Archive for the 'Postseason' Category

Keeping Score: In a Game 7, Lee Would Be No Sure Thing – NYTimes.com

Contrary to what you may have heard, the Yankees do have a fighting chance of beating Cliff Lee if they can force a Game 7 against the Rangers.

B-R user Simmy Cohen noticed that we don't have a K/BB leaderboard on our all-time playoff pitching leaders page, and asked if I could post one today. Here you go... Career K/BB ratio leaders (along with some other stats), in the postseason, minimum 30 innings pitched:

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Two different polls...who you want to see win and who you expect to see win.

Click through to vote.
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Keeping Score: Rangers Emerge From A-Rod’s Shadow – NYTimes.com

One of the most interesting storylines of the ALCS is the fact that the Rangers now face their former star, Alex Rodriguez, a decade after lavishing him with a 10-year, $252 million contract they eventually couldn't afford.

In his two starts against the Rays this post-season, Cliff Lee pitched at least 7 innings both times while not walking a single batter.

Here are the longest post-season streaks in which the pitcher went at least 7 innings with no walks in each:

So Lee is the most recent guy to go it since, umm, Cliff Lee last year.

A few other interesting observations:

• Note how many more strikeouts Lee has in his games than anybody else.
• Carl Pavano has the biggest gap between games, completely skipping over his time with the Yankees and Indians (when he didn't make any post-season starts.) He's also the only guy to have his streak with two different teams, although Lee's two streaks have come with different teams.
• Two of the streaks on here include non-starts: both Roy Collins and Cy Young made one of their appearances in relief. Collins relieved Buck O'Brien to start the second inning and pitched the rest of the game. Young relieved Tom Hughes in the 3rd inning and finished out the game.
• Only Lee (both times) and Greg Maddux actually won all the games in their streaks.

Last week I posted about how often the team with the best Game 1 starter by WAR wins the Division Series (only 55%, as it turns out), and with the League Championship Series coming up on us quickly, I wanted to do a variation of that study for best-of-seven series.

In the wake of the Phillies' sweep of Cincinnati, many are saying their top 3 pitchers (Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, Cole Hamels) are all they really need to overwhelm an opponent, even in a 7-game series. How does that triumvirate stack up to other Top 3s since the strike? Combined, Halladay (6.9 WAR), Oswalt (5.1), & Hamels (4.7) posted 16.7 Wins Above Replacement during the 2010 season, a total that ranks 6th among LCS participants since 1995:

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In the comment section of another thread there has been a bit of a discussion about post-season pinch-hit home runs. You can create the entire list by using the Postseason Batter Event finder, searching All Teams for Home Runs and filtering for Position "PH". (I don't know if the PH for DH definition problem exists here or not.) Here is the complete list of 51:

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Eric Hinske had a huge home run tonight that went for naught. His 2 run pinch-hit home run temporarily gave the Braves an eighth inning lead over the Giants. In post-season history only 2 previous players had hit pinch hit home runs that took their team from behind and put them into the lead.

Catcher John Jaso batted lead-off for the Rays in Saturday's game vs. the Rangers. Jaso becomes the third different catcher to start a post-season game in the 1 hole. Here are all the previous games:

ATL @ SFG - Friday, October 8, 2010 Game Previews - Baseball-Reference.com.

Our absurdly indepth game previews are now setup to include the stats from games previously played in the postseason.  So if it matters to you that Freddy Sanchez is 0 for 5 (including last night's game), you can now get that data easily on the site.