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HOUSTON — Greg Maddux, 740 regular-season starts and 5,000-plus innings, threw out the ceremonial first pitch before World Series Game 5 at Truist Park.
The next pitch, the one that began the actual game, was delivered by Tucker Davidson, who at that moment had five career starts, just beyond 20 innings and no expectation of getting more than roughly six outs in a potential clinching game.
Are we sure the Braves had the order correct Sunday night? Yeah, I’m sure Braves manager Brian Snitker would pick Davidson, but that is only because Maddux is 55 now and last threw a competitive pitch in the 2008 NLCS. The final player Maddux retired in his Hall of Fame career was then Phillies ace Cole Hamels on a groundout.
Hamels was among the bevy of starting-pitching options the 2021 Dodgers lost along the way, including Trevor Bauer, Danny Duffy, Clayton Kershaw, Trevor May and in another NLCS elimination game, this one against the Braves, Max Scherzer.
This is central to this postseason. Yes, frequent calls to the bullpen distinguish the modern game from the one in which Maddux performed. But it goes beyond strategy. This season — perhaps because it follows a 60-game schedule, maybe because so many guys are going close to max effort frequently, or simply because there are more postseason rounds — has left pitching tattered in October.
Never have teams had so many pitchers at their disposal, yet been caught without enough pitching. Even those Dodgers, who tried to make themselves invulnerable with starting pitching, ran out of a healthy and/or rested version of the species as they failed to repeat as champions.
When the Braves won their only Atlanta-based championship in 1995, Maddux threw 16 innings in two World Series games or 1 ¹/₃ innings more than the team has received out of starters in five Fall Classic games this year.
The Braves were not intending to do it this way. But Mike Soroka re-tore his Achilles and never pitched this year. Huascar Ynoa broke a bone in his pitching hand in May after punching a dugout bench and never rekindled the excellence he showed early upon his return. The Braves made two one-year starting pitching investments in free agency last year — $11 million for Drew Smyly and $15 million for Charlie Morton.
Smyly never recaptured the 2020 stretch run excellence he exhibited for the Giants that seduced the Braves into making him a priority sign. Smyly fell out of favor, then the rotation and was pitching mop-up Sunday in Game 5. Morton was everything the Braves wanted as a pitcher, workhorse and person. Atlanta already had extended him for $20 million next year before he fractured his fibula getting his seventh out of Game 1.
Healthy, he would have started Game 5 and we all would not have been rushing to educate ourselves about Davidson, a day after doing the same with Dylan Lee, who started Game 4 remarkably with even less major league experience than Davidson.
When the Braves won Friday night, that was very much the modern game. Snitker decided he would rather have his four best relievers pitch an inning each than stick with Ian Anderson throwing a no-hitter through five innings. In 1995, after Maddux suffered the loss in Game 5, Tom Glavine no-hit Cleveland for five innings en route to eight one-hit innings in the Game 6 clincher.
Then on Saturday and Sunday — opening with Lee, then Davidson — Atlanta had 11 pitchers throw 308 pitches. They split those games. Which — of all things — resulted in a back-to-the-future feel. Because the Braves lost Game 5, like in 1995, and now have their ace lefty Max Fried, like they had Glavine then, to try to close it out in Game 6. A talented righty, Anderson, awaits if there is a Game 7, just like John Smoltz was ready in 1995.
Fried and Anderson feel like heirs to the Glavine/Smoltz/Steve Avery heyday of pitching development (Smoltz and Fried were acquired from elsewhere but did finishing school in the Braves farm system). And here they are lined up to pitch on full rest while the Astros are bringing back Luis Garcia short in Game 6, and will just throw a whole pitching staff if Game 7 is necessary.
Fried is going to have to show he has not hit the pitching wall, having allowed 11 runs in 9 ²/₃ innings in his last two October starts. Anderson, with his 1.26 ERA in eight postseason starts (albeit only covering 35 ²/₃ innings) is the safety net.
Still, in a postseason that has been “Survivor” for rotation members, the Braves are going to try to win their first title since Glavine/Maddux/Smoltz/Avery started in the 1995 World Series with their last two legitimate rotation pieces standing. Even in 2021 that feels more than nostalgic. It feels right.
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