4-hit games, regular seasons vs. post-season
Posted by Andy on December 10, 2007
As reader kingturtle suggested, here is a comparison of the frequency of 4-hit games in the regular season versus the post-season.
Also, don't forget to vote for the 2008 Hall of Fame class.
Here are the breakdown and sum for the last 10 years (regular season.)
4-hit games total games % 1998 375 2432 15.4% 1999 437 2428 18.0% 2000 414 2429 17.0% 2001 373 2429 15.4% 2002 329 2426 13.6% 2003 381 2430 15.7% 2004 408 2428 16.8% 2005 334 2431 13.7% 2006 415 2429 17.1% 2007 442 2431 18.2%
3908 24293 16.1%
Just to be clear on what's being calculated here: individual 4-hit games are counted separately. If one game happens to feature two different players getting 4 hits, they are each counted in the total above. The total games is just that--total games--and not total TEAM games (which would be double the numbers shown since each game has 2 teams.)
And now for the playoffs:
4-hit games total games %
1998 0 30 0.0%
1999 5 31 16.1%
2000 2 31 6.5%
2001 6 35 17.1%
2002 4 34 11.8%
2003 8 38 21.1%
2004 7 34 20.6%
2005 1 30 3.3%
2006 5 30 16.7%
2007 2 28 7.1%
40 321 12.5%
So, perhaps not too surprisingly, the frequency of 4-hit games in the post-season is lower than in the regular season. Why is this not surprising? Well, all offensive numbers are lower in the playoffs, including run scoring, HR, and batting average. That's where the famous adage comes from that good pitching (i.e. the pitching of playoff teams) beats good hitting (i.e. the hitting of playoff teams.)
In history, as we've seen, there have been 132 4-hit games. That's out of a total of 1,199 playoff games (the reader-mentioned number of 900 before was a bit low.) That's an 11% rate historically since the early 1900's.