Sometimes pitchers just run up against a team they struggle against. That's baseball.
Who'd have thought that when the World Series was done, Houston would win the series but Verlander didn't get a win. He pitched great but things worked out to give someone else the credit.
Trashing Darvish is real easy after the fact. You look at his numbers, the confidence his team had in him, of course you put him on the mound in Game 7. If Houston had him, we'd have done the same thing.
Another thing that worked was that the media completely ignored Houston pitchers not named Keuchel or Verlander. They ignored McCullers, Morton, and Peacock. Turned out those guys mattered a lot.
Finally, everyone likes to trot out the truism, '
great pitching beats great hitting'. Yes and no. If pitching
always beat hitting, batting averages of MLB players would be below .100, but in real life, sometimes a hitter figures out even a really good pitcher, and works the at-bat to get the pitch he wants. When a batter fouls off pitch after pitch, he not only drives up the pitch count, he gets a better idea of how the pitcher thinks and throws. Houston's batters solved LA's pitchers by Game 7, enough to win.
That which does not kill me, will try again and get nastier
