Do home runs work in the playoffs?

More of that baseball crap, but hey, it's the postseason...

Just in case you have a Real Life and better things to do than pay attention to the petty feuds in baseball because you’re too busy paying attention to the petty feuds at home:

Moneyball came out in 2003 and author Michael Lewis pronounced Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s geniuses because they figured out walks and home runs were good things, but a number of spoilsports like me pointed out Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s hadn’t done jack shit in the postseason and maybe that’s because weaker teams are eliminated and teams ask their better pitchers to pitch more innings, so walks and home runs might be hard to come by and if that’s the case you better know how to bunt and steal and when necessary, manufacture a run.

OK, so that’s the backstory and the people who love analytics got busy thinking of a response which took a surprisingly-short 20 years and during the 2023 Wild Card Round one of the games featured a TV graphic that showed, going all the way back to the Napoleonic Wars and possibly before that because the Negro Leagues records are incomplete, teams that out-homered their opponents had a much better chance of winning playoff games.

A statistic which inspired the analytics-inclined TV announcer to say despite critics who think way too many players and way too many teams spend way too much time trying to hit home runs (which leads to way too many strikeouts and way too many baserunners standing around waiting for someone to hit one) home runs do work in the playoffs.

So there you have it, case closed and who can argue with the numbers?

But if you think about it – and somebody didn’t – the problem isn’t trying to hit home runs and succeeding, the problem is trying to hit home runs and failing.

For instance: according to the internet the best home run hitting team in the 2023 regular season was the Atlanta Braves with 307.

As you might have already noticed it’s a lot easier to hit a home run when you hit the ball in the air and according to Baseball Reference, 283 of the Braves 307 home runs came on balls with “fly ball trajectory” which is why home run enthusiasts encourage uppercut swings.   

But when the best home-run hitting team in baseball hit a fly ball and it wasn’t a home run, their batting average was .093.

Other than strikeouts (which loopy home run swings are inclined to produce) fly ball outs put the least amount of pressure on the other team’s defense because one guy has to do one thing (catch the ball) while a ball on the ground usually requires at least two guys to do at least three things (catch the ball, throw it and catch it again) and since teams are now playing horseshit defenders if they hit enough homers, it’s a good idea to put as much pressure as possible on those weak defenders.

Before the 2015 World Series started, a Kansas City Royals front office exec told me they’d win the series if they kept the ball on the ground and the Royals did win because the Mets played lousy defense.

Although that’s a simplification which we’ll deal with before we’re through, assuming you have the willpower to read this whole thing and at this point I’m guessing that’s a 50-50 proposition.

(Also, there’s some great stuff about hot women at the end, so don’t give up now.)

About that phrase “out-homering the other team”….

To out-homer the other team you need to hit at least one homer so how about games in which neither team hit one or games in which both teams hit the same number of home runs?

Just in case you’re wondering and I was; during the regular season, games averaged about 2.4 homers per game and so far during the playoffs the average is about 1.3 homers per game, so at least this year your chances of being in a game without a homer go up in the playoffs.

Assuming I counted right…and let’s take a moment and consider the odds of that happening…so far there have been 22 playoff games and in games where one team out-homered the other, those teams went 14-1.

So in a very small sample size which is never going to get any bigger because looking up statistics is really fucking boring and I’m done doing it, the short-sighted TV announcer was right; out-homering the other team is a good way to win a playoff game.

But that leaves seven games where either no home runs were hit or both teams hit the same number of home runs and seven-out-of-22 games is about 32 percent and when every game matters that’s an awful lot of games to ignore.

Full confession: I’ve got no idea if that 32 percent of playoff games without homers holds steady for all playoff games that have taken place since the Discovery of Fire and – no surprise – I’ve got something to say about that.

A digression about unknown knowns or maybe it’s known unknowns and if Donald Rumsfeld weren’t known to be dead, we could ask him

In a world (and right there you should have imagined that movie trailer guy’s voice) in which we know what a ballplayer hits on alternate Tuesdays following a day off and a trip to Applebee’s, you’d think the Numbers Guys would be interested in some pretty basic information like:

A pitcher’s ERA out of the windup versus out of the stretch or a pitcher’s ERA when he uses a slide step, but to generate those numbers you’d have to actually watch ballgames and pay close attention and I’m under the impression that a lot of Numbers Guys get more excited by the statistics baseball produces than watching baseball itself.

A Big League coach who I’m sure would appreciate not having his name mentioned, once said the Numbers Guys were ruining baseball for the rest of us and didn’t even like watching it, which would explain why they don’t care if games last four hours and have less action than a bad date at a drive-in movie.

BTW and, when I think about it, probably TMI:

I’m currently catching up on old movies I theoretically “saw” at a drive-in, but was actually in the back seat trying to convince my date to break at least one of the 10 Commandments (and it wasn’t the one about graven images) so I was shocked to find out Butch and Sundance didn’t make it and the shark in Jaws got blown up, because in the book I think he died from high blood pressure.

Anyway…

If you’re advocating winning playoff games by out-homering the other team, you’d think you might be interested in what percentage of playoff games do not feature a home run so what you’re advocating wouldn’t work in those games, but if that number exists, I couldn’t find it although I tend to give up on this statistical crap pretty easily so maybe it’s out there, but it’s not a number Home Run Addicts advertise.

And now back to our regularly-scheduled diatribe

In the seven games where neither team hit a homer or both teams hit the same number of homers, the team with the most hits and walks went 7-0 so that’s how you win playoff games when you’re not hitting home runs; get as many runners on base as possible and it doesn’t matter how you do it.

Don’t let me get away with what I just did…unless we’re at a drive-in movie

When someone has a position – like homeruns give them a statistical stiffy so they’d like to see more of them – they can sort through the numbers until they find numbers that support their position and ignore numbers that don’t.

Lots of baserunners definitely improve your chances of winning, but we’ve all seen games where a runner gets in scoring position and the pitcher then throws his best stuff (which a starter might not do all the time because he’s pacing himself) and the runners get stranded by good pitching.

A whole bunch of things determine the outcome of ballgames – pitching, defense, errors, hits, walks and who showed up hungover immediately come to mind – so to pick just one category and say this is how you win ballgames is disingenuous.

(Wait…turns out “disingenuous” is pretending to know less than you do about a subject and we’re talking about people pretending to know more than they do, so let’s settle on “bullshit” and when people wonder why I insist on using profanity it’s because profanity is incredibly direct and descriptive and much more likely to hit the target than words like “disingenuous” which should only be uttered by bow-tie wearing blowhards like George Will.)

Anyway…

I could have looked for the team with the most stolen bases or most sac bunts or most line drives over 100-MPH or most hot girls sitting directly behind home plate and because I ignored so many important factors, jumped to inaccurate conclusions about what wins playoff games because the truth is all those things matter and you’re going to get a distorted picture if you look at just one thing even if that one thing is home runs.

And now a story about hot girls behind home plate

If you’re on the other side of the Analytics Grand Canyon and want me to be wrong about all this, you might be saying, “Lee, hot girls behind home plate have absolutely nothing to do with a ballgame’s outcome” and to that I say, “Au contraire” which as we all know is French for, “Wrong again, dipshit.”

And if you want evidence:

I was watching a televised ballgame with Jason Kendall and he said, “Oh my god, I can’t believe it” and froze the picture and walked up to the TV screen and pointed at a hot girl sitting behind home plate and said:

“She’s the pitcher’s wife.”

The pitcher was a rookie and as Jason explained, the last thing that nervous kid needed was to throw a pitch and look up and see his wife because it would be a really good idea for him to focus on the game and not his wife’s reaction to him throwing four straight balls or a 97-MPH fastball six feet over the batter’s head or spiking a curve halfway to home plate. Jason blamed the people in charge of getting tickets for players’ friends and family and said she should be sitting somewhere the pitcher wouldn’t see her after every pitch.

So where’s the metric on that?

My point – and I dimly remember having one – is all kinds of things affect ballgames and we don’t know about all of them so to look at one number and say you have the answer to winning ballgames means you’re ignoring all the other stuff that has an effect.

OK, if you made it this far you probably ought to wrap up in one of those space-age blankets they give marathon runners and start hydrating and maybe eat a power bar because tonight is the first game of the League Championships and you need to stay alert for misleading statistics and which team has the most hits and walks and now that you’re aware of their enormous effect on baseball…

Hot girls behind home plate.