2022 World Series: How the Phillies can pull off the upset and beat the Astros

Let’s get this out of the way: The Astros are a better baseball team than the Phillies.

A Phillies World Series win wouldn’t change that. Over a 162-game sample, Houston won 19 more games than Philadelphia. The gap between Houston and Philly was bigger than the gap between Philly and Oakland.

But we’ve seen this story before.

For the third time in the past four seasons, the World Series is Houston vs. an NL East team that underwhelmed for much of the year and then snuck into the postseason. In each of the two prior showdowns, the Astros were heavily favored.

Nobody in Atlanta or D.C. cares about those odds now. Flags fly forever, and the Astros, for all their American League dominance, have just one (tainted) World Series title to brag about.

Baseball is unpredictable; postseason baseball is even more so. Fifty-five times this year, the Washington Nationals showed up to a ballpark and won a ballgame. In this World Series, anything is possible. Philly could easily shock the world and pull off the upset.

Here’s how the Phillies win the 2022 World Series.

The aces show

Legendary baseball scribe Confucius once said: "You’re only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher." Seems like Confucius was a Phillies fan. 

Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler, Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola: This is Philly’s best shot at pulling off the upset. Both guys would get to pitch twice in a seven-game series. Two times two is four, and that’s how many games you need to win. Math — gotta love it.

Obviously, it’s not that simple, especially considering that Houston will have AL Cy Young favorite Justin Verlander and ground-ball machine Framber Valdez opposite Nola and Wheeler. But the universe in which Philadelphians are parading down Broad Street in 14 days’ time becomes reality only if the Phillies’ front-line pitching duo comes to play.

Wheeler has allowed just five runs across his four postseason starts, and three of those came after Rhys Hoskins bungled a very catchable grounder in Game 2 of the NLDS. Nola got knocked around in his NLCS start against the Padres but had thrown 12⅔ scoreless in his two prior starts and was one of the league’s best pitchers in the second half. Also, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a brother on the Astros, so he won’t have to worry about that anymore.

Houston’s single biggest advantage over Philadelphia in this series is pitching depth. The Astros don’t really have bad pitchers; José Urquidy (three career World Series wins) and Luis García (five scoreless innings in relief in ALDS Game 3) didn’t pitch against New York in the ALCS. They didn’t need to. 

On the other hand, the underbelly of Philly’s pitching staff — Brad Hand, Kyle Gibson, Bailey Falter, David Robertson at this point — could very well be the team’s undoing. The best way to mitigate that disadvantage? Have Nola and Wheeler suck up as many innings as possible. If your good pitchers pitch a lot, your less good pitchers won’t have to at all.

Harper stays hot, or Castellanos gets hot, or Rob Thomson switches the lineup

Bryce Harper is the best player in the series, and right now, he's probably the best player in the world. The NLCS MVP is 18-for-43 this postseason, with five homers and six doubles. His Game 5 go-ahead home run is the kind of stuff people get tattoos of. As Nick Castellanos told me Sunday during the clubhouse celebration: "Bryce is locked the f--- in right now." 

It’s probably about time teams started pitching around Harper, especially when Phillies skipper Rob Thomson continues to bat the struggling Castellanos right behind him. Harper has more extra-base hits than Castellanos has hits this postseason. Castellanos, who struggled for most of his first season in Philly, has shown flashes of breaking out but is still holding on to a 9-for-41 in October.

Why pitch to locked-in Harper if you can instead pitch to the scuffling Castellanos? If the Astros deploy that strategy, something has to give. Either Thomson needs to move Harper up the order, or Castellanos needs to start hitting.

A third high-leverage reliever steps up

So far in October, it has been the Seranthony Domínguez/José Alvarado show. Philly’s two-headed bullpen megatron has been (besides Domínguez’s too-wet outing in Game 5) automatic. But it’s tough to win a World Series with just two relievers; even the 2019 Nats had to lean on Tanner Rainey a bit.

The Phillies will do everything possible to ensure that whenever they have a lead late in games, Domínguez and Alvarado are on the bump against the top of Houston’s order. But things don’t always go to plan, and chances are some other pitcher will need to quiet José Altuve, Alex Bregman, Yordan Álvarez & Co. at some point.

Maybe that’s Connor Brogdon, or maybe it's Andrew Bellatti, both of whom have been great so far this month in lower-leverage, early-game spots. Maybe Robertson, who hasn't looked the same since returning from a calf injury, gets his act together. Maybe Zach Eflin can keep the ball in the ballyard. Maybe Hand ... actually probably not. 

Maybe the Phils go full 2019 Nats, and we get Wheeler, Nola and Ranger Suárez coming out of the pen. 

There’s no more defensive nonsense

You don’t have to be faster than the bear. You only have to be faster than the slowest person running from the bad defense ... or something like that.

All year, the Phillies have stayed just one step ahead of their own abysmal defense. It has threatened to torpedo them at every turn, but the magic combo of good offense, good pitching and good vibes has kept their ship afloat.

During the regular season, only the Rockies and White Sox had worse team defense (per FanGraphs) than Philadelphia. Every ground ball hit to a Phillies infielder right now is cause for bated breath, each dribbler an emotional journey. 

In the ALCS, the Yankees kicked it around a few times, and the Astros punished them for it. But over the course of a seven-game series, a team can hide its blemishes. All Philly has to do is catch the damn baseball.

Jake Mintz, the louder half of @CespedesBBQ is a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. Follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.