The Red Sox go for all the marbles tonight. But to do it, they’ll have to find an answer to young Michael Wacha. In game 2, Wacha became the 16th pitcher to start and win 4 games in a single post-season. With another W tonight, Wacha can become the first starter to reach 5 (Randy Johnson won 5 games in 2001, one of them in relief; before recording the first decision of his regular season career, the Angels’ Francisco Rodriguez won 5 post-season games in 2002, all in relief). Wacha would also become the first starter with more career wins in the post-season than in the regular season.

For the Cardinals, it’s a bigger hill to climb. They will be trying to come back from 3-2 down, on the road. No team has done that since the 1979 Pirates (who came back from 3-1 down).

More after the jump.

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Heading back to Fenway now.  Five players have hit more than one homer at Fenway during a single World Series. Three of those guys played for the home team: Yaz had three homers at Fenway in the 1967 Series, Rico Petrocelli had two homers at Fenway in 1967, and Big Papi has two at home so far in the current Series.  The other two guys with multiple homers at Fenway during a World Series both did it for the Mets: Gary Carter had two in Game 4 in 1986 and Lenny Dykstra had one in Game 3 and one in Game 4 that same year.  Continue reading →

The top WPA performance so far in the 2013 Series goes to David Ortiz, with a 0.386 score in a losing cause for the Red Sox in game 2. That mark just misses making the table below for the top WPA games by players on the winning and losing teams in each game of the World Series.

After the twists and turns (and stumbles) of game 3, it’s on to game 4. What other series have run the same course of this one?

This is the 52nd World Series in which the the first two games were split and, of those, the 27th in which the home team won game 3. That game 3 winner went on to win 17 of those 26 earlier series, a .654 winning clip. While there have been 26 previous series that fit this year’s mold, this is only the 5th time it’s happened since another memorable series involving the Red Sox – their 1975 tilt with the Big Red Machine.

More after the jump on other series that have followed the pattern of the 2013 Classic.

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Some final opinions (oh, sure) about the play that ended Game 3:

We should not judge too harshly Boston’s postgame comments questioning Jim Joyce’s call. But I don’t think any of their points holds water.

• Jake Peavy: “It’s a joke … it’s just amazing to me that it would end on a call like that that’s not black and white.”

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On Grantland, Jonah Keri argues that John Farrell should have used Koji Uehara in the 7th inning of Game 2, rather than Craig Breslow, once the Cards had two men on with one out. I agree — but rather than take up that argument, I want to discuss the historical precedent for such a move.

There isn’t any.

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And here are a few items of pointless drivel to contemplate during the breaks.

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There are many things we’ve never seen in a World Series. These are a few of them:

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Since playoffs were expanded to include the wild card round in 1995, there have been 103 starting pitcher performances that have resulted in a game score of 75 or more. That’s an average of 5.42 per year. This year’s total of 11 is more than twice the average, and is equaled only by the 11 such outings in 2010.

We’ll take a look at 2013’s 11 performances after the jump. Continue reading →

After dispatching both the Dodgers and Tigers in hard fought 6 game series, the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals find themselves on the cusp of a title. And while this World Series match up may not have fans all over the country jumping for joy, the mood in St. Louis and Boston will reach a fevered pitch over the next week. So without further delay, let’s dive right in:

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