There’s A Game 7 Tonight, Because Baseball Is The Best

So! Tonight, there’s going to be a Game 7 of the World Series. Your cheering allegiances aside, that’s a rare and wonderful thing. Appreciate it, because now we’ll have the most possible baseball before the long stretch of no baseball, and this isn’t an occasion that comes around all that often. We had a Game 7 three years ago between Texas and St. Louis, but it had been nine years since it’d happened before that, the longest stretch in big league history. Sometimes, you get classics like Curt Schilling & Randy Johnson against Roger Clemens & Mariano Rivera in 2001; sometimes, you get John Tudor allowing eight runners in 2.1 innings on the way to losing 11-0 in 1985. What’s important is that we’re set up for history, and often the biggest impediment to that is simply the opportunity for it to happen. Not tonight.

Jeremy Guthrie against Tim Hudson doesn’t really sound all that exciting, and maybe it won’t be. It’s difficult to imagine either pitcher going more than five innings, and perhaps it won’t even be close to that. It won’t be the worst-ever matchup of Game 7 starters — 1997’s Jaret Wright against Al Leiter probably still tops that list — but it will be the oldest, thanks to a combined 74 years of age. Or at least it will be for a few innings, since both managers are likely going to dig into their bullpens early, since it doesn’t get more “all hands on deck” than this. On the other hand, maybe that makes it more exciting. This could be baseball unlike baseball.

Obviously, any Game 7 is fascinating, but this one might just be moreso, if only because of the way the postseason has gone so far. You’ve heard in more than a few places that this is “the best postseason ever,” and while that’s probably a bit hyperbolic because of the effects of recency, you certainly understand the sentiment. To merely name a few of the lasting impressions — the AL wild card game madness, the divergent Octobers of Madison Bumgarner & Clayton Kershaw, an 18-inning NLDS game, Lorenzo Cain and the Royals defense, literally every single thing Ned Yost has done — is to unfairly neglect so many others. For a postseason like that to end with a Game 7, well, it seems like a fitting capper.

But then, I can’t help but wonder: What kind of postseason has this been, really? Those great games came in the midst of some pretty unexciting series, didn’t they? None of the six Division and Championship series were really close, at least in terms of going to a deciding game. The six winners beat the six losers by a combined score of 20 games to 3. All three of the American League series were sweeps.

Now, contrast that to the World Series, which almost by definition has gone well because we’re being gifted with a Game 7. But unlike the earlier series, which had wonderful moments in blowout series, it hasn’t really been filled with great games. Take a look at our WPA charts for each of the first six games, and while I probably made these smaller than they needed to be, you get the point. Games 1-3 are the top row, 4-6 the bottom:

Games 1 and 6 were over early. Game 2 was tight until the sixth inning, when the Giants used five pitchers to get three outs and allow five runs. Game 4 was interesting early — Ryan Vogelsong didn’t make it out of the third — until Brandon Finnegan & Tim Collins made it a blowout. Game 5 never got out of hand until the eighth, but it also never felt like the Royals were really ever in it against Bumgarner, either. This is, if this tweet that I have not been able to disprove is accurate, the first World Series that’s ever had five different games decided by five or more runs. Game 3, a 3-2 Kansas City victory, was really the only close one, and that was also a Guthrie/Hudson affair.

So after one of the longest seasons in baseball history — do remember that the Dodgers & Diamondbacks kicked things off way back on March 22 in Australia — we’re basically back where we started in the final days of September, with a one-game winner-take-all affair between two wild card teams that are only here because they’ve already done exactly that.

Our game odds, with the lineups yet to be announced beyond the starting pitchers, put it at 51.6%/48.4% in favor of the Royals, which is basically saying it’s a 50/50 proposition. Two relatively even teams — the Royals have won 100 total games this year, and the Giants 99 — are tossing out relatively even past-peak veteran starting pitchers. This isn’t about who is the best team, it’s about who is the best tonight, and while there’s no doubt a sizeable portion of fans who see no distinction there, clearly there is.

That’s the case if only because of one of the many things that makes baseball great and unique and frustrating and wonderful: Because of the everyday grind of the game, you rarely get to throw out your best team. Certainly, Yost & Bruce Bochy would love to have James Shields (or Yordano Ventura) against Bumgarner tonight. Instead, they get Guthrie & Hudson. Imagine if Peyton Manning or LeBron James or Sidney Crosby missed the final game of their postseason because they’d played too recently? Love you, baseball.

Anyway, you’ll hear a lot today about how “no team has lost a Game 7 at home since 1979,” and that’s true. It also doesn’t really mean anything about anything, unless you really think that something Willie Stargell & Mike Flanagan did or didn’t do in 1979, or anyone in any of those Game 7s since, has anything to do with what the Royals & Giants will do tonight. (If you do believe that, however, you can thank the Cardinals, since Adam Wainwright & Pat Neshek combined to allow all five runs in the All-Star Game, giving the AL home field advantage and putting this game in Kansas City.) You’ll hear a lot, too, about declining ratings, as though 99.9% of programming hasn’t experienced the same as compared to 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. None of that matters. Right now, the only thing that’s important is that we get to enjoy something that comes along far too rarely: Game 7.

It’s been a great season. It’s been an outstanding postseason. It hasn’t, necessarily, been a memorable World Series yet. Tonight, whether it’s because of Guthrie or Hudson or Joe Panik or Mike Moustakas or Sergio Romo or Kelvin Herrera or Yost or, heaven help us, Rule 7.13, there’s the opportunity for that to change. Here’s to hoping that it does.

And if you really need a rooting interest, well, who among us doesn’t want to see Dan Uggla — 0 hits, 6 whiffs, and 2 errors in 4 games with San Francisco, all losses — come out of this with a World Series ring?