Answers to All Your 2019 World Series Questions in One Easy to Swallow Portion

The expected story-line for the 2019 MLB World Series is short, simple and brutal. The Houston Astros will mercilessly deconstruct the Washington Nationals with quiet efficiency over the next week and then neglect to put them back together.

If a World Series could be won in three games, this is the year it would happen.

I’d say that the Nationals are going to be mincemeat, but I really think they’re going to be whatever the next worst thing is after mincemeat….

And that’s pretty much that. All that’s left to do is to play the actual games and get it the hell over with, because some of us have other things to do.

I’m anxious to pick out my Thanksgiving turkey at Al’s You Pluck-‘em We Stuff-‘em food van down by the river. (And whatever you do, do not try one of Al’s rare cooked giblet pumpkin pies.)

“But couldn’t something off-script happen this week?”, a Washington Nationals fan writes in to The Giants Cove from a non-disclosed Federal witness protection location.

“I mean, do my Nats have any chance to win this thing at all?”, the desperate Nats fan blathers on.

Well it depends on what you mean by “any chance”. For example, I had a chance to pick the winning pick-six lotto ticket last Friday and missed it by five numbers (six if you count the last number).

But to get back to your question: “yes” the Washington National do have a “chance” to “win” the 2019 World Series.

Under one of two conditions: 1) if a recount shows that the Kansas City Royals actually won the American League pennant instead of the Houston Astros; or, 2) if the Astros team decides to use Uber instead of a charter flight to get to the away games in Washington.

The only way Nationals fans can find any hope here is to do what baseball broadcaster John Smoltz incessantly recommends to his audience—forget the numbers and focus on the great chemistry in the clubhouse.

Or you could focus on the utter joy and excitement of Major League Baseball and the riveting spectacle of the 2019 playoffs and forget John Smoltz and his chemicals.

So let’s get all crazy baseball analytical and look at some very basic numbers (and feel free to forget them the next time John Smoltz orders you to do so):

2019 Regular season stat basics (with MLB ranks)
Houston———-Washington
920 RS (3)……… 873 RS (6)
639 XBH (3)……556 XBH (8)
288 HR (3)…….. 231 HR (13)
—————————————————
Houston———–Washington
1.13 WHIP (4)…..1.29 WHIP (9)
3.66 ERA (3)…….4.27 ERA (13)
1,671 SO (1)………1,511 SO (7)

And here’s by far the biggest separator between these two teams:
Bullpen ERA– Houston 3.75 (3) Washington 5.66 (30).

Certainly the real screaming headline here is the WS clash between two historically dominant starting rotations.

That Houston’s Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke are in a stratospheric match-up with the Nats’ Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin is simply baseball historic.

FanGraphs makes an outstanding case that this 2019 Series features two of the greatest World Series rotations of all time.

Game One of the 2019 Series begins tonight. Which means the time has come for yet another tedious Series prediction by someone whose quantifiable baseball knowledge could easily fit inside Billy Beane’s earbud case.

I predict that I want this Series to be as good as it can be. Let’s see epic starting pitching and plays in the field that take your breath away. Let’s see heroic performances and astounding comebacks.

Let’s see us some real great baseball over the next week!