BOSTON -- You think the pitchers' duel is dead? Maybe. But if it can be resuscitated, Game 1 of the World Series is when that could happen. When the Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw squares off against the Red Sox's Chris Sale, it will be one of the greatest opening matchups in the history of the Fall Classic. It might be the best.
That it comes here, in 2018, is more than a little ironic. After all, this was the season in which the starting pitcher slipped into obsolescence. Enterprising teams such as the Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland Athletics both navigated their way to winning records without the aid of a traditional rotation. Over the past few weeks, we watched the Milwaukee Brewers come within one game of the World Series, despite eschewing the pitching staff structures we've known for decades.
Yet here we are in the World Series, and we have two teams that lean heavily on the good, old-fashioned starting pitcher. That's especially true of the Red Sox staff this October, as manager Alex Cora has deployed starters as relievers as if this were the 1930s. Well, kind of. In Kershaw and Sale, we have two aces straight out of the old-school mode. No, neither is going to be asked to throw a 14-inning complete game, as Babe Ruth did the last time these franchises met in the World Series. But at the very least, they will be allowed to take a third trip through the opposing batting order if they are throwing well.
Let's get back to the claim made in the first paragraph -- that this is one of the greatest Game 1 matchups in Series history, if not the greatest. That's an objective observation, and we'll get to that in a moment. But we should remember that a great matchup isn't necessarily a great duel -- both pitchers have had their October struggles. Kershaw has been up and down this season, and Sale is still trying to recover his first-half level after having shoulder problems late in the campaign.
What makes this matchup so special is the complete body of work put up over the past few years by the two ace lefties and the fact that with Kershaw, 30, and Sale, 29, both in productive phases of their careers, it's not like we're getting the over-the-hill version of either pitcher.
In terms of the Fangraphs version of WAR (fWAR), both pitchers are among the top 40 or so lefties of all time, with plenty of years ahead of them to move up the ladder. Kershaw, who ranks 42nd among all pitchers, is already 13th among southpaws, right between Jerry Koosman and Hal Newhouser. Among active lefties, Kershaw trails only CC Sabathia, while Sale ranks fifth, behind Kershaw, Sabathia, Cole Hamels and Jon Lester.
To rank World Series pitching matchups, for every starting pitcher in every Fall Classic game, we calculated his career fWAR at the time the game took place. Adding those totals would be one way to rate the matchup, but the list becomes polluted by instances of one Hall of Famer inflating the total by himself, regardless of who is on the other side. To capture what we're getting at here, we used the harmonic mean between the career fWAR totals. By this method, to rank high, both pitchers have to be great -- or at least very good.
According to that method, here are the top 10 starting pitcher matchups in World Series history:
To get a Kershaw-Sale-like matchup these days is, to a certain degree, a matter of luck. To get them lined up against each other requires things to fall a certain way in the preceding rounds. For example, Kershaw and Houston's Justin Verlander didn't meet head-to-head in last year's World Series. If they had, the harmonic mean between their career fWARs would have been 57.3 -- the fifth-best matchup ever.
Also, in most of these instances, we're talking about pitchers with accumulated WAR totals built up over long careers in the majors. Consider the ages of the pitchers at the times in question:
1. Martinez, 37; Pettitte, 37 (Combined age: 74)
2. Clemens, 36; Smoltz, 32 (68)
3. Clemens, 38; Schilling, 34 (72)
4. Mathewson, 32; Plank, 37 (69)
5. Blyleven, 28; Palmer, 33 (61)
6. Alexander, 39; Shocker, 33 (72)
7. Mussina, 32; Schilling, 34 (66)
8. Johnson, 37; Meadows, 30 (67)
9. Kershaw, 30; Sale, 29 (59)
10. Alexander, 39; Shawkey, 35 (74)
Never before have we had two in-their-prime starting pitchers with pedigrees this strong squaring off in the World Series. This is something special. And not only do we get that in Game 1, but we might get it again later in the series. Let's hope so.
As mentioned, a great matchup doesn't necessary make for a great duel. Tuesday night's game will be the 661st World Series game in baseball history. In terms of combined game scores, the highest ranking of the top 10 matchups listed above is 36th, which came when, in the first of two matchups between Mathewson and Plank in the 1913 Series, Matty threw 10 shutout innings to beat Plank, who also went the distance but gave up three runs in the 10th.
Still, if Kershaw and Sale come through with performances worthy of their respective pedigrees, it will be a doozy. There is a precedent for that between these teams.
You might recall that 14-inning complete game we mentioned Ruth threw in the 1916 World Series, when the Red Sox beat the then-Brooklyn Robins. His game score in that outing was a World Series-record 97. His opponent that day for Brooklyn was Sherry Smith, who also went the distance and posted a game score of 82. That combined game score of 179 ranks as the best pitchers' duel in the history of the Fall Classic.
That's a tough act to follow, even 102 years later. But if any two pitchers can recreate a duel that memorable, it might be the ace lefties who will take the mound on Tuesday at Fenway Park. If they come through, they'll remind us once again that no matter how much the use of bullpens might expand, there is nothing so special in baseball as a great pitchers' duel.