The final moments of preparation are underway as the Dodgers and Astros get ready for tonight’s Game 1 of the World Series. On the one hand, it represents baseball’s biggest stage. For the players, however, it’s also the game they’ve been playing forever. When it comes to getting ready, do they prepare like usual? Or is it a contest that requires greater planning than any other?

We went to the players (and a coach) to ask if their routines had been altered at all and if they’d been poring over the data before tonight’s game.

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Dave Hudgens, Astros Hitting Coach: “I was thinking about that earlier in the day, and I was thinking, ‘I want to do the same thing everyday as I do for this game.’ That’s what I try to do. You don’t want to do anything different. Okay, now it’s important so I’m going to do more? I’m going to do the same thing, these guys are doing their same routine, going about their jobs the same way.

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The World Series kicks off tonight with a battle of elite left-handed starters, Clayton Kershaw and Dallas Keuchel. The game will also feature the two best offenses in MLB this year. And yet, for all the talent on the field to begin the game, the series may very well hinge on whether A.J. Hinch is willing to once again trust his bullpen.

During the regular season, the Astros’ relief corps was better than their reputation suggests. As a group, they posted the second-highest strikeout rate of any bullpen, and while their 101 ERA- was a bit below average, their 84 xFIP- was second only to the Indians.

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I know some of you are disappointed not to be seeing The Hottest Pitcher in the Game (Justin Verlander) face perhaps The Best Pitcher in the Game (Clayton Kershaw) in tonight’s World Series opener.

We’ll have to settle instead for the 2015 AL Cy Young winner, Dallas Keuchel, against the Dodgers’ three-time Cy Young winner.

Many eyes will be trained on Kershaw to see if he can improve the one blemish on his resume — postseason performance — and produce a legacy-building outing on the game’s greatest stage.

But the Game 1 undercard, Keuchel versus the Dodgers, is fascinating matchup in its own right.

For starters, it will largely represent a meeting of strangers. Keuchel has never faced Los Angeles. Of the Dodgers most likely to appear on the club’s World Series roster, only three have ever faced Keuchel, for a total of just 27 career regular-season at-bats versus Keuchel. Logan Forsythe is responsible for 20 of those due to his experience with Tampa Bay. He’s recorded seven hits. Chris Taylor has faced him three times (0-for-3), though as a different player with a different swing, and Chase Utley has one hit in four career at-bats versus the left-hander. (The current Astros squad has 81 collective at-bats against Kershaw.)

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This should be a great World Series in large part because it’s so hard to separate the two pennant winners. The Dodgers won 104 games, but the Astros won 101. The Astros outscored their opponents by 196 runs, but the Dodgers outscored theirs by 190. The Dodgers have the possible advantage of rest, but the Astros have the possible advantage of momentum. The Astros got a midseason bump from adding Justin Verlander, but the Dodgers got a midseason bump from adding Yu Darvish. Say, the Astros might have found something by using Lance McCullers out of the bullpen. But the Dodgers have also found something by doing the same with Kenta Maeda.

When I rated all the playoff teams three weeks ago, I found the Dodgers looked the best, but the Astros were right on their heels. There’s just not much of a gap, no matter where you look. As such, I don’t think one could pick a clear favorite. Maybe you give the edge to the Dodgers, just because they could play one extra game at home. Or maybe you give the edge to the Dodgers, just because they could get the better strike zone. That’s one of the only real differences here. Technically, such a difference shouldn’t even exist, but we know that zones aren’t perfectly called or consistent, and the Dodgers have a history.

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The Dodgers have won two playoff series, but they aren’t undefeated. Remember that the Cubs beat them by a run in NLCS Game 4. Other teams have somewhat recently advanced to the World Series without having lost. Back in 2007, the Rockies swept the NLCS, after they swept the NLDS, after they took a one-game playoff over the Padres. And in 2014, the Royals swept the ALCS, after they swept the ALDS, after they took a one-game playoff over the A’s. The Dodgers are one of six teams in the wild-card era to make the World Series by going 7-1.

And it’s not like the Dodgers have even made every win a laugher. Their most recent game was kind of the exception. In Game 2 of the NLDS, they fell behind the Diamondbacks early. In the NLCS, they trailed the Cubs by a couple runs in Game 1, and in Game 2 Justin Turner won it in the bottom of the ninth. Some nails have been bitten. The Dodgers haven’t looked completely invincible.

On the other hand, they have looked completely invincible. When you look at the numbers overall, it seems like the Dodgers have coasted. They’ve turned this postseason into a statistical mismatch.

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Kenley Jansen certainly hasn’t been ignored around here. Back in June, for instance, Travis looked at how Jansen’s reliance on a single pitch compares to Mariano Rivera’s. And yet, I still feel like we don’t really appreciate just how great Jansen really is. Throughout this postseason, so much of the focus seems to go to Clayton Kershaw and Justin Turner. Or if not them, then colorful characters like Yasiel Puig or feel-good stories like Chris Taylor. Often, Jansen feels lost. Now, maybe that’s just a case of me miscalculating the extent of the coverage he receives or just being far too tired to think straight by the time Jansen gets into games, but I feel like the big righty is a little underappreciated. But if he performs the way that he’s been performing, that may change for good this week.

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It would be easy to assume that the Dodgers bullpen is just another part of the club bought and paid for by means of the organization’s massive and unrivaled resources. With the team’s payroll and competitive-balance expenses coming to roughly $250 million this season — itself a substantive decrease over the $300 million outlays of the 2014-16 campaigns — the Dodgers clearly have the capacity to spend with little restraint. And they’ve certainly utilized some of that financial might to the end of bullpen construction: the club, for example, brought back free-agent closer Kenley Jansen by guaranteeing him $80 million over five seasons.

For the most part, however, the Dodgers haven’t built their bullpen on high-salaried free agents or top prospects. Instead, they’ve mostly cobbled it together with a series of low-risk trades and signings, addressing needs in-season when needed without giving up prospects of significance.

Los Angeles opened up this season with a payroll of about $235 million. Close to $50 million of that total was designated for players no longer on the roster. Of the remaining money, half went to the starting rotation. Another 40% was earmarked for Andre Ethier, Adrian Gonzalez, Yasmani Grandal, Yasiel Puig, and Justin Turner. As far as the bullpen, there was Kenley Jansen and his big salary, of course. The second-highest salary in the bullpen at the start of the season went to Sergio Romo, though, who was guaranteed $3 million by the club in February. That figure was the third-highest guarantee the Dodgers have made to a reliever since Andrew Friedman took over operations after the 2014 season. That’s three full offseasons, and the second-biggest free agent guarantee the team has made to a reliever was the $4 million for Joe Blanton a few years ago.

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A few hours from now, Clayton Kershaw will take the ball in Chicago, hoping to help the Dodgers move on to the World Series. Even though the Dodgers lost last night, being able to turn now to Kershaw makes everything better, as he still deserves the benefit of the doubt, any recent struggles aside. Now, I want to take only a couple minutes of your time. Kershaw has already started once in this series. He made Javier Baez make this face.

That’s Baez’s expression after striking out looking. Did you know that it’s possible for Javier Baez to strike out looking? Kershaw made it happen for just the ninth time in 2017. And while it’s possible Baez could’ve been thinking about any number of things — or about nothing at all — maybe he was simply caught off guard. Because Kershaw showed him a little two-strike twist.

Here are two screenshots. The lower one is from the pitch you just watched. The upper one is from the pitch immediately preceding it.

Facing Baez, with the count 2-and-2, Kershaw changed his arm slot. He didn’t go completely sidearm, but considering that Kershaw is usually very much over-the-top, what you’re seeing is a drop-down ambush. Kershaw showed it to Baez. In the same game, he went to it two other times. This is the Rich Hill inspiration. Every so often, Hill will drop down, himself, and Kershaw thought it was a neat trick. So he’s folded it in, from time to time.

I wrote about this in June. Kershaw introduced the drop-down slot late in 2016, and here’s a summary of how it worked at first. When Kershaw dropped down last year, he threw exclusively fastballs. This year he’s mixed in a few breaking balls. He threw one to David Peralta in the NLDS.

But here’s what I find most interesting. We knew last year Kershaw was trying this out. We knew earlier this year he’d brought it back. Then it…it just quietly went away. It’s only recently come back again. Here are all 29 of Kershaw’s 2017 appearances, showing the number of pitches in each game thrown from the alternate angle.

There was nothing, then there was a flurry. Over a streak of seven starts, Kershaw dropped down a total of 35 times. But with the 35th attempt, Kershaw allowed a home run to Jay Bruce. And then the experiment disappeared. Nothing, for eight games in a row. Then a one-off, followed by another three games of nothing. Then the playoffs began. Kershaw dropped down twice against the Diamondbacks, and he dropped down thrice in his first game against the Cubs. It’s back, just in the nick of time. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Forget the second part. But, it’s back, anyway.

It’s still not clear if this is actually a successful tactic. When Kershaw drops down, he doesn’t become a strikeout machine. But this is Clayton Kershaw, and we’re in the playoffs, so I’d say this qualifies as automatically interesting. And it’s another thing for you to watch for tonight, as Kershaw tries to last as long as is possible. He’s already got his normal fastball, slider, and curve. He might throw in the odd second arm slot, just to keep the Cubs a little extra uncomfortable. It didn’t go so well in his last NLCS, but, this is a new playoffs, you know. Kershaw would like to forget about history.

The postseason game is changing around us. Starting pitchers are being asked to go harder for shorter periods of time, allowing teams to begin playing matchups with the bullpen as early as the third inning. And while strategically sound in most cases, this trend has emerged without a major change in how we think about rest and schedules in the postseason. As much as we might love the high-intensity matchups that “bullpenning” provides, is it possible that pitchers are having to endure greater stress than in the past?

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Of all the unlikely breakout stars of 2017, Chris Taylor is a candidate for the honor of unlikeliest.

The infielder/outfielder continues to be a force, homering and tripling in the Dodgers’ Game 3 NLCS victory on Tuesday night to push the Cubs to the brink of elimination.

Taylor entered the season as a wiry, inconspicuous, 6-foot-1, 200-pound, 26-year-old utility man. Over parts of three major-league seasons with the Mariners and Dodgers, he had produced a combined .234/.289/.309 slash line over 318 plate appearances before the 2017 campaign. He was traded by the Seattle to Los Angeles for Zach Lee on June 16 of last season. (Lee was released by the Padres back in August of this season.)

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