Ben Francisco’s pinch-hit 3-run homer
Posted by Andy on October 4, 2011
Ben Francisco just hit a pinch-hit 3-run homer in the 7th inning against the Cardinals. Very few guys have ever hit a post-season pinch-hit homer with at least 2 runners on in the 7th inning or later:
| Date | Series | Gm# | Batter | Tm | Opp | Pitcher | Score | Inn | RoB ▾ | Out | Pit(cnt) | RBI | WPA | RE24 | Play Description | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999-10-17 | ALCS | 4 | Ricky Ledee | NYY | @BOS | Rod Beck | ahead 2-5 | t9 | 123 | 1 | 4 | 0.02 | 2.64 | .43 | Home Run; O'Neill Scores/unER; Williams Scores; Martinez Scores | |
| 1989-10-27 | WS | 3 | Bill Bathe | SFG | OAK | Gene Nelson | down 13-3 | b9 | -23 | 1 | 2 (1-0) | 3 | 0.00 | 1.90 | .00 | Home Run (Fly Ball to Deep LF); Oberkfell Scores; Manwaring Scores |
| 1954-09-29 | WS | 1 | Dusty Rhodes | NYG | CLE | Bob Lemon | tied 2-2 | b10 | 12- | 1 | 3 | 0.29 | 2.35 | 4.29 | *ENDED GAME*:Home Run (Deep RF); Mays Scores; Thompson Scores | |
| 1975-10-21 | WS | 6 | Bernie Carbo | BOS | CIN | Rawly Eastwick | down 6-3 | b8 | 12- | 2 | 5 (2-2) | 3 | 0.44 | 2.66 | 1.94 | Home Run (Deep CF); Lynn Scores; Petrocelli Scores |
| 1979-10-03 | ALCS | 1 | John Lowenstein | BAL | CAL | John Montague | tied 3-3 | b10 | 12- | 2 | 3 (0-2) | 3 | 0.39 | 2.66 | 4.38 | *ENDED GAME*:Home Run; DeCinces Scores; Bumbry Scores |
| 2000-10-05 | NLDS | 2 | J.T. Snow | SFG | NYM | Armando Benitez | down 4-1 | b9 | 12- | 1 | 4 (2-1) | 3 | 0.48 | 2.34 | 2.76 | Home Run (RF Line); Bonds Scores; Kent Scores |
Welcome to the club, Mr. Francisco.
October 4th, 2011 at 7:25 pm
I felt confident that Dusty Rhodes would be on that list.
I was pretty sure Bernie Carbo would be.
I knew JT Snow would be.
October 4th, 2011 at 7:32 pm
All 46 pinch-hit post-season homers before today can be found here:
http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/KH6Hs
October 4th, 2011 at 8:41 pm
damn, all these years, i thought gibson's shot was a 3 run jack
October 4th, 2011 at 8:46 pm
How about a 3 run HR in the bottom of the 9th being worth 0.00 WPA?
October 4th, 2011 at 8:50 pm
Yeah...every kid's dream to hit a 3-run homer in the bottom of the 9th in the World Series...except for the down-by-10-runs part.
October 4th, 2011 at 9:10 pm
Let's see how many others were preceded by an intentional walk:
-- Ledee
-- Rhodes
-- Lowenstein
So, with Francisco, that's 4 out of 7.
October 4th, 2011 at 9:41 pm
Before today, there had been 9 postseason games in which exactly 2 teammates had 4+ hits apiece.
Average runs in those 9 games: 11.7.
All 9 teams won.
The Cardinals, with Pujols & Theriot each getting 4 hits, scored 2 runs and lost.
The last 20 postseason teams with just one hitter with 4+ hits averaged 7.2 R/G, and went 14-6.
Theriot had the 8th postseason game of 4+ hits but no runs and no RBI.
The last to do that: Matt Holliday, 2007 WS, Game 2; Holliday had 4 of Colorado's 5 hits in a 2-1 loss.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS200710250.shtml
October 4th, 2011 at 9:45 pm
Pujols had the 5th postseason game with 3 extra-base hits and no RBI.
Postseason teams with a player getting 3 extra-base hits are now 49-10.
Two is the fewest runs scored by such a team, done (now) three times.
October 4th, 2011 at 10:21 pm
All of the numbers say that it was the right move to face Francisco. Numbers suck if you're a cards fan tonight.
October 4th, 2011 at 11:15 pm
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October 4th, 2011 at 11:28 pm
Completely forgot about Ed Sprague's homer. How is that not more remembered?
October 5th, 2011 at 12:13 am
@9, Roddy -- Which numbers? I'm just asking.
October 5th, 2011 at 12:36 am
i guessed 4 of them correctly! i missed John Lowenstein and Bill Bathe. shucks!
October 5th, 2011 at 1:20 am
@2, that's a great list. Ledee's was the only pinch-hit grand slam. And only 5 of them were walk-offs. Pretty exclusive.
October 5th, 2011 at 1:52 am
@ 12 Basically that Fransisco was a 1 for 18 postseason hitter, 1 for 9 vs Garcia career, and only a .245 hitter against lefties this year with 2 homers. 0 pinch homers this year.
October 5th, 2011 at 2:45 am
Numbers can say a lot of things if you completely disregard sample size.
October 5th, 2011 at 2:57 am
1 for 18 in the postseason might be the worst stat I've ever heard esp given I imagine that's spread over three seasons.
The 1 for 9 vs Garcia career is a hilarious stat. Ruiz, prior to the IBB, against Garcia? Exactly 1 for 9, but Francisco is the matchup the genius wanted.
October 5th, 2011 at 3:18 am
Bottomline is... nobody thought Fransisco was going deep. Who gives a shit about the numbers?
October 5th, 2011 at 3:20 am
I assume Roddy meant that LaRussa looked at those dumbass numbers and decided to go with the move. OR as he said "Ruiz terrorizes us" and threw the numbers out of the window. Even though, uh, Ruiz hasn't been terrorizing shit in this series. TOO MUCH FOCUS ON PAST NUMBERS INSTEAD OF WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE MOMENT. (breathe.... breathe....)
October 5th, 2011 at 5:51 am
Don't forget that walking Ruiz forced Hamels out of the game, too. The Cards hadn't done anything against him in the game so far. There's no question that it was the right move by LaRussa. The unusual result is why the moment got its own post on this blog.
October 5th, 2011 at 5:52 am
Also folks need to watch their language, please.
October 5th, 2011 at 8:52 am
@20, Walking Ruiz didn't force Hamels out of the game. His 117 pitches and shaky, yet effective six innings pitched did.
October 5th, 2011 at 9:30 am
@20 & 22, Hamels was going to be pulled regardless. Francisco was on the steps of the dugout with a bat in his hand before they decided to walk Ruiz. In fact, that may have been why LaRussa decided to leave Garcia in to pitch to Francisco. Numbers or no numbers, the fact is that Ruiz had hit the ball hard twice against Garcia already that game. Facing that or facing a batter who (let's be honest) doesn't exactly inspire fear? The decision made sense to me.
But then, I also thought that, in the bottom of the 9th, Madson should IWW Theriot and face Jay to get the third out rather than risk throwing to a guy with 4 hits that day. This is probably why I am not the Phillies manager...
October 5th, 2011 at 9:32 am
FWIW IWW would be better written IBB IMHO
October 5th, 2011 at 9:40 am
@24, Good point. I'm not even sure what the extra W was for. 🙂
October 5th, 2011 at 9:53 am
Interesting that, of the previous six such homers, there was one each from the last 2 (of the 3 total) Series for the SFG, and one more from the very last NYG Series. So this list could probably be called "Giants & Others" or "Giants & Misc." or something. . . .
October 5th, 2011 at 9:55 am
Phil, are you the same guy who keeps posting comments on the wrong thread? WTF?
October 5th, 2011 at 10:09 am
Andy, I don't see how this was on the "wrong thread," or how it was a "WTF?" moment. Look at your list. How many teams are there in the majors? How many teams were there, even before expansion? For one team, especially one that hasn't been in the postseason a lot of times recently, to be responsible for 50% of the instances on such a list is, statistically, fairly unusual. That's all I was saying, and I'm sorry that you seem to have taken it the wrong way--even though my post doesn't seem at all controversial to me and I can't see what you found wrong with it. Please tell me what I did wrong and I promise to never do it again.
October 5th, 2011 at 10:12 am
Phil, I apologize. My email notifications did something funny and I got confused. Regarding the content of your original comment, I have no quibbles whatsoever!
October 5th, 2011 at 10:26 am
Oh, okay, Andy. Apology accepted. And here I was, afraid that I'd really done something wrong!
October 5th, 2011 at 10:30 am
I thought Hal Smith's three-run homer in the bottom of the eighth of game 7 of the 1960 World Series would be on this list, but Smith had come in to catch in the top of the inning.
October 5th, 2011 at 10:37 am
Andy, I accidentally checked the "Notify me of followup comments via e-mail" box one time on here, and the notification emails for the rest of the day nearly drove me insane.
If you get notification emails all day every day for every post, you may already be insane.
October 5th, 2011 at 10:42 am
Yeah, I get a ton of emails, but the truth is that it's the only way I can keep up. If it were up to me to log into the blog to check all the comments, I wouldn't do it. Instead, I read all of the comments, most of them as soon as they get posted and the email comes through. It's a bitch when I have a few popular posts up overnight--sometimes there are 100 comments for me to read in the morning, and that takes some time. But I read 'em all.
October 5th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
According to Larry Mahnken, this is the first-ever postseason win in which all a team's runs were scored via a pinch-hit homer.
October 5th, 2011 at 1:12 pm
@34, Along the same lines, I saw somewhere else that it was the first pinch-hit home run in postseason history to break up a 0-0 tie. Hard to believe.
October 5th, 2011 at 7:10 pm
What about Tom Lawless in the 87' WS? Must not have been 7th inning or up? I'm almost POS that his was a 3-run jack as well.
October 7th, 2011 at 5:54 pm
@36, Craig -- Lawless started the game, and hit his 3-run HR in the 4th inning.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN198710210.shtml