World Series 2022 -- Houston Astros vs Philadelphia Phillies

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.

a harder decision would have been - this is the third time through the order but verlander’s only given up, say, a solo homer and a walk. do you leave him in, 5-1 in the fifth? probably.

Disagree with some of your characterizations there...but will step away from yet another epic argument.

Sheehan:

Verlander retired the first ten batters of last night’s game. Right when I went to look up my note speculating on the possibility of a postseason no-hitter this year, one tied to Verlander, Rhys Hoskins lined a single to center. The next batter, J.T. Realmuto, hit a soft liner back to the mound, hitting Verlander right in the glove. Verlander, though, looking over to first for a possible double play -- he had Hoskins dead to rights off first base -- didn’t secure the ball. It popped out of his glove, and instead of two outs on a 1-3, the Astros got just one. It wasn’t an error, wasn’t an egregious bad play, but anyone who watched the ’06 Series felt the ghosts at that moment.

Maybe it wasn’t the supernatural, but you can divide Verlander’s night neatly before and after that play.

Before: 12 batters, 11 outs, one single, four strikeouts, no runs

After: 11 batters, four outs, three doubles, two singles, two walks, five runs

I predicted Verlander would go exactly 23 batters, but not like this.

Verlander threw so many bad breaking balls: a slider down and in, within the zone, to Harper for a single; a hanger to Alec Bohm for a double, another to J.T. Realmuto for the same. I didn’t understand his need to keep going to the breaking stuff. We’ve talked about this a lot this month: The Phillies hit breaking stuff and they don’t hit good velocity. Every time Verlander threw a breaking ball rather than a 97-mph fastball, he was giving the Phillies a gift. Verlander’s night was a failure of approach and a failure of execution.

I love the way baseball history connects across decades: 1) Realmuto's HR the first extra-inning HR by a catcher since Carlton Fisk in Game 6; 2) the first extra-inning walk-off HR to win a G1 since Dusty Rhodes (the other famous guy from the '54 WS).

I’m wondering who starts game 3 for the Phils. Seems weird to burn Suarez for 0.2 innings.

They're saying he can still go since he only threw 11 pitches

It wasn't a walkoff HR though clem. First extra inning HR by a catcher since Fisk (and I think just the fourth of all time) is fun and interesting though.

Re:Verlander, in G7 of the 2003 ALCS (the Pedro-Grady Little game), Torre pulled Clemens in the fourth inning. There was speculation at the time that he was retiring and it was his final game. Didn't matter to Torre, Clemens was done. Bochy won three championships with the Giants by not being sentimental with his SP's. He had former CY winners like Zito, Peavy, and Lincecum and used a quick hook with them, reassigned them to the bullpen, whatever it took to win.

You're right, it wasn't...they mentioned first-since-Dusty Rhodes last night; I must have botched the factoid.

Not to reopen this, but I would differentiate between a G7 and a G1.

Just extra-inning HR in G1, not a walk-off:

Extra-inning HR in Game 1 of a World Series:

1946, Rudy York vs. Cardinals
1954, Dusty Rhodes vs. Indians
2022, JT Realmuto vs. Astros

— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) October 29, 2022

fantastic bottom of the ninth in G1.

I hate these in-game dugout interviews.

Houston's turn to get Dusted in the playoffs. They might rip off 4 games in a row and make it go away, but then again maybe not.

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.