Gerrit Cole is reportedly on the verge of joining the Astros:

Or… maybe he’s not:

In any case, it sounds like a deal will get done eventually:

Unless it doesn’t:

While something may or may not be imminent, such a trade would not be surprising: the Pirates have decided to retool at some level and Cole’s name has come up all offseason, first connected to the Yankees (though the Yankees were apparently unwilling to part with Gleyber Torres). The Astros are a top AL contender, the sort team looking to consolidate its position.

The possible return is not yet clear, though the Astros possess the sort of high-end prospects which the Pirates currently lack in their system. So, on the surface, this potential trade makes a lot of sense. A club headed for a rebuild sells two years of control of a top-of-the-rotation arm to a contender.

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When we last saw him, Joe Smith was recording the final out Cleveland would induce in 2017, getting Aaron Judge to ground out. Earlier in the series, he entered Game 3 of the American League Division Series in the eighth inning. He struck out Aaron Judge. Then he struck out Gary Sanchez. He intentionally walked Didi Gregorius — the only batter of eight he allowed to reach base in the postseason — then got Starlin Castro to ground out. It was an excellent end to an excellent season.

Given recent events, it appears likely that Smith will return to the playoffs in 2018: last night, the defending champion Houston Astros officially announced a two-year deal with the right-hander worth $15 million.

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Chatter has been picking up that Major League Baseball will introduce a pitch clock in 2018. It’s felt like an inevitable development for some time, with the clock having been in place in the upper minors for the last few years. Reactions have been mixed, because reactions are always mixed, but the pitch clock is coming, and it’s probably going to be fine. We’ll get used to it, everyone will get used to it, and the game will remain by and large the same.

I made a point about the pitch clock last week. According to early reports, the proposed clock would only be used when the bases are empty, and I pointed out that the game only really slows down after somebody reaches. When there’s a runner on base, pitchers have more to worry about, so it makes sense that they’d work slower. But I don’t want to make this all about pitchers. We tend to think of pitchers as being responsible for dictating the pace. They are, after all, the guys holding the baseballs. But in any at-bat, there are two parties involved. As Buster Olney wrote in his report, no batter in the National League averaged more time between pitches than Odubel Herrera. And no batter in either league averaged more time between pitches than Marwin Gonzalez.

On average last year, overall, there were 24.2 seconds between pitches. For Gonzalez, that average was 29.5. That was up from the previous year’s 27.2, and up from his career low of 24.4. Pitching to Gonzalez was most recently 22% slower than pitching to a league-average hitter. Just as a pitch clock will make certain pitchers hurry up, it would have the same effect on certain hitters. At least, given proper enforcement.

I imagine we can mostly agree that’s a good thing. There’s baseball’s normal, familiar pace, and there are the players who push it too far. Wasted seconds benefit no one, and there’s no need for there to be just two pitches every minute. Players will need to maintain a good tempo. What effect this all ultimately has, we’ll have to see. Yet there’s one question we can answer right now: What in the heck is Marwin Gonzalez even doing?

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Not every team approaches the offseason looking to get better in the same way. That much is obvious: budget alone can dictate much of a club’s activity on the free-agent market. A little bit less obvious, though, is how the present quality of a team’s roster can affect the players they pursue. Teams that reside on a certain part of the win curve, for example, need that next win more than teams on other parts. That can inform a team’s decisions in the offseason.

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The worst called strike of this season was thrown in the eighth inning of a game between the Astros and the Tigers on the second-to-last day of July. I measure these things by the distance between the location of the pitch and the nearest part of the rule-book strike zone, and, here, we have a called strike on a pitch that missed the zone by 9.8 inches. It’s not a pitch that’s out there on an island — there are always a bunch of called strikes on pitches that miss by six or seven or eight inches — but 9.8 inches is a hell of a distance. I’m holding up two fingers in front of me. Are they separated by 9.8 inches? I don’t know, but they’re separated by what my eyes estimate would be about 9.8 inches. Big miss, considering the umpire is *right there*. We’ve got the season’s worst called strike identified. And maybe the most amazing thing about it: no one cared. You couldn’t even bring yourself to care today. It’s impossible. You’ll see what I mean. But first, a brief statement.

I hate SunTrust Park. I’ve never been there. It’s brand new. I’m sure a lot of thought went into its design, and I’m sure it has its perks. All the new ballparks have their perks. I don’t care about the SunTrust Park design or amenities. I care about the SunTrust Park technology. And the pitch-tracking data from SunTrust Park is garbage. It’s horribly calibrated, and it makes a project like this super annoying. I looked at dozens and dozens of potential worst called strikes. The bulk of the candidates were thrown in Atlanta, and all of them were off. By, like, several inches, in different directions. That’s been aggravating for me, today, but there are also some broader implications.

Pitch locations feed into a lot of the data we like to use. And if you can’t trust the pitch locations, you can’t trust the data. Incorrect locations would affect, say, zone rates. They’d affect chase rates. They’d affect framing metrics. I hope that people smarter than me are aware of this. I hope they’re working to fix this, if they haven’t already. There’s no excuse. In its initial year of existence, SunTrust Park was messed up. Not in a way many people would ever notice, but *I* noticed, and right now I’m the one writing.

Okay, now back to the worst called strike. We’re not going to Atlanta. We’re going to Detroit!

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Every year, around this time, I look forward to this post. I look forward to it because it checks the two boxes most important to me as a writer: the post is always popular, and I don’t have to try to come up with a new idea. It’s always the same idea, and it’s always the same basic research. What changes are the names and the dates and the numbers. It’s not that the research and prep are easy, but finding an idea is usually the challenge. That’s not a concern when you have a recurring series.

That being said, I get nervous. I always want to write about the worst called ball of the season, but, around the All-Star break, I tend to write about the worst called ball of the first half. Here’s this year’s. If that stands up as the worst called ball overall, then I’d have to decide if I want to write a second time about the same event. It’s preferable, to me, that the second half contain a ball that’s objectively even worse. The odds of that aren’t great; the second half is shorter than the first. They’re not actually halves at all.

Excitement and nervousness. My fingers are always crossed. This year, I got lucky again. The worst called ball of the first half was thrown on June 18. The worst called ball of the whole season was thrown on August 20. It was worse by a fraction of a fraction of one inch. The pitch-tracking technology isn’t truly that precise, to begin with. And this all depends on the upper and lower strike-zone boundaries, which are subjective, since they change for every hitter. I don’t have 100% confidence that the ball on August 20 was worse. But my confidence level is at least, I don’t know, 51%. That’s good enough to proceed.

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Since 2000, there have been 101 World Series games played. On average, one out of every eight of those games has gone to extra innings. The most recent World Series produced two such contests. On average, about 60% of World Series games have produced final scores within three runs. For the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers, it was five out of seven. Only about one-third of World Series matchups reach a Game 7, but the 2017 edition provided one of those, as well. The Astros and Dodgers both scored 34 runs. It’s hard to ask for more than we received — and the television ratings from the World Series reflect the appeal of the games.

The only piece really missing from this season’s championship was some real drama in the final game — and we almost got that, as well. Yes, the Astros quickly took a 5-0 lead and conceded just a single run over nine total innings. In five of those first six innings, though, their opponents recorded a run expectancy of at least .86 runs. While they scored a single run in the sixth inning, probability suggests that it “should” have been more. By the numbers, the Dodgers possessed greater than an 80% chance of scoring at least twice and a 50% chance of coming through three times. A 5-3 or 5-4 lead heading into the ninth would have made for some compelling baseball.

As it happened, the Dodgers didn’t live up to their probabilities over the first six innings, and the game lacked the sort of tension that would have drawn a few more eyeballs. Regardless, the World Series performed strongly in the television ratings for the second straight season. In 2004, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series, sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals and recorded a very high 15.8 rating That figure probably actually understated interest in the series: had it produced a couple elimination games, the ratings would have been even higher.

In the 11 seasons after the Cardinals-Red Sox contest, the World Series averaged a 9.4 rating, failing to hit double-digits after 2009, when the Yankees won their last championship. Last season reversed the trend, accruing a 12.9. This season followed suit with a strong 10.6, lacking the advantage of a Cubs teams looking to end its 100-plus-year drought.

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Following one of the most remarkable World Series of all time, in the wake of a matchup defined by historically wild swings in win probability, the Houston Astros engaged in a relatively subdued title celebration on the infield turf of Dodger Stadium. Given that Game 7 was one of the few four-hour stretches in the series that lacked constant tension and drama, it makes sense. As Charlie Morton finished off the Dodgers in the final innings, the conclusion seemed inevitable.

Following the game, the architect of the title, Astros GM Jeffrey Luhnow, briefly took the post-game microphone, addressing an emptying stadium and a national television audience. He did what most winning executives do in such situations: he thanked ownership for their patience and support.

As mundane as Luhnow’s words might have seemed, it’s likely that they transcended mere cliche. Because, where other clubs typically experience ebbs and flows, the Astros took one of the most extreme routes to a title in the game’s history. Ownership had to be open to a lot of losing. Because of the result, however, it’s a path down which other clubs will likely attempt to travel. In a copycat industry such as this one, everyone wants to be like, or at least learn from, the last team standing.

How can your team be like the Astros?

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Look, I don’t want to dwell on this too much. I’m not sure there’s anywhere to take it, and I’m a natural skeptic with these theories, anyway. I’m not sure why the World Series baseball would feel unusually slick, and, even if it’s true that it did, well, both teams got the same baseballs. You adjust and you deal. The Astros won one more game than the Dodgers did. Every single baseball game is played under its own unique conditions. The Astros are the rightful champions, and the Dodgers are the rightful runners-up.

But there’s always going to be that what-if element. It would be there anyway. What if Clayton Kershaw started Game 7, instead of Yu Darvish? What if Cody Bellinger had actually walked off Game 2? What if Yulieski Gurriel had been suspended immediately, instead of having it delayed until 2018? What if a million things. Baseball seldom makes it clean. What if there truly was something weird about the ball? What could’ve happened if there weren’t?

There’s no closure to be found through entertaining these questions. The games will never be replayed, and the Astros will stand as the 2017 champs forever. I just wonder. I see the argument against the ball being different. I made it just the other day! And yet, I’m not sure how to explain Brad Peacock.

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When the accolades are being given out for this 2017 Astros championship, they’ll deservedly go to the club’s young core. They were spectacular. World Series MVP George Springer led the way in the final seven games with an OPS over 1.400, five home runs, and enough exuberance to exhume the dead. Possible regular-season MVP Jose Altuve led the club with a 1.021 postseason OPS and seven home runs. Alex Bregman and Carlos Correa combined for nine wins this year. Indeed, no team club received as many wins from players aged 28 or younger than this Houston Astros team.

We shouldn’t forget the veterans on this squad, though, a collection of players who not only offered important production but supported their younger teammates all the way to the end.

The Astros hitters over 30 — led by Brian McCann, Carlos Beltran, and Josh Reddick — compiled the 17th-most wins among 30-somethings across the league. It doesn’t look like a lot, but that group may have helped change what had been a losing culture in Houston most recently.

“There was a lot of concern about where this thing was going,” said general manager Jeff Luhnow after the game, “and culture is a hard thing to quantify. From the young guys that we’ve had here — Altuve, [Carlos] Correa, Springer, [Alex] Bregman — they were developing their own culture, and the thing that we were missing was the McCann, Beltran, been there, done that, been in every situation and can help these guys through it, and that was useful.”

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