RED TEAMING:

Red teamers would have likely deemed the depth of talent in position players and starting pitchers on both teams as roughly equal, or perhaps given a slight edge to Houston. And in examining the disparity in bullpens - during the regular season, Astros relief pitchers allowed the second-fewest runs in baseball while the Nationals 'pen surrendered a whopping two runs per game more than the Astros - they would have asked several simple questions. The first is, could the Nationals mitigate that vulnerability and, if so, what difference would it make? As it turns out, the answer to that question was hiding in plain sight. During the first three rounds of the playoffs, the Nationals deputized members of their elite starting pitching staff four times, all but eliminating their middle-inning bullpen vulnerabilities.

The second question that red teamers would have likely asked is related to the baseball equivalent of military "readiness." In wargaming, the quality of a potential adversary is judged by many factors, including training and preparedness against a skilled enemy. And this is where things start to get interesting. A close examination of the teams' regular-season schedules reveals a wide disparity. The Astros, who won 107 games, played 99 against teams with losing records and just 63 against teams who won more than they lost. The Nationals played 96 games against teams .500 or better and only 66 against teams with losing records. In short, one team's win total was juiced by the baseball equivalent of facing third-world military forces; the other's was suppressed by routinely competing against well-trained NATO allies.

The Astros won 73 percent of the games they played against losing teams, but just 55 percent against winning teams. The Nationals won 68 percent of their games against losing teams and went 48-48 against teams .500 or better. The Nationals won 93 games during the regular season, but based on the difference between their runs scored and runs allowed, known as their Pythagorean expectation, the Nats should have won 95 games, a more-than-respectable result in the National League East, a far stronger division than the Astros' home in the American League West. The NL East had perhaps the best pitching in baseball last year, headlined by the likes of the Mets' Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard, the Phillies' Aaron Nola, and the Braves' Mike Soroka. The Nationals entered the World Series having repeatedly faced some of the best starting pitchers in baseball.

Red teamers would no doubt have looked closely at the skill level of the Astros' opponents and wondered: What if the Nationals had played that same schedule? The answer is revealing. If the Nats had played the same number of games against losing teams as the Astros, based on their season-long performance, their win total would jump from 93 games to 98. And if the Astros had played 96 games against teams .500 or better, as had the Nats, their wins would have dropped from 107 to 100. The difference between the two would have been virtually imperceptible.

Analysts red-teaming the World Series would have noticed something else that could be classified under "readiness." During the regular season, the Astros seldom -- if ever -- faced starting pitchers as good as the Nationals' duo of Strasburg and Scherzer. The baseball analyst Eno Sarris ranks Scherzer as the major leagues' fourth-best starting pitcher, and Strasburg as No. 6. Meanwhile, the best pitcher in the American League West who is not an Astro, according to Sarris's rankings, is Frankie Montas of the Oakland Athletics, judged the 24th-best starting pitcher in MLB and the division's lone top-30 starting pitcher outside Houston. Good pitching stopped good hitting: Washington's aces effectively shut down the powerful Astro offense during the four games the Nationals won in Houston.

Several years ago, Vince Gennaro, the president of the Society for American Baseball Research, introduced the idea that one useful predictor of how batters might fare in postseason play is how they performed against top-flight pitchers during the regular season. During the 2019 regular season, the Astros faced starting pitchers ranked in the top 30 on Sarris's list 19 times, scoring an average of just under four runs per 9 innings. The Nationals faced top 30 pitchers a total of 31 times and scored an average of 4.35 runs per game. Against top-flight pitchers during the season, the Nats offense was more productive, even though they faced elite pitchers far more often -- including eight games in September as they battled for a playoff spot. The Astros faced no top-30 pitchers after Aug. 27.

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