Here’s something you might not have known about the Red Sox: they’re good, especially at the hitting part. Over the course of the regular season, they scored 853 runs in 1439 innings, or about 0.6 runs per. Pitchers facing the Red Sox posted a 5.02 ERA, nearly half a run higher than the next-highest mark. As the Red Sox demonstrated in Game 1, they’re capable of scoring runs in a hurry, which, incidentally, is the only thing they do in a hurry, and this is one of the reasons why the Sox are probably the best team in baseball. That statement should hold true no matter how this series ends up.

Much of the talk after Game 2 is focusing on the top of the seventh, when the Cardinals rallied and took advantage of some defensive lapses to establish a two-run lead. In that frame the Cardinals went ahead 4-2; by that score, the Cardinals were triumphant. But a two-run lead against the Red Sox in Fenway is precarious, no matter how it’s achieved. Better to be ahead than behind, of course, but the Cardinals couldn’t have considered their position safe. They still needed to keep the Red Sox off the board, and that’s where Carlos Martinez and Trevor Rosenthal came in handy.

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The most amazing thing that happened in the first game of the World Series happened when the game was already well in hand for the Red Sox. The first inning was nearly turned upside-down by an embarrassing initial call, and Pete Kozma performed worse in the field than at the plate, and Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina allowed the easiest of pops to drop between them. It was, without question, a weird game, and the Cardinals never got themselves righted, but if you’re in search of the amazing, you look to the bottom of the seventh. When David Ortiz came to the plate, Boston’s chances of winning were just under 99%. When David Ortiz took his curtain call, Boston’s chances of winning were just under 100%. What Ortiz did hardly mattered, in the grand scheme of things, or even in the lesser scheme of things. A not-close game became a less-close game. But what Ortiz did hadn’t been done.

I was looking forward to watching Kevin Siegrist face David Ortiz, as much as you can look forward to any individual matchup late in a five-run game. Ortiz, obviously, has his own presence, which goes beyond the statistics, but Siegrist has been good and lately he’s been throwing harder. In September and October he’s been pushing his fastball to 98 and 99, and between him and Ortiz, I was interested to see who would have the advantage. It could at least mean something for the rest of the series. The at-bat was over in one pitch. Siegrist did throw his fastball.

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Wednesday night, in Game 1 of the World Series, Jon Lester was good. The Cardinals’ hitters, in turn, were not, or at least their performance was not, and as a consequence, the Cardinals lost. The Red Sox are now ahead by a game, and the Cardinals have as long as possible to wait for the next start by Adam Wainwright.

That’s the story, basically. It’s not the story that’s going to get all of the physical and electronic ink — the Cardinals’ defense, early on, was atrocious, and Wainwright gave up a few solid hits, and Carlos Beltran got hurt robbing a grand slam, and David Ortiz subsequently got his home run anyway to pour gravy all over the blowout. There’s a lot that’ll be written about what went wrong for St. Louis early. There’s a lot that’ll be written about the implications of Beltran being injured. But the Cardinals didn’t score a run until Ryan Dempster hung a splitter in the top of the ninth. With some luck, this game could’ve been closer. With some luck, this game could’ve been even more lopsided. Against Lester, the Cardinals just weren’t going to win without a miracle.

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During the postseason is when we talk about postseason statistics, and one of the first points always brought up is that the level of competition in the postseason is more difficult. As such, it isn’t fair to just run a straight comparison between numbers in the playoffs and numbers not in the playoffs. The postseason is selective for the best teams, which will have many of the best players. Many of the worst players on the best teams won’t play, or won’t play much. There is a counterpoint, though, at least as far as pitchers are concerned: the playoffs take place in October, by which point a lot of arms might be worn down. The season is long, and it’s taxing, and who’s to say what’s really left in the tank come Columbus Day or whenever?

What we know, anecdotally, is that good pitchers tend to still be good. We seldom ever see a player’s velocity crater, and if a guy were truly worn down he probably wouldn’t be used. One of the interesting things we’ve seen with Michael Wacha, though, is that his velocity hasn’t just stayed the same — lately he’s been throwing harder. It stands to reason that’s why he’s been so effective, at least in part. And it turns out Wacha isn’t the only Cardinal with strength saved for a final push.

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The league’s getting faster. Not the time of game — fastball velocity. And throwing some of the fastest fastballs in a league of fast have been the Cardinals, whose 92.6 mph average as a staff was good for third overall this year. The Red Sox did fine against a Tigers team that was only .3 mph short of that average, but going into this World Series, it’s still fair to say they will see some fastballs that are over 94 mph. And it’s fair to wonder how they’ll do against that added oomph.

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Yesterday, the names of the World Series umpires were released, with John Hirshbeck serving as the crew chief. Like I have done for the first two rounds in the playoffs, I will examine each umpire’s strike and ball calling tendencies. Overall, the group is pretty solid, with the exception of Bill Miller, who calls one of the league’s largest strike zones.

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If the Cardinals are to earn a berth in the World Series Friday night, they’ll have to do so opposing a team starting Clayton Kershaw, presumably baseball’s best starter. Taking the mound for the Cardinals will be a still-mostly-unproven rookie in Michael Wacha, and on the face of it, that puts the Cardinals at a considerable disadvantage. But, a few things are working in their favor. One, the Cardinals are at home, and the home-field advantage is undeniable, even if it’s almost impossible to observe in the moment. Two, Wacha and the Cardinals just beat Kershaw and the Dodgers earlier in this very series, by a 1-0 final. So nothing here is impossible. And three, some people figure that by this point in the season, pitchers are pitching on fumes. Wacha, however, only seems to be getting stronger. The gap between Kershaw and Wacha exists and is big, but right now it’s probably not as big as you might’ve thought.

There’s something to be said for postseason adrenaline. There’s something to be said for Wacha still finding his way as a starter in the bigs. And there’s something to be said for the way Wacha has been handled this year, as the Cardinals didn’t want a repeat of the Strasburg Shutdown in 2012. The Cardinals anticipated the future, they wanted to have Wacha available down the stretch, so they gave him some breathers over the course of the summer. As a result, Wacha’s stabilizing a late-season rotation that’s missing Shelby Miller. He’s not just throwing his pitches — he’s throwing his pitches better.

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Team depth can be defined many different ways: the quality of your fifth starter, the quality of your bench, the contributions from your non-stars. And, looking at the results of the games so far in the National League Championship Series, you might think the Cardinals had superior depth, given home runs by Shane Robinson and shutdown innings by Seth Maness. But if we look at the year as a whole, and these two rosters as a whole, a different sort of picture emerges. Again, depending on your definition.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about some interesting platoon splits of a couple of left-handed hitters who had my attention. When I started looking at some right-handed hitters who had splits I wanted to discuss, they also turned out to be players with a big impact this year: the winner of the 2013 National League batting title, the most exciting young player in years, and the hero of last night’s NLCS game. Their splits are interesting in themselves (at least to a certain type of baseball fan), but also are concrete way of thinking about more general principles with respect to platoon skill.

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In the brief interludes between arguing whether the Cardinals do indeed have “the best fans in baseball” and if they should or should not be offended by Yasiel Puig, a popular discussion topic on social media has centered on St. Louis’ so-called “Cardinals Devil Magic,” i.e., the sense that everything always seems to go the Cardinals’ way in October.

Setting aside the obvious fact that it didn’t help them out much last year when they frittered away a 3-1 NLCS lead to San Francisco, you can understand why, really. The Cardinals are in their ninth NLCS since 1996 and are just a single game away from their fourth World Series in ten seasons, but they’re not really outplaying the Dodgers. Los Angeles has outhit the Cardinals in each of the four games of the series, and held them to just a .134/.190/.175 line through three games; cumulatively, the Cardinals have outscored the Dodgers by just a single run, 8-7. But it’s the Cardinals who are up three games to one, and the Dodgers who find themselves in a desperate position in Wednesday’s Game 5. Read the rest of this entry »