Last night, with the franchise’s first championship hanging in the balance, Astros manager A.J. Hinch handed the ball to Charlie Morton. He never asked for it back, and four innings later, the Astros mobbed Morton on the mound. They are champions today in part because of Charlie Morton, and there was perhaps no more fitting player to get the last out of the 2017 season, because Charlie Morton embodies so much of what baseball is today.
Symbolism is useful, but it’s also overused. The Astros just won the World Series, and George Springer just won the World Series MVP. Are there ways in which Springer is a symbol for what the Astros are, and for what they’ve achieved? Sure, if you need him to be. He’s a good young player. Homegrown. Seems like a leader. Thrived on the biggest stage. Springer could serve as a symbol, because he is great, and the Astros are great. Look how easy this is!
But while it’s appropriate that Springer won the award, I don’t think that’s because the Astros made a point of following his lead, or anything. I don’t think the Astros made themselves in George Springer’s image, any more than they made themselves in Jose Altuve’s. A winning team is a collection of a whole lot of talent. It’s appropriate that Springer won the award because of this.
You thought you were seeing a lot of this before. You haven’t seen anything yet. You’re going to hear about this from your dentist.
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.
A few hours from now, Yu Darvish will throw the first pitch of Game 7 of this year’s World Series. Shortly thereafter — or, less shortly thereafter, if the Astros are lucky — Lance McCullers will take the mound. I don’t need to tell you what Game 7 means. Nobody does. It’s plainly evident: This game is everything. It’s everything that anyone plays for.
Because of the stakes, and because there’s no tomorrow, patterns you might be used to no longer apply. Both teams will employ an all-hands-on-deck approach, hoping for sufficient adrenaline to counteract fatigue. Darvish, of course, will want to go as long as he can. The same goes for McCullers. They’ve probably both dreamed of going the distance. But that’s almost certainly not going to happen. The Dodgers and Astros are likely to dip into their bullpens. And that’s where it gets extra fun.
Both teams have their full complement of arms. The Dodgers might have more faith in their relievers than the Astros do, but the Astros’ relievers also ought to be more rested. Yet there’s an additional twist. It’s hard to find a writer who doesn’t expect to see Clayton Kershaw. It’s just as hard to find a writer who doesn’t expect to see Dallas Keuchel. There’s also been chatter the Astros might make brief use of Justin Verlander. Kershaw and Keuchel would be on two days’ rest. Verlander, zero. With one game remaining, one game that means more than all others, we should examine the playoff history of this.
The Dodgers’ reward for having the best record in the majors this year, for recording three more wins than the Astros during the regular season, is this: they host the final game of the 2017 major-league campaign, Game 7 of the World Series, tonight.
Home-field advantage is a real phenomenon. In the game’s history, World Series Game 7 victors have been split evenly, 19-19, between home and road teams. But that’s a fairly small sample. In baseball, the home team typically wins 54% of regular-season games, and that rate holds up as a constant decade after decade, era after era.
Conventional wisdom suggests that home-field advantage is the result of multiple advantages enjoyed by the home team: the right to bat last, the ability to tailor a roster specifically to the park, a certain comfort with the surroundings, and the absence of travel-related fatigue (such as might be experienced by the visitors). All of those elements, perhaps, play a role. But the salient factor behind home-field advantage is umpire bias, particularly regarding borderline strike-ball calls. University of Chicago behavioral economist Tobias Moskowitz and Sports Illustrated writer L. Jon Wertheim documented convincing evidence in support of that observation in their book Scorecasting.
The authors used pitch-tracking data to quantify this concept.
Tonight, two great teams play for the championship. An outstanding World Series will end with the best theatre the sport has to offer; one game, winner takes it all. Game 7s are unlike any other baseball game of the year, and for the second year in a row, we might be in for a classic.
The biggest change in any Game 7, of course, is that neither team has to worry about tomorrow. The need to weigh present versus future performance goes away. Tonight, the only thing the managers have to decide is who, in each moment, gives them the best chance to win tonight, and then everyone can go rest for five months afterwards.
The game will start with Yu Darvish and Lance McCullers on the mound. Neither will be around for the finish, though, and the biggest task either manager faces today is to map out how he plans on getting 27 outs. So let’s look at the options for both Dave Roberts and A.J. Hinch.
Justin Verlander threw an epic game in his final 2017 outing. It just wasn’t enough to bring home the hardware for the Astros. It’s wasn’t for lack of trying: he averaged over 96 mph on the 60 fastballs he threw, struck out nine, and didn’t walk a batter. He even broke out a surprise for the Dodgers, something that left many of them shaking their heads after the game.
The biggest at-bat of Game 6 was when Chris Taylor doubled. Whether it was a good pitch or not, whether it was a good swing or not, Taylor made contact and the ball found the grass, and the Dodgers evened the score. Just as importantly, they moved runners to second and third with nobody out, and, that quickly, the home team became the obvious favorite. The Dodgers’ chance of winning increased about 24 percentage points. Corey Seager followed with a sacrifice fly, and the lead was never surrendered. The game flipped in the sixth. That fast, the Astros were forced to prepare for Game 7.
At the end of the day, you need to score to win. Justin Verlander blanked the Dodgers through five, and, for a time, it looked like it might not even matter if the Astros added on. Perhaps George Springer’s home run would be enough. But, to me, there was a turning point, before the major turning point. Going into the bottom of the sixth, the Dodgers were still down 1-0. Yet it could’ve been an awful lot worse. But for the sequence in the top of the fifth.
As Rich Hill started the inning, Brian McCann ripped a single, and Marwin Gonzalez ripped a double. Josh Reddick dug in with two runners to score, and there were all of the outs to play with. Reddick was in position to provide some insurance. Then Hill started him off with three balls.
If you tune into the World Series tonight, chances are pretty good that you’ll be able to watch at least one future Hall of Famer — and likely, even, that you’ll see several.
Of the participants in this year’s Series, Clayton Kershaw is already a lock. Both Carlos Beltran and Chase Utley are in the twilight of their careers but have strong cases for inclusion without doing any more work. Among younger players, Jose Altuve is already off to a great start, and early-20-somethings Carlos Correa and Corey Seager have certainly made their mark.
Meanwhile, there’s one player expected to appear in tonight’s game who occupies an in-between category. On the one hand, he hasn’t yet established unassailable Hall of Fame credentials and is past his peak. On the other, he seems poised to compile a few more reasonably productive years. Justin Verlander has a decent case for the Hall right now, but the next few seasons will determine how persuasive his case ultimately is.
The thing about the slick-baseball theory is it’s so easy to believe. To review, as quickly as possible: Pitchers believe the World Series baseball is different. Like, the actual baseball itself. They suspected it was kind of different earlier in the playoffs, but now they think it’s more different. It’s different by feeling more slick, more slippery. You can imagine how that could pose a problem. What are pitchers to do if they’re not accustomed to their instrument?
So the idea goes, it’s had a profound effect on sliders in particular. Anecdotally, you can get behind it, because we’ve seen some sliders get hit hard. But the other evidence is even more compelling. There’s the blindfold test. There are pictures. And, simply, there are the pitchers, speaking their minds. Experienced pitchers, who you’d think would know what a baseball feels like more than anyone. This is more than just one or two guys. Tom Verducci spoke to players and coaches from both the Astros and the Dodgers. Why would you doubt what the pitchers have to say? Why would they just make this up?
I don’t think they are making it up. I think pitchers do have a certain sense for things. I’d just like to present a graph.