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Mike Napoli has just posted the best season by a 29-year-old catcher, as ranked by OPS+. CLick through for the details. Read the rest of this entry »

When Adrian Beltre's game-5-tying HR moonbeamed into the LF stands while his back knee collapsed to the ground, my first thought was: "Reggie '77."

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In game 5, Allen Craig became the 10th man ever to be caught stealing twice in one World Series game. He has at least one edge on the rest of them, though: the breath of life. Read the rest of this entry »

A little news from Ben Cherington's introductory press conference as Red Sox GM: John Lackey is getting Tommy John surgery and will miss the 2012 season.

I've also heard that the Red Sox have insurance on Lackey's contract for this possibility, meaning a lot of sting is removed, at least for that massive 2012 salary. Not too bad, considering the guy just posted the worst season in history for a regular Red Sox starting pitcher.

Last night, Lance Lynn intentionally walked the only batter he faced in the game. It seems that the wrong reliever was warming up, which is why LaRussa replaced Lynn after the free pass.

There have been just a few other instances in the playoffs of a pitcher intentionally walking the only batter faced:

Notice that every one of these cases ended up loading the bases (since 2 runners were inherited in each instance.) Probably, a double play was being set up. Also note that the WPA is not very high for any of these walks--a bit negative, but adding the extra force and possibility of a double play prevented the extra base runner from being too much of an added negative.

In the last instance before last night, Allen Watson ended up intentionally walking Lou Merloni, after Merloni pinch-hit in the middle of a plate-appearance that had been begun with Jeff Nelson throwing ball one.

There are a few reasons I can think of why a relief pitcher might face just one batter and intentionally walk them:

• As above, the batter is pinch-hit for (either during or before the plate appearance but after the pitching change) and the manager decides that the matchup is unfavorable and opts to put the guy on.
• A pitcher issues a ball and then has to leave the game either due to injury or ejection. The manager brings in an emergency reliever and simply has him issue three intentional balls while the real reliever who will take over warms.
• There is a miscommunication between the manager and bullpen coach during the most important game of the year, resulting in the wrong pitcher warming up. No wait...that could never happen--it's ludicrous.

Since there are only a handful of World Series games each year, the same size is never very large for any particular set. Nevertheless, it's sometimes fun to see if there are any patterns.

Here are the last 20 times that a team was shut out in a World Series game:

We don't yet know about the 2011 series, but before that you have to go all the way back to the Yankees' loss in Game 2 of the 1996 series to find a team that got shut out but eventually won the championship.

The only other teams among these 20 to win the World Series were the 1993 Blue Jays, 1986 Mets, and 1985 Royals.

In all, there have been 112 shutouts in the World Series since 1919, and that's in 535 total World Series games (which includes through Game 4 of the 2011 series, again through 1919.) On a percentage basis, that's 20.9% of World Series games that resulted in shutouts.

By taking a quick peek at the MLB Pitching Encyclopedia, it looks like about 4.3% of games have historically ended up with either team being shut out. Although I calculated that using a weighted average, it's still an average over a lot of different eras, but nevertheless it does suggest that it's good pitching more than good hitting that gets teams to the World Series.

Since 1974*, B-R's Event Index finds four World Series relievers who allowed a multi-run HR on their first pitch of the game: Read the rest of this entry »

Derek Holland was removed from Game 4 after getting an out in the 9th, and wound up with no runs charged to him. How rare is that?

• It was the 3rd out of 2,656 postseason starts to last at least 8.1 IP but less than 9 IP, with no runs allowed: Read the rest of this entry »

Allen Craig has tied the record for most post-season pinch-hitting appearances in a season with a WPA of at least 0.09:

He benefits, of course, from playing in an era with more post-season games in a year, but nevertheless he's been excellent.

Albert Pujols went 5-for-6 last night with 3 homers and 6 RBI. Not bad for a guy who some thought was washed up.

It was a great game, no doubt, but because the Cardinals already had a big lead when he did much of his heavy hitting, it wasn't worth all that much in terms of WPA.

His value of .211 for the game is quite low. Here are all the 3-HR regular season games from 2011:

As you can see, Pujols' performance would rank as one of the "worst" as compared to this group, not that this is his fault (but rather a credit to his teammates.)

In fact, Pujols' game is the lowest-ranked 3-HR game in post-season history:

In fact, even most of the 118 2-homer post-season games resulted in more WPA than Pujols got yesterday.