In 2019, the Washington Nationals won a World Series behind three of the game’s best starting pitchers and three of the game’s best bats (accounting for position). They did it after a disastrous start to the season in which they were, near the end of May, in possession of the second-worst record in the National League.
The 2019 Nationals’ World Series recipe is not a good World Series recipe. You don’t start your ideal World Series campaign by wallowing around with the Marlins. You don’t finish your ideal World Series campaign hoping for an at-times nightmarish bullpen to hold together because your three guns can only throw so many innings, especially with one suffering back problems. The 2019 Nationals won a World Series the way your idiot coworker at your college summer job wins a couple grand at the horse track—they cashed in on one extraordinarily high-upside, low-probability bet.
That said.
The Nationals remind us of something about World Series contenders.
In the regular season, depth is important. In the postseason, depth can be important. But it doesn’t have to be. The higher number of off days in October and the lower incentive to minimize pitchers’ workload bestows a larger weight on a team’s aces than is the case in the regular season. Sometimes, that matters little. Sometimes, that matters a lot.
At the moment, three of the fifteen highest-fWAR pitchers in baseball pitch for the Milwaukee Brewers. I would say qualified pitchers, but that’s not true. Corbin Burnes hasn’t met the qualifying innings threshold, having been out for a bit with an asymptomatic case of the coronavirus. He’s still third in baseball in pitcher fWAR. Third in baseball. Ahead of everyone not named Gerrit Cole or Jacob deGrom. After missing 25% of his starts.
Brandon Woodruff is also in the top ten, which isn’t a surprise. Woodruff wasn’t guaranteed to be up there (or as close to guaranteed as the deGrom and Cole sorts are), but he hasn’t posted a FIP above 3.30 since he broke into the league with eight starts in 2017. Brandon Woodruff is among the best pitchers in baseball. Brandon Woodruff is on that list.
And then there’s Freddy Peralta. Peralta was great out of the bullpen for the Brewers last season, throwing nearly thirty innings over fifteen outings and posting a 3.99 ERA backed by a 2.41 FIP and a 3.11 xERA.
He’s been better this year.
Through eight starts and one relief appearance, Peralta has a 2.40 ERA. He has a 2.68 FIP. And his xERA, at 2.06, is third among baseball’s 69 qualified starters.
Without that third ace, the Brewers would be in a tight spot in a seven-game series, especially against a team like the Dodgers who can roll Walker Buehler out there after Clayton Kershaw and Trevor Bauer. With a third ace…
It’s worth noting too that the Brewers have a rather advantageous path, as far as paths go. The NL Central is a mess, with their competition a Cardinals roster that would be otherworldly were this 2017, a Reds team that went all-in for one year and had that year turn out to be the shortest season in more than a century, a Cubs team whose ownership seems to really want to sell at the deadline so they can rake in rebuild profits for a couple go-rounds before turbocharging the fanbase again with big free agent moves, and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Better still for Milwaukee, they wouldn’t have to face the Dodgers or the Padres in the NLDS if everything were to play out according to script, and while you’d rather not have to face Jacob deGrom and Marcus Stroman and Carlos Carrasco in a five-game set, the Mets are still the Mets and are flawed enough to be concerning.
But the bats. The Nationals had the bats.
Milwaukee does not have an Anthony Rendon. Christian Yelich might produce at a Juan Soto-like level if his back gets healthy, but even still, no Rendon, no Trea Turner.
But Washington didn’t have Josh Hader. Or Devin Williams (who, to be fair, has not been his 2020 self so far). Over a regular season, no, those guys aren’t going to equal the contributions of two of the best twenty or thirty players in the game. But in the playoffs? It’s not outside the realm of possibility, because as with starting pitching, playoff baseball puts more weight on your best bullpen arms than your worst bullpen arms to a degree that isn’t the case with the regular season.
There are plenty of reasons to doubt. Again, the 2019 Nationals aren’t the example of the best way to win a World Series. Corbin Burnes has yet to throw more than 60 innings in a season. Freddy Peralta has yet to throw 90. Brandon Woodruff has yet to get through 125.
But once you get past the Dodgers, and the Yankees, and the Padres, and yes ok let’s say the Mets and the Astros and the White Sox if we’re being generous (but each of those has some flaws nearly on par with the Brewers’ lack of seven hitters to complement an ailing former MVP, or at least reasons to fear a total decomposition), the Brewers are right there with anyone else you throw out as a World Series contender.
This isn’t to say the Brewers will win the World Series. It’s just to say they might. They don’t have all the pieces. But they have some pretty great ones.
