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BOSTON – Boston vs Los Angeles is the ultimate clash of cultures and we are not talking about lobster rolls versus fish tacos. The Red Sox and the Dodgers want to win the World Series in very different ways. The series will be decided according to the offensive that can best impose his will on the opponent.
This is the first world series since the Red Sox beat the Cardinals in 2013 and the championship will be decided between the top teams in each league. The Red Sox form teams with a relentless team of contacts that leaves no marks or strikes. The Dodgers live on alleys and races at home.boom! approach.
The Red Sox want to slow down the series – fouling the field, coming out of the box, chaining the shots. The Dodgers are in a hurry. They want to go on strike quickly.
Last year, the Red Sox were the most patient batting team in baseball – okay, the most passive team. When Alex Cora took up his duties as a manager this year, he used his experience as an Astros coach, telling his Red Sox strikers: "You were so easy to counter your game plan. You have had too many bad shots. "
A bad grip is when a batter passes a breakable ball without swaying. The Boston hitters won 4,767 qualifying strikes last year, the largest number of baseball players. This year, they took 651 less and would be in the middle of the pack, 15th.
"It's all because of him," said head coach Tim Hyers, pointing to Cora. "He was there since the first day of spring training."
But the Red Sox are still able not to expand the area and put the ball in play when they swing. Only Indians and Astros made contact more often than the Red Sox. They form a traditional rally team at the same time in baseball, at the moment when the exchanges are dying. There were 524 strikeouts and 416 playoff hits, which is a deterioration in the regular season ratio.
Here's the difference between the Red Sox and the Dodgers: in the playoffs, the Red Sox win against a .370 unsustainable with riders in the scoring position. The Dodgers hit .190 with the riders in scoring position. But the Dodgers still did the World Series because they played well. The mark position for them is the batter's box.
The Dodgers hit 13 home runs in the playoffs, compared to only four when they were ahead in the count. The Red Sox may be a better strike team with two strikes this post-season than the Dodgers, at least in batting average (.201 to .163), but the Dodgers outnumbered the Red Sox in those accounts (.288 to .254). and far from home (7-1).
If there is one hit that best embodies the Dodgers, it's the fierce ball that Yasiel Puig put on a wrong 1-to-1 articulation curve of Jeremy Jeffress of Milwaukee in the game 7 of NLCS. The pitch was located almost perfectly for a pitcher, out of the box. Yet, Puig has somehow hit a line crier on the center wall.
"There are very few baseball hitters out there who could do it," said Dodgers president Andrew Friedman. "It just shows you the kind of talent he has."
If the Dodgers continue to swing like that, no matter what they hit with the runners in goal position.
Here are the other key elements to decide on this global series.
Chris Sale is not at full power
Sale made 303 throws this year at 97 MPH or more – none since August 12th. This is not the same Sale, who has been fighting for three months against the inflammation of the left shoulder, a condition that only responds well to rest. It's a five or six-inning pitcher that has a handful of balls at 95 or 96, but otherwise rivals with his remarkable change and slider. His gear is still good enough to win, but throwing in the mid-90, he lost a margin of error – and an error or two on the plate is where Dodge's ability to slug comes in.
Mookie Betts will not start at second base
Boston thinks – for the moment, anyway – that it's too big a request to play his right-handed second base in the middle three games in Los Angeles. The Red Sox took part in a full infield training yesterday and Betts was not one of them.
Here's what the Red Sox see. The Dodgers start two left-handed pitchers in Los Angeles: Rich Hill and Clayton Kershaw. Jackie Bradley Jr. beat .077 this year against left handed bullets – four shots all year long. It's better to start these games on the bench, with Betts in the middle of the field and Ian Kinsler on second.
The Dodgers have right-handed Walker Buehler lined up for the third game. Now, do you really want to place Betts in an awkward position for a match, which would actually equate to six or more innings because you do not want to see him come out the last innings of a tight match – and compromise your defense ? It does not mean anything. Bets at second base, however, would be possible in case of emergency in the game.
The Dodgers have the best bullpen
Ryan Madson and Pedro Baez were relegated to Los Angeles. What makes the Dodger pen so unique is that it can appeal to several former starters who have an arsenal of deep ground, and not just the usual two-throw combo teams fleeing brittle fastballs: Julio Urias ( with its climbing speed) Alex Wood and Kenta Maeda.
"They are hard to prepare," said Hyers.
In addition, give the Dodgers (Kenley Jansen) closest to the Red Sox (Craig Kimbrel) a closer look, and consider the Boston market to be running too many hitters and facing the most selective baseball training, and you can see the games decided. late favor of Los Angeles.
Clayton Kershaw rediscovered his curve
As much as people talk about Kershaw's diminished fastball speed, he has added speed at its cursor. His problem is that the fastball and the slider have become too similar. In September, Kershaw launched 82% of its locations between 87 and 92 mph.
But in the playoffs, Kershaw returned to his old friend, the curveball. And he is a much better pitcher when he rocks in his ball that breaks in the mid-70s. Check out the change at Kershaw:
In the fifth game of the NLCS series, Kershaw conceded two hits to his first batter, Lorenzo Cain. He ended up throwing 21 curves in the game, a record for him since May. If Kershaw draws some curves to score goals in the first round of the World Series Game 1, watch out.
The Dodgers must contain Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez
You know these two guys are hard outs. But they have not received enough attention to be a historically exceptional duo. Their low score for both of them (by Martinez) was a batting average of .330 and an idling ball of .629. Only eight tandems have been able to say, only one other (Todd Helton and Larry Walker in 2001) since Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig in 1937.
Martinez owns Kershaw (.455 / .500 / 1.091 in 13 appearances on the plate) and is a scientist who strikes so much that he beats .560 on first steps and changes. (The league average is .219). Good luck maintaining Martinez.
As for Betts, the Dodgers should trust what the Astros did to him: do not feed him quickly. Betts hits 377 against fastballs, second best in the league. In the ALCS, Houston sent him only 43% of the fast balls.
The games will be really long
Electronic surveillance (ie, theft of signs using dedicated high-magnification cameras) has become a huge problem to further slow down the game. Both teams are as bad as any other when it comes to gambling. 'offensive and electronic defense. Even in the absence of anyone on the base, paranoid captors routinely go through multiple signs – this includes (follow me here) by giving signs to change the signs before giving the signs.
Paranoia is real. The LCS teams were warned to keep their base coaches close to the batter's box and away from the foul lines, where they could take a look at the receiver's signals and relay what was happening to their players' position. feet. MLB posted a number of resident security officers around the retransmission screens behind the protection ponds to prevent the panels from being relayed by signals from the broadcast and internal video streams. (The Dodgers, for example, monitor six dedicated internal cameras at home.)
The Brewers used several "dummy" signs of coaching on the bench at the NLCS, just like a college football sideline in the games. They were also convinced that the Dodgers sometimes relayed the signs of the second goal (hand on the back of the helmet: reduced speed, hand on the top: fast ball). The Red Sox were so convinced that the Astros were trying to conceal signs that the third goal coach of the third game of the ALCS, Carlos Febles, gave no sign for the first five innings, just to ruin it.
Reminder: The Dodgers used 43 throwers to cover seven NLCS games. Their matches this post-season averaged three hours, 37 minutes.
The grinders that are the Red Sox are even less in a hurry. Their nine playoff games have an average of 3:47, with nothing faster than 3:28.
Now it's only the World Series that is at stake – a World Series of top league teams. The games should be long. The series should be long. Who wins the match probably comes back to either the Red Sox who beat the Dodgers or the Dodgers who hit the Red Sox.
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