MLB – Ranking of the 50 players of the world series

You just want to know who will win the World Series and who will be the hero, but we can not tell you more. What we can tell you is who will be in a position to be the hero, and why.

In exactly two sentences, here's your guide for the 50 players of the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers in this World Series. They are organized according to the place that each player should occupy in the hopes and projects of his team.

(Note that the final World Series lists have not been announced.)

1. Mookie Betts, RF / superstar, Red Sox. At this point, it is impossible to say anything negative about Betts except when you have to temper the most outrageous hyperbole of someone else – for example, "I'm afraid I have to correct you when you say that Mookie Betts was the best player in baseball this year and was worth 74.8 WAR, when he was the best baseball player and produced 10 , 9 WAR. "He's good at everything literally, literally each So we will just tell you that he plays the shallow ground to the right of baseball.

• 

  We examine what is at stake for Boston and L.A., to know if Clayton Kershaw can get a title and what matches could make a difference.

• 

  The Dodgers are full of talent and eager to avenge their defeat in the 2017 World Series. But this Red Sox team? Well, it's really something special.

• 

  From the Wild Cards round to the World Series, we'll be covering the 2018 playoffs.

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2 Justin Turner, 3B / Enchantment, Dodgers. Turner (wrist fracture) only made his debut on May 15 and eventually led the team with a payroll of $ 180 million in WAR. At a time when batting attacks are steadily increasing and where it is generally accepted that batting outs are not an obstacle to becoming a big hitter, it's interesting to see Turner and a handful of other offensive superstars ( Lorenzo Cain, Alex Bregman, Anthonies Rendon and Rizzo) significantly reducing their exclusion rates.

3 Chris Sale, SP / As, Red Sox. If the Red Sox were not on the road to 108 wins this summer, with a fairly comfortable lead in the AHL, Sale would probably have started a few more games and easily crossed the 162-run mark. a whole season "qualified." In this case, we would talk about the pitcher who just set the record for the nine-inning shootouts, and probably also from the AL Cy Young – although even with only 158 innings, we can Affirm that Sale could have the best main field, the best secondary field and the best third baseball field.

4 Clayton Kershaw, SP / Legend, Dodgers. As Kershaw enters his old age and his fastball goes to 90 mph, you'll hear a lot about the need to go out differently, which means fewer fastballs, more sliders, more shots on the ball. outer part of the plate rather than on the inner part and more low heights in the area than high. His last start in the National League championship series was the only one of this season's playoffs. But if I'm honest with myself, I live especially those days when Kershaw and Sale become urgent. , games in relief of end of series.

5. J. D. Martinez, DH / Carrier, Red Sox. A good deal of leader in the LIRs inherits many of the front-runners, but the RBI leader, Martinez, was truly an excellent series producer, driving in a higher percentage of his runners – about 20% – than any other regular player of the league this season. Fastballs thrown at 95 mph or more are about twice as frequent in the playoffs as in the regular season (best pitchers, shorter outings, maybe more adrenaline and higher stakes, etc.), so it's worth noting that Martinez hit .364 / .462 / .568 against shots of 95 mph or more this season, making it the sixth best WOBA against high-speed baseball.

6 Manny Machado, SS / Location, Dodgers. According to the DRS Advanced Defensive Metering System (used in the Baseball-Reference.com WAR model), Machado was the baseball baseball's best baseball stint while being an Oriole this year, and very good for the Dodgers – a gap such as over a full season. Baltimore Manny would allow 40 points more than Los Angeles Manny. I do not know, man, I just know that he's throwing dingers.

7. Andrew Benintendi, LF / No. 2 hitters, Red Sox. Without testing the specifics of this description as well Benintendi is basically a major player in the 60th percentile for each skill, from speed to plate discipline to speed. This lack of exploitable weaknesses has the cumulative effect of making him a regular player in the Major League 75th percentile. Maybe no one had more reason to cheer on the Brewers in the NLCS than Benintendi, a .234 / .310 / .331 career hitter against left-handers who will now have to deal with a Dodgers rotation at 75% of the sudpaws and a counterfeiter of the Dodgers to three more of them.

8. Walker Buehler, SP / Future As, Dodgers. Buehler has launched five rounds in 2016 (his professional debut), 98 in 2017 and has already launched 170 this year, but he has so far neutralized any fears that the league will catch up with him or that he will use it physically. October was his fastest month of the season, and he might have benefited from a fit that he did mid-summer to better differentiate its secondary lands.

9 Craig Kimbrel, PR / Closest, Red Sox. In 28 innings since the all-star break, including in the playoffs, Kimbrel has had 21 batterers, averaging points (5.14) and a strike rate of 59%, which is disturbing compared to his career of 65%. But he also has the lowest career in his history in post-dead ball history (by far, in fact), so at this point, the Red Sox could be an asset to the Mariano Level World Series, and it could be a huge liability before the end of each game, and there is absolutely no way of knowing which one until it is done.

ten. Cody Bellinger, 1B / CF, Dodgers. Bellinger must be the first player in history to play 162 games, while part of a section, which reflects both its versatility (who has never heard of a 1B / CF? And manager Dave Roberts' commitment to using every inch of his bench deepen from other teams. The size of the sample makes this next part almost certainly meaningless, but here is: the pinch is a technique that not all batters develop in the same way, and Bellinger has a score of 0 to 14 that year.

11 Xander Bogaerts, SS hitter / cleaner, Red Sox. Running a lot on 100 runs inherits many baserunners, but Bogaerts was really an excellent racing producer, driving in a higher percentage of his baserunners – close to 20% – than all major league regulars of the season. He has become a much stronger and more dangerous hitter, moving from 155th place in the 2017 exit speed rankings to the 49th in 2018.

12 Kenley Jansen, PR / Closest, Dodgers. Jansen was not up to the indestructible strength of this year since his debut in the Dodgers, losing nearly a third of his catches in attack while he doubled his career record in number of shots allowed. When he's right – as he has done in 6⅔ rounds of the playoffs – he will throw his scorer for more strikes than any other pitcher in the game and will cause some of the lowest exit speeds of the league, often without having to turn to a second throw.

13. Rick Porcello, SP / Workhorse, Red Sox. Porcello is still a bit misunderstood as a baseball player (he now throws more than four seams and sliders), as a guy who works low in the zone (he regularly shares up and down), as the winner of Cy Young (who he does, but he has been an average League Eater in every season of his career, including the last two). In the modern game, this means that he will have a short leash in the post-season games that he starts but that, if the series becomes urgent, becomes a potential weapon out of the market, where his fastball wins tic.

14. Max Muncy, best batter 1B / no doubt, Dodgers. It's also probably pointless to mention, for reasons of sample size, but Muncy – who, let's note, was the fifth best baseball hitter this year – was also talented in pinch strikes that Bellinger was bad at. /.441/615 in 34 trips. The Dodgers had by far the best collection of baseball batters this year, and next to Muncy, these "peloton" guys were coming off the bench regularly: Chris Taylor had beaten 0.313 / 0.335 / 0.625 during the season; Enrique Hernandez hit 0.261 / 0.370 / 0.565; Matt Kemp .346 / .370 / .538; Joc Pederson .269 / .394 / .500; and Yasiel Puig .294 / .294 / .529.

15. Jackie Bradley Jr., CF member / defensive star, Red Sox. Bradley is not really this Fast, and he plays a position that usually gives great importance to the speed of the rabbit, but he is so good at position – getting jumps, borrow clean routes, collect everything he can reach, play at baseball and deliver powerful and accurate throws – – that he was one of the elite defenders at the position. If I can quote another writer (Alex Speier of the Boston Globe) on the subject: "If Emmanuel Kant's Teutonic ruminations had transpired about 250 years later than his first age in the middle of the eighteenth century, he might have used the defense of Jackie Bradley Jr. to illustrate the distinction between, and perhaps even reconcile, the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime, effectively erasing a whole philosophical discipline. "

16. Chris Taylor, CF / INF, Dodgers. There are a lot of sports players in this series, a lot of strong players that move as well, but there's not really a real blazer, which makes Taylor – who's ranked just 82nd out of Statcast Sprint Speed ​​Ranking – the fastest runner on any one or the other list. He may not be fast like Billy Hamilton or Trea Turner, but he's an exceptionally alert and aggressive baserunner, and his 30 "basics" taken – these additional bases taken during ballooning, past balls and wild lands – were the second most important in the majors this year, according to Baseball-Reference.

17. Ryan Brasier, installation agent and preparer, Red Sox. Eight years ago, Brasier launched a draw for Double-A Arkansas. Since he was not a potential candidate at the time, I wrote: "Even though it's the highlight of his career, he's pretty far ahead of any of us." This summer, he celebrated his 30th birthday last summer, having left the professional Nippon baseball, landed at Triple A, resurfaced in Boston with a top speed of 98 mph and has led a surprisingly low BABIP to the sixth lowest ERA in the league and a job comparable to that of Boston. primary installation man.

18 Hyun-Jin Ryu, Head of SP / ERA, Dodgers. Ryu's fastball is not remarkable – it's not so fast, it does not have a lot of effects / movements – but its ability to control it in 2018 has done all the difference. Batters had beaten 0.696 against her in 2017, but 0.333 in 2018; Ryu launched it in the area only 47% of the time in '17, but 57% in '18; and with that pitch under his orders, the rest of his excellent four-pitch mix worked.

19 David Price, SP / Richest Person, Red Sox. Most of Price's playoff series – 8.5K / 9, 2.3BB / 9, .286 BABIP – actually correspond to his career statistics (8.7, 2.5, .289) and much better drummers. The only exception is that he has twice abandoned his home circuits, and we are not all qualified to say he really has made having a playoff block focused on about seven shots spread across 362 hitters – and if he did, whether it's still there or after, after his breakthrough, that showpiece gem last week.

20. Kenta Maeda, Head of Installation and Installation, Dodgers. Rescuers do not really need four courses. Thus, when Maeda went into the paddock, he was able to throw his curved ball and throw a lot more sliders – a field that, for Maeda, receives a lot more strikes, chases and puffs than his overflowing colleague. The difference is not obvious in his ERA, but the Dodgers trust Maeda for the moments of development with the strongest leverage: he has practically stopped beating the drummers, and his overall rate has risen by about 30%.

21 Mitch Moreland, All-Star 1B / Surprise, Red Sox. If the Red Sox are not good, Moreland – a slow and slow first baseman, with a low batting average and moderate power, which costs enough money to count and offers little advantage than what is there – could well be cited as a shortcut for their bad construction of the list. Since they're really, really Well, it is on the contrary an excellent example of the distance that a team can go if it simply fills each spot of alignment with someone who can continue the exchanges and catch the ball without putting anybody in it. Angry at the club or costing $ 30 million.

22. Yasiel Puig, RF / Energy, Dodgers. It's probably Puig, not Bellinger, who won the NLCS Most Valuable Player title, as he did not just hit .333 / .064 / .619 in the series, but he was also, by Championship Win Probability Added, the biggest hit so far in this series. post-season year. It will do at least four things this World Series that will be saturated-GIF in your social media feeds, and I will go ahead and predict them: it will celebrate a double shuffle by eating an insect; he'll crash into the bleachers, land on the knees of a fan, and then spend a long awkward moment stroking his hair; he will invent a new word for "strain at the groin"; and he will throw someone out of the warning lane.

23. Nathan Eovaldi, SP / acquisition on time, Red Sox. Here is how often the 20 throwers with the fastest fastballs in the game throw the pitch: 50%, 54, 39, 56, 56, 60, 52, 58, 52, 61, 57, 59, 58, 61, 64 , 59, 57, 55, 61, 59. Eovaldi, who was throwing away his heater 70 Percent of the time, 39 is aberrant, and his fastball works much better now than it is complementary to a slower but more severe cutter.

24. David Freese, 1B / left-masher, Dodgers. By championship Added probability of victory, Freese is – you see – the most important hitter of the 21st century in the playoffs. Given the way the Dodgers use their roster, and especially Freese, it is quite possible that he gets 10 shots on goal in the series and that seven of them will run against Sale, the best pitcher of the season. world.

25. Rafael Devers, 3B / Wunderkind, Red Sox. Devers is a 21-year-old with real flaws – clumsy at third base, undisciplined in play, bad contact in the zone, good for contact out of the box – but he will almost certainly be a star capable of wearing the Red Sox at a world series. The irony is that even with these flaws, he is doing it pretty quickly, beating 0.35 / 417 / 0.615 in 36 appearances on the playoff plate.

26. Rich Hill, SP / Spinner, Dodgers. Hill has one of the best curves in the game – it's not only efficient and pretty, but it can be launched again and again, over and over, and so on. – which allows him to get out of trouble with the fastball of the 80s that he works in the area. He has had a 3.04 MPMD since mid-June after a series of small injuries at the start of the season.

27. Matt Barnes, RP guy / seventh inning, Red Sox. In many ways, he represents 90% of Kimbrel on 110% of the body: he launches a ton of difficult curved bullets, gets a tonne withdraws on tarpaulins, walks a ton of hitters, and has been particularly wild this season, and especially this post-season. He was 265th of the major tournaments in this year's rounds and 35th of the wild courses.

28 Joc Pederson, FC / PH, Dodgers. We really can not emphasize enough the incredible Dodger platoon system this year – with two types of players at almost every position that would be part of the vast majority of teams – but here it is again: Pederson is a very good defensive center. The field player who sits between Giancarlo Stanton and Joey Votto in the OPS + 2018 standings, and he will start playing less than half of the series games of the Dodgers in playoffs. Anecdote: when writing the list of 50 players in this world series, it was the last name I remembered after Dylan Floro and Blake Swihart, because you can really forget that Joc Pederson, close star, is even a part of this team. .

29. Brock Holt, Field / Super-Utility Player, Red Sox. On 9 August, Holt became a completely different batter, firing more bullets, lifting more flies and hitting everything faster. Jen McCaffrey of The Athletic has identified the most entertaining explanation possible: he started using the Betts bat that day, and since the post-season has reached .333 / .422 / .595 since.

30 Enrique Hernandez, Field / PH player, Dodgers. After a NLCS of 1 in 14, Hernandez has the lowest APA of all the batters of this post-season, which is a remarkable achievement for anyone out of two. winner teams. Overall, he is a patient striker who has solved his squad problems this year, plays all positions except catcher and has added enough power to his game so that the three-circuit match of last year no longer looks like to that of the final of last year. time.

31. Eduardo Rodriguez, pitcher / left-handed, Red Sox. Rodriguez – a four-handed left-handed starter who was ousted from Boston's playoff rotation – seemed to play a decisive role in the post-season. It did not really happen, perhaps because the Red Sox had to deal with the heavy and righteous queues – but it could find a bigger role against Bellinger, Muncy and Pederson.

32 Alex Wood, pitcher, Dodgers. Like last year 's Astros World Champion, the Dodgers did not have a single qualified pitcher for the title of ERA and, like Astros of the year last, the leader of the Dodgers in the games started did not make the rotation in the playoffs. Wood may well become a real weapon in the arena – in his career he earned an ERA of € 2.70 – but he has been used to relatively low-debt positions up to now in the playoffs.

33 Ian Kinsler, 2B / veteran, Red Sox. That could be overly optimistic, given that the man has just had his worst offensive season and extremely humiliating beats against Gerrit Cole in the AHL championship. But Kinsler's defense is always fantastic, he always puts the ball in play, he is very conscious and I have a weird intuition that he deserves to watch in this series.

34 Matt Kemp, field player, Dodgers. The divisions are getting worse and worse as you reduce them for Kemp: since the All-Star break (when he was All-Star!), He has reached .251 / .310 / .397, and since the All Star break against left-handers (against whom he is most often booked), he only hit 0.22 / .247 / .389, and against the left-handers in the playoffs, he is only 1 against 7 with dynamic strikes on 30% of the shots he saw. It is telling that when Brewers manager Craig Counsell started Wade Miley with a single batter to force the Dodgers into a right-handed training, Kemp was not starting anyway.

35 Steve Pearce, PH / Lefty, Red Sox. Since it's debut in 2007, Pearce has reached 0.235 / 0.308 / 0.402 (essentially Brandon Inge) in odd years and 0.27 / 0.31 / 0.90 (that's Carlos Beltran) even years. If Moreland is healthy enough to run, Pearce will be a straight weapon on the bench, which will put him in the line to beat Kershaw in the ninth inning of the seventh game.

36 Julio Urias, pitcher, Dodgers. Honestly, I'm surprised that the Urias playoff presence is not a bigger show: it's a recent phenomenon, it's only 22 years old, it just to return from an operation at the shoulder that prevented him from entering more than a year and he came out of nowhere. to give the Dodgers bubble an 11th hour buzz. He's also been very good at hitting 10 batters and not making a goal in 7⅓ innings since returning to the majors, but I guess there's plenty to be excited about this post-season.

37 Joe Kelly, RP / good thing, Red Sox. Kelly is at the top of the relief group "Alex Cora does not really trust" – not the guy who is part of the plan, but the guy who is warming up when the plan seems to break down. It lost its role of big lever after a bad exit on July 24 and was (much or perhaps not by coincidence) much better since: 63% of strikes (out of 60), 13% of strikes (against 10), a 3.34 AMM (4.79) and one authorized home run.

38 Yasmani Grandal, C / Hitter, Dodgers. For the fourth year in a row, Grandal has finished among the top five catchers for framed sleeves, leading the league for the second time, and watching his glove closely, is seeing a brilliant and nuanced athletic form. . But for the second consecutive year, he lost his starting position late, this time because of an epidemic of past bullets that looked a lot like a catcher. It's not entirely clear at the moment, Grandal can, you know, capture.

39 Sandy Leon, C / out, Red Sox. Leon is one of the best, and most complete, defensive sensors in the game: an excellent frame, an above-average pitcher, an above-average blocker. Nine starting pitchers (not counting Shohei Ohtani) had a better performance this year.

40. Austin Barnes, Field Player C, Dodgers. Barnes, like Leon, is a fantastic defensive receiver and passionate gambler. Like Leon, he had a fantastic offensive season on which we could perhaps look back and look strangely out of his character. Barnes hit .205 and .290 this year, but he has offensive skills that few people can match: he draws lanes, many, even when the throwers have no reason to fear throwing him, which is described right now.

41 Eduardo Nunez, Field / Squad Player, Red Sox. Nunez probably had the worst season of all players, and according to Statcast's sprint speed, he lost nearly half a foot per second (much more than the typical aging curve) from 2017 to 2018. An ankle injury limited him at the end of the day. the ALCS, allowing Devers to hit one of the biggest circuit of the playoff season.

42 Pedro Baez, pitcher, Dodgers. Baez has allowed a race in the last two and a half months. In October, he exactly same statistics as Jansen: 6⅔ innings, two hits, no points, two goals, 10 Ks. When he throws, prepare snacks.

43 Christian Vazquez, C / out, Red Sox. Like Leon, he is an excellent frame, an above-average pitcher, an above-average blocker and does not hit. Leon was the second worst baseball hitter this year, by OPS +; Vazquez was seventh, although Vazquez made a little more contact and could run a bit (for a catcher).

44 Ryan Madson, RP, Dodgers. One of the most experienced lifters of the season and owner of two World Series rings, Madson made a surprising entry into the playoffs, beating Josh Fields and Ross Stripling even though he was a victim intimidation during his very brief stint with the Dodgers. But after a rather bad season, he is again really good, that is to say that he is a reliever.

45 Brandon Workman, PR / working man, Red Sox. Workman is the kind of 90s generic right-hander the teams rely on for the long seasons, but he's already faced 13 playoff hitter and 10 of them have reached the base – and five of them have scored. If this happens to a replacement on his first two outings in April, it could take six weeks to get a decent ERA, and October does not last six weeks.

46 Dylan Floro, pitcher, Dodgers. Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi said Floro was "the one who escaped" after the reliever left as a free agent for the minor leagues after 11 innings in the Dodgers' system last summer. . Its speed on the ground has gone from 92 to 100 km / h with the Reds, and the Dodgers have a new chance against the right-hander, who has a 1.39 ERA (including six appearances in the playoffs) since an exchange in July .

47 Heath Hembree, RP / erratic coach, Red Sox. Hembree was a late addition to the playoff formation, replacing injury-stricken Steven Wright midway through the AL Division series. He has launched three and a half innings without a shot or a goal since, but it's hard to trust a guy with reverse divisions like Hembree: The left-handers hit .186 / .295 / .256 this year. 323 / .525.

48. Caleb Ferguson, pitcher, Dodgers. Despite Ferguson's reverse split at the majors this year, the Dodgers – no doubt noticing his more conventional minor splits and thinking that "horses" were more than "zebras" – had used him as a left-handed specialist in both. first rounds of the competition. playoffs, and he removed nine of the ten batters he faced. The Red Sox have neither Freddie Freeman nor Christian Yelich, so Ferguson will be accused of making Moreland, Devers and Bradley miserable.

49 Blake Swihart, third receiver / super-utility guy, Red Sox. Swihart appeared at six posts this year, including his main role – Rescue Rescue Catcher – but he did not appear in either ALDS or ALCS, although he was on both lists. If it appears in the World Series, it probably means that a match has really, really, really, very late, and everything will be played out in Swihart, as it should be.

50 Brian Dozier, 2B, Dodgers. "Dozier is a stalled attacker," wrote the Los Angeles Times when it was acquired by the Dodgers in July, which was an optimistic note for a player who had been hot before the trade deadline. Now, it looks bleak, as Dozier had the worst month of his career in September (he averaged .087 / .189 / .229) and was downgraded on the bench for all playoff games up to # 39, now.