million train station that overshot its original budget by $4 million. The city had been so jacked up to build this thing that they had swatted the home of a former Houston mayor and a prominent synagogue out of the way to get it up.

When people had grown bored and disgusted by trains in the mid-70s, Union Station was abandoned for a shiny new Amtrak facility. But instead of knocking it down or blowing it up, as the city had done with the buildings that had been in Union Station’s way initially, it was granted immortality by the National Park Service on the National Register of Historic Places.

When the Astros started muttering about getting a new stadium in 1995, and were actually threatening to leave Houston and become the new Washington franchise against which they are currently playing in the World Series, it was eventually determined that Union Station would make the perfect starting point for construction of their new facility.

Given the historic choo-choo depot that now serves as its main concourse, it makes sense that Minute Maid Park would incorporate a train into the ballpark’s home run celebrations. The train is piloted at 2.5 mph but still has an emergency brake, just in case of a horrifying accident occurring at a speed that many doctors consider an ideal pace for walking.

Juan Soto, who you may have heard is only 20 years old and already has three home runs in the postseason, went up to meet that train last night, bashing a home run to a part of Minute Maid Park where baseballs aren’t supposed to go. In the top of the fourth inning, he sent a Gerrit Cole fastball onto the unlit track of the silent Astros train, and the two inanimate objects became a pair of unwitting companions for the remainder of the game.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a great postseason. But…

Baseball fans have been treated to an excellent month of ballgames. The NL Wildcard was an instant classic, and three matchups in the divisional round went the distance. Washington pitched historically well in the NCLS, and on the other side of the bracket, two of the best teams in baseball battled in an entertaining war of attrition, a back and forth set that climaxed with José Altuve’s walk-off homer in Game 6. Thus far, we’ve been spoiled.

But you’d be forgiven for thinking it hasn’t felt that way. As baseball reaches its annual crescendo, the sport’s collective focus has often drifted away from the games on the field. The partial un-juicing of the ball emerged as a dominant storyline early in the postseason, right alongside the usual complaints about extended commercial breaks and out-of-touch announcers blathering on far-flung networks. Then, as the league championships kicked off, ESPN’s T.J. Quinn released a disturbing piece detailing how Angels team employees not only failed to intervene on Tyler Skaggs‘ drug use but actually abetted it in his final days. Reading the news, you may well conclude that the league itself has lost the ability to sway the narrative in a way that reflects positively on the enterprise.

Unfortunately, the pattern continued; Game 1 of the World Series began under a cloud of a different sort. In the aftermath of Houston’s dramatic, exuberant ALCS win over the Yankees, assistant general manager Brandon Taubman used the occasion to rub salt in a wound. With three women reporters standing nearby, Taubman, cigar in hand, loudly and repeatedly directed a message their way: “Thank God we got Osuna! I’m so [expletive] glad we got Osuna!”

On the surface, it’s a curious message: Altuve only had to save the day because closer Roberto Osuna had coughed up a ninth-inning lead. The context, however, is damning. Osuna is only an Astro because the club was able to acquire him on the cheap while he served a suspension for domestic violence. One of the women in question has previously come under fire from Taubman for the timing of her Osuna-related tweets. That she was wearing a purple anti-domestic violence bracelet at the time adds a jolt of nastiness to already reprehensible behavior.

By now you know the details of what followed. How Sports Illustrated’s Stephanie Apstein reported the news; that Houston vehemently denied the incident took place, and questioned Apstein’s credibility, when multiple other journalists from other outlets corroborated Apstein’s account; and the Astros’ late and inadequate walk-back of their initial statement. On a day when we should have been celebrating the best of baseball, hyping up Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer, we were instead left to grapple with the worst symptoms of its culture. As the Washington Post’s Barry Svulga succinctly summed it up: “It’s infuriating it’s 2019, and it’s the World Series, and we even need to be having this conversation. But clearly we do.”

In the end, baseball itself rescued the day. It wasn’t so much that a great game made us forget all that transpired in the previous 48 hours — as if anyone with a Twitter feed possibly could have anyway. No, a game cannot simply toss us an escape rope, and we shouldn’t want to move on so soon: Three women were wronged in an incident symptomatic of a broader problem; basic decency demands that we ask baseball to better itself.

What a game can do is remind us why we care in the first place, why we’re bothering with reading and listening and talking about these problems within baseball’s ecosystem instead of anywhere else. For all that was wrong in the last few days, baseball reminded us of its virtues, of why we choose to spend our leisure time in this imperfect space. Read the rest of this entry »