19 Responses to “Sample Sizes and the Postseason”

1. Andy Says:
   October 5th, 2011 at 9:37 pm

   Interesting that his runs scored are nearly identical but he has a regular-season edge in RBI.

2. Jimmer Says:
   October 5th, 2011 at 9:42 pm

   You missed one other player who played in at least 75 postseason games.

3. Raphy Says:
   October 5th, 2011 at 9:59 pm

   @2 agreed.
   Tied for 7th in post-season games.
   Crazy

4. bluejaysstatsgeek Says:
   October 5th, 2011 at 10:13 pm

   OT Oddity:

   Did anyone notice that three of the four starters in tonight's NLDS games had identical ERAs of 3.69 (Oswald, Wolf & Saunders) and Jackson's was only slightly higher at 3.79!

   Seems like that could be some record for smallest range among 4 starters.

5. Voomo Zanzibar Says:
   October 5th, 2011 at 10:47 pm

   Yeah but he is 0-3 batting. That's not so good.
   The 0.71 era mostly makes up for it, though.

6. Dvd Avins Says:
   October 5th, 2011 at 11:03 pm

   You face tougher opposition in the post-season, of course. So if you maintain your rate stats from the regular season, you're actually rising to the occasion, performing at a better apparent livel of ability, not the same.

7. TheGoof Says:
   October 5th, 2011 at 11:56 pm

   I was thinking of writing in about this very topic yesterday. I noticed it about Jeter's stats during the course of the year. Glad you got it in!

8. TheGoof Says:
   October 6th, 2011 at 12:02 am

   Mo has pitched 10% of his career innings in the postseason... to an ERA of just a third of his regular season one. That's just sick. Only two guys have gone 140 IP with an ERA under 1 in a regular season, both in the mid 1910s and much higher than Mo's postseason total.

   It does bolster the "best pitcher ever" argument, though I'd still lean toward Walter Johnson.

9. Evan Says:
   October 6th, 2011 at 12:08 am

   @1

   Jeter has played 38 WS games, roughly half of which were played in NL parks where Jeter would have batted one or two positions after the pitcher which would suppress his RBI totals. It's only about 1/6 of his games (vs. ~1/20 of regular season games in NL parks) so it shouldn't be enough to account for all of the difference.

   It may be that the comparatively weaker hitters at the bottom of the Yankees' order are more apt to be negatively affected by the superior pitching usually seen in the postseason than the top and middle of the order would be.

   He also seems to be more apt to bunt in the postseason (nearly twice as many SH), which might make a small contribution to the discrepancy.

10. Johnny Twisto Says:
    October 6th, 2011 at 1:00 am

    Jeter has batted 1st in 40% of his postseason games, compared to 34% of regular season games.

11. Mike Felber Says:
    October 6th, 2011 at 4:46 am

    My avatar likes to be #1. Though even I must admut that this must be in comparison to his peers. Much as I like Mo though, no way is he the best ever. Best at his role, sure. But closers have markedly better ERAs-look at what part of the order they face, hows long they pitch for...If the best starters were used in this role, some would be able to have sublime ERAs. But it is just much more valuable to throw about 3 X as many IP!

    And it would be harder for a guy with less pitch varuation to be quite as dominant throughout a whole game, & much harder to be as great a starter as a closer.

12. Hartvig Says:
    October 6th, 2011 at 6:08 am

    At a glance and just using OPS as a benchmark it appears that Reggie Jackson is indeed Mr. October with a + 0.039 and Jeter the only other in the plus category (+ 0.010). Three players are at least 0.100 below their regular season numbers (Justice, Lofton & Martinez). But the caveats about sample size (Jackson has about half as many games as Jeter) and generally increased quality of competition that have already been mentioned need to be considered. Still, it's a bit much when 2 players who already kind of annoy me (Jackson & Jeter) actually show some evidence of a much overused and annoying cliche and do appear to be "clutch hitters".

13. Shping Says:
    October 6th, 2011 at 6:36 am

    This player had pretty balanced stats as well, playing in "a lot" of WS games in the old days:

    http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/reesepe01.shtml

14. Larry R. Says:
    October 6th, 2011 at 9:25 am

    @8

    Mo has 1351.1 IP. The best bullpen man, fine. Best pitcher ever...c'mon.

15. scott-53 Says:
    October 6th, 2011 at 9:29 am

    Jeter has a shot at playing in his 162nd post season game if the Yankees make the World Series this year.

16. Michael Says:
    October 6th, 2011 at 10:06 am

    Is there a postseason set of leaderboards on this site anywhere? The reason I ask is because I wanted to know if Jeter is the all-time leader in PAs in the postseason, and that got me wondering about who the postseason leaders are in a bunch of categories.

17. Evan Says:
    October 6th, 2011 at 10:12 am

    @16,

    If you go to the front page of the site, on the left side beneath the blog topics and pictures of former players there are several sections, one of which is "Postseason." If you click on "Postseason" it will bring you to a page that has leader boards at the top of the page for pitching or batting broken down by round and one that is aggregate (this is also the page with all the results of postseason series).

18. Michael Says:
    October 6th, 2011 at 10:20 am

    @17 - Found it, thanks!

19. Paul E Says:
    October 6th, 2011 at 10:35 am

    Reggie Jackson, Pete Rose, and Jeter get all the felatio from the press because of post-season glory, but, obviously you don't get to the post-season without great teammates.....You could make a helluva All-Star team from their teammates. Morgan , Schmidt, Bench, Bando, Catfish, Perez, A-Rod, Carlton, Bernie Williams, Posada, Rivera, etc....

    I hate to say it, but the greatest sustained post-season performance(s) above his "accepted/normal" playing level would have to be Lenny Dykstra. In 32 post-season games he homered 10 times - his regular season average for 162 games-obviously not the 75 game standard set above, but still fairly extraordinary