The Houston Astros and Washington Nationals meet Tuesday night at Minute Maid Park. Will Game 1 set the tone for the 2019 World Series?

What's on tap

8:08 p.m. ET: Nationals at Astros, Game 1

The view from inside the ballpark

HOUSTON -- Other than the additional media setting up shop at Minute Maid Park, it would have been hard to distinguish Monday's pre-World Series workouts from regular-season batting practice sessions.

The Astros seemed particularly loose, but also very focused, during their round of BP, with George Springer and Jose Altuve alternating between laughing and dancing near the cage and stopping for quick conversations with younger players who are going through the process for the first time, such as Yordan Alvarez. It will be intriguing to see if having so many guys who were part of the 2017 championship run will give the Astros any edge over a Nats team with just six players who previously have appeared in a World Series. -- Dan Mullen

A stat to impress your friends: The Nationals' starters have struck out 36.1% of batters faced this postseason, the highest percentage ever through the league championship series; the Astros are right behind them on the all-time list at 31.6%.

Two questions

1. How much will the Nats' rust and the hangover from the Astros' weekend elation play a factor in Game 1?

Don't buy into this storyline for the Nationals. To a man during the Nationals' media session Monday they said the days off aren't an issue. "We've been doing this for seven, eight months," starter Patrick Corbin said. "There won't be any rust." As for an American League Championship Series hangover, Alex Bregman did admit to not getting any sleep Saturday night. He said he got some on Sunday -- at least until his fantasy football alerts would wake him up. So if the Astros lose and Bregman struggles, blame fantasy football. -- David Schoenfield

Zero. The numbers show that the whole too-many-days-off issue is more myth than reality, and Max Scherzer getting a few extra days off to rest his arm is much more important than any idea of the Nats cooling off with six days between games. As for the Astros and an ALCS hangover? Game 1 of the World Series in front of your home crowd should be a pretty good cure. -- Mullen

2. What's the best fan outfit/sign/prop/etc. you've seen so far in Houston?

Obviously, it has to be Polish Pete and his ode to Jose Altuve. Wait, is ode the right word? Maybe not. As a friend of mine who lives in Texas said, "We love a good polka in Texas." So, yes, the Nationals have Gerardo Parra and his "Baby Shark" walk-up music that gets the stadium going, but the prediction here is that the Altuve Polka will soon be heard in bars all around Houston. -- Schoenfield

The most excited I've seen anyone around Houston so far came from Justin Verlander when he found out 2017 World Series champion teammates Brian McCann and Evan Gattis will combine on the first pitch before Game 1. If the rest of Houston is as excited as JV is, it's going to be a loud start to this Fall Classic. -- Mullen

Predictions

Pick against Gerrit Cole at home with six days' rest after allowing one run in three playoff starts so far? Not me. Max Scherzer pitches well, but the Astros tack on a couple of late runs and Yordan Alvarez finally hits his first postseason home run. Astros 5, Nationals 1 -- Schoenfield

The Astros don't lose at home. Cole doesn't lose, period. Scherzer will make this one fun, but it's really hard to imagine Houston dropping the opener of this series at a rocking Minute Maid Park. Astros 3, Nationals 2 -- Mullen

Best of the playoffs so far

Our running postseason MVP: How good is Gerrit Cole right now? Everyone agrees he was a little off in Game 3 of the ALCS, yet he nonetheless shut out the Yankees over seven innings for a huge Astros win. For the postseason, Cole is 3-0 with a 0.40 ERA and 32 strikeouts, giving up one run, 10 hits and eight walks in 22⅔ innings. Needless to say, he is on track for one of the best postseasons ever for a starting pitcher.

The 50 players on these two World Series rosters will be tested over the next seven games, they will be examined in minute detail, and the things they do will influence everything we remember about them for the rest of their careers and beyond.

But this is where they stand today: Here is your guide to all 50 players we anticipate will be on the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals in the 2019 World Series, organized by how prominently each should figure into his team's hopes and plans.

1. Max Scherzer, SP, Nationals

In his five years with the Nationals, Scherzer has thrown the most innings in baseball, has the second-best ERA by any starter, has the third-best FIP of any starter and has the most WAR (FanGraphs or Baseball Reference model) of any starter. The first half of his 30s -- ages 30 to 34 -- rank sixth in the history of the game by B-Ref's WAR. He just turned 35, but he's arguably as good as he has ever been: His league-leading FIP this season was a career best, his strikeout rate -- which has climbed six years in a row -- was a career high, and the 43rd pitch he threw in the NL wild-card game was his fastest fastball since 2015.

2. Alex Bregman, 3B, Astros

One downside to extreme patience -- and Bregman, with the lowest chase rate in the majors this year, has that -- is that taking a lot of pitches can put the batter behind in a lot of counts. That's no matter to Bregman: He hit .304/.393/.611 after falling behind 0-1 in the count, the 16th-best post-0-1 OPS this century (and he had the 19th-best post-0-2 OPS), which is part of why he's one of the two-to-four best players in the majors right now.

3. Gerrit Cole, SP, Astros

In the three months since the All-Star break, the very worst back-to-back starts Cole threw were probably Aug. 28 and Sept. 2, when he did this: 12 2/3 innings, 28 strikeouts, three walks and a 3.55 ERA, with both starts coming against playoff teams and both ending in Astros victories. In fact, the nine playoff teams faced Cole 11 times this year, and they hit .150/.218/.288 with 109 strikeouts in 75 innings, good for a 1.67 ERA for Cole and a 10-1 record for the Astros.

4. Justin Verlander, SP, Astros

In his entire career as a Tiger -- a career that might have been good enough to get him into the Hall of Fame, a career that included four seasons leading the league in strikeouts -- Verlander had seven starts in which he got more than 20 swinging strikes. As an Astro just this season, he had 10 such starts, plus one more in ALCS Game 5. His strikeout rate in the second half was the third-highest in major league history.

5. Anthony Rendon, 3B, Nationals

The slick-fielding, power-hitting, strikeout-avoiding, universal-respect-garnering Rendon, according to Baseball-Reference, has five nicknames, but four are just variants of his name said in a hurry, while the fifth is nearly perfect: Tony Two Bags. That tag would be all the way perfect -- he has led the NL in doubles the past two seasons, with aesthetically perfect totals of 44 each year -- except he has to share it with the unworthy Mitch "Mitchy Two Bags" Moreland, who neither possesses the correctly alliterative first name nor boasts the dominant, well-rounded game that allows Rendon's doubles proficiency to be emphasized as a stylistic flourish rather than as a backhanded compliment.

6. Stephen Strasburg, SP, Nationals

Strasburg, once the most famous pitching prospect in history, has been in Scherzer's shadow for the past five years, but this is the second season in the past three in which he has so dominated the second half and the postseason that we start to wonder whether this is it, when he emerges as the best pitcher in baseball. In this moment, rooting for Strasburg is almost a historical imperative: He's still a slight underdog to make the Hall of Fame, and this incredible thing he has been doing in the postseason -- a 1.10 ERA, 57 K's and five walks in 41 career innings -- is both pushing those chances upward and giving us that very rare gift -- a baseball thing we'll be able to tell our grandchildren about decades from now.

7. George Springer, CF, Astros

This was a pretty good year for Springer: He added sprint speed (according to Statcast), had his best year on defense, conquered right-handed pitching for the first time, set career highs in homers and slugging (along with half the league, to be fair), and might have snuck atop some MVP ballots had he not missed most of June. I don't know if his greatness is in danger of getting lost among all the other great Astros' greatness, but he's 23rd all time in championship win probability added (cWPA), directly behind Reggie Jackson and David Ortiz.

8. Juan Soto, LF, Nationals

No hitter in baseball combines discipline on pitches outside the strike zone with assertiveness on pitches inside the strike zone like Soto, whose first two seasons are so uncharacteristic of his age that finding a suitable 20-year-old comp requires going back to ... I don't know, Bob Dylan or Mary Shelley or Ted Williams. While anybody can flip a bat after a home run or pump a fist after striking out the side, Soto alone celebrates incremental gains in count leverage, following every taken ball with what has become known as The Soto Shuffle.

9. Jose Altuve, 2B, Astros

Two years can change a player -- especially second basemen, who traditionally age early, quickly and miserably -- and across the 2019 season, Altuve was roughly half the player he was in 2017, when he led the league in stolen bases (this year he had six) and challenged .350 (this year he challenged .300 and lost) and won the MVP award. But Altuve's second half this season (.325/.373/.622) was MVP-worthy, and he leads all hitters in total bases this postseason -- more than the next two Astros combined -- so what sort of pessimist would be here complaining about fewer stolen bases?

10. Carlos Correa, SS, Astros

Correa is 10th among all active players in WAR per game, but three injury-shortened seasons have kept him from finishing an unmistakable MVP-level season. He's the strongest shortstop in the game, with a Tulowitzki-esque arm and a home run rate that led all major league shortstops this year and that only Alex Rodriguez (four times), Ernie Banks (three times) and Trevor Story (once) ever topped.

11. Patrick Corbin, SP, Nationals

It isn't just that Corbin is the only third starter in baseball who is better than the Astros' third starter, Zack Greinke. It's also that he's better than probably 26 teams' No. 2 starters and at least 20 -- maybe as many as 25 -- teams' aces. Among starters, his slider gets the highest whiff rate, though it's a little misleading to call it "a" pitch: Corbin can shape it different ways, and in just the postseason, he has thrown it as hard as 86 mph and as slowly as 78, which helps him get away with throwing it almost half the time without batters ever getting comfortable with it.

12. Zack Greinke, SP, Astros

This version of Greinke doesn't throw very hard and doesn't get many strikeouts, but he does two things very well: He avoids homers (ninth-best HR/9 in baseball), and he avoids walks (third-best BB/9). When he's ahead in counts, he ranks 52nd out of 61 qualifying pitchers in strike rate, as he cautiously works around the edges to prevent any unnecessary hittable pitches. When he's behind in counts, he ranks first in strike rate to avoid free passes.

13. Michael Brantley, LF, Astros

Players older than 30 collectively had their worst year in a half-century, but the 32-year-old Brantley was one exception, producing his best season since 2014. He's an extreme contact hitter -- only David Fletcher whiffed less on pitches in the zone -- and he usually pulls the ball, but this year he did uncharacteristic damage when he didn't, batting better than .400 and slugging almost .600 when he hit to the opposite field.

14. Yordan Alvarez, DH, Astros

Three weeks ago, Alvarez would have been higher on this list, but the worst-timed slump -- he's 225th out of 226 postseason participants this year in championship win probability added -- has knocked him from fifth to seventh in the Astros' lineup and from wherever he would have been on this list to right here. In the regular season, he was the second-best rookie hitter in history, behind only Shoeless Joe Jackson, so this slump (at least one strikeout in every game played, huge spikes in chase and whiff percentages) is truly shocking, though it's slightly less so once we realize that Alvarez's quality of pitchers faced in the regular season was fourth-lowest in baseball.

15. Trea Turner, SS, Nationals

Turner is the fastest player in these playoffs -- and the second-fastest in the majors this year, by Statcast's sprint speed -- but he has become fairly conservative with his speed, attempting fewer stolen bases, fewer "extra" bases as a baserunner and only one bunt this season. That isn't to say his speed isn't a big advantage: He had the majors' third-highest batting average and second-highest slugging percentage on ground balls this year, which made him a better hitter by OPS+ than 36 players who outhomered him.

16. Victor Robles, CF, Nationals

Robles is like his teammate Trea Turner, except not quite as fast, not quite as strong, not quite as disciplined on pitches out of the zone, not quite as good at making contact and not quite as efficient on the bases. Yet he might actually be the better player, thanks to one signature skill: running down hard-to-run-down fly balls. Robles led the league in outs above average, a Statcast-derived defensive metric for outfielders, and he should win a Gold Glove this year, an accomplishment all the more impressive for how many goofs the rookie made during a choppy, anomalous April.

17. Roberto Osuna, RH RP, Astros

Osuna, at 24 years old, has already been around forever -- he's eighth among all active pitchers in both saves and postseason relief appearances -- and, like all veteran pitchers, he keeps tinkering, relying more often on a power changeup this year and reaching a new career high for fastball velocity. The Astros used him conservatively in the regular season -- he entered the eighth inning for a save only once (and blew it) -- but that was probably to protect him for this month. He has already seen three eighth innings this October, and he threw as many as three innings in a game last postseason.

18. Robinson Chirinos, C, Astros

Chirinos is a below-average thrower and a below-average framer, but the Astros threw the fewest wild pitches in the American League this year, and Chirinos -- who rates as the second-best blocker in the game, according to Baseball Prospectus' advanced measures -- was a big reason for that. He has 13 career WAR, and they've all come since he turned 30. For a catcher who is only four months younger than Brian McCann, Chirinos looks shockingly fresh.

19. Will Harris, RH RP, Astros

The Astros got Will Harris on waivers just after he turned 30, and since then, he has the third-best ERA in the majors. He's a two-pitch pitcher -- cutter and curve -- who doesn't have the mean scowl of a closer or the snapping velocity of a closer, but he has most likely been better over the past half-decade than your favorite team's closer(s).

20. Howie Kendrick, 1B, Nationals

Kendrick is obviously not Christian Yelich, but like Yelich, he was a ground ball hitter, an other-way hitter and a singles hitter who unlocked something in his swing relatively deep into his career, improved his contact across the board and began to mash like an MVP. Kendrick hasn't hit quite as well or for as long as Yelich, but his .344/.395/.572 line this year included the 12th-best OPS in the majors, and for the third year in a row, he set a career-best line against right-handed pitching. That's an incredible late-career bloom for a player who, two years ago, was nothing but a pinch hitter on the Nationals' postseason roster.

21. Yuli Gurriel, 1B, Astros

Among those few hitters who manage to carry a reverse split deep into a career, Gurriel is one of the most extreme cases: Of the 150 right-handed batters with the most playing time the past four years, Gurriel is the 36th-best at hitting righties and just the 91st-best at hitting lefties. He's a dead-pull hitter who manages to pull even more balls at home, where the short left field helped him slug .615 in Houston this year.

22. Ryan Pressly, RH RP, Astros

Pressly missed most of September and hasn't really regained his spot in the Astros' pecking order -- he still hasn't pitched a full inning this postseason and has been most recently called into games in the third, the fifth and the 11th -- but he's still one of the 10 or 20 best relievers in baseball. He throws twice as many breaking balls as fastballs, even in three-ball counts.

23. Sean Doolittle, LH RP, Nationals

Doolittle's apparent simplicity is part of what makes him such a joy to watch: Like the Dodgers' more famous relief ace, Kenley Jansen, Doolittle mostly throws one pitch (a "rising" fastball, in Doolittle's case), he mostly throws it for strikes (the fourth-highest strike rate in baseball this year), and over an eight-year career, hitters haven't figured out how to square him up. His season stats this season were torpedoed by two bad weeks in August -- following heavy usage in July and preceding a stint on the DL -- but his seven effective weeks since include both very encouraging signs (opponents hitting just .132/.164/.264 against him) and worrisome ones (an uncharacteristically low strikeout rate and fewer swinging strikes in October).

24. Anibal Sanchez, SP, Nationals

Sanchez intentionally walked 10 batters this year -- the most by a pitcher since 2010 -- which tells you something about him at this point in his career: He's an evader, a pitcher who is content to fall behind in the count or even put a man on to avoid throwing a juiced baseball through the swing plane of a good major league hitter. Sanchez's zone rate overall has been dropping -- from 52% in 2017 to 46% this year -- but in exchange, he has induced the league's fourth-lowest average exit velocity and 11th-lowest batting average on balls in play the past two years.

25. Adam Eaton, RF, Nationals

Eaton was injured for most of his first two seasons in Washington, and like Rip Van Winkle, he returned to a very different world: His .792 OPS and 15 homers are far less impressive in this run-scoring environment than they were when he put up nearly identical numbers for the White Sox in 2015 and 2016. He might be the best two-strike fouler in the game, though.

26. Daniel Hudson, RH RP, Nationals

Three years ago, after the long climb back from Tommy John surgery, Daniel Hudson had a 1.55 ERA in mid-June for Arizona, and he was on the cusp of taking over as the Diamondbacks' closer and/or on the cusp of being traded to a playoff contender when disaster hit: Hudson had one of the worst months in major league history, allowing 28 runs in eight innings, and just like that, it was two steps forward and about 15 steps back. As such, it's extremely satisfying to see him now, in 2019, as the co-closer on a World Series team -- and not just its closer but its savior, as this bullpen was one of the worst bullpens in history before Hudson arrived at the trade deadline and began to settle it down.

27. Joe Smith, RH RP, Astros

Smith is a side-arming veteran who mows down right-handers and avoids barrels, having allowed as many home runs in his 13-year career as Justin Verlander has allowed in one-and-a-half seasons as an Astro. Smith threw only one-third of an inning for Houston last October, and this regular season, he was at best sixth in Houston's bullpen order, but he has climbed into high-leverage late innings with a strong postseason.

28. Brian Dozier, 2B, Nationals

Two years ago, Dozier was an MVP candidate, and now he has started exactly one of Washington's 10 playoff games, but that isn't to deny that he still has his merits, such as the ability to punish left-handers (against whom he hit .280/.375/.525 this year) or score himself with one swing (only 10 second basemen homered more frequently than he did this season). He had a strange reinvention in the second half as an ultra-disciplined contact hitter, walking nearly as often (28 times) as he struck out (31) but shedding exit velocity and homering once in his final 20 games.

29. Josh James, RH RP, Astros

October hasn't been quite the showcase I'd hoped it might be for James, whose changeup was the second-most whiff-inducing in the majors and whose slider was fourth. He's just too wild to really count on -- four walks in five postseason innings, with more than a third of his pitches coming from behind in the count -- even if he is capable of coming in and punching out Edwin Encarnacion, Giancarlo Stanton and Gary Sanchez in a perfect outing, as he did in the first game of the ALCS.

30. Tanner Rainey, RH RP, Nationals

Rainey's most recent four outings -- 3 2/3 innings across the LDS and LCS -- mark only the third time all season that he has gone that long without issuing a walk, excellent timing for a bullpen that was in desperate need of a third good reliever to get to Hudson and Doolittle. Rainey is a strikeout monster who tops 100 with his fastball, has the league's whiffiest slider, walks almost a batter per inning, gets crushed when he's behind in the count and might be the most important unknown -- one way or the other -- in this World Series.

31. Jose Urquidy, Swingman, Astros

As a starter at three levels this year -- including 41 late-season innings with the Astros -- Urquidy struck out 11 batters per nine innings and six batters for every walk, but the world rarely trusts short right-handers with average-or-worse velocity. The Astros trust him enough to make him the long man in their postseason bullpen games but, thus far, not enough to let him start one.

32. Ryan Zimmerman, 1B, Nationals

It's easy to write off Zimmerman as old and busted, based on his sub-replacement 2019 season, but if you expand your view -- for instance, he has hit .284/.345/.520 the past three years -- or zoom in to the strong September that followed his injury-marred summer, you can see plenty of reasons besides nostalgia (Natstalgia?) for Davey Martinez to have given him so much playing time this October. Zimmerman is still in the 90th percentile for exit velocity, and he has become such a pull hitter that it'll be interesting to see whether he and the Crawford Boxes get romantic.

33. Aledmys Diaz, UT, Astros

The Astros traded for Diaz to replace super-utility guy Marwin Gonzalez last winter, and besides starting games at all four infield positions and in the outfield, Diaz took a big leap forward with his plate discipline this season. He doubled his walk rate while cutting his strikeout rate, but he remains crowded out of the Astros' lineup and has been limited to seven pinch-hitting appearances in this postseason.

34. Yan Gomes, C, Nationals

Gomes hit .261/.400/.478 against left-handed pitching this year, which is a real bummer since Houston might not give a single inning to a left-handed pitcher in this series. Gomes hit well in the second half, he has World Series experience, he's a solid if unspectacular defender, and for what it's worth, Washington's pitchers were a little bit better with him behind the plate this year.

35. Kurt Suzuki, C, Nationals

Suzuki hit .343/.375/.582 against left-handed pitching this year, which is a real bummer since Houston might not give a single inning to a left-handed pitcher in this series. Suzuki is a below-average framer, a below-average thrower and a below-average blocker, so Washington will have to decide whether his above-average bat still plays in this series or whether a 1-for-20 October is enough to tilt the bulk of playing time to Gomes.

36. Josh Reddick, RF, Astros

The Astros are the most conservative baserunning team in baseball -- they took the "extra" base on hits only 33% of the time, easily the lowest in MLB -- and Reddick might best illustrate it: He took the extra base 53% of the time in his final season before joining Houston and has since dropped to 44%, then 36%, then 22% this year. That's lower than Albert Pujols' rate, despite Reddick's still having average speed. The king of drawing catcher's interference, Reddick has already clipped the catcher's mitt once this postseason.

37. Jake Marisnick, CF, Astros

The one area in which Houston is weaker this year than in 2017 is at the bottom of the order, in part because Marisnick's career year in 2017 evaporated immediately. He's still a fantastic defender -- he ranked 11th in baseball in Statcast's outs above average, despite playing only about half the time -- and the fastest player on this Astros' roster, so it isn't hard to squint and see him getting a chance to play the hero as a defensive replacement or pinch runner.

38. Kyle Tucker, OF, Astros

In the second game of the ALDS -- which Tucker started in right field -- the lefty swung and missed at a fastball that passed across the logo on the bill of his helmet -- amazingly high. That was a sign of what was to come for the Astros' top hitting prospect, who will surely star in a future postseason or two but has whiffed on half his swings in this one.

39. Martin Maldonado, C, Astros

Gerrit Cole's personal catcher, Maldonado caught 10 of Cole's starts after joining Houston and only one by Justin Verlander or Zack Greinke. After he joined the Astros, he hit .286/.412/.762 at home, with five of his six homers into the Crawford Boxes in left field; he hit .119/.213/.167 everywhere else.

40. Michael A. Taylor, CF, Nationals

Thanks to Victor Robles' injury in the NLDS, Taylor has played more complete games this postseason (five) than he played in the regular season from mid-May onward (four). He played really well in those five games -- homered, hit .300, made the diving catch to end the NLDS -- but is now back to the bench, where he offers good speed, excellent defense as a late-inning replacement and a flimsy bat that can't handle right-handers or left-handers.

41. Asdrubal Cabrera, UT, Nationals

Among players traded at the deadline this year, only Nicholas Castellanos outhit Cabrera, who was released by Texas just after the deadline, signed for the pro-rated minimum salary with Washington and hit .323/.404/.565 down the stretch as the Nationals' part-time second baseman. He has faced Justin Verlander more than any other pitcher in his career and has hit .276/.345/.474 in those 86 plate appearances, so it wouldn't be shocking to see him start over Ryan Zimmerman in Verlander's two games.

42. Brad Peacock, RH RP, Astros

No, Peacock isn't as much a part of Astros lore as Ryan Zimmerman is for the Nationals, but appreciate this about him: He and Altuve are the only two Astros left from 2013, when Rick Ankiel, Philip Humber, Bud Norris, Fernando Martinez, L.J. Hoes, Brandon Barnes, Erik Bedard & Co. went 51-111 and reached the dankest stage of the four-year rebuild. Peacock was a kid then. He's an old man now, at least as far as right-handed relievers go, and you'd like to imagine that when he isn't pitching, he pulls up his storytellin' chair and lights his storytellin' pipe and tells the kids what swears Bo Porter knew and what it was like to talk about pitching with Clemens (Paul).

43. Austin Voth, RH RP, Nationals

Victims of the Nationals' incredible starting rotation this postseason: 1) Dodgers; 2) Cardinals; 3) Voth, who hasn't pitched a single inning this October, despite emerging as a solid starter this summer. We figured he'd be an important part of this shallow bullpen, but when the starters go seven innings per game, there isn't much need to gamble on a fourth or fifth reliever -- not even one who, like Voth, seems like he would be pretty good.

44. Hector Rondon, RH RP, Astros

Rondon was still throwing high-leverage innings for Houston in September, but that felt like a lie. He was throwing fewer strikes and getting fewer whiffs than at any point other in his career, and his slider in particular was failing to find the zone or entice hitters to chase. He has faced two batters in October: one in the fourth inning with Houston already down by four and one to close out the ninth inning with Houston up seven.

45. Fernando Rodney, RH RP, Nationals

It has been nearly a decade and a half since the 42-year-old Rodney last appeared in the World Series, with Detroit in 2006, and he's somehow still basically the same: same mid-90s velocity, same disappearing changeup, same basic peripherals, same ambivalent flirtation with the strike zone, same wild swings between dominance and chaos. If he gets into a game this series, he'll pass Mike Timlin as the 16th-oldest pitcher to appear in a postseason game.

46. Gerardo Parra, OF/1B, Nationals

The Baby Shark guy. Parra's still a good defensive right fielder, capable if not threatening at the plate, and he's worth carrying on a postseason roster just for the energy his late-inning pinch-hitting appearances bring to the home crowd -- not unlike the effect of Angel Stadium's Rally Monkey videos in the early- and mid-2000s.

47. Matt Adams, 1B, Nationals

When only a home run will do, there's Adams, who hit 20 homers in part-time play while otherwise strangling the Nationals' offense with a .276 on-base percentage as a first baseman. The Astros have a lot of pitchers who can get left-handed batters out but no actual lefty, which might open the door for Adams to pinch hit, a role in which he went 3-for-33 with two homers this year.

48. Roenis Elias, LH RP, Nationals

"Who is Roenis Elias," you might wonder, if you are an actual player on the actual Nationals and you can't figure out where you've heard that name before. Elias is lefty reliever who briefly closed for Seattle this year, got traded to Washington at the deadline, missed two stretches with hamstring injuries, threw a grand total of three regular-season innings as a Nat and, to my knowledge, hasn't so much as warmed up in the postseason.

49. Bryan Abreu, RH RP, Astros

Abreu is a 22-year-old with nine career big league innings, a mid-90s fastball and a high-spin curve, and he will enter a contested game in this World Series in only one circumstance: It's the 19th inning or later, and even the Astros' starting pitchers have all been used. That means he will work only innings that don't matter at all, or else the whole arc of history will come down to him.

50. Javy Guerra, RH RP, Nationals

If you're old enough, you'll remember when teams used to carry 10-man pitching staffs with seven pinch hitters on the bench, and that's basically what the Nationals are doing, except without the pinch hitters. Like Voth and Elias, Guerra is around, he's part of the 25, he's on the bus, he's in uniform, he's dropping into conversations things such as, "you know, I had the highest strike rate in the National League this year" and "boy, I've waited a long time and traveled a long way to get a chance to pitch in the postseason," but at this point, Davey Martinez is more likely to try to sneak Patrick Corbin into a game twice than call Guerra.

MOSCOW -- A Russian hockey team has been fined after its coach threatened to set fire to a referee's car.

The Kontinental Hockey League fined Amur Khabarovsk 300,000 rubles ($4,700) after coach Alexander Gulyavtsev shouted "I'm going to set fire to your car in Perm," a reference to the Russian city where both he and referee Viktor Gashilov are from.

Gulyavtsev was protesting a penalty awarded against his team in Monday's game against Dynamo Moscow.

Gulyavtsev later claimed he meant the comments as "a joke," adding that "I just said car, it's not as if I said apartment."

However, the KHL ruled the comments breached its rules on insulting and threatening officials. The league warned Amur that cases like this "tarnish the image" of the league.

Dynamo Moscow won 5-1.

The 2020 NHL draft has long been heralded as one with an exciting class with a lot of top-end talent. In the early going of the season, there has been a clearer separation between the top prospects in this class and those who somewhat fall in line, illustrating a more dramatic drop-off after the first four to six picks than we've seen in recent years.

Although there is currently a consensus No. 1 prospect, there is also a bigger group of players chasing that spot than normal. We've seen Jack Hughes and Rasmus Dahlin go wire-to-wire as No. 1 prospects in the past two drafts, but that might not be the case in 2020. This class starts at the top with Alexis Lafreniere, the presumed No. 1 for some time. His early season tear has helped reestablish his presumed dominance over the class, but the continual improvement and development of Quinton Byfield make him the most legitimate challenger right now.

Remember, this is a very, very early list, and there's bound to be a lot of movement between now and our midseason rankings. There's a lot of work to do and a lot left to learn about the class. But at this point in the draft year, here are my top 25 prospects for the 2020 NHL draft, updated from my June edition.

1. Alexis Lafreniere, LW, Rimouski Oceanic (QMJHL)

Height: 6-foot-1 | Weight: 196

An intelligent, aggressive forward who has shown improvement away from the puck, Lafreniere is an absolute highlight machine. He has high-end puck skills but also uses his frame well to create space for himself. The end result has been a mountain of early season points, as he continues to build a body of work that already includes making Team Canada as an under-ager, earning CHL Player of the Year honors in 2018-19 and tallying 185 points in 121 games entering this season.

Although the QMJHL can be an offense-friendly league, Lafreniere is absolutely torching it, to the tune of 2.50 points per game in the early going. If Lafreniere keeps his scoring pace up, it will be one of the more dominant draft seasons in recent memory. Sidney Crosby's final QMJHL season saw the future Hall of Famer produce 2.71 points per game, and Jonathan Drouin is the most recent U19 player to come "close," as he had 2.35 points per game in his draft-plus-one season. Lafreniere has his challengers to the top spot, but given his long history of production and his improvement in other elements of his game, he has a good head start.

2. Quinton Byfield, C, Sudbury Wolves (OHL)

Height: 6-foot-4 | Weight: 215

When at his best, Byfield is an unstoppable force capable of putting a team on his back and taking it to the next level. After posting a rookie-of-the-year campaign in the OHL in 2018-19 by leading the Wolves offensively on their march to the playoffs, Byfield has been scoring at a more than two points per game pace in the early going this season, showcasing an unmatched combination of speed and power in the major junior ranks.

The comparisons that Byfield has drawn to Eric Lindros are lofty, but it's hard not to be enamored with his 6-foot-4, 215-pound frame, especially when he moves as quickly as he does. Byfield also has an excellent shot, allowing him to score from distance, on top of his ability to drive the net for close-range chances. With Lafreniere being a wing and Byfield a center, there is a little debate on positional value and overall impact in regard to that No. 1 spot on the draft board.

3. Alexander Holtz, RW, Djugardens (SHL)

Height: 6-foot | Weight: 192

Arsenal captain Granit Xhaka has blasted former Manchester United defender Patrice Evra and labelled his criticism as "bull----."

Unai Emery's side lost 1-0 to newly promoted Sheffield United at Bramall Lane on Monday and Evra condemned Arsenal's performance.

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"Sheffield United deserved the win, but I'm not surprised about Arsenal," Evra told Sky Sports.

"I used to call them 'my babies' 10 years ago, and they are still, when I look at them and think they are 'my babies,' that's the truth -- I'm not being disrespectful when I say that."

Xhaka responded to Evra after the game and questioned why former players were quick to criticise Arsenal.

"We have to stop speaking about mental [issues] or bull---- like this," he said. "For me it's the same if you play home or away. You have to win. You have to show big character. You have to show good games and not to find always the same excuse.

"A lot of people speak too much. I hear that the first time he [Evra] speaks something against us. I have a lot of respect about him, because he was a great player. But you have to be careful what you say in those situations as well.

"For me it's strange because they were in the same situation as us, they were players as well.

"Maybe sometimes it was good, sometimes it was not so good. But how I say if you speak every weekend, every game, bull---- like this they speak, they don't get respect about what they say.

"I think we did a lot of good things. I think Sheffield had one chance, it was the goal. That's it."

Arsenal dropped outside of the top four after suffering their second Premier League defeat this season.

Arsenal face Guimaraes to the Emirates on Thursday in the Europa League before hosting Crystal Palace on Sunday.

Among all Indian fast bowlers who've taken at least 10 wickets in home Tests, Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav have the best strike rates. It's a fact Virat Kohli is well aware of - he brought it up himself in his post-match press conference after India wrapped up a 3-0 Test series victory over South Africa in Ranchi.

What makes Shami and Umesh so dangerous in Indian conditions? According to Kohli, it stems from the attacking lines they bowl, and their fitness, which allows them to bowl relentlessly in those areas.

"If you look at these two guys, their strike rate is probably the best in Indian conditions in history, which tells you that these guys hit the stumps and the pads more than anyone else before them." Kohli said. "It's again a great sign of the kind of intent that the bowlers are running in with now. The fitness levels obviously have gone up, so your brain is obviously supporting what you want to do, because your body also will support that workload.

"You bowl three good overs and if you're tired, then the other two [overs in the spell] are not as effective, and you lose the opportunity to take a wicket after creating pressure. But these guys are relentless, they're running in to just take wickets, bowl in areas that make batsmen uncomfortable.

"The focus was on spin [in the lead-up to the series], but the pacers have done the damage. We've become a multi-dimensional team now, and it's not [just] one thing that you need to counter when you're playing against us."

India's fast bowlers ended the series with a collective bowling average of 17.50. South Africa's quicks, in comparison, averaged 70.20.

After the first Test in Visakhapatnam, where Shami had run through South Africa in the fourth innings, Kohli had said Shami was capable of getting more help out of Indian pitches than anyone else he had seen. Asked how he and Umesh were able to get that sort of help while their South African counterparts could not, Kohli said it was mindset that set India's fast bowlers apart.

"We speak of doing things differently," Kohli said. "On a green pitch, say the openers walk into bat and feel like, 'well, the opposition hasn't gotten many runs, so we might not either', then you're not going to get runs. If you believe we can score runs on green wickets, you will get a hundred when the others don't. So it's about mindset.

"As fast bowlers, if you feel like there's nothing in the pitch but we can make something happen, you will make it happen, because that's the kind of effort you want to bowl with. If you look at a pitch and you just give up, then you're getting nothing out of it, so it's the mindset. They want to make things happen, they don't want easy cricket, they don't want easy situations, they want to have things which are challenging, and then they try to come on top, because it's going to do the team a lot of good if you do well in difficult scenarios.

"It's all about the mindset. They run in to bowl, they ask - even if the ball is doing a little bit - after the spinners have bowled, they immediately want the ball back, so they want to make an impact, they want to make breakthroughs, and I think it's about the positive mindset they've created for themselves."

When India went to South Africa last year and played on green, seaming pitches, they lost the first two Tests despite putting the hosts under pressure at various points, but came back to win the third in Johannesburg. The return tour didn't have anything like the same degree of competitiveness.

"Yeah, look, when we went to South Africa, we know that we competed in every game, and eventually ended up winning the last Test as well," Kohli said. "It was all about one session or maybe an hour of bad cricket that cost us games, so we understand that, to compete in conditions which are not yours, you need to be positive every single minute of every day on the field. If you let five minutes of negativity creep in, it's a downward slide from there.

"We understand that it can get difficult, but we have also applied a lot of pressure on the opposition, especially in our conditions, so it's difficult to keep up when the [other] team is playing so well, but yeah, focusing on the positives of our team, I don't think we allowed the opposition to get into any game, at any stage at all."

India handed a debut to Shahbaz Nadeem in the third Test, after he came into the squad as a late replacement for Kuldeep Yadav. Close to 15 years after his first-class debut, the left-arm spinner enjoyed an excellent Test debut, picking up four wickets and finishing the match with two in two balls. Kohli said India had always been aware of Nadeem's quality as a bowler.

"I've played with Nadeem before as well, Under-19 as well, and we've always known he's quite a skilful bowler, the kind of skill he has with his conventional left-arm spin," Kohli said. "He puts revolutions on the ball, his seam position is really good, bowls at a good pace, and when you've taken 420 wickets in first-class cricket, you can come and bowl four maidens straight up in a Test match [like Nadeem did]. He's capable of bowling in one area.

"I think he's made a very good start. He bowled with a lot of composure. It's amazing how things can change dramatically in life. Two days before the Test, he was in Kolkata, and from there he came here and played. He was not out with the bat, he pulled off an excellent run-out, and in both innings he bowled well, so I'm quite happy for him. I've known him for a long time. He's obviously a quality bowler, and for us to bring him in on this kind of track as a replacement, we already knew he has the quality. From here, he'll only keep building."

Namibia 159 for 6 (Smit 43, Erasmus 37, Davey 2-29) beat Scotland 135 for 8 (MacLeod 39, Frylinck 2-15) by 24 runs

With captain Kyle Coetzer sitting out still feeling the effects of dehydration after a draining half-century in Monday's win over Papua New Guinea, Scotland looked deflated coming up against a rested Namibia unit, who stormed to their first win of the tournament by 24 runs.

Namibia's top-order failed once again after opting to bat first at the toss, reduced to 46 for 3 in the seventh over. But captain Gerhard Erasmus helped steady the innings after entering at No. 5 to build a 49-run stand with Craig Williams. Erasmus was the aggressor, slogging two straight sixes in his 37 off 26 balls before he sliced a slog to short third man off Tom Sole's offspin in the 14th.

JJ Smit was sent in at No. 6 and provided a crucial finishing kick to the Namibia innings. The allrounder struck four straight sixes off Sole, Safyaan Sharif and Josh Davey in a blistering 43 off 22 balls before falling in the 19th over, a knock which earned him Man-of-the-Match honours before he fell off a full toss to deep midwicket. Nine more runs off the final over took Namibia to 159, making 99 off the last 10 overs to reach a total that was more than enough on a ground with an 80-meter boundary to the western side which has made quick scoring difficult all week.

Craig Wallace came into the XI and opened in the absence of Coetzer but was knocked over second ball by Ben Shikongo who clipped the top of the stumps with a back of a length ball to beat Wallace's slog. An even bigger blow was struck in the field nine balls later when George Munsey, Scotland's most consistent batsman at this tournament, was run-out after taking on Niko Davin's arm from the 80-meter boundary at deep backward square but wound up well short of the relay to Smit over the non-striker's stumps coming back for a third run.

Calum MacLeod and stand-in captain Richie Berrington did well do reconstruct the innings with a 48-run stand. Scotland were 64 for 2 at the 10-over mark, four runs ahead of where Namibia had been, but constant rotation of the bowling unit by Erasmus and disciplined lines built enough pressure for the Scotland innings to burst. Berrington fell to an excellent diving catch at deep midwicket by Jan Frylinck to end the stand, sparking the first of five consecutive men caught on the boundary as the required run rate climbed forcing Scotland to hit out in vain.

MacLeod eventually fell to end the 15th, driving Frylinck to Christi Viljoen at long-off for a stodgy 39 off 46 balls. Scotland were reduced to 107 for 8 when Mark Watt was caught at short fine leg failing to get elevation scooping a full toss from Viljoen. But Sharif and Davey scored 28 off the last 15 balls to mitigate the net run rate damage Scotland took with the loss, something which could be crucial by the end of the group on the net run rate tie-breaker.

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- The New England Patriots have acquired veteran wide receiver Mohamed Sanu from the Atlanta Falcons in exchange for a second-round draft pick, league sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter.

Sanu gives the Patriots an inside target, especially on third down, to help take pressure off top target Julian Edelman. The 6-foot-2, 210-pound Sanu, 30, is in his eighth season and has 33 receptions for 313 yards and one touchdown this season.

With Edelman (ribs), fellow starter Josh Gordon (knee) and No. 3 target Phillip Dorsett (hamstring) all on the injury report in recent weeks, Sanu provides veteran insurance at a position where the Patriots are still adjusting following the release of Antonio Brown in September.

Undrafted free agents Jakobi Meyers and Gunner Olszewski have helped fill some of that void, but now high expectations on them will lessen. First-round draft pick N'Keal Harry is also eligible to return from injured reserve for the Nov. 3 game against the Baltimore Ravens.

The Patriots have long had an affinity for Sanu, who played at Rutgers alongside current Patriots defensive backs Devin McCourty and Duron Harmon, and entered the NFL as a third-round draft choice of the Cincinnati Bengals. The club had been trying to trade for Sanu since before the draft, according to Schefter.

A second-round pick is a significant price to pay, but one reason the Patriots might have felt comfortable doing so is that Sanu's contract extends through the 2020 season. The Patriots will pay Sanu a prorated portion of his $6 million base salary in 2019, and Sanu is scheduled to earn a base salary of $6.5 million in 2020.

In terms of draft capital, the Patriots are also projected to receive two third-round compensatory draft picks in 2020, for the free-agent losses of Trey Flowers and Trent Brown in the offseason. If that's the way it unfolds, the Patriots would have a first-round pick and three third-rounders on the first two days of the draft. Compensatory picks are slotted in at the end of the round.

Los Angeles Lakers coach Frank Vogel made a lot of strong decisions during his tenure as coach of the Indiana Pacers, but there was one mistake that's been hard to forget.

In Game 1 of the 2013 Eastern Conference finals Vogel took his defensive center, Roy Hibbert, off the floor for the final play of overtime against the Miami Heat. He conceded to the danger of small ball center Chris Bosh getting open for a jumper and was afraid switching would result in a bad match up elsewhere.

LeBron James crushed the strategy, zipping past Paul George for an uncontested layup at the buzzer with one of the best basket defenders of this era on the bench. The Heat won by one point and ended up taking the pivotal series in seven games.

That decision still stings.

At his core, Vogel believes in the power of having a great defensive center. He pushes back against the contemporary notion that centers have lost their value and the game has moved past having a somewhat stationary basket defender patrolling the front of the rim.

With James now on his team, Vogel sees a way to turn back the clock. But he needs some greatness from James to get it done. Specifically, for the Lakers to accomplish their goals and follow their plans, they need a great defensive season from No. 23.

"The league's modern-day offenses are designed to invert your defense. To get switches and 7-footers guarding point guards and point guards guarding bigs down low," Vogel said. "We want to resist that temptation. There are still times when you have to do it, but we want to do it as little as possible."

The Lakers' roster features the personnel to make this vision work. Vogel has two classic centers who are good at defending the rim and gifted at blocking shots in JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard. And they have a defensive wizard in Anthony Davis who can do it as well. In theory, the Lakers could have one of the best rim-defending teams in the league.

Right from the start of the preseason, Vogel had his guards playing old-school basketball and getting up in players faces on the perimeter. Avery Bradley was running a clinic in this regard. It also plays toward the strength of players like Danny Green, Rajon Rondo and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. The idea is to deny jump shots and encourage drives right into the big guys prowling in the paint, known as "funneling" the offense into the best defenders.

This was the basis of how Vogel built one of the league's best defenses around Hibbert in Indiana, when the big man changed the game by learning to master the "rule of verticality" that enabled him to defend and make contact with drivers without fouling.

Hibbert and other centers like him are out of the league now. Teams are playing smaller and quicker big men because they're so worried about screens freeing up great shooters. But the Lakers plan to do a lot of dropping their centers back and fighting over screens instead.

This system requires the forwards to work very hard on defense. They have to commit to helping the center and also getting out to the shooters that nearly every team has spacing the floor. It's an energy-zapping exercise that requires discipline because the opposition will surely test it.

"I'm born to have workload, it's who I am," James said. "Defensively is where we set our mark, and everything else falls into place."

Starting in the 2008-09 season, not coincidentally the year he won his first MVP, James made all-defensive first team five consecutive seasons. During his Heat years from 2010-14 he was demonic on that end, prowling for steals and putting on a nightly clinic in help-and-recover.

Those Heat teams often would trap on screens, triggering turnovers that led to their vicious fastbreaks that would flip games from tight to blowouts in a handful of minutes. Coach Erik Spoelstra would signal in the play by clasping his hands together, appropriately as if he were wrapping them around the opposition's neck.

But it just took so much energy that it was hard to keep it up. By the 2013-14 season, James' last in Miami, he was slipping on defense. He made the all-defensive team that year, but only the second team and some of it was on reputation. When he got to Cleveland the next season and there was no such defensive system in place, it was almost like James started going on regular season defensive vacations.

That's not to say he couldn't summon defense when needed, probably the greatest play of his career came on defense in Game 7 of the 2016 Finals when he chased down Andre Iguodala with an historic blocked shot. But there's a reason he hasn't been on the all-defensive team since he left South Florida.

Over the past couple seasons, James' defensive performance has weakened. He's been slower on close outs or, at times, doesn't even bother. He's gotten lethargic on rotations and sometimes abandons the weak side.

Two years ago in Cleveland his defensive real plus-minus ranked 44th among small forwards. But that season he was playing 82 games and conserving energy for a playoff run, where he was outstanding. Last season with the Lakers, he was part of an overall middling defensive group, although he was slowed by a groin injury.

If Vogel sticks with the system he wants to play, that isn't going to work this season. And it's already one of the things James and his high-profile new teammate are trying to address.

At the start of the season, Davis issued a challenge to James: Get back on the all-defensive team. It's a coded challenge, because whether James makes it or not, Davis wants to set a standard that he doesn't want the recent years' version of James going through the motions on defense for much of the regular season.

"We're able to take constructive criticism from each other," James said. "I can get in his ear and he can get in my ear, but it's all to make each other better and challenge each other, which will ultimately be better for the team."

We're able to be straightforward with one another and not sugarcoat anything and not take anything personal."

In their discussions over meals, on private jets and in makeup chairs while filming "Space Jam 2" this summer, James and Davis formulated a strategy for this season. They worked out together, practicing positioning on what could end up being one of the more devastating pick-and-roll combos the league has ever seen. But the talking was perhaps most important.

A central theme that came out of these taco summits, sources said, is to set a tone for the entire organization to maintain poise when the expected firestorm comes. This is for the locker room, the media and social media.

Win by 30, stay level. Lose by 30, stay level. Being on a hot streak where people want to pick the Lakers as favorites, chill. Being on a cold streak where there's rumors about the coach's job or trades, chill. When posting on social media, the idea is to involve the team and not single anyone out.

"There's going to be a lot of stuff people say; there's going to be a lot of narratives that people try to tag on the Lakers," Davis said. "People are going to try to portray the Lakers or a player as something they're not. We have to stay close."

This goes both ways. It was James who got loose during his first season back in Cleveland in 2014-15, putting out passive-aggressive tweets and occasionally talking in code that undercut teammates and coaches. It was Davis who last year handled his trade demand sloppily, getting fined by the NBA, and then going out the door with a less-than-tasteful "That's All Folks" message (good promotion for a Looney Tunes movie though).

The idea is that James and Davis will hold each other accountable toward the off-the-court machinations that threaten every newly-formed star duo. But a big part of that accountability comes back to defense. While Vogel plays a central role in motivating James and putting him in a position to be successful, when it comes down to it, James will have more built-in respect for Davis than probably anyone else on the roster.

That means that if Davis can scramble on defense to get in and back McGee and then blitz out to challenge a shot then the same can be expected from James. "Hopefully the two of them can help each other reduce the workload," Vogel said of his two big stars. "What we're trying to get is dominant defense and selfless offense."

The offensive part, when James and Davis are two of the most efficient players in league history, promises to not only be easier but also be one of the reasons to watch the NBA this season.

The defense, though, is maybe where a lot of the real attention should be focused.

"I've not played with a guy like that before and I'm not sure he's played with a guy like me before," Davis said. "We're going to feed off each other. We're selfless and we want to win."