Baseball

Major League Baseball says it will look into allegations that Houston Astros assistant general manager Brandon Taubman shouted at female reporters regarding the club’s acquisition of closer Roberto Osuna following Game 6 of the ALCS on Saturday.

According to Stephanie Apstein of Sports Illustrated, Taubman turned to three female reporters in the clubhouse and yelled six times, “Thank god we got Osuna! I’m so f—— glad we got Osuna!”

The Astros traded for Osuna during the 2018 campaign while he was serving a 75-game ban for violating the league’s domestic violence policy.

The team called Apstein’s report “misleading” and “completely irresponsible,” but two other reporters corroborated the story.

“Domestic violence is extraordinarily serious and everyone in baseball must use care to not engage in any behavior – whether intentional or not – that could be construed as minimizing the egregiousness of an act of domestic violence,” the league said Tuesday in a statement.

“We became aware of this incident through the Sports Illustrated article. The Astros have disputed Sports Illustrated’s characterization of the incident. MLB will interview those involved before commenting further.”

The Baseball Writers’ Association of America also released a statement Tuesday calling for the Astros to publicly apologize to Apstein for initially discrediting her reporting.

“The Astros’ initial denial of the incident reported by SI was an unethical and intentional fabrication, designed to discredit our members and all journalists,” BBWAA president Rob Biertempfel said. “The BBWAA is encouraged by MLB’s decision to investigate this matter and will fully cooperate. We expect that appropriate disciplinary measures will be handed out and made public.

“Also, a public apology to the media outlets involved – particularly Stephanie Apstein, Sports Illustrated, and the BBWAA – should be forthcoming.”

Taubman apologized Tuesday for his actions, but said his comments were “misinterpreted.”

“This past Saturday, during our clubhouse celebration, I used inappropriate language for which I am deeply sorry and embarrassed,” Taubman said in a statement. “In retrospect, I realize that my comments were unprofessional and inappropriate. My overexuberance in support of a player has been misinterpreted as a demonstration of a regressive attitude about an important social issue.

“Those that know me know that I am a progressive and charitable member of the community, and a loving and committed husband and father. I hope that those who do not know me understand that the Sports Illustrated article does not reflect who I am or my values. I am sorry if anyone was offended by my actions.”

Astros owner Jim Crane also commented on the situation.

“The Astros continue to be committed to using our voice to create awareness and support on the issue of domestic violence,” Crane said in the same release. “We not only ensure mandatory training annually for all of our employees, we have also created an important partnership with the Texas Council on Family Violence, and have raised over $300,000 through our initiatives to help various agencies providing important support for this cause. We fully support MLB and baseball’s stance and values regarding domestic violence.”

Astros manager AJ Hinch discussed the incident in front of reporters before Game 1.

“I’m very disappointed for a lot of reasons,” the manager said of Taubman’s comments, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. “It’s unfortunate. It’s uncalled for … We all need to be better across the board in the industry.”

HOUSTON — Major League Baseball said in a statement Tuesday that the league will interview relevant parties regarding allegations published Monday night in a Sports Illustrated article.

According to the report by SI’s Stephanie Apstein, during the celebration in the Houston Astros‘ clubhouse after the team’s 6-4 win over the New York Yankees in Game 6 of the ALCS on Saturday, assistant general manager Brandon Taubman turned to a group of female reporters — including one wearing a purple domestic violence awareness bracelet — and repeatedly yelled, “Thank God we got Osuna! I’m so f—ing glad we got Osuna!”

Last season, Astros closer Roberto Osuna, 24, served a 75-game suspension for violating MLB’s domestic violence policy. Osuna, while a member of the Toronto Blue Jays, was charged in May 2018 with domestic assault; the charge was later withdrawn when the woman he is alleged to have assaulted made it clear she would not travel from Mexico to Toronto to testify.

The SI report Monday was corroborated by multiple witnesses present in the clubhouse at the time.

MLB declined to comment directly on the allegations, instead saying in a statement Tuesday, “Domestic violence is extraordinarily serious and everyone in baseball must use care to not engage in any behavior — whether intentional or not — that could be construed as minimizing the egregiousness of an act of domestic violence. We became aware of this incident through the Sports Illustrated article. The Astros have disputed Sports Illustrated’s characterization of the incident. MLB will interview those involved before commenting further.”

In a statement released Monday after the SI report was published, the club claimed the report was “misleading and completely irresponsible,” adding, “Our executive was supporting the player during a difficult time. His comments had everything to do about the game situation that just occurred and nothing else — they were also not directed toward any specific reporters.”

On Tuesday, Taubman apologized for his behavior via a statement released by the team but maintained that his comments were misinterpreted.

“This past Saturday, during our clubhouse celebration, I used inappropriate language for which I am deeply sorry and embarrassed,” Taubman said. “In retrospect, I realize that my comments were unprofessional and inappropriate. My overexuberance in support of a player has been misinterpreted as a demonstration of a regressive attitude about an important social issue. Those that know me know that I am a progressive and charitable member of the community, and a loving and committed husband and father. I hope that those who do not know me understand that the Sports Illustrated article does not reflect who I am or my values. I am sorry if anyone was offended by my actions.”

HOUSTON — There were moments early in the American League Championship Series when it felt like the Houston Astros were one play away from stumbling into a serious hole against the New York Yankees. But the final moment belonged to Jose Altuve, and the Astros are AL champions.

Altuve blasted a two-run, walk-off home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth off Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman, igniting a raucous crowd and sending Houston to the World Series for the third time in franchise history and second time in three years. The Astros won 6-4, clinching the pennant in six games.

Altuve said the homer was probably his best career moment to date, but he wouldn’t take credit for the win.

“I have to say No. 1 because we’re going to the World Series,” Altuve said. “But we’re not going to the World Series because of me. We’re going to the World Series because of everybody inside of the clubhouse.”

It was not easy.

With the Astros two outs from the flag, Yankees second baseman DJ LeMahieu battled closer Roberto Osuna for 10 pitches before finally lofting a high-arching fly ball that just cleared the right-field fence. It was a two-run shot, and it knotted the score at four. As it turned out, LeMahieu was only setting the table for Altuve’s heroics.

The game marked the first time in postseason history that a team hit a game-tying or go-ahead home run in the top of an inning, then allowed a game-ending homer in the bottom of the inning. It made for a whirlwind of emotions, but when you have Altuve on your side, managing those emotions is a bit easier.

“I was sitting on the stairs, and I looked at [Michael Brantley] after the 2-0 pitch and said, ‘Jose is gonna win it for us,'” Astros outfielder Josh Reddick said. “He’s the glue to this team. He holds us all together and gets us going.”

The clincher fueled a sellout crowd at Minute Main Park under the roof on an autumn night in Texas.

The pregame whistles and train toots and towel waves had barely subsided when, after a snappy 1-2-3 first inning for Houston opener Brad Peacock, Yuli Gurriel lined a three-run homer into the Crawford Boxes in left field.

The quick start left the Yankees scrambling to catch up all night in what turned out to be a futile effort to save their campaign. Finally, LeMahieu’s great at-bat brought New York even — at least for a few minutes.

For Altuve, the storybook finish provides another shining bullet point on a career résumé that already seems stacked enough to eventually land him in the Hall of Fame. If it takes one Hall of Famer to know another one, count Astros great Craig Biggio as a believer.

“The greatest thing about Jose is Jose,” Biggio said amid the celebration on the field after the game. “He’s just a great human being. He gets in the heat of the moment and rises to the occasion. He’s an incredible player.”

The Astros capped their third straight 100-win season with another AL title, and in doing so, they ensured that the Yankees go without a pennant in the 2010s, marking their first decade without a league title since before they acquired Babe Ruth in 1920.

Instead, it’s Houston that might someday be remembered as the team of the decade that’s coming to a close. For that to happen, the Astros need to take one more step, and they are well aware that they have unfinished business.

“We’re not done yet,” Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow said. “This series could have gone either way. The last series could have gone either way. We knew we had built a team to win. Now we get a chance to prove it.”

Houston defeated the Yankees in the ALCS for the second time in three seasons. The Astros also knocked New York out of the postseason for the third time in five years — something no other team has done to the Bronx Bombers.

As for those moments of vulnerability: Initially in the series, the Yankees seemed poised to knock off the top-seeded Astros. They routed Houston 7-0 in Game 1. In Game 2, the teams battled in a grueling, 4-hour, 49-minute affair that finally ended when Carlos Correa homered on the first pitch of the 11th inning. The Astros never trailed in the series again. The Yankees missed their opportunity, which might have been the theme of the series for them.

“It’s the biggest thing I look back on is that we left eight or nine in this game on base,” Yankees slugger Aaron Judge said after his team was eliminated. “Even throughout the whole series, we left a lot of guys on base and had a lot of missed opportunities.”

After 107 regular-season wins, the Astros ended up where the consensus figured them to be — at least, the consensus of baseball pundits and the betting markets. Their path was rocky at times — the five-game AL Division Series against the Tampa Bay Rays, the early struggles against New York — but that’s how October baseball goes. Now, Houston is positioned to stake claim to the dynastic throne the Yankees have occupied so often in baseball’s history.

“We said all along our goal was to win multiple championships,” Luhnow said. “We’re not there yet. We’ve won one. We’re going back to another. Hopefully, we’ll get that done.”

With the pennant secured, the Astros will open the World Series on Tuesday at home against the well-rested Washington Nationals. Washington completed its four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals on Oct. 15, the night Houston and New York played Game 3 of their six-game tussle. The Nationals are making their World Series debut.

Game 1 of the Fall Classic should be a premium pitching matchup: Houston figures to send Gerrit Cole to the mound, now that he won’t have to start Game 7 against the Yankees on Sunday.

Of course, he was pleased about it. When asked if this was the happiest he had ever been to not make a start, Cole leaned back and issued an emphatic, “Yes!”

The Nationals likely will counter with Max Scherzer, making the Series opener the first of a series of high-profile pitching confrontations.

“It’s incredible,” said Astros starter Justin Verlander, who is lined up to start Game 2, likely against Washington’s Stephen Strasburg. “I keep saying incredible, but it really is. The Nationals have a great rotation, have a great four starters. I like our rotation as well. It should be a great series.”

The starting pitching will be the initial dominant storyline of the World Series, but ironically, the Astros clinched the pennant on a night when both managers went to a bullpen day in lieu of a traditional starter. Peacock opened for Houston, giving up one run in 1⅔ innings. Meanwhile, Chad Green threw the first inning for New York and gave up Gurriel’s home run. The Yankees fell to 12-6 in opener games, including the postseason, and Houston won one for the first time in three tries.

The strategy smacked of 2019 baseball. According to Elias Sports Bureau research, the most recent postseason game in which neither starting pitcher threw at least two innings was Game 4 of the 1999 ALDS between the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians.

That the Astros won a bullpen game against a Yankees team with one of the most feared relief staffs in baseball is hardly a surprise. That’s the Astros: They win in ways old and new and in ways big and small.

“It was fun,” Luhnow said. “It was a fun baseball game for a lot of reasons. I don’t know how many pitchers we used in total, but it meant that the managers had to be really wise about when to take their pitchers out. This game could have gone either way, but we had Altuve, and they didn’t. That ended up being the difference.”

Now things are about to get as big as they get in baseball: the World Series. This time, it’s between a team trying to secure its place atop the mountain and another trying to ascend to that peak for the first time. The bad news for the Nationals is that the moments of vulnerability for the Astros might already have passed.

The 50 players on these two World Series rosters will be tested over the next seven games, they will be examined in minute detail, and the things they do will influence everything we remember about them for the rest of their careers and beyond.

But this is where they stand today: Here is your guide to all 50 players we anticipate will be on the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals in the 2019 World Series, organized by how prominently each should figure into his team’s hopes and plans.

1. Max Scherzer, SP, Nationals

In his five years with the Nationals, Scherzer has thrown the most innings in baseball, has the second-best ERA by any starter, has the third-best FIP of any starter and has the most WAR (FanGraphs or Baseball Reference model) of any starter. The first half of his 30s — ages 30 to 34 — rank sixth in the history of the game by B-Ref’s WAR. He just turned 35, but he’s arguably as good as he has ever been: His league-leading FIP this season was a career best, his strikeout rate — which has climbed six years in a row — was a career high, and the 43rd pitch he threw in the NL wild-card game was his fastest fastball since 2015.

2. Alex Bregman, 3B, Astros

One downside to extreme patience — and Bregman, with the lowest chase rate in the majors this year, has that — is that taking a lot of pitches can put the batter behind in a lot of counts. That’s no matter to Bregman: He hit .304/.393/.611 after falling behind 0-1 in the count, the 16th-best post-0-1 OPS this century (and he had the 19th-best post-0-2 OPS), which is part of why he’s one of the two-to-four best players in the majors right now.

3. Gerrit Cole, SP, Astros

In the three months since the All-Star break, the very worst back-to-back starts Cole threw were probably Aug. 28 and Sept. 2, when he did this: 12 2/3 innings, 28 strikeouts, three walks and a 3.55 ERA, with both starts coming against playoff teams and both ending in Astros victories. In fact, the nine playoff teams faced Cole 11 times this year, and they hit .150/.218/.288 with 109 strikeouts in 75 innings, good for a 1.67 ERA for Cole and a 10-1 record for the Astros.

4. Justin Verlander, SP, Astros

In his entire career as a Tiger — a career that might have been good enough to get him into the Hall of Fame, a career that included four seasons leading the league in strikeouts — Verlander had seven starts in which he got more than 20 swinging strikes. As an Astro just this season, he had 10 such starts, plus one more in ALCS Game 5. His strikeout rate in the second half was the third-highest in major league history.

5. Anthony Rendon, 3B, Nationals

The slick-fielding, power-hitting, strikeout-avoiding, universal-respect-garnering Rendon, according to Baseball-Reference, has five nicknames, but four are just variants of his name said in a hurry, while the fifth is nearly perfect: Tony Two Bags. That tag would be all the way perfect — he has led the NL in doubles the past two seasons, with aesthetically perfect totals of 44 each year — except he has to share it with the unworthy Mitch “Mitchy Two Bags” Moreland, who neither possesses the correctly alliterative first name nor boasts the dominant, well-rounded game that allows Rendon’s doubles proficiency to be emphasized as a stylistic flourish rather than as a backhanded compliment.

6. Stephen Strasburg, SP, Nationals

Strasburg, once the most famous pitching prospect in history, has been in Scherzer’s shadow for the past five years, but this is the second season in the past three in which he has so dominated the second half and the postseason that we start to wonder whether this is it, when he emerges as the best pitcher in baseball. In this moment, rooting for Strasburg is almost a historical imperative: He’s still a slight underdog to make the Hall of Fame, and this incredible thing he has been doing in the postseason — a 1.10 ERA, 57 K’s and five walks in 41 career innings — is both pushing those chances upward and giving us that very rare gift — a baseball thing we’ll be able to tell our grandchildren about decades from now.

7. George Springer, CF, Astros

This was a pretty good year for Springer: He added sprint speed (according to Statcast), had his best year on defense, conquered right-handed pitching for the first time, set career highs in homers and slugging (along with half the league, to be fair), and might have snuck atop some MVP ballots had he not missed most of June. I don’t know if his greatness is in danger of getting lost among all the other great Astros’ greatness, but he’s 23rd all time in championship win probability added (cWPA), directly behind Reggie Jackson and David Ortiz.

8. Juan Soto, LF, Nationals

No hitter in baseball combines discipline on pitches outside the strike zone with assertiveness on pitches inside the strike zone like Soto, whose first two seasons are so uncharacteristic of his age that finding a suitable 20-year-old comp requires going back to … I don’t know, Bob Dylan or Mary Shelley or Ted Williams. While anybody can flip a bat after a home run or pump a fist after striking out the side, Soto alone celebrates incremental gains in count leverage, following every taken ball with what has become known as The Soto Shuffle.

9. Jose Altuve, 2B, Astros

Two years can change a player — especially second basemen, who traditionally age early, quickly and miserably — and across the 2019 season, Altuve was roughly half the player he was in 2017, when he led the league in stolen bases (this year he had six) and challenged .350 (this year he challenged .300 and lost) and won the MVP award. But Altuve’s second half this season (.325/.373/.622) was MVP-worthy, and he leads all hitters in total bases this postseason — more than the next two Astros combined — so what sort of pessimist would be here complaining about fewer stolen bases?

10. Carlos Correa, SS, Astros

Correa is 10th among all active players in WAR per game, but three injury-shortened seasons have kept him from finishing an unmistakable MVP-level season. He’s the strongest shortstop in the game, with a Tulowitzki-esque arm and a home run rate that led all major league shortstops this year and that only Alex Rodriguez (four times), Ernie Banks (three times) and Trevor Story (once) ever topped.

11. Patrick Corbin, SP, Nationals

It isn’t just that Corbin is the only third starter in baseball who is better than the Astros’ third starter, Zack Greinke. It’s also that he’s better than probably 26 teams’ No. 2 starters and at least 20 — maybe as many as 25 — teams’ aces. Among starters, his slider gets the highest whiff rate, though it’s a little misleading to call it “a” pitch: Corbin can shape it different ways, and in just the postseason, he has thrown it as hard as 86 mph and as slowly as 78, which helps him get away with throwing it almost half the time without batters ever getting comfortable with it.

12. Zack Greinke, SP, Astros

This version of Greinke doesn’t throw very hard and doesn’t get many strikeouts, but he does two things very well: He avoids homers (ninth-best HR/9 in baseball), and he avoids walks (third-best BB/9). When he’s ahead in counts, he ranks 52nd out of 61 qualifying pitchers in strike rate, as he cautiously works around the edges to prevent any unnecessary hittable pitches. When he’s behind in counts, he ranks first in strike rate to avoid free passes.

13. Michael Brantley, LF, Astros

Players older than 30 collectively had their worst year in a half-century, but the 32-year-old Brantley was one exception, producing his best season since 2014. He’s an extreme contact hitter — only David Fletcher whiffed less on pitches in the zone — and he usually pulls the ball, but this year he did uncharacteristic damage when he didn’t, batting better than .400 and slugging almost .600 when he hit to the opposite field.

14. Yordan Alvarez, DH, Astros

Three weeks ago, Alvarez would have been higher on this list, but the worst-timed slump — he’s 225th out of 226 postseason participants this year in championship win probability added — has knocked him from fifth to seventh in the Astros’ lineup and from wherever he would have been on this list to right here. In the regular season, he was the second-best rookie hitter in history, behind only Shoeless Joe Jackson, so this slump (at least one strikeout in every game played, huge spikes in chase and whiff percentages) is truly shocking, though it’s slightly less so once we realize that Alvarez’s quality of pitchers faced in the regular season was fourth-lowest in baseball.

15. Trea Turner, SS, Nationals

Turner is the fastest player in these playoffs — and the second-fastest in the majors this year, by Statcast’s sprint speed — but he has become fairly conservative with his speed, attempting fewer stolen bases, fewer “extra” bases as a baserunner and only one bunt this season. That isn’t to say his speed isn’t a big advantage: He had the majors’ third-highest batting average and second-highest slugging percentage on ground balls this year, which made him a better hitter by OPS+ than 36 players who outhomered him.

16. Victor Robles, CF, Nationals

Robles is like his teammate Trea Turner, except not quite as fast, not quite as strong, not quite as disciplined on pitches out of the zone, not quite as good at making contact and not quite as efficient on the bases. Yet he might actually be the better player, thanks to one signature skill: running down hard-to-run-down fly balls. Robles led the league in outs above average, a Statcast-derived defensive metric for outfielders, and he should win a Gold Glove this year, an accomplishment all the more impressive for how many goofs the rookie made during a choppy, anomalous April.

17. Roberto Osuna, RH RP, Astros

Osuna, at 24 years old, has already been around forever — he’s eighth among all active pitchers in both saves and postseason relief appearances — and, like all veteran pitchers, he keeps tinkering, relying more often on a power changeup this year and reaching a new career high for fastball velocity. The Astros used him conservatively in the regular season — he entered the eighth inning for a save only once (and blew it) — but that was probably to protect him for this month. He has already seen three eighth innings this October, and he threw as many as three innings in a game last postseason.

18. Robinson Chirinos, C, Astros

Chirinos is a below-average thrower and a below-average framer, but the Astros threw the fewest wild pitches in the American League this year, and Chirinos — who rates as the second-best blocker in the game, according to Baseball Prospectus’ advanced measures — was a big reason for that. He has 13 career WAR, and they’ve all come since he turned 30. For a catcher who is only four months younger than Brian McCann, Chirinos looks shockingly fresh.

19. Will Harris, RH RP, Astros

The Astros got Will Harris on waivers just after he turned 30, and since then, he has the third-best ERA in the majors. He’s a two-pitch pitcher — cutter and curve — who doesn’t have the mean scowl of a closer or the snapping velocity of a closer, but he has most likely been better over the past half-decade than your favorite team’s closer(s).

20. Howie Kendrick, 1B, Nationals

Kendrick is obviously not Christian Yelich, but like Yelich, he was a ground ball hitter, an other-way hitter and a singles hitter who unlocked something in his swing relatively deep into his career, improved his contact across the board and began to mash like an MVP. Kendrick hasn’t hit quite as well or for as long as Yelich, but his .344/.395/.572 line this year included the 12th-best OPS in the majors, and for the third year in a row, he set a career-best line against right-handed pitching. That’s an incredible late-career bloom for a player who, two years ago, was nothing but a pinch hitter on the Nationals’ postseason roster.

21. Yuli Gurriel, 1B, Astros

Among those few hitters who manage to carry a reverse split deep into a career, Gurriel is one of the most extreme cases: Of the 150 right-handed batters with the most playing time the past four years, Gurriel is the 36th-best at hitting righties and just the 91st-best at hitting lefties. He’s a dead-pull hitter who manages to pull even more balls at home, where the short left field helped him slug .615 in Houston this year.

22. Ryan Pressly, RH RP, Astros

Pressly missed most of September and hasn’t really regained his spot in the Astros’ pecking order — he still hasn’t pitched a full inning this postseason and has been most recently called into games in the third, the fifth and the 11th — but he’s still one of the 10 or 20 best relievers in baseball. He throws twice as many breaking balls as fastballs, even in three-ball counts.

23. Sean Doolittle, LH RP, Nationals

Doolittle’s apparent simplicity is part of what makes him such a joy to watch: Like the Dodgers’ more famous relief ace, Kenley Jansen, Doolittle mostly throws one pitch (a “rising” fastball, in Doolittle’s case), he mostly throws it for strikes (the fourth-highest strike rate in baseball this year), and over an eight-year career, hitters haven’t figured out how to square him up. His season stats this season were torpedoed by two bad weeks in August — following heavy usage in July and preceding a stint on the DL — but his seven effective weeks since include both very encouraging signs (opponents hitting just .132/.164/.264 against him) and worrisome ones (an uncharacteristically low strikeout rate and fewer swinging strikes in October).

24. Anibal Sanchez, SP, Nationals

Sanchez intentionally walked 10 batters this year — the most by a pitcher since 2010 — which tells you something about him at this point in his career: He’s an evader, a pitcher who is content to fall behind in the count or even put a man on to avoid throwing a juiced baseball through the swing plane of a good major league hitter. Sanchez’s zone rate overall has been dropping — from 52% in 2017 to 46% this year — but in exchange, he has induced the league’s fourth-lowest average exit velocity and 11th-lowest batting average on balls in play the past two years.

25. Adam Eaton, RF, Nationals

Eaton was injured for most of his first two seasons in Washington, and like Rip Van Winkle, he returned to a very different world: His .792 OPS and 15 homers are far less impressive in this run-scoring environment than they were when he put up nearly identical numbers for the White Sox in 2015 and 2016. He might be the best two-strike fouler in the game, though.

26. Daniel Hudson, RH RP, Nationals

Three years ago, after the long climb back from Tommy John surgery, Daniel Hudson had a 1.55 ERA in mid-June for Arizona, and he was on the cusp of taking over as the Diamondbacks’ closer and/or on the cusp of being traded to a playoff contender when disaster hit: Hudson had one of the worst months in major league history, allowing 28 runs in eight innings, and just like that, it was two steps forward and about 15 steps back. As such, it’s extremely satisfying to see him now, in 2019, as the co-closer on a World Series team — and not just its closer but its savior, as this bullpen was one of the worst bullpens in history before Hudson arrived at the trade deadline and began to settle it down.

27. Joe Smith, RH RP, Astros

Smith is a side-arming veteran who mows down right-handers and avoids barrels, having allowed as many home runs in his 13-year career as Justin Verlander has allowed in one-and-a-half seasons as an Astro. Smith threw only one-third of an inning for Houston last October, and this regular season, he was at best sixth in Houston’s bullpen order, but he has climbed into high-leverage late innings with a strong postseason.

28. Brian Dozier, 2B, Nationals

Two years ago, Dozier was an MVP candidate, and now he has started exactly one of Washington’s 10 playoff games, but that isn’t to deny that he still has his merits, such as the ability to punish left-handers (against whom he hit .280/.375/.525 this year) or score himself with one swing (only 10 second basemen homered more frequently than he did this season). He had a strange reinvention in the second half as an ultra-disciplined contact hitter, walking nearly as often (28 times) as he struck out (31) but shedding exit velocity and homering once in his final 20 games.

29. Josh James, RH RP, Astros

October hasn’t been quite the showcase I’d hoped it might be for James, whose changeup was the second-most whiff-inducing in the majors and whose slider was fourth. He’s just too wild to really count on — four walks in five postseason innings, with more than a third of his pitches coming from behind in the count — even if he is capable of coming in and punching out Edwin Encarnacion, Giancarlo Stanton and Gary Sanchez in a perfect outing, as he did in the first game of the ALCS.

30. Tanner Rainey, RH RP, Nationals

Rainey’s most recent four outings — 3 2/3 innings across the LDS and LCS — mark only the third time all season that he has gone that long without issuing a walk, excellent timing for a bullpen that was in desperate need of a third good reliever to get to Hudson and Doolittle. Rainey is a strikeout monster who tops 100 with his fastball, has the league’s whiffiest slider, walks almost a batter per inning, gets crushed when he’s behind in the count and might be the most important unknown — one way or the other — in this World Series.

31. Jose Urquidy, Swingman, Astros

As a starter at three levels this year — including 41 late-season innings with the Astros — Urquidy struck out 11 batters per nine innings and six batters for every walk, but the world rarely trusts short right-handers with average-or-worse velocity. The Astros trust him enough to make him the long man in their postseason bullpen games but, thus far, not enough to let him start one.

32. Ryan Zimmerman, 1B, Nationals

It’s easy to write off Zimmerman as old and busted, based on his sub-replacement 2019 season, but if you expand your view — for instance, he has hit .284/.345/.520 the past three years — or zoom in to the strong September that followed his injury-marred summer, you can see plenty of reasons besides nostalgia (Natstalgia?) for Davey Martinez to have given him so much playing time this October. Zimmerman is still in the 90th percentile for exit velocity, and he has become such a pull hitter that it’ll be interesting to see whether he and the Crawford Boxes get romantic.

33. Aledmys Diaz, UT, Astros

The Astros traded for Diaz to replace super-utility guy Marwin Gonzalez last winter, and besides starting games at all four infield positions and in the outfield, Diaz took a big leap forward with his plate discipline this season. He doubled his walk rate while cutting his strikeout rate, but he remains crowded out of the Astros’ lineup and has been limited to seven pinch-hitting appearances in this postseason.

34. Yan Gomes, C, Nationals

Gomes hit .261/.400/.478 against left-handed pitching this year, which is a real bummer since Houston might not give a single inning to a left-handed pitcher in this series. Gomes hit well in the second half, he has World Series experience, he’s a solid if unspectacular defender, and for what it’s worth, Washington’s pitchers were a little bit better with him behind the plate this year.

35. Kurt Suzuki, C, Nationals

Suzuki hit .343/.375/.582 against left-handed pitching this year, which is a real bummer since Houston might not give a single inning to a left-handed pitcher in this series. Suzuki is a below-average framer, a below-average thrower and a below-average blocker, so Washington will have to decide whether his above-average bat still plays in this series or whether a 1-for-20 October is enough to tilt the bulk of playing time to Gomes.

36. Josh Reddick, RF, Astros

HOUSTON — Justin Verlander will follow Gerrit Cole and start Game 2 of the World Series for Houston against Washington on Wednesday.

Zack Greinke will start for the Astros on Friday when the Series resumes at Nationals Park.

“Greinke gets to hit. That’s going to be fun for him,” Astros manager AJ Hinch said Monday.

Greinke has a .225 career batting average with nine homers, including three this season for Arizona before he was traded to Houston on July 31.

Houston plans a bullpen game for Game 4 on Saturday.

HOUSTON — The Houston Astros issued a statement late Monday denying a Sports Illustrated report regarding the behavior of a team executive in the aftermath of the club’s pennant-clinching win in the American League Championship Series on Saturday.

According to the report, during the postgame celebration in the Houston clubhouse after the Astros’ 6-4 win over the New York Yankees, assistant general manager Brandon Taubman turned to a group of female reporters — including one wearing a purple, domestic violence-awareness bracelet — and repeatedly yelled, “Thank god we got Osuna! I’m so f—ing glad we got Osuna!”

Last season, Houston closer Roberto Osuna, 24, served a 75-game suspension for violating Major League Baseball’s domestic violence policy. Osuna, then a member of the Toronto Blue Jays, was charged in May 2018 with domestic assault, however the charge was later withdrawn when the woman he is alleged to have assaulted made it clear she would not travel from Mexico to Toronto to testify.

Osuna agreed to a peace bond, which required him to not contact the woman and to continue counseling.

He was acquired by the Astros shortly before the end of that suspension.

This season, Osuna led the AL with 38 saves, but he blew a two-run lead in the Astros’ series-clinching win, giving up a two-run homer to New York’s DJ LeMahieu in the ninth inning. Houston won in the bottom of the inning off a Jose Altuve home run.

The Astros statement read, “The story posted by Sports Illustrated is misleading and completely irresponsible. An Astros player was being asked questions about a difficult outing. Our executive was supporting the player during a difficult time. His comments had everything to do about the game situation that just occurred and nothing else — they were also not directed toward any specific reporters. We are extremely disappointed in Sports Illustrated’s attempt to fabricate a story where one does not exist.”

Taubman was promoted to assistant GM by the Astros late last season. He was worked for the club since 2013.