This really does appear to be the post-season of building narratives around small sample sizes. Cody Bellinger was hitless in the World Series:
When Bellinger walked to the plate with one out in the seventh inning, and his drought had extended to 13 at-bats with eight strikeouts, he was facing Astros starter Charlie Morton. The same guy who was pitching the game of his life, retiring 18 of the last 20 batters.
“We weren’t worried,’’ Seager said, “because he’s got no pulse. He doesn’t have a memory, either. Things go away. That’s what you have to do in baseball. You have to forget the past. Forget your last AB, and move onto your next one.’’
Bellinger had been fooled all Series on breaking balls, and jammed on fastballs, so he told himself to take the ball the other way. This is what he focused on during batting practice. This is what he told himself to do with his team down 1-0, and only eight outs away from going down 3-1 in the Series.
Morton quickly got ahead of him, 1-and-2, with Bellinger looking at one curveball for a strike and fouling off the next. Morton then tried to throw a fastball past him, but Bellinger didn’t chase it. He threw another curveball. This one missed too.
Morton came back one more time with a high curveball, and Bellinger pounced on it, hitting it to left field, drifting just to the right of the left field Crawford Boxes, toward the wall, into a crevice. Marwin Gonzalez could not track both the flight of the ball and the narrowing of the opening.
The ball caromed off the wall, and Bellinger had a double.
Very good players go 0 for 13, especially if they are facing a bevy of good pitchers. Managers and other players are aware of this, as Corey Seager‘s comment indicates, as did Dave Roberts refusing to move Bellinger down in the lineup. The Dodgers as a team are not hitting particularly well in this World Series. Bellinger was just the most extreme performance.
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2yU5rKv
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