In 1911, the city of Houston finished construction on a $5 million train station that overshot its original budget by $4 million. The city had been so jacked up to build this thing that they had swatted the home of a former Houston mayor and a prominent synagogue out of the way to get it up.

When people had grown bored and disgusted by trains in the mid-70s, Union Station was abandoned for a shiny new Amtrak facility. But instead of knocking it down or blowing it up, as the city had done with the buildings that had been in Union Station’s way initially, it was granted immortality by the National Park Service on the National Register of Historic Places.

When the Astros started muttering about getting a new stadium in 1995, and were actually threatening to leave Houston and become the new Washington franchise against which they are currently playing in the World Series, it was eventually determined that Union Station would make the perfect starting point for construction of their new facility.

Given the historic choo-choo depot that now serves as its main concourse, it makes sense that Minute Maid Park would incorporate a train into the ballpark’s home run celebrations. The train is piloted at 2.5 mph but still has an emergency brake, just in case of a horrifying accident occurring at a speed that many doctors consider an ideal pace for walking.

Juan Soto, who you may have heard is only 20 years old and already has three home runs in the postseason, went up to meet that train last night, bashing a home run to a part of Minute Maid Park where baseballs aren’t supposed to go. In the top of the fourth inning, he sent a Gerrit Cole fastball onto the unlit track of the silent Astros train, and the two inanimate objects became a pair of unwitting companions for the remainder of the game.

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It’s been a great postseason. But…

Baseball fans have been treated to an excellent month of ballgames. The NL Wildcard was an instant classic, and three matchups in the divisional round went the distance. Washington pitched historically well in the NCLS, and on the other side of the bracket, two of the best teams in baseball battled in an entertaining war of attrition, a back and forth set that climaxed with José Altuve’s walk-off homer in Game 6. Thus far, we’ve been spoiled.

But you’d be forgiven for thinking it hasn’t felt that way. As baseball reaches its annual crescendo, the sport’s collective focus has often drifted away from the games on the field. The partial un-juicing of the ball emerged as a dominant storyline early in the postseason, right alongside the usual complaints about extended commercial breaks and out-of-touch announcers blathering on far-flung networks. Then, as the league championships kicked off, ESPN’s T.J. Quinn released a disturbing piece detailing how Angels team employees not only failed to intervene on Tyler Skaggs‘ drug use but actually abetted it in his final days. Reading the news, you may well conclude that the league itself has lost the ability to sway the narrative in a way that reflects positively on the enterprise.

Unfortunately, the pattern continued; Game 1 of the World Series began under a cloud of a different sort. In the aftermath of Houston’s dramatic, exuberant ALCS win over the Yankees, assistant general manager Brandon Taubman used the occasion to rub salt in a wound. With three women reporters standing nearby, Taubman, cigar in hand, loudly and repeatedly directed a message their way: “Thank God we got Osuna! I’m so [expletive] glad we got Osuna!”

On the surface, it’s a curious message: Altuve only had to save the day because closer Roberto Osuna had coughed up a ninth-inning lead. The context, however, is damning. Osuna is only an Astro because the club was able to acquire him on the cheap while he served a suspension for domestic violence. One of the women in question has previously come under fire from Taubman for the timing of her Osuna-related tweets. That she was wearing a purple anti-domestic violence bracelet at the time adds a jolt of nastiness to already reprehensible behavior.

By now you know the details of what followed. How Sports Illustrated’s Stephanie Apstein reported the news; that Houston vehemently denied the incident took place, and questioned Apstein’s credibility, when multiple other journalists from other outlets corroborated Apstein’s account; and the Astros’ late and inadequate walk-back of their initial statement. On a day when we should have been celebrating the best of baseball, hyping up Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer, we were instead left to grapple with the worst symptoms of its culture. As the Washington Post’s Barry Svulga succinctly summed it up: “It’s infuriating it’s 2019, and it’s the World Series, and we even need to be having this conversation. But clearly we do.”

In the end, baseball itself rescued the day. It wasn’t so much that a great game made us forget all that transpired in the previous 48 hours — as if anyone with a Twitter feed possibly could have anyway. No, a game cannot simply toss us an escape rope, and we shouldn’t want to move on so soon: Three women were wronged in an incident symptomatic of a broader problem; basic decency demands that we ask baseball to better itself.

What a game can do is remind us why we care in the first place, why we’re bothering with reading and listening and talking about these problems within baseball’s ecosystem instead of anywhere else. For all that was wrong in the last few days, baseball reminded us of its virtues, of why we choose to spend our leisure time in this imperfect space. Read the rest of this entry »

8:00	Dan Szymborski: And here we are as the clock strikes 8.

8:00	Dan Szymborski: Not that I have an actual clock anymore.

8:00	Dan Szymborski: Not even my grandfather clock because my grandfather did not have one.

8:01	Dan Szymborski: DAN IS NOT SMART ENOUGH TO IDENTIFY THE QUESTION

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Strong pitching — aided, perhaps, by a less lively baseball — has been the predominant story of this postseason, and given the pair of rotations lined up for the the World Series, it may well continue to be. The Nationals’ Max Scherzer and the Astros’ Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke own five Cy Young awards between them, and all are likely bound for the Hall of Fame someday. If Verlander doesn’t win this year’s AL Cy Young award, teammate Gerrit Cole quite likely will, and both Scherzer and his teammate Stephen Strasburg are contenders for the NL award (though they may take a back seat to Jacob deGrom). Oh, and if that’s not enough talent, the Nationals’ Patrick Corbin, who signed last winter’s largest free agent contract, and Aníbal Sánchez, who took a no-hitter into the eighth inning of the NLCS opener against the Cardinals, are here as well. As Craig Edwards wrote, this is one of the greatest pairings of rotations for the Fall Classic since at least 1947.

With that out of the way, a few additional thoughts about pitching, starting and otherwise, as Game 1 approaches.

Breaking Stuff Could Be the Key

As with the ALCS against the Yankees, the Astros appear to have an edge on the Nationals when it comes to matching up against certain pitch types. In terms of pitchers’ wOBAs allowed, the two teams are actually very close except for one pitch type:

This will be a series of hellacious sliders, given that the Astros and Nationals ranked first and second in terms of lowest wOBAs allowed on the pitch; good luck hitting those of Verlander (.164, the majors’ lowest mark), Scherzer (.169, second-lowest), Corbin (.202, sixth-lowest), or Cole (.224, 13th-lowest). Likewise, the Nationals had the majors’ second-lowest mark and the Astros the fourth-lowest on changeups, with Strasburg (an MLB-low .190), Greinke (.224, fifth-lowest), Sánchez (.271, 23rd-lowest), and Scherzer (.286, 28th-lowest) the ones to watch out for. Greinke was the majors’ best when it came to curves (.179), with Strasburg (.202, fifth) and Verlander (.222, sixth) near the head of the class. Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract-crowdsourcing project this offseason, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2019-20 free-agent market.

Below are ballots for eight of this year’s free agents — in this case, a group of outfielders. Numbers are prorated to full season where noted. Projected WAR figures from final the update of the 2019 Steamer forecast.

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract-crowdsourcing project this offseason, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2019-20 free-agent market.

Below are ballots for seven of this year’s free agents — in this case, a collection of infield/utility types. Numbers are prorated to full season where noted. Projected WAR figures from final the update of the 2019 Steamer forecast.

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A year ago, Chris Sale and Clayton Kershaw took the mound in the opening game of the World Series. As far as pitching matchups go, those names might have made for the greatest Game 1 of all time. Sale was coming off another great season, with a FIP and ERA both around two, having amassed roughly 14 WAR over the previous two seasons combined. Kershaw has been the most dominating pitcher of his era, winning three Cy Young Awards with another three top-three finishes plus an MVP. Of course, that version of Kershaw wasn’t pitching last season, dimming the true battle of aces wattage and putting it more in the middle tier of World Series opener pitching matchups. That’s not the case tonight, as Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer make for what is arguably the greatest Game 1 pitching matchup in World Series history.

Max Scherzer has won two of the last three Cy Young awards and finished in second place last season. He was a favorite for the award in the first half as his 5.7 WAR essentially lapped the field, but injury trouble forced him to take some time off and he wasn’t as sharp on return. He still finished the season with a 35% strikeout rate, a 5% walk rate, a 2.92 ERA, 2.45 FIP, and 6.5 WAR, the last of which was second to only Jacob deGrom in the NL and fourth in baseball behind Gerrit Cole and Lance Lynn. Scherzer has begun to shrug off the late-season donwturn and in the last two rounds of the playoffs, he has pitched 15 innings, struck out 21, walked just five and given up just a single run. His velocity has trended up in the postseason and he’s pitching with eight days rest.

As for Gerrit Cole, he topped all pitchers with 7.4 WAR this season; since the start of 2018, only deGrom and Scherzer have more than Cole’s 13.4 WAR. He’s returned to ace status after a great 2015 season, with injuries slowing him down in 2016 and ’17. He deserves to win the Cy Young award as he heads to free agency, and he has had a brilliant postseason up to this point with 22.2 innings, 32 strikeouts, and just one run in three starts. We have arguably the best pitcher in baseball right now going up against the best pitcher in baseball over the last three (and maybe up to eight) years.

Looking only at single-season WAR, the duo is impressive for the first game of the World Series. Look at the scatter plot below, which shows all matchups for World Series openers since 1947:

Cole has the highest WAR for an American League starter in Game 1 of the World Series since at least 1947. Before that, Smoky Joe Wood put up 7.6 WAR for the Red Sox in 1912, while Lefty Grove had 8.3 WAR for the A’s in 1930, and Hal Newhouser’s 8.2 WAR paced the Tigers in 1945. Those are the only pitchers with better seasons in the American League to start Game 1 of the World Series. Scherzer’s 6.5 WAR ranks eighth among the 72 NL Game 1 starting pitchers since 1947. On average, or using geometric mean to avoid one really good starting pitcher skewing the matchup, tonight’s game is very close to the top, but not quite the best:

The Year of the Pitcher back in 1968 wasn’t just some clever name. It really was a year of incredible pitching. Nobody doubts Gibson’s greatness. He averaged more than 5 WAR per season before 1968 and then put up another 18.6 WAR in the two seasons following that historic 1968 campaign. Denny McLain, on the other hand, had put up a total of two wins the previous two seasons, and after a seven-win 1969 season was replacement level as a gambling suspension and arm trouble caused his lackluster rest-of-career.

As for the second-highest matchup, Schilling hadn’t been as good in his last few years with the Phillies but his time with the Diamondbacks coincided with a resurgence. Mussina’s 2001 season was the high point in a nine-year run that saw the Hall of Famer average 5.6 WAR per season. Just below Scherzer and Cole are Koufax and Ford, two Hall of Famers in the middle of their great careers. To provide some balance to the numbers above and find great seasons with some notion of staying power, I weighted the World Series season at 50% and the previous two seasons at 25% each:

Tonight’s game narrowly edges the Koufax-Ford matchup from 1963 as well as the Cliff Lee-Tim Lincecum battle, as the latter was coming off back-to-back Cy Youngs in 2008 and 2009 before a solid 2010 season. If in-season WAR is the sole determining factor in the matchup, then the Gibson-McLain battle is still number one with Schilling and Mussina in 2001 second, and tonight’s game coming in third. If you want to consider what happened in-season most, but provide a little more weight to fairly recent performances, there hasn’t been a better Game 1 matchup in at least 70 years.

The connection between past and present is more durable in baseball than in other sports, and the link is particularly apparent during the World Series. We’ve had nearly 120 of these now, and the classics are a constant presence in contemporary broadcasts. Seemingly every inning, we hear about great games from earlier eras or learn how X is the first player to do Y in the World Series since 1950-something.

If there’s any problem in this connection with the past, it’s that so much of the discourse focuses on the games from the so-called Golden Era at the expense of more recent history. To an extent, that’s a function of time; however great the 2016 World Series may have been, it’s difficult to place those games into historical perspective. Sometimes, memories must marinate.

But that shouldn’t stop us from trying. Below, I recounted each of the World Series’ from the 21st century, and attempted to rank them from least to most compelling. It’s a subjective list — could it be anything else? — but however you order it, it’s clear that we’ve had our share of great matchups lately. More than anything though, at the dawn of the 2019 World Series, it’s worthwhile to take a look back at the previous 19 matchups. After all, we had a lot of fun back then. It’d be a shame if we forgot the details.

19. 2007: Red Sox over Rockies in Four

Entering the series, Colorado was the best story in sports. With a record of 77-72, the Rockies were 6 1/2 games out of first with barely two weeks to play in the regular season. From there, they took 12 of 13 down the stretch, won a one-game playoff, and swept consecutive series to reach their first championship.

Reality struck immediately. Dustin Pedroia led off the bottom half of Game 1 with a homer over the Green Monster and the Sawx boat-raced their guests 13-1. Games 2 and 4 were one-run contests, but this was ultimately a matchup between the best team in the American League and a .500ish squad no longer riding a historical hot streak, and it felt like it.

Series Minutiae: Bobby Kielty only hit one homer during the regular season and had just one at-bat in the series, but it was a big one: His solo shot in Game 4 proved to be both the winning run in the game and the last at-bat in his big league career. Read the rest of this entry »