Miller: Making sense of the home run-happy World Series
From Sam Miller at ESPN.com on October 26, 2017:
The dominant story of this World Series — a home run explosion that has acquainted most of America with the, uh, definitely not juiced baseball — has camouflaged another feature of this Series: The pitching has been absolutely incredible.
At least, during the other 138 at-bats that have not resulted in a home run, it has been incredible.
Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers batters, who collectively hit .234/.307/.304 on non-homers during the regular season, have hit just .135/.199/.159 on non-homers in this series. Pitchers’ WHIP in this World Series (including the homers) is 0.97, the same as Chris Sale’s was this season. Both offenses punished the league in the regular season, giving opposing pitchers a 1.43 WHIP and 4.89 ERA. And in this series, the combined ERAs are just 3.92, despite an unprecedented frequency of homers.
Read the full article here: http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/21171697/11-world-series-home-runs-11-bad-pitches-los-angeles-dodgers-vs-houston-astros
Originally published: October 27, 2017. Last Updated: October 27, 2017.