OUSTON — The players who populate the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers postseason rosters don’t have the luxury of sitting back, taking a deep breath and enjoying their involvement in what could turn out to be a classic World Series. They’re too immersed in individual confrontations, the inning-by-inning strategy and all the other minutia that makes October baseball such a challenge and a joy to relive and dissect.
But the view from 30,000 feet says this series is starting to develop that special feel of one that people might be talking about for a while.
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After four games and multiple plot twists, we’ve arrived at a potential crossroads and a new nightly theme for Game 5: really good left-handed pitchers with Cy Young Awards and beards, ready to hook up in what should be a doozy.
The Dodgers will send out Clayton Kershaw on Sunday night, while the Astros counter with Dallas Keuchel in a rematch from Game 1 in Los Angeles. Short of a Kershaw-Justin Verlander confrontation — which might make Minute Maid Park spontaneously combust — this is about as compelling as October baseball can get.
“It’s fast. It moves. The NLDS seems like it was forever ago,” Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager said. “It’s the same thing every night. You sit in bed waiting for the next day. You can’t stop thinking. You can’t stop game-planning. You can’t stop trying to get ready.
“We’ve been talking about it all year, winning [this] series. We had to win the best of seven. Then it turned into a best of five, and now it’s the best of three.”
When the Dodgers beat the Astros 6-2 on Saturday night, it marked the 45th time in history that a World Series was tied at two wins each. Of the previous 44 occasions, the victorious team in Game 5 has gone on to take the series 29 times (or 65.9 percent of the time). It might be of some comfort to the Astros to know that of those 44 times, the home team has been victorious 26 times (or 59.1 percent of the time).
But each series takes on a mind of its own, and this Houston-Los Angeles matchup has featured enough plots twists and momentum shifts to give everyone a case of emotional whiplash. The teams went from scorching, 100-degree heat in California to a climate-controlled bubble in Texas, and from Kershaw’s brilliance in Game 1 to the Astros’ stunning, late-inning and home-run fueled resilience to win 7-6 in an 11-inning Game 2.
After Houston’s 5-3 victory in Game 3, there was reason to wonder if the Astros would lose another game at home. Until they did. And now the Houston bullpen, which looked so nifty when Brad Peacock was twirling 3 ⅔ hitless innings Friday, looks suspect again after yet another meltdown by Astros closer Ken Giles.
The Dodgers’ victory Saturday ensures that the Astros will not be able to wrap things up at home as a gift to their devoted fan base. They will not become the first team to log an 8-0 record at home in a single postseason. And if they want to avoid returning to Dodger Stadium in a position of extreme duress for Game 6, they’ll have to beat Kershaw, who is generally regarded as the best pitcher on the planet.