Chicago Sun-Times

Series recipe: Data plus heart

- Bob Nightengal­e bnighten@usatoday.com USA TODAY Sports

LOS ANGELES Game 1 of the World Series will be played at Dodger Stadium, but considerin­g the assembled brain power that could give NASA a run for its money, it’s a wonder why the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros aren’t playing this on the moon.

In an era when every franchise allocates significan­t resources into analytics, no clubs do it better, and perhaps more exhaustive­ly, than your World Series participan­ts.

Keep a close eye on the Dodgers in this series, and you’ll see a batboy occasional­ly sprint to the outfield during pitching changes, huddling with the outfielder­s, making sure they’re in proper positionin­g, just in case they left their cheat sheets on the bench.

The Astros front office calls their offices the Nerd Cave, where they hired an ex- NASA engineer, Sig Mejdal, to become the Astros director for decision sciences.

Their brain power got them to the finals of this 2017 baseball season, and for the first time in 47 years we have two teams meeting in the World Series that have won at least 100 games during the regular season.

Yet don’t let those algorithms fool you.

They might hate to admit it, but neither of these two teams would be the last ones standing if not for chemistry.

No, we’re not talking about Bunsen burners, beakers, protons and neutrons.

“I had always heard stuff from afar, and once I got here and started connecting with the team,” Dodgers President Andrew Friedman said, “it was a pretty consistent theme. And being able to live it, it was extremely apparent. We had to change our clubhouse dynamics.

“Now, you look at this team, and the dynamics among this group is unlike any I’ve ever seen. It’s also why we’ve had success bringing up talented young players over the last couple of years and have had success pretty quickly. That’s attributed in large part to our clubhouse environmen­t.”

Go ahead, call it covalent bonding if you wish, but it’s a matter where everyone enjoys being around one another, supports each other and acts like a team instead of 25 test tubes.

“The numbers are very important here,” Dodgers reliever Tony Watson says, “but I also think you can’t just throw away the clubhouse culture. We’re not robots. There are a lot of personalit­ies in here, but the fact we get along so well here is extremely important to our success. It’s infectious.”

While the Dodgers have had baseball’s highest payroll for three seasons, the eight position players in Game 5 of the National League Championsh­ip Series that knocked off the defending World Series champion Chicago Cubs earned just $ 30.1 million. That’s a testament to the baseball operations department’s ability to develop and overturn talent.

It’s also a reflection of a team closer- knit than your local Boy Scout troop.

The Dodgers no longer have a clubhouse filled with Hollywood stars, but baseball rats.

Friedman, a former analyst at Bear Sterns and Co., and general manager Farhan Zaidi, an MIT grad with a Ph. D. in economics, identified and weeded out the selfish players in the organizati­on, brought in the likes of Chase Utley, Kike Hernandez, Chris Taylor, Charlie Culberson, Austin Barnes and Logan Forsythe, and a championsh­ip team was born.

“I give a lot of credit to Andrew and Farhan, because when they got here,” All- Star closer Kenley Jansen says, “they cleansed the system. It wasn’t always like this. Not even close.

“We became a very close team, and that’s why we’re here. It’s why I wanted to come back here.”

Sure, the Dodgers and Astros still lead the free sports world in data. Their pitchers know exactly what pitch to throw at what time in what count to every hitter. The players know where to position themselves based on the pitch to the count to the weather patterns. But no amount of talent, they learned, will overcome divisivene­ss.

“They provide us with all those metrics and scouting reports,” says lefty starter Rich Hill, who has pitched in eight organizati­ons, “and it can get us as detailed as you want. Not

 ?? JAMIE SQUIRE, GETTY IMAGES ?? “I want to win aWorld Series. And I want to win it with these guys,” Dodgers’ Game 1 starter Clayton Kershaw says. “That would mean everything to me.”
JAMIE SQUIRE, GETTY IMAGES “I want to win aWorld Series. And I want to win it with these guys,” Dodgers’ Game 1 starter Clayton Kershaw says. “That would mean everything to me.”
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