UTK Special 10/27/23

World Series Health Preview

We get an all-Southwest World Series. As unexpected as it is, that should make for some exciting baseball as few of us played out this scenario in our heads for months, or will be seeing the rematch of last year’s I predicted. Luckily for both, health won’t be a big deal for either, but fatigue this deep into both the season and the playoffs is. Managing that is, of course, secondary to winning the whole dang thing. Flags fly forever and all that. Players and managers are willing to push past points where they’d stop in season. “If this was the playoffs …” becomes “this is the playoffs.”

Balancing the fatigue push and the fatigue drop-off is key, especially for younger players. Especially for the ones that don’t seem to show it, like Corbin Carroll and Evan Carter, far past their career highs in every workload measure that exists. Handling that is the job of the medical and performance staffs, as well as the coaching staff. Do they listen? Do they listen and then “go with their gut” in the moment? We’ll see how Bruce Bochy and Torey Lovullo handle things starting Friday night.

So let’s take a look through the teams heading into the 2023 World Series:

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