The Astros might be World Series champs already if Charlie Morton had kept pitching

The Astros have a chance to win their first-ever World Series championship on Tuesday, when they take on the Dodgers in Game 6. That’s great and all, but there is a good chance that there did not even need to be a Game 6, and that the Astros should already be your 2017 champions. Had Houston done one thing differently back in Game 4, we might already be discussing the championship parade in Houston.

That one thing was the decision to remove Charlie Morton from Game 4 after just 76 pitches. Morton had been rolling, but he gave up a hit, and Astros’ manager AJ Hinch immediately signaled for the bullpen ... which promptly gave up the lead Morton had been protecting, in a game the Astros would eventually lose to the Dodgers, allowing Los Angeles to tie the series up, 2-2.

Morton started Game 4 by allowing a single to Chris Taylor. Taylor ended up being caught stealing to end the inning, so Morton ended up only facing the minimum until the top of the sixth, when Austin Barnes was hit by a pitch. Morton would escape that inning without allowing Barnes to score, keeping the Astros’ 1-0 lead intact, but that apparently was the end of any rope the starter had.

Cody Bellinger doubled in the seventh after Morton had already retired Justin Turner. Morton, at 76 pitches, with just three hits and four baserunners allowed, after just 76 pitches, seven strikeouts, and seven groundouts, was pulled from the game in favor of Will Harris, who had been hit relatively hard in the postseason to that point and showed himself to be homer-prone in the regular season.

Harris quickly surrendered the lead, allowing his inherited runner to score, but otherwise finished off the inning. Chris Devenski managed to throw a scoreless inning to follow that, and things didn’t fall apart until Ken Giles came into the ninth in a tie game in order to give the Astros a better chance of winning in the bottom of the inning. Instead, he imploded, and the Astros gave up four runs and the game in the ninth.

Now, Morton was only at 76 pitches in the sixth, and had averaged 11 pitches per inning prior to the seventh. He probably wasn’t going to finish Game 4 by himself, but he probably could have come close — throw in that he’s been well rested all postseason long, and it becomes even more likely he could have brought the Astros most of the way to a win.

Morton has made four postseason starts this October, with pitch counts of 83, 72, 54, and 76. That 54 made sense, as the Astros could bring in starting pitcher Lance McCullers in relief of Morton, and keep the Yankees’ off-balance in a win-or-go-home Game 7. In Game 4, though, the Astros needed to rely on their actual bullpen to hold a small lead, and that’s not something they were excelling at in the regular season, never mind this October, when they’ve been a disaster.

Yes, Morton was worse from pitches 76-100 this season, allowing an 845 OPS in that slice of his games. That’s not significantly worse than average, though: it’s below-average — 12 percent worse — but the Astros’ pen in the regular season was a little below-average in OPS allowed, and has been horrible in the postseason. Basically, Hinch had two different risks to weigh, and he went with a bullpen he doesn’t trust over a guy who had been mowing down the Dodgers for six innings already, who had thrown 11 consecutive scoreless frames, and had looked incredible doing so — probably, in part, because he’s much better rested than his teammates in the pen.

Hinch has a closer he doesn’t trust, a setup man who can’t be relied upon to consistently get outs, and has shown that he believes his best relievers are starters who didn’t start that day on more than one occasion: it’s why McCullers and Brad Peacock keep getting so much work, and why he even went to Justin Verlander in the ALDS against the Red Sox despite it not even being an elimination game for Houston.

Given all of that, why Morton, who was hitting all of his spots, missing bats, and inducing grounders, who probably had another 20-25 pitches in him easy, was lifted after giving up a double to a guy who hit 39 homers and is going to win the NL Rookie of the Year deserves to be questioned.

The Astros very well might have won Game 4 if Morton had been left in to clean up the tiny mess he had created. They might have won even if he had allowed Bellinger to score, but had also been allowed to give up a run without being immediately yanked from his start: the Astros wouldn’t have had to go to Giles in the ninth, because Harris and Devenski would have still been available, and maybe Morton plus one or those two is enough for Houston to secure a 3-1 lead in the World Series. They did end up scoring in the bottom of the ninth off of Kenley Jansen again, but it didn’t matter thanks to all the runs given up in the top of the frame.

Then, if Game 5 still goes the way it did, the Astros are already World Series champions. You can’t tell exactly what the effect of keeping Morton in would have been, but we know what happened when Hinch removed him. It’s only fair to think about what might have been had the Astros shown just a little more faith in a guy who helped them get to this point in the first place.

Now, none of this matters in the long run if the Astros win Game 6, or if they manage to avoid blowing their current 3-2 lead with a Game 7 victory. If the Dodgers come back and win their first World Series since 1988 with their return home, though, Morton being lifted after 76 pitches and just the third hit allowed should haunt the Astros. And maybe make teams think twice about automatically pulling a starter who’s thriving just because the hitters have already seen him twice.