By Steven Luker
We have the final two teams to battle for the 2023 MLB World Series that starts Friday in Texas. The teams we are looking at are going to be the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers.
Before we dive into players to watch out for in the World Series let talk some history of these two teams. The 2021 season had a 100 loss record season and showed improvement in 2022. The Rangers are the only team of these two that bought in a new manager for the season.
The Diamondbacks on the other hand kept their manager after the 100 loss season. The Managers of these two clubs that made it to the World Series is sixth year manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks improving the record to 84 wins and 78 losses record is Torey Lovullio who has won one World Series win as a bench coach of the Boston Red Sox in 2016.
Lovullio is also the 2017 NL Manager of the year winner. For the Texas Rangers it is under new manager Bruce Bochy, a former Giant, and Padres Manager. Bochy is also the first Manager to be in the divisional series with three different teams. Before Bochy took over it was run by Chris Woodward, a former Dodger base coach who was fired last season.
But enough about the old manager, let’s look at Bruce Bochy. The Texas Rangers this season bought in two new coaches to help and they brought back Mike Maddux to be the pitching coach and they also hired Will Venable to be an associate manager to Bochy. These two teams have bought a lot of young talent or veteran players to help their team.
In the regular season these two teams went head to head and it was a 1-1 series so it was tied between these two teams. The matchup of these two teams happened in May of the regular season.
The players to watchout for in this World Series will be as follows by team. Let start with the higher seed number five seed Texas Rangers. The players from the postseason to watch out for is Corey Seager who is batting .333 with five doubles and 15 hits and an OPS of 1.127.
The next player is going to be Adolis Garcia, a .327 hitter with seven home runs slugging .750 and OPS of 1.102 and 17 hits this postseason. The third hitter to watch out for is Evan Carter a .308 hitter with 12 hits six doubles and a .308 batting average. There are two pitchers to watch out for in the Texas Rangers.
The first pitcher we will look at is Jordan Montgomery who was a former New York Yankee and St. Louis Cardinals player and he came to Texas with Chris Stratton and the Cardinals received LHP John King, RHP Tekoah Roby and SS Thomas Saggese. Montgomery this postseason has been really great for Texas posting a three wins and zero losses record with an ERA of two point 16 and a WHIP of one point 28.
The second pitcher to look out for in Texas pitching is Nathan Eovaldi this postseason Evoladi has a four wins and zero losses record with an ERA of two point 42 and a WHIP of point 96. These are the players to watchout for in the Texas Rangers.
The last team to look out for is the number six seed Arizona Diamondbacks and they have a handful of hitters to watchout for. The first hitter we are taking is Kentel Marte who is batting .358 in the postseason with 19 hits. Another hitter Corban Carroll batting .295 and four stolen bases.
The two pitchers to watch out for Airzona is Merrill Kelly who is a two and one record with a two point 65 ERA with 19 strikeouts a WHIP of one and hitters are hitting .153 . The last player is Brandon Pfaadt who is winless in the postseason but has a ERA of two point seventy, a WHIP of one point zero eight and hitters are hitting only .246.
