We’re in the Top 150 now, so these are Moments you should
be paying extra careful attention to. There will be a quiz later.
Moment #:
150
Date: October 30, 2015
Game: 2015 World Series Game 3, @ New York
Mets
Score: Kansas City 0, New York 0, Top of the
1st
Situation: No outs, bases empty
Count: 0-0
Matchup: Alcides Escobar vs. Noah Syndergaard
Result: Ball one
WPA: N/A
Summary: Noah Syndergaard
tries to send a message to the Royals by throwing the first pitch of Game 3 way
up and in.
I can't believe Escobar didn't swing at that.— Rany Jazayerli (@jazayerli) October 31, 2015
By Game 3 of the World Series, pretty much the whole world
knew that 1) Alcides Escobar was almost certainly going to swing at the first
pitch of the game and 2) he and the Royals were having an inordinate amount of
success doing so. Escobar had been named the ALCS MVP after going 11-for-23
against the Blue Jays with three extra-base hits, 5 RBIs, and 6 runs scored in
six games. He had swung at the first pitch of the game in all six ALCS games,
putting three of those pitches into play, two for hits. (He went 4-for-6 in his
first plate appearance of each game, the four hits coming in the first four
games.) In Game 1 of the World Series he had famously swung at the first pitch
and been gifted an inside-the-park home run by Yoenis Cespedes; on the first
pitch of Game 2, he had flied out to right field.
Along with all his personal success, the Royals had a
baffling tendency to, you know, win games. Escobar had swung at the first pitch
in nine straight games, going back to Game 5 of the ALDS, and the Royals were
7-2 in those games. (He didn’t swing at the first pitch in Games 1 and 4 of the
ALDS; he hit an infield single on the first pitch in Game 3, and fouled off the
first pitch in Game 2.) As Sam Miller detailed
back when this phenomenon was first getting a lot of attention, the Royals had
a better record during the regular season when Escobar swung at the first pitch
than when he didn’t.
Syndergaard decided to try to derail that correlation by
making it essentially impossible for Escobar to swing at the first pitch, which
in and of itself was not objectionable. The manner in which he did so – buzzing
Escobar’s noggin with a high pitch – was questionable, although I take it on
faith that given the control wielded by an elite major league pitcher, that
Syndergaard was not trying to hit Escobar and in fact placed the pitch exactly
where he wanted it to go. His comments after the game, saying of the Royals, “If they have a problem with me throwing
inside, then they can meet me 60 feet, 6 inches away,” well, those are fighting
words, quite literally. But they also insure that this pitch, which had no
outcome on the game or the Series, will nonetheless be remembered for a long,
long time.
