Bring on the Fall Classic! Here’s your first look at how Texas and Arizona stack up.
The 2023 World Series matchup is set.
Starting Friday, the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks will clash for the Commissioner’s Trophy in a meeting of powerful lineups and dominant starting pitchers.
One night after the Rangers booked their first trip to the Fall Classic since 2011 with a Game 7 victory over the Houston Astros, the Diamondbacks continued their stunning run with a 4-2 Game 7 win in Philadelphia.
What has October taught us about each of these teams? What does each squad need to do to come out on top? And which players could be the difference-makers on both sides? ESPN MLB experts Bradford Doolittle, Alden Gonzalez, Jesse Rogers and David Schoenfield break it down.
What’s the most impressive thing about the Rangers this postseason?
Doolittle: The explosiveness of the offense is the Rangers’ standout trait, but during the playoffs what has really put them over the top is the performance of their top two starting pitchers. Simply put, Texas would not be in the World Series without the consistent performances of Jordan Montgomery and Nathan Eovaldi.
Eovaldi built upon his previous playoff reputation and has fully established himself as one of the great October pitchers of the last decade — at least. Montgomery has been almost as good (with one clunker mixed in there, in the ALDS against the Baltimore Orioles). Montgomery has become Bruce Bochy’s new « MadBum » (Madison Bumgarner), drawing a Game 7 bullpen assignment even when the Texas relief staff was fully rested and ready to go. Two starting pitchers can no longer carry a club to a championship in the way that Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling did in 2001, but what we’ve seen the Rangers’ top two do is as close to that as we are likely to get.
Gonzalez: The Rangers’ lineup is deep, but Adolis Garcia is the one who makes them go – more so than even Marcus Semien and Corey Seager, the $500 million middle-infield combo that occupies at the top of the order. Garcia has become Texas’ most dynamic player. And when he’s running hot, his energy is infectious. In his last six at-bats of the ALCS, while heckled at unimaginable levels by the Houston crowd, he homered three times and drove in nine runs, almost single-handedly ending the defending-champion Astros’ season. He has driven in 20 runs in 12 playoff games and is already just one RBI behind David Freese in 2011 for the most in a single postseason. This is a guy who just four years ago was passed over by the St. Louis Cardinals — and two years ago by the Rangers themselves, when they designated him for assignment. Amazing.
Why will it (or won’t it) work against the D-backs in the World Series?
Doolittle: Arizona has not really been carried by the performance of any particular starting pitcher or, indeed, any one thing at all. Whatever it has taken to survive in a particular series, Torry Lovullo and his team have been able to find. In Merrill Kelly and Zac Gallen, Arizona does have a top two capable of staying with Eovaldi and Montgomery. There is less pressure for that duo to work deep because Lovullo has been so aggressive with his bullpen use, but if Texas continues to get long, effective starts from its big two, that will make things awful tough on Arizona. That would mean Bruce Bochy can both effectively moderate his high-leverage relievers and keep his staff fresh for when he needs to feature a steady parade of bullpen arms.
Gonzalez: Garcia’s bat has a tendency to run hot and cold. He OPS’d .790 in July and August, then .934 in September. And just before running absolutely rampant in that six-at-bat stretch to cap off a historic LCS run, he struck out four consecutive times, taking some ugly swings on a handful of occasions.
