Before the Los Angeles Dodgers turned Game 1 of the World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays into a laugher, the rout started with an unlikely home run. The play in question is Cody Bellinger's fourth-inning, two-run blast off Tyler Glasnow. In a sense, any time Bellinger goes deep, it can hardly be called unlikely. But for Bellinger to go deep on that pitch, against that pitcher, was fairly remarkable.
Let's set the situation: The game was scoreless in the bottom of the fourth, with the L.A.'s Clayton Kershaw and Glasnow putting up matching zeros. Max Muncy walked to start the fourth and went to second on a grounder to bring Bellinger to the plate.
In terms of leverage index, the matchup between Bellinger and Glasnow was the sixth highest of the game. At 1.52, it rose to the statistical definition of high leverage (depending on where you draw the lines), but no doubt it was a big moment, the kind that you encounter in tight, low-scoring games. The moment also was heightened by the fact that it was, you know, the World Series.
There is some history between Glasnow and Bellinger that's worth mentioning despite the invariably smallness of the sample. Back in 2018, when Glasnow was still with the Pittsburgh Pirates, they faced off three times. Bellinger homered in the first two of those matchups and then walked. When Bellinger grounded out in the second inning of Tuesday's Game 1, it was the first time Glasnow had ever retired him.
Still, it can't be emphasized enough: This a very different version of Tyler Glasnow than the one who was trying to live up to his lofty prospect-ranking status during his days with the Pirates. It had been a long stretch, in time and developmental distance, since those two last faced each other.
In that second-inning at-bat, Glasnow showed Bellinger three four-seamers, ranging in velocity from 96.8 mph to 98.8 mph, per Statcast. His season average was 97.3 mph. The range of spin was narrow: between 2,338 and 2,442 revolutions per minute, against Glasnow's norm of 2,406. The league averages on that pitch type in 2020 are 93.4 mph with 2,309 in spin.
Those disparities are why Glasnow can get by with a limited pitch arsenal: He throws wicked hard and generates the kind of spin that results in the much sought-after fastball hop. In that first matchup Tuesday against Bellinger, the third of Glasnow's four-seamers induced a routine hopper that first baseman Yandy Diaz easily nabbed and took to the bag for an out.
In the fourth, Glasnow started Bellinger off with another four-seamer. This one was at 98.2 mph with 2,329 rpm in spin. The velocity was fine, not exceptional, for Glasnow. As we all saw on Tuesday, Glasnow can rev up his fastball over 100 mph with regularity. In fact, he went over triple digits six times in Game 1, the most by a starter in a World Series game since we have data for, going back to 2008. The spin on the pitch was not great, again by his standards, rating in just the 25th percentile of Glasnow's offerings this season.
Meanwhile, the pitch and its location seemed to be more or less what Rays catcher Mike Zunino expected. He called the pitch, then set up in that half-crouched/half-standing stance that catchers get into when they are trying to create a target for a pitch up in the zone, a stance that looks precarious to anyone who has dealt with lower back issues. He was set up on the inner half of the plate, and he got what he was asking for.
The pitch wasn't perfect, but it did get on the inner half of the plate. It didn't have the vicious hop of Glasnow's top-shelf offerings and ended up reaching Bellinger just a tick above belt-high. Bellinger unloaded on it, uncoiling his rangy frame with his trademark whiplash swing, turning on the ball and hitting out to right-center field, 378 feet from home plate with an exit velocity of 107.8 mph and a launch angle of 36 degrees.
By now, you might have reached our deep dive into the game's biggest play and think, "OK, so Cody Bellinger hit a home run. And?"
This is where the unlikely aspect of it all creeps in and, thus, the baseball-specific beauty of it all.
According to TruMedia, Bellinger had seen 167 pitches in his career (including the playoffs) coming in at 98 mph or more. His slash line against those pitches was .133/.250/.178 with six hits in 52 plate appearances terminating with those offerings. Four were singles and two were a doubles. Zero were home runs.
Zeroing in even more: Bellinger had seen 26 pitches that fast on the inner third of the plate horizontally and in the middle third of the plate vertically. His positive results on those pitches included two singles, against Kevin Gausman this season and Ray Black in 2018.
As for Glasnow, he throws a lot of pitches 98 mph or faster, so you figure there is more of a diversity of results. And there is. Before Game 1, TruMedia had Glasnow throwing 590 pitches at 98 mph or faster during his career. The slash line his unfortunate opponents have compiled on those bullets was .214/.325/.338. He had allowed five homers. Only one of those was to a lefty hitter: Less than a month ago, Andres Gimenez of the New York Mets turned around a 98.2 mph Glasnow four-seamer for a home run off the facade of the second deck at Citi Field. That pitch seemed to leak out a little more over the middle of the plate than the one Bellinger turned on angrily in Game 1.
Ah, but there is more, because the previous paragraph left location out of the mix. TruMedia shows Glasnow as throwing 32 pitches during his career at 98-plus mph that hit the inner third of the plate in the middle third vertically. Opponents posted a .471 OPS on those pitches, and none went deep.
None, that is, until Cody Bellinger took a pitch that -- when you combine location and velocity -- he had never hit out of the park. And he did it off a pitch that Tyler Glasnow -- when you combine location and velocity -- had never allowed to be hit out of the park. Honestly: You've got to love baseball.
The Dodgers rolled to an 8-3 win, and there is no guarantee -- or anything close to it -- that if Bellinger had not homered on a pitch he shouldn't have homered against that Los Angeles would not have rolled to a win anyway.
All we have in the aftermath is this statistical nugget: According to FanGraphs.com, Bellinger's homer increased the Dodgers' chance to win Game 1 by 19.6%, making it nearly double the impact of any other play of the game. That homer, which should not have happened, pushed Game 1 down the path it eventually went.
This, really, is the hidden beauty of 21st-century baseball, a sequence not as evident as other things the Dodgers did in Game 1, like pulling a double-steal or Kershaw racking up a strikeout or Bellinger robbing a home run or everything Mookie Betts did. But in its own way, that teeny, little, metric-fueled moment was every bit as intriguing as anything Arthur Conan Doyle might have dreamed up for Sherlock Holmes, had Sherlock been a ballplayer.
There's a universe of metrics behind every moment of every game in 2020 baseball. Beginning with this story, that's the universe we're going to explore in this space for as long as this year's Fall Classic lasts.