We have, as regular readers have presumably noticed, been dropping the ball a bit more lately, caught in the college football whirlwind while preparing for college basketball. So, we’re a day late in giving our congratulations to the Texas Rangers, and we’re a day late in mourning the passing of Bob Knight. A quick thought on each.
How the Rangers Did It
For all the hand-wringing about the Rangers bullpen entering October, it sure performed. The third-most impactful player on the World Series win, by Baseball Reference’s CWPA, was José Leclerc. Jon Gray and Josh Sborz were fourth and fifth.
I keep coming back to Gray’s outing in my own mind, because that was really when I—I was cheering for a Diamondbacks bet we had—began to think the D-Backs were going to lose the series. The Seager home run in Game 1 felt natural and even fairly normal. It was a blow to Arizona, but you expect things like that to happen in a World Series. What you don’t expect is the pitcher your opponent relegated and relegated and relegated again (Jon Gray made $14M this year to ultimately be the Rangers’ 5th or 6th or 7th starting pitcher) shutting you down for three innings, bridging the gap in which you were set to seize control of the series. Gray bridged that gap, made Christian Walker’s baserunning foible a consequential disaster, and helped the Rangers win their first World Series in franchise history.
Corey Seager, of course, deserves the most credit. Corey Seager may one day be the greatest Ranger ever, which is nuts considering he played a significant role in seven Dodgers seasons and won a World Series MVP there as well. He’s maybe two or three years away from passing Nolan Ryan’s WAR with the Rangers, and while he’s unlikely to reach Pudge Rodriguez’s roughly 50 WAR, he does have eight years left on his contract. If he ages normally, you’d expect him to end up with roughly 40 WAR himself in Texas, and he’s already got the one title.
Last, a hand for Bruce Bochy. First of all, because Bruce Bochy is very fun. Secondly, because the postseason is a big time for managers. We tend to downplay the significance of the role, or at least the regular season strategy piece, but the postseason strategy is a bigger deal, and what we do consistently theorize is that the biggest deal is the environmental role. The Rangers were swept four separate times in August and September, lost two of the greatest pitchers of their generation to injury at times, dropped three straight against their archrival in the ALCS, and won the World Series. That is resilience, and fostering an environment which produces that resilience is a major role of a manager.
RIP Bob Knight
Speaking of head coaches, we lost one of the greatest to ever do it this week.
Bob Knight’s career happened before my time. By the time I was old enough to follow college basketball any kind of closely, he was at Texas Tech, and Texas Tech was good but not great, making that wacky Knight School reality show on ESPN my first real encounter with Bob Knight.
Part of the consequence of this is that I don’t have direct memories of Bob Knight at Indiana and can’t totally grasp what his greatness was and what it meant. The other part is that I wasn’t around during the era of his misdeeds, and so I struggle to evaluate which crossed lines at the time. Obviously, many did—some things are wrong regardless of era, and some are wrong even if they weren’t in contemporary eyes—but I’ll leave it to others to judge. What I do know is that Bob Knight turned Indiana University into one of college basketball’s greatest programs, and that Bob Knight did a lot to elevate basketball to the status it has in the idealized vision of that state. Basketball was always going to be a big deal in Indiana. Bob Knight made it even bigger. His impact on the sport and on that state and on this country were enormous, and while he was loathed by many, those who loved him with a similar fervency seem to number even more. Prayers for comfort to those who mourn; our condolences to those who grieve. They’re right when they say there’ll never be another.
