Disclaimer: this post will not contain any wOBAs, xFIPs, or UZRs. This is the story of Game 7 from the perspective of one fan — me.

As soon as David Freese’s home run landed in the grass beyond the centerfield wall, ending Game 6, I made up my mind that I was going to the stadium for Game 7. It was an interesting and amazing night, and I thought I’d try to relay that experience.

On Friday in St. Louis everyone seemingly adopted new salutations. Gone were “hello” and “goodbye”, instead, every conversation started with, “Could you believe that game last night?” and ended with, “The Cards have to win tonight.” Everyone at my office spent most of their Friday passing around emails with the best links about Game 6 (the win expectancy graph being one popular option). Cardinals fans are always crazy about their team, and we’ve been in two World Series recently, but I’ve never seen anything like the buzz for Game 7.

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Over the next few days, I will be running out a series based on win probabilities from the World Series not only using single game win probabilities like the ones in our game graphs, but also using overall series win probabilities, which will be introduced today.

The idea behind the series win probabilities is based around the same idea as the single game win probabilities we use here: both teams have a 50% chance of winning each game. As such, this flow chart describes every possible path for a team through the World Series (or any other seven game series; the part from 1-1 up would describe a five-game series):

Click to embiggen, and then follow the jump for more on what’s inside.

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There was a moment, as the Cardinals and Rangers somehow dragged themselves through the middle innings of Game Six, when David Freese was the goat for the Cardinals. Freese was 0-for-2 through the first five innings, but it wasn’t like he stranded the bases loaded or struck out looking twice. It wasn’t the bat. It was this one moment here that induced cringes (and laughs) nationwide, captured by SB Nation’s Jeff Sullivan:

When it comes to pitching, the pop-up is the next best thing to a strikeout. Batters reach on pop-ups around two percent of the time. There it was, already inside Freese’s glove. And then, there it was again, on the ground, as one of the Cardinals’ biggest postseason heroes committed one of the most egregious errors a Major League baseball player can ever commit, whether it’s Game Six of the World Series or a 6-0 sixth inning in the 66th game of the season. Of course, the error would be punished, as a mere two pitches later Michael Young drilled a double to the left field gap which plated Hamilton, the go-ahead run.

The stage was set, should the Rangers just hold on, for Freese’s mistake to be the one that ended the Cardinals’ season. But, as Jonah Keri reminded us in his fantastic recap for Grantland, without the constraint of a clock, as long as there remains an out to be made, any scenario is possible.

Like going from the goat who blew the Little League play to putting together one of the greatest games in World Series history.

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Chris Carpenter is starting tonight on only three days rest, while Matt Harrison hopes to do better than the shellacking he took in Game Four. Both pitchers will need to change up how they’re attacking hitters if they want to be successful.

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Wow.

That’s all I could muster as it became clear that David Freese’s flyball to center was leaving the yard. Just wow.

There have been numerous good playoff games and some great World Series games, but what took place Thursday night existed on an entirely different plane. It’s always tough to gauge the historic status of something so recent, but calling Game Six of the 2011 World Series one of the best baseball games in history just feels right.

The World Series is somehow, some way, going to a seventh and final game Friday night after twists and turns galore. For seven innings, the game was defined by missed opportunities and blunders both physical and managerial. After that, the game was defined by the old adage you can’t predict baseball.

In the end, Freese, who tied the game in the ninth with a two-out, two-strike, two-run triple knocked the ball out of the yard in the 11th to seal the deal. However, what transpired over the previous few innings foreshadowed a crazy finish. Freese’s home run wasn’t even shocking. Of course that happened. But various circumstances had to be present for the Cardinals to even have a shot at knotting up the game and winning it in extras. Here are some of Thursday night’s highlights that led to such a wild ending.

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Well, actually I have no idea if Carlos Gonzalez loves the mountains or if Chase Headley hates the beach, but if my home/road splits looked like their’s, I would certainly start to appreciate/blame the topography.

Many have pointed out how dramatic a split young Carlos Gonzalez possess — at home in Colorado, he’s an elite swing sultan; away from where the beer flows like wins, he is a pedestrian, league-average bat-swinger. Yeah, we get it. Everyone knows, right?

Well, the split is perhaps more dramatic than initially anticipated. Looking at players in the last decade (from 2001 through 2011) with a minimum of 500 home and 500 away PAs, we see CarGo has hit a wRC+ 74 points higher at home than away — more than anyone else in the period:

In other words, no one compares to Carlos Gonzalez… Okay, well, actually one guy does.

And it makes a world of difference.

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How wonderfully awkward.

The last time Colby Lewis and Jaime Garcia faced off, we were treated to one of the best pitcher’s duels of the World Series. Jaime Garcia shut down the Rangers for seven innings while striking out seven hitters, and Colby Lewis very nearly kept pace by lasting 6.2 inning and allowing one run.

How did Lewis and Garcia attack hitters in that start? What can we expect from them tonight? Let’s find out.

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It has become almost second nature this postseason for sarcastic Twitterists such as myself to mock certain mainstream writers who have seemingly used each plate appearance to tell us how much impending free agents have gained or lost on their upcoming contracts. And while I don’t think that postseason play has positively or negatively affected the financial standing (at least from a contract perspective) of any the players in this postseason, it will undoubtedly effect the reputations and/or legacies of some players. While there is still baseball left to be played, I thought we could take a look at six players in this World Series whose postseason performance has served to highlight the excellent, but underrated performance they put up throughout 2011, and how it may help them moving forward.

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Following a peculiar fifth game in which each manager engaged in a losing oneupsmanship contest, the Rangers head to St. Louis for a potential deciding Game Six. After splitting the first two games on the road and taking two of three at home, the Rangers are obviously closer to winning the World Series. However, the Cardinals do have home field advantage in their favor once again, and under somewhat comical circumstances given the performances of other playoff teams in the All-Star Game. The Cardinals have home field, after all, due to Prince Fielder (Brewers) belting a mammoth homer off of C.J. Wilson (Rangers) in a game held in Arizona, while two Phillies pitchers did a good job holding the junior circuit at bay for four innings.

The pitching matchup is a repeat of Game Two, with Jaime Garcia opposed by Colby Lewis. The Cardinals took a 1-0 lead in the seventh in that game behind a very strong Garcia performance. He didn’t allow a run over seven innings, surrendering just three hits and a walk to go along with his seven strikeouts. Lewis matched him, giving up just the one run in 6 2/3 innings. The bullpen game was won by the Rangers, though the deciding factor was the Rangers excellent baserunning, with some credit owed to the defensive miscue on Jon Jay’s throw to the plate.

There are a few main storylines to consider heading into what could potentially be the final game of the 2011 postseason and a very exciting World Series. Oddly enough, only one of them deals with actual participating players.

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Much will be written today and in the coming days about Tony LaRussa’s pitching changes and strategic moves in the eighth inning of World Series Game 5 on Monday night. Others here at FanGraphs will provide you will the gory details.

This post takes a look back at LaRussa’s bullpen management over the 16 years he’s been the skipper for the St. Louis Cardinals. It’s a follow-up post to the one I wrote last Thursday, aptly titled The Untold Story of LaRussa’s Bullpen Management. In last week’s post, I looked at the number of innings pitched by Cardinals relievers each season between 1996 and 2011 and found only four seasons where Cardinals relievers had pitched more innings than the National League per team average. I also examined the number of pitching changes called for by LaRussa during the 2004, 2006 and 2011 postseasons–the years the Cardinals played in the World Series.

I concluded, based on that information, that LaRussa’s reputation for over-managing the Cardinals’ bullpen was not fully supported by the facts. Several readers noted in the comments that looking only at total innings pitched by relievers didn’t tell the whole story. The issue, the readers noted, wasn’t so much how early LaRussa pulled his starting pitcher to get to the first reliever, but how many relievers he used to get from the starter to the end of the game. Or, to put it another way, what was the average number of innings pitched per Cardinals relief appearance as compared to the average for all National League teams.

I’ve now analyzed that data and agree that it paints a more complete portrait of LaRussa’s bullpen management style. Indeed, it confirms the view that LaRussa has been one of the most–if not the most–aggressive bullpen managers in the National League over the past 16 seasons.

Let’s take a look.

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