You are going to spend a lot of the next 24 hours reading all kinds of reasons why the Phillies will enter Friday’s World Series opener as a heavy underdog against the Astros. Those reasons are more than valid. But this year’s postseason is a perfect example of how little anyone really knows.
We saw it with the Giants in 2010 and the Cardinals in 2011: a best-of-seven series is a wildly different environment than a 162-game season. A playoff football game is 1/17th of an NFL regular season. A playoff NBA series is 1/12th. A seven-game baseball series is 1/23rd of a baseball regular season. Anybody who says they know what is going to happen in a sample size that small is wrong.
The Phillies have multiple paths to victory. The Astros probably have more of them, given the huge advantage that comes with their level of pitching depth. But it still comes down to top-end talent vs. top-end talent. Ask Robert Suarez how that worked out.
Here are three matchups that the Phillies will probably need to win in order to win this World Series.
1. Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber vs. the Astros’ fleet of righties
Harper is the kind of player who can single-handedly negate the odds of a playoff series. He’s in the midst of one of the all-time great postseasons, having reached base in nearly half of his playoff plate appearances (20 of 46) with 11 extra-base hits, five of them home runs. That amounts to a 1.351 OPS in 11 games.
But Schwarber has the potential to emerge as a series-shifting X factor. We’ve seen what it looks like in those stretches when he simply does not miss. As good as he was against the Padres, with three home runs and six walks in 21 plate appearances, he has the potential to be even better. Get this: In 21 career plate appearances at Minute Maid Park, Schwarber has four home runs and five walks.
The Astros’ pitching staff was phenomenal in their four-game sweep of the Yankees in the ALCS. The bullpen has allowed just three runs in 33 innings this postseason. But Houston has not carried a lefty reliever all postseason, which means lots of late-game situations when Schwarber will have the platoon advantage.
To maximize this matchup, Phillies manager Rob Thomson should flip-flop Harper and J.T. Realmuto in the batting order. All postseason, Thomson has stuck with the same top half of the lineup, with Schwarber followed by Rhys Hoskins, Realmuto, Harper, and Nick Castellanos and Alec Bohm. It made plenty of sense to put a couple of right-handed power bats between the Phillies’ two lefty sluggers. Thanks to baseball’s three-batter rule, any lefty reliever who was brought into a game to face Schwarber would face the prospect of also going up against Hoskins and Realmuto. If he got Schwarber out to end an inning, he’d have to pay a price to remain in the game to face Harper.
No longer is that a concern. The Astros will start a lefty in Game 2. In Game 1, though, a Schwarber-Hoskins-Harper-Realmuto top of the order would have two benefits: maximizing the number of at-bats for Harper, and putting someone besides Castellanos behind him. While Realmuto might not be a huge deterrent to pitching around Harper, he at least gives the Phillies more of a chance at making an opponent pay than Castellanos, who is hitting .220 with a .565 OPS this postseason.
2. Aaron Nola vs. Justin Verlander
Here’s a stat that might make you feel a little better about Game 1 starter Nola: In the regular season, he allowed five-plus runs in six starts. His next time on the mound after those starts, he combined to allow a total of four runs in 45 innings. In three of those starts, he pitched eight-plus scoreless innings.
The last time we saw Nola, he was allowing four runs in a stunning fifth-inning meltdown in Game 2 of the NLCS against the Padres. After starting the postseason with a couple of starts in which he allowed a single unearned run in 12⅔ innings, Nola was charged with six earned runs in 4⅔ innings of that loss in San Diego.
On paper, this might be the first time Nola or Zack Wheeler is on the wrong side of a pitching matchup. For a long time, the name Justin Verlander was synonymous with postseason dominance. Hearing it still conjures up images of the guy we saw on the mound from 2012-18. During that stretch, Verlander posted a 2.07 ERA with 115 strikeouts and 24 walks in 104⅓ postseason innings with his teams winning 11 of his 15 appearances.
There’s a chance the Phillies see some version of that pitcher in Game 1 of the World Series. But that’s less of a given now than it was four or five years ago. In his last nine postseason starts, the Astros are just 4-5, with Verlander having allowed four-plus runs five times. This year’s playoffs are a good example of the 39-year-old right-hander’s variability. In Game 1 of the ALDS against the Mariners, he allowed six runs, four extra-base hits, and struck just three of the 21 batters he faced. Then, in the ALCS opener against the Yankees, he allowed just five baserunners in six innings while striking out 11 of 24 batters.
3. Ranger Suárez and Connor Brogdon vs. the world
The biggest reason to doubt the Phillies is their bullpen, plain and simple. It’s not a given that they would have made it through another two games of the NLDS. Now, they have to make it through another best-of-seven series. Someone needs to step up besides José Alvarado and Seranthony Domínguez. Brad Hand looks like a lost cause at this point. David Robertson followed up his three-strikeout performance in Game 4 by allowing two of his three batters to reach base in Game 5. Maybe it’s Brogdon, who has followed up a stinker of a postseason debut in Game 1 of the NLDS by retiring 13 of the last 14 batters he has faced, six via strikeout.
Suárez has the potential to emerge as a huge X factor after looking extremely sharp in the NLCS, pitching 5⅔ innings and allowing three baserunners.
