Why Has the World Series Felt Boring?

Game 4 of the World Series started like gangbusters for the Houston Astros in Washington. A game-opening strikeout by Patrick Corbin against George Springer was followed with four straight singles, producing two runs to give Houston the first lead of the night. Corbin was able to leave the bases loaded in the top of the first to keep his side in the game, but when his pitcher opponent Jose Urquidy took the mound in the bottom half of the inning, he made quick work of the Nationals, inducing two foul pop-ups and stranding Anthony Rendon after his two-out single.

The rest of the game carried on, well, pretty much exactly like that. Each starter traded scoreless innings in the second and third innings, but then the Astros added on with a two-run homer by Robinson Chirinos in the fourth. Washington put up some fight by loading the bases with one out in the bottom of the sixth to bring Juan Soto up representing the tying run, but all Soto could do was bring in a single run with an otherwise harmless groundout. The Astros got their own bases-loaded opportunity the very next inning, and they didn’t miss it, with Alex Bregman crushing a grand slam to put the game out of reach. Houston got a lead early, and aside from a fleeting moment or two, never really seemed in danger of losing it, eventually tacking on enough insurance to make the Nationals’ final few at-bats little more than a formality. Here’s what the win probability chart looked like from that game:

After the fourth batter of the night, Washington’s win probability was never higher than 40%. After the sixth inning, it was never better than 15%. All told, it looked like a typical one-sided baseball game. There’s nothing wrong with that on its face, but when stacked up next to the other four games that have taken place in this World Series, there’s been a troubling trend. According to our calculations, the loser of Game 1, Houston, never had better than a 36.5% chance to win that game after the fifth inning. In Game 2, Houston’s odds of winning were below 2% entering the eighth. Washington’s highest odds of winning after the fifth inning of Game 3 were just 24.5%, and its odds of winning Game 5 after the fourth inning were never better than 13.2%.

This is all normal baseball. Take any stretch of five games from any team in the regular season, and the odds you’ll come up with five games in a row like this aren’t terribly long. What this hasn’t necessarily been, however, is exciting baseball. Tense baseball. Sprint-to-the-fridge-because-your-beer-mug-is-empty-but-this-next-batter-might-change-the-entire-season-on-the-very-next-pitch baseball. It’s been perfectly fine, if a little long and tiresome, but fine isn’t what MLB wants this time of year, and it’s not what you or I want as fans. This is the World Series, dag nabbit. These games are supposed to be great, and by and large, all we’ve gotten are relative clunkers. What gives?

Lack of drama has been a problem thus far, and part of that has been an absence of lead changes. In Game 1, Washington fell behind 2-0 in the first inning but came back to score single runs in the second and fourth before breaking through with three runs to take the lead in the fifth. That is the only lead change that has taken place through five games of this World Series, which the Astros now lead 3-2. With the caveat that there will be at least one more game in this series, that lack of back-and-forth pales in comparison to most other World Series this decade.

The 2010 World Series was similarly lacking in major in-game swings, as were 2012 and 2016. For the most part though, the past few years of postseason play have been notable for the number of rallies, big and small, that have taken place and helped decide the winner. Some of those lead changes have come early in games, while others have been dramatic late-game comebacks. Those are completely missing from this year’s World Series.

To be clear, the fact that a World Series is bereft of lead changes — late in the game or otherwise — doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a boring set of games. The 2016 World Series, for example, was a seven-game thriller between two franchises looking to end horrendous championship droughts, with Game 7 lasting 10 innings. No one would claim that series lacked excitement, but the difference between a series like that and the 2019 version lies in how close the contests are to begin with. While a few games from 2016 could be considered duds, three of them were decided by only one run. This year, meanwhile, is shaping up to be the most lopsided collection of games in years.

With an average win margin of 5.2 runs per game, this year’s World Series is outpacing every other one this decade. It’s a far cry from the last two, which featured average win margins of just 2.3 runs per game in 2017 and 2.8 runs per game in 2018, and combined with the fact that the team running away with things late has almost exclusively been the team who got the lead early, it’s made for some pretty dull action.

But what’s causing this? The Astros entered this series favored more heavily than any World Series team since 2007, according to ESPN, and our own playoff odds estimated they had a startling 72.1% chance of defeating Washington after the end of the ALCS. But that doesn’t necessarily mean each game was supposed to be a runaway. These two teams had the best rotations in baseball, and even if the Astros held the edge both at the plate as well as in the bullpen, conventional wisdom suggested that these games should have been closely contested. The first game was close at the end, and the second game was close until the Nationals exploded for 10 runs in the final three innings, but besides that, fans of all sides have been able to mostly relax comfortably in the backs of their seats rather than bounce a leg and bite their nails at the edges of them.

That’s because the team that’s losing at any given moment simply hasn’t hit the same way they have when they’re ahead or when the game is tied.

The Nationals are a shell of themselves when playing from behind in this series, while a couple of homers late in Games 1 and 2 help disguise the fact the Astros aren’t the same offensive team in comeback situations either. On one level, this data shouldn’t be earth-shattering — teams who are behind are going to face better relievers, while a team that is already ahead will get to chip away at the second tier of their opponents’ bullpen.

But in this case, it isn’t as though the Nationals have used the majority of their plate appearances when trailing against Houston’s relief aces. They’ve played from behind for most of the past three games and were unable to put together any offense against Zack Greinke — who had previously struggled in this postseason — and Urquidy, despite being able to steal a lead and build upon it against Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander earlier in the series. For both teams, falling behind has coincided with someone flipping an off switch within their own lineup. The trailing team has rarely put itself in position to remedy its situation, which is how you get a collection of games that feel all but decided by the fifth inning.

Has this ruined the World Series? Not necessarily. Postseason baseball carries with it a baseline of enjoyment, and baseball in general is a good and welcome thing in this world, especially in these final days of October, when we know we only have so much of it left before it disappears for a few cold months. Decry the quality of World Series games at will, but keep in mind the structure of this game inherently prevents it from producing drama with the speed and fury of other sports.

No one is ever going to compare playoff baseball to, say, playoff hockey. At best, playoff baseball is like a slow-paced game of whack-a-mole, in which the moles pop up 45-60 seconds apart, and every so often, one of them gives you a high voltage shock of electricity, and also lifts its shirt for some reason. The whole time you’re playing, you’re waiting to get shocked, and when you do, boy is the hurtin’ good. Sometimes, the shocks come in bunches. Sometimes, you stand there whacking moles for five games, thinking, “gee, feels like I should have gotten that sweet, sweet shock by now.”

The ingredients are there for more electricity. Juan Soto is still here, as is the best position player free-agent-to-be, one of the best offenses in baseball history, and one of the most unstable bullpens in history. There’s a really good chance the next couple of days give us something we’ll remember fondly for the rest of the winter. It would do us all well for baseball to give us a rousing send-off for 2019. Even if it doesn’t though, I have a feeling it still won’t be any easier to say goodbye.