The Grandest Stage by Tyler Kepner

Author:Tyler Kepner [Kepner, Tyler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2022-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

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In 2019, McKeon won another championship ring as a senior advisor for the Washington Nationals. That World Series, Nats vs. Astros, was billed as a throwback to the heyday of starting pitchers. Six veterans—Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin for Washington; Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, and Zack Greinke for Houston—boasted multiple 200-inning seasons and All-Star selections. And while some of those pitchers were dazzling, especially Strasburg, the ending highlighted the biggest quandary facing World Series managers today.

In an age awash with data, which do you trust—your game plan or your eyes—to answer that timeless question: Take him out or leave him in? If a starter is rolling, should you let him go until he stumbles or yank him before he does?

For most of Game 7, Greinke was the story. He threw 67 pitches in six innings, allowing a single and a walk and making several stylish plays on the mound. Whether he liked it or not, the quirky, cerebral Greinke—a guy so indifferent to history that he once said he’d rather not throw a no-hitter than deal with the “bunch of nonsense” that comes with it—was etching his name in World Series lore.

And then—after a ground out, a homer, and a walk—he was gone. The Astros still led, 2–1, with Howie Kendrick due up. The easy move, the move nearly every manager would have made for the first 110 or so World Series, was no move at all: when a likely Hall of Famer is going strong in Game 7, you let him keep going. But A. J. Hinch, the Astros’ manager, considered many more factors, and pulled Greinke for Will Harris.[*9]

Asdrubal Cabrera was up after Kendrick, and Hinch had made up his mind that Greinke would not face him a third time; Cabrera was 2-for-4 off Greinke in the World Series and 18-for-41 (.439) lifetime. The question then became who should face Kendrick. Harris had struck him out in a tight spot in Game 4, and while Greinke is famously unpredictable, the savvy Kendrick—whose career embodied the phrase “professional hitter”—had faced him off and on for a decade. He’d never faced Harris until the World Series.

In theory, Hinch could have turned to Gerrit Cole, who was also getting loose in the bullpen. Cole had beaten the Nats in Game 5 and had two days’ rest. Ideally, Hinch hoped to give Cole plenty of time to warm up, and then unleash him to start the ninth inning, as Boston’s Alex Cora had done with Chris Sale to close out the 2018 World Series in Los Angeles.

But Hinch was also leery of asking Cole to do something new; Dallas Keuchel and Justin Verlander had struggled for Hinch in past October relief outings, and he wasn’t sure what he would get. Harris offered predictability; he’d given up a homer the night before but had otherwise been nearly flawless in October.

Harris got Kendrick to swing and miss at a first-pitch curveball. Then he used his best pitch, the cutter,

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