World Series 2018 Redux

[xogfog]

The Red Sox win the 2018 World Series over the Dodgers 4 games to 1. It was a pretty one sided series with the Dodger's only win coming in an amazing 18 inning win. The Red Sox were able to win without getting much from their two best hitters (Betts and Martinez), they just pitched better and ground out at bats.

The Red Sox were the best team in baseball all season and are actually a fun team to watch. I follow them as my second team outside of the Phillies so I'm very familiar with the team and have followed them for years. Yes, they have the largest payroll in the sport, but the team also has a lot of home grown talent and only one player from the 2013 championship team was on this team. They've drafted well, which not only gave them most of their starters (Betts, Bradley Jr., Benintendi, Bogaerts, Devers and Vasquez), but gave them the assets to trade for Sale, etc,,, They spend, but they spend wisely.

In the playoffs, the Red Sox did something that historically, used to only be done in a seventh game scenario, where all hands are on deck. They routinely utilized their starters on their side days in games and in leverage situations out of the bullpen Porcello, Price, Sale and Eovaldi all pitched out of the bullpen during the playoffs and during the world series. I wonder if that will catch on in the future across the league for playoff baseball. Conversely, I wonder if that kind of high stress use will hurt those pitchers in the long run.

Manny Machado had a terrible series, not sure if his price comes down any because of it, but between his poor performance, his lack of hustling issues and his "dirty player" reputation all on display during the playoffs, I wonder if his price came down a little. As for another free agent that increased his value, Nathan Eovaldi was incredible and earned himself a big payday, he was throwing 102mph seeds with a 96mph hard cutter and a bugs bunny curve ball and after throwing an inning in each of the first two games, threw six innings of scintillating relief (97 pitches) in game 3, only to be a hard luck loser, but his performance definitely gave the team a boost.

Anyway, congrats to the Red Sox and let's hope the Phillies are hoisting the trophy in the near future.

[phillychuck]

Notice the Red Sox have built their 2018 WC in five years (2013 team all gone but one player). That's a pretty quick re-load. And they managed to somehow overcome a lot of false steps along the way.

[Philsmania]

I cannot say that I particularly like the Red Sox as they have pretty much become the Cowboys of baseball..."America's Team", if you will. I know people who root for them because one grandparent grew up in New England. Please. Having said that, I do know quite a few Phillies phans who adopted the Red Sox as their second favorite team. I attribute a lot of that to 1986 when they nearly beat that year's despised Mets team in the WS. But yes, tired of Boston teams always winning--eleven titles since 2001 between the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins. Their fans have become more haughty and entitled than New York fans.

Here are my random thoughts.

Yes, it was a pretty one-sided series.

Kershaw is awesome in the regular season but is is not a money pitcher in the Postseason, a la Barry Bonds during the Pittsburgh portion of his career on the position player side of things.

Dodgers bullpen wilted and seeing how poorly Madson struggled, you wonder if it is the end of the road for his career.

114 World Series have been played and in 59 of them (or 51.7%), the NL has been represented by either the Dodgers (20 times), the Giants (20 times, though most of them in the early years) or the Cardinals (19 times). Cubs are the next closest with 11 WS appearances which is remarkable considering that they went 70 years without one from 1946 to 2015. I guess it goes to show how rare it is to go the WS for most of the NL.

Red Sox certainly win their titles in bunches. They won the first WS played in 1903 and that kicked off a stretch where they won 5 in 16 years through 1918 (and 4 in 7 years from 1912-1918). In the next century that followed, the Red Sox had their much-chronicled 85 year drought and now a stretch where they have won 4 in 15 years.

Dodgers lived--and, ultimately, died--by the long ball (or lack thereof). TTO baseball perhaps not the roadmap to a title?

[zambonir]

The 2013 Sox were an outlier though - they went all-in on free agents and veteran lottery tickets to try and augment the few guys they had left from the previous era (Ellsbury, Ortiz, Lester) and caught lightning in a bottle. They brought in Gomes, Ross, Napoli, Victorino, Stephen Drew, Hanrahan. The Phillies could and maybe should have tried that too (including keeping Vic and Pence) since they were already committed to the rest of the aging core but I don't think we would have liked it (as it is we still got Papelbon and Burnett but went cheap on hitters). Sox only won 71 games the next year and then fired Cherington in 2015 when his attempt to capture magic vets (Sandoval, Hanley, Porcello - though he certainly worked out long-term) failed. Obviously Theo and Cherington drafted much better than Gillick and Amaro (and Klentak) did.

[mdougherty12]

I cannot say that I particularly like the Red Sox as they have pretty much become the Cowboys of baseball..."America's Team", if you will. I know people who root for them because one grandparent grew up in New England. Please. Having said that, I do know quite a few Phillies phans who adopted the Red Sox as their second favorite team. I attribute a lot of that to 1986 when they nearly beat that year's despised Mets team in the WS. But yes, tired of Boston teams always winning--eleven titles since 2001 between the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins. Their fans have become more haughty and entitled than New York fans.

Here are my random thoughts.

Yes, it was a pretty one-sided series.

Kershaw is awesome in the regular season but is is not a money pitcher in the Postseason, a la Barry Bonds during the Pittsburgh portion of his career on the position player side of things.

Dodgers bullpen wilted and seeing how poorly Madson struggled, you wonder if it is the end of the road for his career.

114 World Series have been played and in 59 of them (or 51.7%), the NL has been represented by either the Dodgers (20 times), the Giants (20 times, though most of them in the early years) or the Cardinals (19 times). Cubs are the next closest with 11 WS appearances which is remarkable considering that they went 70 years without one from 1946 to 2015. I guess it goes to show how rare it is to go the WS for most of the NL.

Red Sox certainly win their titles in bunches. They won the first WS played in 1903 and that kicked off a stretch where they won 5 in 16 years through 1918 (and 4 in 7 years from 1912-1918). In the next century that followed, the Red Sox had their much-chronicled 85 year drought and now a stretch where they have won 4 in 15 years.

Dodgers lived--and, ultimately, died--by the long ball (or lack thereof). TTO baseball perhaps not the roadmap to a title?

Seems like everyone was saying the same thing about David Price 3 weeks ago.

[xogfog]

Price and Kimbrel both did remarkable things, Price changed his spot on the pitching rubber in the middle of the playoffs to the far 1B side and suddenly could use his changeup on the outside corner. Kimbrel was struggling in the playoffs and got a phone call from his friend and former closer Eric Gagne who spotted that he was tipping pitches by how he was holding his glove and he fixed it.

[flyers19rw]

It struck me as how far away from the Red Sox the Phillies are. I doubt that any position player on the Phillies could push a Red Sox player out of his job. Nola would break into their starting rotation but none of the other Phillies starters could. No comparison with the bullpen either. Its going to be a long haul for the Phillies to get back into contention. The bad drafting and poor showing in signing top notch LA free agents shows.

[andyb]

Seems like everyone was saying the same thing about David Price 3 weeks ago

Bigger issue seems that the injuries and innings have taken away something from Kershaw's stuff. He is still plenty young to get it back but I would put little stock in that big game nonsense.

[zambonir]

Dodgers fans (at least some of 'em) are ready for Kershaw to opt out, Roberts to go (he's not yet under contract) and of course, want no part of Machado. All of those things would be overreactions. Kershaw has struggled more than most (compared to say, Cliff Lee, who was a pretty good postseason pitcher until he got to the World Series a second time) but it's still basically a small sample. He actually pitched pretty well against the Cubs and Astros last year overall; had the Dodgers got anything from Darvish last World Series that label would be gone from Kershaw regardless of what he did this year.

[schillingfan]

Remember the Phillies split their season series with the Sox, even after coughing up one game. Our pitching was really good then.

[Philsmania]

Seems like everyone was saying the same thing about David Price 3 weeks ago

Bigger issue seems that the injuries and innings have taken away something from Kershaw's stuff. He is still plenty young to get it back but I would put little stock in that big game nonsense.

The numbers speak for themselves. There is a significant drop-off from Kershaw's regular season and postseason performances, especially once you get past the NLDS. Plus, as Fox talked about last night, his record in elimination games is not good. Though, interestingly, his career postseason WHIP is not that big a diversion from his career regular season WHIP. His career ERA climbs with each step--2.39 regular season, 3.72 LDS round, 4.61 LCS round, 5.40 WS round. He has 30 career postseason games with 24 postseason starts and a 4.32 postseason ERA. Not exactly a SSS.

[mdougherty12]

Sure, but David Price still has bad career postseason numbers, too. Now Price hasn't been as good as Kershaw for his career, and Price hasn't thrown quite as many innings as Kershaw, but the narrative changed as soon as Price had a couple good series in a row for a World Series- winning team.

[zambonir]

But it is a small sample size. It's a bigger sample size than a lot of pitchers because he's played on a very successful team but it's still not enough to draw a real conclusion other than bad luck and other variables. You can say he hasn't pitched great in the post-season but you can't say he definitively pitched worse because of a mental deficiency, or even because of stronger competition. As you note, the consistent WHIP is most interesting. Also, his performance suffers because it's being measured against his own greatness.

Some good pros and cons here:

Clayton Kershaw vs. the postseason, explained

Kershaw since 2013 — the start of this six-divisional title run for the Dodgers — has nine different postseason starts of at least six innings and one or zero earned runs allowed. That’s the most in baseball during that span.

Kershaw has also allowed five or more runs eight times in his playoff career, the most ever.

It also talks about his especially bad luck with inherited runners (going back to 2013) and the fact that he's leaned on more - left in longer, pitched on short rest more often - than would be usual for most pitchers.

And yes, he's gone on the DL with back issues each of the last three years, which is the big question going forward (for his opt-out, or for a team to sign him).

Of course if the Phillies can get him who cares if he has trouble in the postseason, at least he'd get them there first. And he's a lefty.