Baseball: A Two-Way Player-Chapter 671 - 21: The Counterattack Begins Now

"Viewers in front of the TV, if you've just turned on the TV, please don't be surprised. Our electronic scoreboard is not showing a display error—yes, you read that right, the Astros are indeed leading the New York Yankees 9-0 at their home ground!"

Taking advantage of the break after the fifth inning, when the players were switching sides, the commentator responsible for the live broadcast began summarizing the game:

When Carlos Correa hit a sacrifice fly to Central Field from Masahiro Tanaka's hand, increasing the score gap to 9 points, the game was already over in the minds of most commentators.

On one hand, to hit four home runs and score nine points in three and a half innings indicates that the Astros' batters are in exceptionally good form today;

For the Yankees, whose starting pitcher was knocked out before pitching even two innings, it is hard for them to guarantee that they won't continue losing points in the rest of the game—Major League isn't the kind of amateur league like Koshien, hoping for professional players, who are virtually monsters, to make sloppy defensive errors is almost impossible.

On the other hand, in such a regular season game where the outcome doesn't really affect much, battling hard with the opponent is considered by many to be a low cost-effective choice:

Even if they lose this game, the Yankees would give up the top spot in the American League, but they would still be the number one seed in the Eastern Division, maintaining a certain lead in victories over the Orioles and Red Sox behind them, with little overall impact. But if they choose to go head-to-head with the Astros, leading to key players in the batting lineup or bullpen suffering injuries, affecting subsequent games, that is a real loss.

In fact, don't just consider this situation. Even in the fiercely competitive postseason, unless it's a life-or-death match where the opponent holds the match point, 99% of teams would still choose to retreat and conserve strengths rather than fight on, saving energy to battle another day.

As the Statcast system showed, once the Astros expanded the score gap to 9 points, their win probability had reached an astonishing 99.7%, making winning this game almost a certainty;

In other words, under absolute rational data analysis, the Yankees' chance to even out the score and achieve a comeback is only 0.3%—mind you, when the Cleveland Cavaliers were trailing 1-3 in the 2016 NBA Finals, they even had a 3% win probability!

Lin Guanglai and Aaron Judge haven't given up on this game, but they can't demand all their teammates to be like them—so time is not on their side, they must seize the opportunity in the next bottom half of the inning to narrow the score gap.

Today's starting pitcher for the Astros is Charlie Morton, whom they signed during the offseason; the pitcher who just celebrated his 33rd birthday last November has had a lukewarm career, serving as the team's third to fourth starter, with only one season achieving ten wins. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Born in New Jersey, Charlie Morton has been a die-hard Yankees fan since childhood, and today he finally got the chance to pitch at Yankee Stadium, performing quite well, currently still keeping the Yankees' batting line scoreless.

Morton's main pitches are a sinker with an average speed of 95 miles per hour and a curveball averaging 81 miles per hour—the former being his most frequently used, while the latter his go-to pitch in most cases, together constituting approximately 80% of his pitches used against opponents; additionally, Morton often combines usage of a four-seam fastball averaging 96 mph and peaking at 98.9 mph, an average 88 mph slider, and an average 87 mph fast forkball, boasting a well-stocked arsenal.

As a career ground-ball rate pitcher reaching 55%, Morton, who excels at inducing batters to hit grounders through pitches like sinkers, has given the Yankees' hitters a tough time in this game:

In the previous four offensive half-innings, it's not that the Yankees didn't have scoring opportunities, in fact, their batting lineup has already completed two rounds in the four innings; but whenever they were close to scoring, Morton would always induce ground balls to execute double plays, terminating the Yankees' offense abruptly, leaving several stranded runners.

"We have breaking news, Bryce Harper from the Washington Nationals has completed salary arbitration for the 2018 season, in the last season of his contract with the Nationals, this 2015 MVP will receive an annual salary of $21.6 million, breaking the record set by David Price... It's reported that Harper's agent team has already twice rejected the Nationals' contract extension offers, and the Los Angeles Dodgers are willing to offer this star player a 10-year $400 million record-shattering deal..."

"Indeed, I thought Stanton's contract with the Marlins was already terrifying enough, but now it seems this record will soon be surpassed—and I'd point out that the Angel's Trout hasn't extended his contract yet, with baseball's investment costs ever rising, we might witness more monstrous contracts in the future!"

Seeing there's not much left to analyze about this game, commentators from ESPN and Fox began discussing other topics, mainly focusing on players from the 2010 draft—Trout, Harper, Machado have become MLB superstars now, and will soon be complete free agents in the upcoming years, sure to stir up a storm in the free market.