Rendon’s Signature Swing Lifts 2019 World Series

Though the final score was once again lopsided, Tuesday night’s Game 6 was this World Series’ most entertaining game since the opener, even if much of it pivoted upon lengthy debates of rules both written (the seventh-inning interference call against Trea Turner) and unwritten (the bat-carrying homers of Alex Bregman and Juan Soto). Beyond those controversies, Stephen Strasburg‘s 8.1 innings and Anthony Rendon’s pair of late-inning hits headlined the Nationals’ winning effort. The latter also helped rescue what has been something of a dull World Series from some ignominious distinctions.

Rendon’s two-run seventh-inning homer off Will Harris did not swing the lead; the fifth-inning homers of Adam Eaton and Soto off Justin Verlander did that job. Rendon’s blow did divert attention away from the scrutiny over Turner’s path to first base after hitting a dribbler to pitcher Brad Peacock, as well as the long on-field delay for what was actually ruled an un-reviewable judgment call. Instead of having runners at second and third with no outs, the Nationals had a runner on first and one out, and boy, were they — and just about everybody outside of Houston — extremely pissed. The tension ratcheted up a few notches when Eaton, the next batter after Turner, popped up to third base on the first pitch from Harris. Two pitches later, Rendon pulverized a cutter that Harris left in the middle of the plate; that’s a 2019 postseason-high 43.4 degree launch angle for you aficionados of such matters:

The ball-don’t-lie homer stretched the Nationals’ lead to 5-2, and while it produced some mutterings about how the lead should have been 6-2 had the umpires not screwed up the call (as well as some terrible puns), such gripes get filed in the category of what Yankees play-by-play voice Michael Kay calls “the fallacy of the predetermined outcome” — the assumption that the inning would have unfolded in exactly the same manner as it did with that one change; we can’t know how Harris, Eaton, and Rendon would have approached their respective tasks in the parallel universe where two runners were on base. Nationals manager Davey Martinez was still hot enough to get run even after the inning finished.

Anyway, Rendon — who had also driven in the Nationals’ run in the top of the first against Verlander via a shift-beating single through the hole on the right side of the infield — effectively put the game out of reach in the top of the ninth when he plated two more runs with a double off the right-center-field wall at the expense of Chris Devenski:

The 29-year-old third baseman’s five RBI matched Gleyber Torres‘ ALCS Game 1 total as the highest of this postseason, and it now stands as the World Series’ highest total since Addison Russell‘s six RBI in Game 6 in 2016. Via the Baseball-Reference Play Index, his .325 WPA matched George Springer’s Game 1 performance for the highest of this World Series, though the pair are tied for a more modest 10th in this postseason:

If you’re wondering about pitcher WPA from this postseason, Strasburg’s .306 mark is the highest of any starter in this World Series, edging Gerrit Cole‘s .299 from Game 5, though Sean Doolittle‘s four-out save in Game 1 weighs in at .326 for the top overall pitching performance thanks to its high leverage. The last of those is still just 11th overall this postseason, with Aníbal Sanchéz’s .526 WPA from his no-hit bid in the NLCS opener topping the list.

All that’s cool, if not historic. Where a bit of history — esoteric history, for those into WPA, which admittedly ain’t everybody — comes in is in rescuing this series from a dubious distinction. As I noticed in putting together Tuesday’s piece on Kurt Suzuki, the Nationals catcher’s go-ahead homer off Verlander in the seventh inning of Game 2 had the highest WPA of any single play in this World Series according to our version of the metric, at .192. The Baseball Gauge, which has a very cool WPA and Championship WPA database that provides measures for each play, game, and series, has slightly different numbers, putting Suzuki’s homer dead even with Soto’s two-run, fifth-inning double off Cole in Game 1 (.190 for both). Rendon’s homer has now edged ahead of that pair:

As you can see, the Soto and Eaton homers both cracked the series’ top 15 as well, as did a Springer double off Strasburg that sent Josh Reddick to third base instead of tying the game; Strasburg ultimately stranded both runners by striking out Altuve and getting Michael Brantley to ground out. One note here: the Gauge’s WPA rankings include outs — generally negative WPAs for the hitting team, and positive for the pitching team — though only one cracked the initial top 15: Hudson’s bases-loaded strikeout of Alvarez with two outs in the seventh inning of Game 1, which produced a .133 WPA; I felt it was worth omitting that from the above to keep the comparisons consistent across sites. Also worth noting is that the maximum difference in WPA between FanGraphs’ version and the Gauge’s for any single play was a mere .003; the hits of Springer and Alvarez swapped places relative to my previous version of the table, but otherwise the order was undisturbed.

So Rendon’s homer took over top honors for this series. Let’s call that the series’ Signature Swing, which works out nicely both with regards to the action and the change in probabilities. Rendon’s Signature Swing prevented this year’s series from having the lowest such event of any World Series in the past 30 years:

I had to omit the pitchers due to space considerations, the list of which includes Dennis Eckersley, who also served up Kirk Gibson’s pinch-homer in 1988 (which registered a chart-topping .859 WPA), and the Braves’ Mark Wohlers, who landed here for hits in both ’95 and ’96. Steinbach’s homer off Rick Reuschel came in a series that turned out to be a sweep, one whose signature drama was actually the Loma Prieta earthquake (6.9 on the Richter scale) that delayed the playing of Game 3 by 10 days. The 1990 and 2007 series were also sweeps, though some of the other Signature Swings from above came in series that were much closer; the 1987 and 2014 ones both went the full seven games, for example, but they didn’t have That One Play which stood as particularly significant relative to other series.

Thanks to Rendon, Strasburg, Soto, and Eaton, this series is going the distance as well, and with it comes another chance for the Nationals and Astros to rewrite the story with a new Signature Swing. Game 7!!! I can hardly wait.