World Series 2022 -- Houston Astros vs Philadelphia Phillies

voted astros in 5 but i've been wrong about everything else this postseason so who knows

i can't really root for either of these teams, but if philly wins i'll at least be happy that kyle schwarber has another ring

Phillies in 6.

Always amazed me that Casey Stengel started by playing alongside names like Zack Wheat in the 1910s, then 50 years later he was managing the Mets. Dusty Baker was drafted in 1967, played alongside Aaron, now 50 years later he's managing in the WS. He (and Stengel, and Durocher, and even someone like Buck Martinez) personifies Posnanski's idea of the "baseball life." So I'd love to see him win.

But if the Phillies win, I'll be happy for Harper. I used to be iffy about his inconsistency, but the last two years he's really settled in--he was a good candidate for a third MVP before he went down this year.

I have a feeling the Phillies are the serendipitously hot team this year, so I'll take them in six.

Yeah -- Astros for Dusty, Philths for Harper.

During the regular season, Realmuto and Schwarber combined for 32 SBs and were caught only twice. #howaboutthat

only one person involved with this series invented the high-five

also dusty winning might help me stop thinking about poor russ ortiz

only one person involved with this series invented the high-five

still completely fucked up by this

which is the thread for off-season hot stove shit? do we have one yet?

skip schumaker is going to be managing the marlins, for example. he's very scrappy!

Astros in 5

Phillies are hot but the Astros are not going to let Harper beat them. Astros are that good and about to prove it.

I hope I'm wrong because I actually really like this Phillies team but

Phillies do have that team of destiny vibe but the Astros have seemed well-nigh unbeatable and I voted Astros in 4 because it would be kind of cool to see a team sweep the postseason

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

- verlander will tie jon lester for most playoff game 1 starts (12)

- with michael brantley on the IL, this will be the first world series since 1950 with no african-american players

wow, that actually quite surprising!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

11 - 3

as a western pennsylvanian it would be tough to root for the phillies but also i hate their cream uniforms

points for being unique; more points off for being awful

oh look, it's red and blue and a barely stylized P

i'm glad they were the first team to lose 10,000 games

a juggernaut vs an okay team. momentum is fake in baseball

My mom scored a ticket to see the Halloween game, I told her she should go as Mike Schmidt.

mike schmidt was on a level with like, burt reynolds and george brett in my personal cosmology of manliness

i feel like american masculinity reached its absolute apex in the late 70s, black, white, gay, straight, didn’t matter

Here's Posnanski's preview:

https://open.substack.com/pub/joeposnanski/p/the-no-bs-world-series-preview?r=1jtu0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

The Astros have primarily won via pitching so far, but it is impressive that they could sweep the first two series with their leadoff hitter 0-26 at one point.

Alas I am not a subscriber

That's supposed to be a sharable link--let me try again.

https://open.substack.com/pub/joeposnanski/p/the-no-bs-world-series-preview?r=1jtu0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Here we go

Gonna be 25 strikeouts tonight.

Joe Davis is very good

Pretty damn impressive (Tucker, I mean).

Wow

Did this just really happen?

Phillies come all the way back

I thought this was over two innings ago. Verlander retires like 12 in a row and then sets about giving up a 5 run lead!

The Verlander curse

The Baker curse

Harper up with two on

Astros get out of that mess

you don't actually have to give us a play-by-play

True, sorry

bee, i kinda appreciate the play by play you offer. feel free to continue

Same

Kyle Tucker has gotta be asking what else does he have to do.

He wasn't all that far from catching Realmuto's HR...I was watching and somehow managed to drift off for a few seconds and missed Castellanos's catch.

That was, as they say, a statement win.

But then again, game of inches ... Castellanos barely making the catch, Tucker barely missing his, and so on.

Justin Verlander eh. Why the fuck did they leave him on for the 5th?

He hasn’t been good this post season (and has never been good in the WS) but his regular season numbers plus future hall of fame credential probably count for something in the way of trust.

Even though I know you've got to have a quicker hook the nearer the end you are, it's almost a catch-22: the biggest reason Dusty Baker is successful as a manager is the respect his players have for him, and I think you'd damage that if you pull Verlander mid-inning in the 5th when you're still up 5-3.

Surely if your pitcher shits the bed and gives up five runs to tie the game that puts pressure back on the batting order to get back that lead - which they obviously didn’t do.

i agree with gyac. Dusty’s sitting on the deepest pen in baseball, possibly the deepest pen in World Series history. everything was clicking for Verlander through three, and then all of a sudden it wasn’t, and he’s lucky the Phils only got 3. now you’ve got the top of the order coming back for the dreaded third time. i think it’s pretty cut and dried. you’re trying to win the World Series not a popularity contest.

It's a seven-game series--I'm inclined to wait and see. Verlander gave up a double, and that tied the game, then he got the next two outs. Tucker's second HR made it 5-0 with one out in the third; should Thomson have pulled Nola then? He didn't, Nola finished the inning, got through the 4th without a run, and got the first out in the 5th. So it's forgotten.

what the Phillies did or didn’t do is irrelevant. you’re Dusty Baker and you’ve got the greatest bullpen ever assembled, your starter is handing out bases like they’re halloween candy and they haven’t even been around the order twice yet. in the 4th Verlander gave up three singles, a double and a walk. he just didn’t have it anymore. he started the fifth by surrendering a double. he then walked Schwarber. and STILL he stays in the game. crazy.

I mean this is just going by the book. you’re the one arguing in favour of an unorthodox “trust the guy” approach clemenza but usually people argue that when the by-the-book outcome DIDN’T come to pass. this time it did.

I want a game 7 because I can’t watch tonight and also I want the phils to win.

i don't really care who wins the series, but i *would* like a Brad Lidge Moment tonight

I want everyone to tell me--and tell me before it happens--the exact moment when they should take out Valdez.

(Left myself wide open there: "How about we tell you the exact moment when we take out you instead?")

tell us -- before it happens -- the exact moment at which you will no longer be impressed by his performance

There it is

(Not talking about current conversations in this thread)

Yeah--it wasn't me who gushed about his curveball.

(It amuses me that after a decade of being ridiculed by ILX's patron saint as a wide-eyed naif, you've decided I'm jaded because I wasn't thrilled three relievers pitching three hitless innings.)

No way he leaned into that.

Wow

Ditto...I think Alvarez has only been so-so since the Mariners HR, but what a flair for the dramatic.

I want everyone to tell me--and tell me before it happens--the exact moment when they should take out Valdez.

Just needling...not sure your post was necessary in the middle of this great inning.

Don’t needle if you don’t like getting it back. Also, don’t read ilx during the game if you get annoyed at being replied to while play is happening?

Oh my goodness--you sound far angrier than any of my posts.

My basic point was that everybody decided pulling Verlander was the right move after he gave up the two runs. No one posted beforehand. So I was saying, "Okay, this time tell me beforehand." Twice Thomson has removed his starter this series and had it blow up. In G5, Baker left Verlander in to get out of a couple of jams, and that time it worked.

It's baseball--anything can happen, and there's no right answer.

fwiw i would not let valdez start the seventh

93 pitches, three straight righties to face (not that i know his splits, of course)

Great! That's all I'm asking for. I think that's reasonable around 90 pitches. I'd give him a baserunner before pulling him--we'll see.

dusty otm (until the phillies run amok, of course)

No one posted beforehand. So I was saying, "Okay, this time tell me beforehand."

gentlemen, can we simply enjoy the mystery that is baseball? it’s been a great series (also, valdez out this inning)

gyac is no gentleman

If the Astros do hang on, Valdez vs. Pena is a pretty interesting MVP call.

Peña mvp for me

Gyac, I can be stubborn about my opinions. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying there's room for a difference of opinion there.

I think I'd go with Pena too.

bothers me that espn resets all the individual stats for each series while mlb dot com shows cumulative playoff stats

espn is wrong, but i guess it's useful for mvp-ness

If he hadn’t already gone out, this would have been a great time for Nick Castellanos to have homered.

If it were just Pena with the bat, maybe Valdez, but Pena's been fantastic in the field, too. They still have to win.

(Not sure which broadcast I have on, but if you don't the same one, they just said there hasn't been a home team clinch the WS at home since 2013...that's kind of amazing.)

That was truly weird, about six different ways.

fortunately for my aunt, the iggles are 8-0

I hate the astros

congrats to Dusty and Dusty only

Okay you won a real one, can you please fade from the spotlight now, there are other, much cooler less tainted teams that would like to play baseball well too

Found it moving the way they surrounded Dusty in the dugout. I guess I've seen that before, but I don't remember.

I picked Astros in 5, it took a extra game. Very happy for Dusty Baker.

Joe Davis > Joe Buck

fuck the haters, my Astros take another WS, wearing my Altuve jersey RN

Congrats f. hazel

f. hazel, you and me both :)

pena, mvp. right on.

Congrats sknybrg, I thought you would be a Mets fan

Between Ortiz shooting the fake money at him and the cameo by his wife, I know Verlander has endeared himself to ILB even more.

Phillies offense stressed me out this entire series, never felt safe from them

they were like 3-for-420 with runners in scoring position tho

wonder how joe girardi feels tonight

lol phils did very well given their shit unbalanced roster, late season streaks are real but they disappear as soon as they come

Joe Davis > Joe Buck

I second this. Davis probably made more memorable calls in this postseason than Joe Buck did in the last 25 years.

Fun season

Didn't realize till last night that Pena's already 25. Late start for a rookie (for the obvious reason of Correa) that will probably come into play when he hits the free agent market down the road.

Like anything pertaining to old media, I doubt Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson of the Year is nearly as newsworthy as it was 20 years ago. (1998, McGwire and Sosa; 2001, Johnson and Schilling. Three of the four are pariahs now.) Still, I'd love to see Dusty Baker win it this year. Wasn't sure if they've ever given it to a coach, but I checked and they have, at least three times: John Wooden in 1972, Dean Smith in 1997, and Pat Summitt and Mike Krzyzewski in 2011. (They seem to have a thing about college basketball coaches.) If they do go with baseball, I suppose it'd be Judge; if the Yankees had won, for sure it's be Judge. I don't know if there is an obvious winner from some other sport this year.

Totally forgot that it was Dusty Baker's son who almost got trampled at home in 2003.

https://www.mlb.com/news/darren-baker-celebrates-dad-dusty-s-world-series-victory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzV7x8WcR4g

That’s literally the first thing I think of when it comes to Baker. I had only recently started watching baseball again and I wondered who the idiot was that let a toddler on the field

J.T. Snow ought to be in the HOF for that.