Playoff Zeroes to Heroes
With the playoffs coming up we're going to be hearing a lot about how this player can't play under pressure, or how this guy rises to the occasion. I don't buy that nonsense. Playoff sample sizes are way too small to determine a player's skill. It's very easy for a great player to look bad when we only have a few dozen games to judge them with. Plus, history has shown us that those "playoff chokers" are only chokers until suddenly they aren't.
Prior to 2017, Justin Verlander was 0-3 with a 7.20 ERA in the World Series. Anybody who wanted to call Verlander a choker had plenty of evidence in his World Series resume. He was 0-1 with a 3.75 ERA in last year's World Series, but good luck trying to convince anyone that he didn't play an important role in winning it all. Andy Pettitte had a 5.72 ERA in his first 3 years in the playoffs. He is now the all-time playoffs wins leader. Then there's guys who were seen as superstars when it mattered. Remember how David Freese could do no wrong in the playoffs? He won the 2011 World Series MVP. He has a career .874 OPS in the playoffs. Sounds like a clutch player to me. Oh wait, he has hit .216/.296/.360 in the playoffs since winning World Series MVP. I guess the magic wore off. Cole Hamels was 2008 NLCS and World Series MVP. He had a 8.53 ERA the next post season.
Jermaine Dye had a .237 AVG and .650 OPS in his first 36 playoff games before winning the 2005 World Series MVP. He hit .406 with a 1.128 OPS in the playoffs from the 2005 World Series onward. He went from being a playoff choker to a guy who crushed everything.
Scott Brosius hit .383/.400/.660 on the way to winning the 1998 World Series MVP. Hit .201/.239/.342 after that.
Mike Schmidt had a career .191 AVG and .505 OPS in the playoffs leading up to 1980 World Series. He won the MVP and had a 1.133 OPS in 3 playoff series. Then he hit .050 in the 1983 World Series. He was a guy who couldn't handle the pressure, then suddenly he could, until once again he couldn't.
Willie Stargell sure looked like a guy who couldn't hit in the playoffs. Career .217 AVG and .653 OPS leading up to 1979 playoffs. Ended up winning both NLCS and WS MVP leading his team to the championship.
Reggie Jackson, known as Mr. October, hit .220 with .686 OPS during his final 6 playoff series. Is age related decline to blame? Nope. He was regular season MVP runner up in 1980 and an all-star 3 of those 4 years his teams went to the playoffs. I guess he just decided to only be a regular season player those years. Mr. April to September.
Brooks Robinson had a .053 AVG in the 1969 World Series. What a choke artist. He's a bum when the games matter. Oh, then in the very next World Series he hits .429 and wins MVP. Oops.
Gene Tenace had a 1.313 OPS in 1972 World Series. He had a .259 career playoff OPS before that series and .509 OPS after that series. But by golly did he ever clutch up for that one series. I guess only that one World Series mattered to him and the other 3 didn't.
George Springer hit .115 with no extra base hits in the ALCS last year. He then hit 5 home runs and won the World Series MVP.
Prior to the 1997 World Series you could have said Jim Thome was just a regular season hitter who couldn't do it in the playoffs. His career line to that point was .198/.296/.349. He would hit .277/.375/.735 in his next 4 playoff series. After that I guess he decided to go back to just being a regular season hitter and slashed .143/.250/.206 during his remaining playoff games.
It's easy to fall for the playoff narrative that certain guys just have it and others don't, but we've seen over and over again that this isn't true. Guys who were thought of as bums are suddenly the heroes and vice versa. We know that luck can play a big role in a player's numbers over a full season of play so when we're looking at a handful of starts or plate appearances it's not hard for a player to put up numbers that are way out of line with their true talent level. Over and over and over again researchers have tried to find whether being "clutch" is a skill and they always come up empty.
Clayton Kershaw has a career 10.25 K/9 and a 2.73 BB/9 in the playoffs. These numbers are fairly close to his regular season career numbers, but his ERA in the playoffs is nearly 2 runs higher. I did a search for pitcher regular seasons where they struck out between 9.5 and 10.5 per 9 while walking between 2.5 and 3.5 per 9. Kershaw sits at the high end of the strikeout spectrum and the low end of the walk spectrum so he has pitched better than most of the pitchers in this sample based on peripheral numbers. 30 pitcher seasons fit that criteria and only 2 of them had a higher ERA than Kershaw's 4.35 career playoff ERA. Kershaw has undoubtedly been hit by bad luck in the playoffs.
If the Dodgers and Red Sox meet in the playoffs there will be lots of talk about how Price and Kershaw can't handle the pressure, but don't be surprised if either one of them comes through for their team. Playoff clutchiness is a myth and good players tend to play well, but are also not immune to poor streaks. Don't fall for small sample size narratives. Don't forget that Matt Carpenter had a .558 OPS on May 15th and he's in the MVP discussion now. If those first 39 games were playoff games there would be all kinds of talk about how Carpenter can't handle the heat of the post season. Nah, he's just a really good player who went through a rough stretch. Same thing happens every year in the playoffs.
