WHEN GUT FEEL WON OVER THE DATA
Champion Nationals show that baseball is still unpredictable
The late innings of Game 7 of the World Series were where narratives went to die.
With the Houston Astros holding a 2-0 advantage heading into the seventh inning, the lead seemed much bigger given that Zack Greinke was doing a fabulous Greg Maddux impression on the mound, inducing weak ground balls that he was fielding like a serve-and-volley player at the net.
The Astros, the data-driven organization that had earned enmity across Major League Baseball for its slavish devotion to numbers, and more recently for unrelated reasons, were about to lock down their second World Series title in three seasons, in which they won more than 100 regular-season games each time. This was dynastic stuff, the kind of accomplishments that only a handful of organizations have ever managed.
As if to underscore the message, the Washington Nationals were playing the part of the overmatched idealists. Dave Martinez was managing by gut and feel, leaving a labouring Max Scherzer out on the mound to fend off the Astros. He was the wounded gladiator, and the Astros were angry lions. (Except Jose Altuve, the feisty chipmunk.)
The ruthless Astros were about to squeeze the life out of the plucky underdogs. But then baseball happened again.
The funny thing about Washington’s thrilling comeback, with six runs in the final three frames to win Game 7 and take the first World Series in Nationals (and Montreal Expos) franchise history, is how utterly baseball it was. Anthony Rendon’s no-doubt shot over the left-field wall to put the Nationals, finally, on the board was the kind of thing that happens even when a pitcher like Greinke is doing a maestro thing on the mound. It was one of the very few balls that anyone on the Nats had hit squarely all night. But, leave a pitch over the plate against a hitter like Rendon, and, boom.
It wasn’t until two batters later that the cruelty of the sport was laid bare. Greinke had been yanked after a walk to Juan Soto and Will Harris was in to tidy things up. He is usually death on right-handed hitters, with breaking stuff that tails away from them. Howie Kendrick swung and missed at his first offering, just as planned. But then Kendrick barrelled his second pitch, sending it slicing to the opposite field, plunking the screen on the foul pole in the right-field corner for a two-run homer that flipped the score in favour of the visitors.
If that ball dives just a bit further, if the spin carries it maybe six feet to the right, possibly even less than that, then the Astros still hold a lead, and who knows what a chastened Harris does next. He had a huge strikeout of Kendrick earlier in the series; he could have done so again. The narratives would have all been intact. Hinch’s ruthless decision to hook Greinke — following the data that says starters are significantly less effective when facing batters for the third time in a game — would have been vindicated.
Instead, it was the opposite. “It’s a decision I’ll have to live with,” Hinch said afterward.
“And I don’t know what would have happened had I left (Greinke) in.”
In the other dugout, Martinez had taken the opposite approach to handling a veteran starter. Scherzer had been unable to get out of bed 72 hours earlier, and he was clearly not the Scherzer who fanned 12 hitters per nine innings this season. He gave up seven hits and four walks over five innings, striking out just three. It was the first time in a streak of 257 starts that Scherzer walked more batters than he fanned, the longest such streak since the 1920s.
Every bit of logic suggested that Martinez should have replaced him earlier, instead of leaving him to gut out innings against the lions. He had two rested starters, Patrick Corbin and Anibal Sanchez, in the bullpen. Scherzer couldn’t locate his breaking pitches, and at some point one of these Astros was going to smoke a fastball. Even when Carlos Correa finally did, the shot down the third-base line bounced into foul territory, but didn’t make it to the outfield, which would have allowed more runners to score. Instead, it was just a one-run single to make it 2-0.
These were the margins that allowed the Nationals to write their own history.
And, instead of proving, again, that baseball could be won by removing the human element, by playing the percentages and trusting the numbers, it was Hinch, and the Astros who will face an off-season of second-guessing.
Their ethos is to apply cold science to a quirky old sport, to the exclusion of all else. They are trying to wrestle the unpredictability out of it.
Baseball has shown it will not go quietly.