Source: FanGraphs

One of the most insane baseball games anyone has ever seen. We will have attempts at analysis later. Now, just amazement.

HOUSTON — The investigative team of Ben Lindbergh, Rob Arthur and Alan Nathan might have to get back to work. Not only has the ball played differently since 2015 when it became livelier, now the World Series ball is playing differently players told Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci.

“Lance McCullers took the blindfold test in the bullpen,” said Charlie Morton, Houston’s Game 4 starter, referring to another Astros pitcher. “He could tell which ball was which with his eyes closed. It’s that different.” Read the rest of this entry »

In the top of the fifth inning of Saturday’s Game 4, Cody Bellinger faced Charlie Morton and struck out. This was nothing too terribly weird — for a good long while, Morton was dominant, and the Dodgers could hardly muster a threat. Bellinger was just another hitter put away. Yet the strikeout meant Bellinger was 0-for-13 in the World Series, with eight whiffs. It’s true that, in circumstances like these, people can make far too much of small-sample underperformance. It’s also true that, in circumstances like these, players can get into their own heads. Bellinger has never played under any greater pressure. It almost wouldn’t be possible.

In the top of the seventh inning, Bellinger drilled a one-out double, and he scored the tying run on Logan Forsythe’s two-out single. Later, in the top of the ninth inning, Bellinger drilled a tie-breaking double, scoring Corey Seager with nobody out. The inning got only larger from there, and the Dodgers knotted the series. If Bellinger didn’t have the team’s two biggest hits, he had two of the top three or four.

But let’s quickly go back to the strikeout. The count was 1-and-2, and Morton came after Bellinger with an inside breaking ball. Bellinger attempted a mighty swing.

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Following the final game of the regular season, Jose Altuve told a small group of reporters that once October rolls around, “everybody starts with zero wins and zero losses, and everybody’s average is zero.”

Nearly a month later, the Astros are even-steven with the Dodgers in the World Series and Altuve’s average (.322) is farther above zero than anyone’s in the postseason (minimum 20 at bats). That’s hardly a surprise. The 27-year-old second baseman captured his third American League batting title this year, hitting a career high .346. He doesn’t consider it his biggest personal accomplishment to date.

“That would be the Silver Slugger,” Altuve told the scribes, citing an honor he was awarded last year. “With the batting title, they only care if you hit .300/.320, but the Silver Slugger is all around — doubles, triples, home runs — and I’m 5’ 5” and 160 pounds.”

His numbers have been anything but Lilliputian. Over the past four seasons, the Venezuelan spark plug has a .334/.384/.496 slash line and 254 extra-base hits. And while he leads MLB in one-base hits over that same period, it’s not as though singles are a bad thing. Read the rest of this entry »

HOUSTON — The power of the role of the manager has diminished as more authority is concentrated in the front office. But the manager position is a significant one and never more important than on the World Series stage. Managers can win and lose games. And it was decision-making in Game 4 that was particularly fascinating in the Dodgers’ 6-2 win to even the series Saturday.

Game 4 was about a lot of things. Cody Bellinger ended his three-game slump. Joc Pederson warranted his placement on the postseason roster, and the evening was also a game about human and managerial decision-making. Read the rest of this entry »

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HOUSTON — Dodgers Game 4 starting pitcher Alex Wood was asked a day earlier during his media session if he had ever pitched in a championship environment like the World Series. Of course, finding a comparable is perhaps impossible given the stage and the stakes. From the podium before a room crowded with reporters, Wood said he had played in two state title games in his native Georgia. It was like a scene from The Natural when Robert Redford’s character, Roy Hobbs, upon his mysterious arrival in a major league clubhouse, tells New York Knights manager Pop Fisher (played by Wilford Brimley) that he used to play in high school.

Wood is a few hours away from his most important professional start. Not only are the Dodgers down two games to one in the World Series, but Dave Roberts continued to lean heavily on his bullpen Friday as Dodgers starting pitching Yu Darvish was only able to record five outs before Roberts appeared to dismiss him.

While Wood might be set for something of a tandem outing Saturday, the Dodgers need more than five outs from him. Read the rest of this entry »

HOUSTON — The Charlie Morton I knew in Pittsburgh was nothing like the Charlie Morton sitting before a conference room filled with national media members in the depths of Minute Maid Park on Friday afternoon.

The Morton we have seen this year in Houston, the Morton we have seen excel at times in the postseason, is a completely different iteration of the pitcher we saw for the Pirates. Morton will start Game 4 of the World Series against the Dodgers on Saturday.

The Morton I knew in Pittsburgh was a ground-ball artist, he was in many ways the Pirates’ ideal prototype pitcher during their 2013-15 run of three postseason appearances, a three-year period when they won 280 games. Morton leaned on a darting, ground-ball-inducing two-seam fastball and was directed, and believed in, pitching to contact. He was supported by a dramatic increase in infield shifts. I know this story seems rather dated, and the story has been told, but it really wasn’t that long ago that this was a cutting-edge philosophy.

Return to the present, and Morton is a bat-missing arm. He’s averaging a career-best 96.1 mph with his four-seam fastball and he’s averaging 95.1 mph with his sinker. Among pitchers who threw at least 90 innings this season, Morton ranked seventh in fastball velocity sandwiched between Stephen Strasburg and Michael Fulmer. He still has the hammer curve he’s always had, but he’s throwing it a career-best 28.4% rate along with more four-seam fastballs and more four-seamers up in the zone.
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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.

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In terms of significant, game-changing moments, no World Series game in history compares to Wednesday night’s epic between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros. In the sixth inning, Corey Seager hit a two-run homer off of Justin Verlander to break a 1-1 tie. In the top of the ninth, Marwin Gonzalez hit a solo shot to tie the game 3-3. In the 10th, Jose Altuve broke the tie with a solo shot. In the bottom half of that same inning, Enrique Hernandez’s RBI single tied the game, and then in the top of the 11th, George Springer hit a two-run homer that would put the Astros up for good. Each of those five plays increased the scoring club’s chances victory by 25% according to Win Probability Added. That’s never happened before in a World Series game.

Since 2002, only one in three games have produced plays with at least one play with a WPA of .25 or greater. To put that in greater context, consider: there have been only 18 plays total this posteason that produced a WPA of .25 or greater.  Here they are, in order of impact on win probability:

Of the eight biggest plays in the postseason this year, four occurred in Game 2. Hernandez’s single in a losing effort produced the highest WPA of any play in this postseason.

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