Marisnick a possibility for spot on 25-man World Series roster
All October, as he has watched the Astros knock off the Red Sox in four games and come back from the brink of elimination to defeat the Yankees in seven, Jake Marisnick has held out hope the team would advance deep enough for him to return to the field.
Now that the Astros have punched their ticket to the World Series, a workout at Dodger Stadium on the eve of Tuesday’s Game 1 will help to determine whether the outfielder’s healing right thumb will allow him to be included on the 25-man roster for the Fall Classic.
“We’ll see where I’m at. I feel great,” Marisnick said after the Astros’ Game 7 win Saturday night. “I’d love to be a part of this. I’d love to get on the field.”
Marisnick, who’s only five weeks removed from surgery, would only be able to play defense and run if active on the Astros’ World Series roster. His bench spot would probably come at the expense of Derek Fisher, who played in the American League Championship Series only late in the Astros’ 8-1 loss in Game 3 at Yankee Stadium.
Marisnick has been throwing for almost a week and said it feels “close to normal.” Hitting will wait until the winter, as he is yet to have been cleared to test his swing after surgery.
If he plays, Marisnick’s speed on the bases could test the arm of former Riverside Poly High School teammate Austin Barnes, who in the playoffs has supplanted Yasmani Grandal as the Dodgers’ primary catcher. Marisnick, who grew up in Southern California rooting for the Angels rather than the Dodgers, works out with Barnes in the offseason in Riverside, Calif.
Keuchel’s familiarity with Dodgers lacking
Despite debuting with the Astros before their move to the American League in 2013, Astros World Series Game 1 starter Dallas Keuchel has never pitched against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In his six major league seasons, Keuchel has faced only three players on the Dodgers’ current roster: Logan Forsythe, Chase Utley and Chris Taylor.
The lefthanded-hitting Utley plays only against righthanders these days, so Forsythe and Taylor are most likely the only players of those three Keuchel will face.
Forsythe, an ex-Tampa Bay Ray, is 7-for-20 with a triple against Keuchel. Taylor, who played in parts of three seasons with the Seattle Mariners from 2014-16 before reinventing himself with the Dodgers, is 0-for-3 with three strikeouts against the former Cy Young Award winner.
ALCS Game 7 largest viewing for FS1
The Astros’ clinching victory Saturday night in the ALCS was the most-watched program in the history of FS1, with an average audience in 9.924 million viewers, and had an audience of 10.5 million on FSI, Fox Deportes and Fox Sports Go.
The Spanish-language telecast added 445,000 viewers, and the streaming audience averaged 152,748 minutes per viewer.
The seven-game series averaged 6.5 million viewers on Fox television and FS1 for the largest ALCS viewing audience since 2013.
Game 7 also was the mostviewed LCS telecast on any network since 11.6 million for a Giants-Phillies game in 2010 For the entire postseason, Fox is averaging 5.1 million viewers, flat with last year’s numbers that included the Cubs’ NLCS victory.
Both home-team markets had their largest audiences ever for an FS1 program. The game had a 21.6 Nielsen rating and a 38 audience share in Houston, averaging 537,836 households, and 18.0 with a 33 share in New York, averaging 1.27 million households.