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World Series Preview: A Matchup With No Underdog

Justin Turner, left, is the engine of the Dodgers’ offense. Justin Verlander is the star of the Astros’ pitching staff.Credit...Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press; Ronald Martinez/Getty Images.

LOS ANGELES — Upset winners and unsung heroes are part of the charm of the World Series. Yet at its core, as the culmination of the longest, most punishing schedule in major professional sports, the event should be a showcase for excellence — and greatness will be out in force this time.

The 113th World Series, which starts here on Tuesday between the Los Angeles Dodgers (104-58) and the Houston Astros (101-61), will be the first matchup of 100-victory teams in nearly 50 years. The last such meeting, between Baltimore and Cincinnati in 1970, resulted in an emphatic five-game triumph for the Orioles.

“I don’t care how many games you’ve won, whether it’s 100 or 109, like we won the year before,” said Jim Palmer, the Hall of Fame pitcher, whose 109-win Orioles had lost to the 100-win Mets in five games in 1969.

“When it’s four out of seven, it’s hard to stop momentum. It’s not like you can put on the brakes or put up a roadblock and guarantee a couple of rainouts. You play two, have an off-day, play three more.’’

Palmer said he thought the bullpens could be the difference in this Series. The Dodgers’ relievers, with the maestro Kenley Jansen as the closer, held the Chicago Cubs scoreless across 17 innings of the National League Championship Series. The Astros’ bullpen was shakier in the A.L.C.S.; besides Lance McCullers Jr., who earned a four-inning save on short rest to close out the Yankees on Saturday, Houston relievers had a 5.93 earned run average in that series.

The engine of each team’s offense has a look all his own. Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner revels in his long, red hair and shaggy beard — and hit .322 with a robust .945 on-base plus slugging percentage this season. Astros second baseman Jose Altuve is the shortest everyday player in the majors at 5 feet 6 inches — but this season he’s probably the best player, too. Altuve led the majors in batting average, at .346, and hit .400 in the A.L. playoffs.

“Jose Altuve is a perfect player,” Astros Manager A.J. Hinch said this month, and who could argue?

Other notables dot the lineups — the newcomer Cody Bellinger and the old pro Chase Utley for the Dodgers; the homegrown sensations Carlos Correa and George Springer for the Astros — and both pitching staffs include an ace yearning for a championship. The Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw, 29, and the Astros’ Justin Verlander, 34, have won the Most Valuable Player Award, and will probably spend their golden years gathering on a stage in Cooperstown every July. But neither has a World Series title to his name.

Kershaw, who will start Game 1 against another top left-hander, Dallas Keuchel, went 18-4 and led the National League in earned run average for the fifth time, with a 2.31 mark. He reached 200 strikeouts for the seventh time, and despite middling postseason numbers over all (6-7, 4.40 E.R.A.), the Dodgers have now won eight of his last nine playoff appearances.

“His desire to be great is relentless,” said Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, after the N.L.C.S was over. “You watch how he prepares, you watch how he goes about his work every fifth day, and for all that he has put into this game, knowing how badly he wants to pitch in a World Series, I’m overcome with joy for him that he gets to experience this.”

Kershaw has spent his entire 10-year career with the Dodgers, while the Astros are just getting to know Verlander, who joined them in a trade from Detroit on Aug. 31, moments before his eligibility for the postseason would have run out.

Verlander has taken the mound nine times for Houston, postseason included — and gone 9-0 with a 1.23 E.R.A. He brings elite pitching and star power to the World Series; his fiancée, the supermodel Kate Upton, wore a 1980s-vintage Astros warm-up jacket, with the old rainbow design, to the on-field celebration after the final game of the A.L.C.S.

“I just congratulated him, and told him I was proud of him and what he had done,” said Nolan Ryan, an Astros executive and Hall of Fame pitcher, after Verlander was named the most valuable player of the series. “He stepped up and he’s a big part of this ball club. I enjoy power pitchers, and he was a real pleasure to watch.”

Verlander will start Game 2 of the World Series on Wednesday, probably against the Dodgers’ Rich Hill. The series’ starters should also feature the All-Stars Yu Darvish (in his final performance or two before free agency) and Alex Wood for the Dodgers, and the Astros’ shutout duo from Game 7 against the Yankees, Charlie Morton and McCullers.

“Teams driven by stats or by names, they don’t do anything, they don’t get anywhere,” Morton said in the raucous clubhouse after Game 7 of the A.L.C.S. “Teams with grit, a tight-knit bond, those teams outperform expectations.”

That may be true, but both of these teams were expected to contend, and both fulfilled their promise all year long.

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George Springer led the Astros in home runs this season.Credit...Elsa/Getty Images

The Astros use their best power hitter, George Springer, in the leadoff spot. He went just 3 for 26 in the A.L.C.S., but bashed 34 homers in the regular season with a strong .367 on-base percentage.

“He’s an incredible tone-setter — his presence, his energy, his knowledge of the strike zone, his threat to do exactly what he did tonight,” Hinch said after Springer homered in a victory this summer. “He’s a middle-of-the-order bat who’s leading off the game, and once it rolls back around, you can see how productive he can be getting the most at-bats of the night.”

As fastball velocity rises in the majors, use of the curveball — with its greater speed variation than the slider — is also up. No two starters throw more curves than the Astros’ McCullers and the Dodgers’ Hill. McCullers, who silenced the Yankees with a flurry of curveballs to close out Game 7 of the A.L.C.S., threw curveballs on 47.4 percent of his pitches in the regular season, by far the most for any major leaguer with at least 100 innings. Hill ranked second, with 37.5 percent curveballs. McCullers throws the pitch much harder than Hill, with an average velocity near 86 miles an hour, compared to about 74 m.p.h. for Hill.

Besides Bellinger, no Dodger hit 30 homers or drove in 80 runs this season. But if their offense seems underwhelming, consider the lineup for their last World Series game, in 1988: Steve Sax, Franklin Stubbs, Mickey Hatcher, Mike Marshall, John Shelby, Mike Davis, Rick Dempsey, Jeff Hamilton, Alfredo Griffin. Nobody on that Dodger team had more than 25 homers or 82 runs batted in, but with stellar pitching (including two complete games from Orel Hershiser) and the timeliest of all timely hitting (Kirk Gibson’s iconic homer to end Game 1), the Dodgers upset the Oakland A’s in five games.

Few players have ever matched the all-around skills and longevity of the Astros’ Carlos Beltran. He is one of five players with at least 2,700 hits, 400 homers, 300 steals and multiple Gold Gloves, along with Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Willie Mays and Andre Dawson. Yet only two of those players — Rodriguez and Mays — have won the World Series. Beltran lost in his previous appearance, with St. Louis in 2013.

While Houston’s catcher is the seven-time All-Star Brian McCann, the Dodgers’ Austin Barnes keeps a lower profile. A backup to Yasmani Grandal for most of the season, Barnes emerged to start six of the Dodgers’ eight games in the playoffs. The team acquired him with Enrique Hernandez from Miami in a seven-player deal in December 2014 that sent second baseman Dee Gordon to the Marlins.

Barnes, who by then had played part of just one season above Class A, supports the theory that minor league numbers translate to the majors: his on-base percentage in the minors, .388, matches his on-base percentage for the Dodgers, and his slugging percentage (.439 in the minors, .430 for the Dodgers) is nearly identical.

Jansen wears No. 74, a number worn by only nine other players in major league history. For Jansen, it was not simply a high number assigned randomly one spring training. He chose it to honor the street address of his boyhood home in Willemstad, Curacao. His parents had struggled to keep the house after Jansen’s father suffered a stroke when Jansen was 12. Baseball success has taken care of the mortgage.

“The short story is I helped my parents save the house,” Jansen said a few years ago. “We had good times, good memories over there, and also we went through a lot of tough times with the 74. That’s why I’m wearing it.”

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Jimmy Wynn, left, Larry Dierker, center, and Jose Cruz wearing Houston jerseys of the past in a 2012 ceremony.Credit...Pat Sullivan/Associated Press

Neither team began with its current nickname. For their first three seasons, the Astros were known as the Colt .45s, after a suggestion from a fan named William Neder, who wrote in a contest entry, “The Colt .45 won the West and will win the National League.” In the team logo, smoke rose from a pistol to form the “C” in Colts. In December 1964, with the Colt firearms company considering a lawsuit over merchandising rights, the team owner Roy Hofheinz changed the name to Astros to capitalize on the space race.

“The name and insignia will help dispel the image of Texas as a land of cowboys and Indians,” Hofheinz said.

The Dodgers went through several names in their early years in Brooklyn — Atlantics, Grays, Bridegrooms, Superbas, Robins. In the 1930s, the name Dodgers — for folks who dodged trolley cars on their way across busy Brooklyn streets — finally stuck.

Visitors to Minute Maid Park know the word “coyotes” has only two syllables: those are “ky-oats” who wail along the trail in the clap-along seventh-inning stretch anthem “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” Likewise, fans at Dodger Stadium — from the South Bay to the Valley, from the West Side to the East Side — groove along to Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” after every win.

Both teams have 10 retired numbers, including No. 32 for a pitcher. The Dodgers’ 32 honors the Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, but the Astros’ honoree is far less known. In April 1964, before the Dodgers or most teams had retired any numbers, the Astros — then still known as the Colt .45s — retired 32 for Jim Umbricht, a top reliever in their first two seasons as an expansion team. After posting a 2.01 E.R.A. in 1962, Umbricht was found to have a malignant tumor in his leg. He returned after surgery and pitched well again, but died of lymphoma the next spring at age 33.

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Nolan Ryan can be found sitting behind home plate at Minute Maid Park.Credit...Bob Levey/Getty Images

If you miss seeing Mary Hart on “Entertainment Tonight,” for which she was a host from 1982 to 2011, you can still find her on TV, on the far right of your screen behind the home plate for games at Dodger Stadium with her husband, Burt Sugarman. In roughly the same seating location for the games at Houston’s Minute Maid Park, you’ll see Nolan Ryan with his wife, Ruth. And you’ll almost surely see the ubiquitous Marlins Man — a Miami lawyer and sports superfan named Laurence Levy — in his trademark orange jersey and visor somewhere close by.

The Dodgers are one of just three teams without a mascot, joining the Yankees and the Los Angeles Angels on the no-fun list. Luckily, the Astros have Orbit, a fat and furry green prankster with little baseballs affixed to his antennas. Orbit, who likes to shed his shirt and streak across the field to celebrate winning streaks (get it?), is known for playfully teasing the players; he held a sign reading “I’m Not Touching You” while hovering inches from the head of the notoriously twitchy Adrian Beltre. Orbit is a rival of the Tampa Bay Rays’ Chris Archer, who presented him with a formal “Declaration of Unfriendliness” after a series of madcap antics this summer.

The Dodgers’ Hernandez and Josh Fields are former Astros, and Houston’s Josh Reddick has played for Los Angeles. Outfielder Jimmy Wynn, known as the Toy Cannon, ranks fourth on the Astros’ career home run list and played for the Dodgers in the 1974 World Series.

Don Sutton, the Dodgers’ career leader in wins, losses, shutouts and strikeouts, left the team as a free agent to join the Astros in 1981. He fractured a kneecap in his final start of that season and missed the playoffs, but several others have played in the postseason for both teams, including Fields, Reddick, Enos Cabell, Danny Heep, Jose Lima, Davey Lopes, Jeff Kent and Rafael Landestoy.

A meeting of former National League West rivals, this World Series feels a bit like the 2014 Super Bowl between the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos; for decades, the matchup occurred multiple times every regular season.

But the Astros, who moved to the A.L. in 2013, did face the Dodgers in a playoff series after the strike-shortened 1981 season, when baseball staged a best-of-five series between the first- and second-half winners of each division. The Astros — who had beaten the Dodgers in a one-game playoff to win the West the year before — took the first two games in Houston but dropped the last three at Dodger Stadium.

Nolan Ryan had no-hit the Dodgers two weeks before, but he lost the finale to Jerry Reuss, who spun a five-hitter against his former team to send Los Angeles on its way to a championship.

A correction was made on 
Oct. 25, 2017

An article on Tuesday about the singularly strong winning records of both teams playing in the 113th World Series misidentified the team for which Josh Fields currently plays. It is the Dodgers, not the Astros.

How we handle corrections

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: A Matchup Of Two Equals In Excellence. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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