World Series Game 1: Arizona Diamondbacks v Texas Rangers – live | World Series

Diamondbacks 0-0 Rangers, top 1st

Gabriel Moreno is up next for the Diamondbacks. He actually gets ahead in the count 2-1. He swings and misses at another splitter, a pitch working well for Eovaldi, he takes another pitch to work a full count but eventually strikes out to the end the top of the first.

Diamondbacks 0-0 Rangers, top 1st

Eovaldi gets Ketel Marte to hit a foul ball and then swing and miss on a low splitter. 0-2. The next pitch is a ball. 1-2. Marte fouls the next one off before taking another ball. 2-2. He then grounds out, again right to first.

Diamondbacks 0-0 Rangers, top 1st

Eovaldi gets a strike on pitch two and induces a groundball out to first for the game’s first out.

First pitch!

Oh never mind, here’s the big dramatic montage. Oh well, I will never get sick of watching Carlton Fisk waving the ball fair. You have to play the hits if you’re FOX.

We’re almost in time for the actual baseball! The official broadcast has begun and… oh wow, not even a big long dramatic montage. I like how more down-to-earth this is compared to the NFL postseason.

Derek Jeter interviews former Texas Rangers owner, and current mediocre painter, George W Bush, who is throwing out the first pitch. The broadcast reminds us that he did the same thing to kick off the 2001 World Series, immediately after 9/11.

Of course, the Diamondbacks famously *won* that series. So, well, it’s an interesting choice for the Rangers in that respect.

National anthem

Today’s national anthem is courtesy of H.E.R., who I mostly know for being absolutely huge among people who vote for the Grammy Awards. Not a bad target demo to have. She is perfectly acceptable as always. 6/10.

We’re getting the team announcements now. It’s fun that they broadcast these for the first home games of the World Series. I love the ceremony of the whole thing.

Predictions

My main prediction: this is not going to be a short series. The Phillies have the better offense, and had the best defense in the American League all season long. However, they lack depth in their pitchers outside their frontline starters. Meanwhile, the Diamondbacks can’t rely on the big home runs like the Rangers, but they have the kind of opportunistic offense that can absolutely feast on bad pitching. On the flipside, Arizona also has the superior bullpen depth. This will be the meeting of two very different with evenly matched rosters. I have the Rangers in six, maybe seven.

I also predicted a Phillies-Astros rematch. So who knows, however.

In Game 1, however, I’m betting on Nathan Eovaldi continuing with his postseason success. He’s 8-3 lifetime in the playoffs, with a 2.87 ERA, and has already helped the Boston Red Sox win their most recently title back in 2018. If he goes deep in this game, the Rangers will have an excellent chance to get a Game 1 victory. If they lose, the Rangers might already be in a deep hole.

Your thoughts? Again, we’re taking them here, feel free to email them to hunter.felt.freelance@theguardian.com or tweet them to @HunterFelt.

Rangers starting lineup

1. Marcus Semien, 2B

2. Corey Seager, SS

3. Evan Carter, LF

4. Adolis García, RF

5. Mitch Garver, DH

6. Jonah Heim, C

7. Nathaniel Lowe, 1B

8. Josh Jung, 3B

9. Leody Taveras, CF

Starting pitcher: Nathan Eovaldi,

Arizona Diamondbacks lineup

1. Corbin Carroll, RF

2. Ketel Marte, 2B

3. Gabriel Moreno, C

4. Christian Walker, 1B

5. Tommy Pham, DH

6. Lourdes Gurriel Jr., LF

7. Alek Thomas, CF

8. Evan Longoria, 3B

9. Geraldo Perdomo, SS

Starting pitcher: Zac Gallen

Brief history

The Diamondbacks are in their second World Series, having beaten the New York Yankees in 2001 (the first and still most dramatic World Series of the millennium). The Rangers made it this far twice in their existence They lost back-to-back appearances in 2010 and 11.

Since the Rangers have been in Texas since 1972 (they were the Washington Senators for a decade before that) it’s arguable that they’ve been waiting longer than the expansion Diamondbacks, who came into existence in 1998. That is not, however, how Major League Baseball works: championships aren’t awarded based on who’s been waiting longer.

Preamble

When you’ve been doing a job for a while, you often feel a certain sense of deja vu. This won’t be the first time I’ve started a Game 1 liveblog by saying something equivalent to, “nobody had these two teams as being the last ones standing at the end of the season.”

However, let’s be real: this has to be the most unlikely and impossible-to-predict World Series matchups of the Wild Card era. The Ringer attempted to figure out the likelihood of this happening and they estimated something of a .006 percent chance, a real Han Solo “never tell me the odds” moment.

It also leaves us, the sports-talking media, in somewhat a bind. How do you hype up a series between two teams that have no history between them and are rarely in the national spotlight? There are no clear superstars here, at least not yet, and no obvious storylines to make our jobs easier.

Well, here’s the wonderful thing about sports: if you put two teams together and force them to play four-to-seven games, storylines will emerge! Sports are narrative-creating machines and drama can emerge out of nowhere.

Let’s take this Arizona Diamondbacks season. When the Philadelphia Phillies took a 2-0 lead over them in the NLCS, it looked like Philadelphia was destined to make its second-straight World Series. Instead, Arizona rallied to come back and won both Games 6 and 7, taking advantage of Houston’s inability to win at home. Not bad for a team that ended their regular season with an 84-78 record, putting them 16 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in their own division.

The Rangers didn’t technically win their division either, they had an identical record to the Houston Astros, who were awarded the division on the tiebreaker. This ultimately didn’t matter, the Rangers upset the Astros when the games mattered most, holding on to win a seven-game series against the MLB’s Designated Villains, relying on clutch home runs to shift momentum back in their favor whenever it looked like Houston had regained control.

Now, the Rangers will start proven postseason performer Nathan Eovaldi, who has gone 4-0 with a 2.42 ERA in these playoffs, while the Diamondbacks will start Zac Gallen, 2-2 with a 5.24 ERA in his first four playoff games. If it sounds like Texas has the edge today, well, it would be a mistake to assume anything during this postseason where the favorites have continually faltered.

As always, we would love to hear your thoughts as the game progresses. You can send in predictions, commentary and questions either via email (to hunter.felt.freelance@theguardian.com) or Twitter (to @HunterFelt) and we’ll publish them here throughout. Or you can just sit back and lurk, it’s really up to you!

It’s Game 1 of the World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Philadelphia Phillies at Globe Life Field! First pitch is scheduled at 8:03 pm EST, but we’ll be back before that with predictions, starting lineups and other assorted nonsense.

Hunter will be here shortly. In the meantime here’s Alex Kirshner’s lookahead to the 119th Fall Classic.