Kallman: The Astros didn’t blow it; the Nats won it
From SABR member Jeff Kallman at The Hardball Times on November 5, 2019:
It’s not going to make the pill any easier to swallow, but it wasn’t A.J. Hinch’s fault. He’s not the reason the Astros lost a World Series they seemed destined to win both going in and while they were just eight outs from the Promised Land.
I know Hinch didn’t even think about bringing Gerrit Cole in if he’d decided Zack Greinke had had enough. I questioned the decision myself when first writing about Game Seven elsewhere. And I was really wrong. Just as you are, Astroworld, to lay the loss on Hinch’s head. The Nats beat the Astros, plain and simple. Through no fault of Hinch’s.
He wasn’t even close to having lost his marble. Singular. He actually managed just right in that moment. It’s no more his fault that Howie Kendrick made him look like a fool right after he made his move than it was his fault the Astros couldn’t bury a Max Scherzer who had nothing but meatballs, snowballs, grapefruits, and cantaloupes to throw, two days after Scherzer’s neck locked up so tight it knocked him out of Game Five before the game even began.
Read the full article here: https://tht.fangraphs.com/hinch-didnt-blow-it-the-nats-won-it/
Originally published: November 6, 2019. Last Updated: November 6, 2019.