The Most Unbelievable Moment of the World Series So Far

This has been a crazy World Series. Last night’s game was particularly nuts, but this whole series has been one long string of unlikely outcomes. Even the run-of-the-mill 3-1 Dodgers victory in Game 1 was remarkable for how short it was. Nothing in this series is usual.

But amidst all the bonkers plays that we’ve seen, I think there was one particular moment last night that still lingers. As I sit here roughly 12 hours after the game ended, I still don’t know how this happened.

I’ve included the Fox score box just as a reminder of what led up to this screen shot.

In the top of the seventh inning, Justin Turner doubled to lead off against Brad Peacock, who was pitching on one days rest after throwing 53 pitches on Friday night. Peacock wasn’t supposed to be available, but after watching Dallas Keuchel and Collin McHugh struggle, A.J. Hinch decided to go back to the guy who was so good for him in Game 3.

Turner’s at-bat probably should have been a clue that this wasn’t a great idea, as Peacock still wasn’t able to locate the two sliders he threw, and thus had to rely primarily on his fastball. Turner was able to basically sit on that one pitch and drilled a two-seamer 385 feet. It was this close to being a go-ahead home run.

To that point, the two teams had combined to score 14 runs in six innings. The Astros bullpen had been awful all series, and the guy pitching was both on fumes and unable to locate his best pitch. With the go-ahead run in scoring position and nobody out, the Dodgers’ 4-5-6 hitters were coming up, and the Dodgers’ win probability had spiked up to 61%.

That’s the context in which Dave Roberts chose to ask his cleanup hitter to lay down a sacrifice bunt.

In Roberts’ defense, Kiké Hernandez has been terrible against right-handed pitchers in his career, running a 63 wRC+ against RHPs in his time in the Major Leagues. Of course, one could easily argue that if you don’t trust Hernandez to swing away with the go-ahead run on second base against a right-hander, then you shouldn’t hit him clean-up, even when the opponent starts a lefty, since you know he’s going to face a bunch of right-handed relievers later anyway. But line-up choice aside, Hernandez was the guy at the plate, and Roberts decided that the match-up was so poor that his best option was to give up an out to try and get Turner to third base.

Now, before we go any further, we have to note that Turner was the Dodgers’ DH last night. The team chose to play Charlie Culberson in the field because Turner was banged up in Game 4, and he was not running at anything close to 100%. And even 100% Justin Turner is one of the slowest runners in baseball. 68 batters had 75 “sprint speed” opportunities this year, according to Statcast. Justin Turner’s average 26.2 feet-per-second top speed ranked 66th out of 68 runners this year.

So, while theoretically there’s some value in getting a runner from second to third with less than two outs, so he could score on a sacrifice fly or a slow chopper on the infield, the reality is that Turner might not have been able to score from third on a non-hit anyway. He’s already not-fast, and last night, he was not-fast and not-healthy. So the entire premise of the improved chances of scoring one run might have been false, given that Turner probably wasn’t going to try to score on a passed ball unless it ricocheted so far away from Brian McCann that he could walk home.

But, whatever, let’s put Turner’s ability to score from third aside for a minute. Let’s assume that, for a few seconds in the World Series, adrenaline would allow him to run as not-fast as usual, so that getting him to third base with one out had some value. We don’t need Turner to be hobbled for this decision to remain completely crazy.

Because, if Hernandez had successfully gotten the bunt down and advanced Turner to third base, the situation would have been Turner at third with one out and Cody Bellinger due up. Cody Bellinger is a good hitter, but you know what Cody Bellinger is not known for? Contact hitting. He put the bat on the ball on just 70% of his regular season swings this year, and that’s fallen to just 61% in the postseason. Bellinger is the kind of player that defines baseball in 2017; swing hard to hit it far, or don’t hit it at all.

Had Bellinger come up in that situation, with the go-ahead run at third base, perhaps he would have changed his swing, as he did the night before. But, also, Peacock likely would have done whatever he could to go for the strikeout. We can’t know what would have happened, but I do know that if your game plan involves giving up an out so that you can ask Cody Bellinger to put the ball in play, but not put it in play in a way that would have scored Turner from second anyway, it’s a weird strategy.

Of course, Bellinger might not have hit there anyway. Perhaps, with Logan Forsythe on deck, they would have just intentionally walked Bellinger to set up a right-on-right match-up with a double play in order. Is giving up an out to get Turner to third so that you can hope Forsythe hits a ball that isn’t a double play candidate but can still score a gimpy Turner from third really an improvement on just letting three guys try to get a hit off a pitcher who was going on one days rest after throwing nearly four innings on Friday night, and had just given up a rocket to the first batter he faced?

These are not definitely provable questions, of course, as we can’t really know what would have happened had Hernandez gotten a good bunt down. Which he didn’t. Which shouldn’t be a huge shock, as Hernandez has all of three bunts in his career. This isn’t something he does regularly, and he laid down an awful bunt right back to the mound, which allowed Peacock to nail Turner going to third base. So the Dodgers gave up an out and moved their runner out of scoring position.

It’s the result they deserved, though, because asking Hernandez to bunt in the first place made no sense. Even without all the specific context of the situation, playing for one run in the seventh inning of a game where 14 runs have already been scored is bananas anyway. This wasn’t some kind of pitchers duel where the next time to plate a run is a huge favorite. This was a night where, okay, neat, you have a lead, good luck holding that for 30 seconds.

Of course, baseball intervened, and George Springer dove for Cody Bellinger’s line drive to center, scoring Hernandez from first, and the Dodgers ended up with a one run lead anyway. In the end, the series of events worked out for Roberts, as Springer’s mistake allowed a run to come home and put a runner at third with less than two outs. But then, Bill Miller’s fifty-foot-wide strike zone came back into play, and Logan Forsythe struck out when a ball in play would have likely scored a run from third, since Bellinger is much faster than Turner. Which again points out how nuts it was to try and setup a ball in play to begin with, given that Bellinger strikes out on his own all the time, and Miller was ringing up any batter who didn’t swing at a pitch within a foot of home plate.

Of course, Brandon Morrow made all of this irrelevant in the bottom of the seventh, when he showed why a one run lead wasn’t going to last either way. And it’s not a 13-12 game was decided by the Dodgers decision to sacrifice bunt in the seventh inning. This wasn’t the critical play of last night’s game by any chance.

But, today, it’s the one I still can’t believe happened. Dave Roberts is a really good manager who mostly does really smart things, but for one batter last night, he made a decision that just doesn’t make any sense at all. In a series full of crazy things, the craziest play of all was asking a cleanup hitter to sacrifice bunt a hobbled already-slow runner so that a high-strikeout slugger could try to make moderate contact on a night where the strike zone was 10 feet wide.