 |
||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
I am a big David Eckstein fan. I was long before the media grabbed a hold of his story in 2002, and I’ll continue to be a fan of his into the foreseeable future. Eckstein is a scrappy, determined, down-to-earth player who is one of the friendliest ballplayers I’ve encountered. He plays the game with a lot of heart, and that reminds me a lot of how I played the game, or at least how I envisioned myself playing the game. There is also a great story surrounding this modern-day Rex Hudler, which is that he was released from Double-A by the Red Sox several years ago and yet went on to become a starting big-league shortstop, for a team that ended up playing in, and eventually winning, the World Series.
The problem is that the media became enamoured with Eckstein’s scrappiness, determination and his history, and many turned him into the reason, or a main reason, the Angels made the World Series. There was a lot of hype around Francisco Rodriguez, but those two players seemed to overshadow people like Glaus, Garret Anderson, Jarrod Washburn and Ramon Ortiz who contributed more to the team. However, as big of a fan as I am of Eckstein, I recognise that a .752 OPS shortstop is likely not a huge reason for the team’s success. It doesn’t help that in the playoffs he hit .294/.338/.294, the first two being right around his 2002 totals but his slugging dropped about 100 points.
The point of that example is that it seems every year some player gets an undue amount of credit for his team’s postseason success, often at the expense of other equally, if not more so, deserving players. Well, this is two players in the case of the Yankees, as Tim McCarver makes every attempt possible to steal Derek Jeter away from his squeeze of the month as he puckers up to Jeter’s sphincter like no man before him. The media often not only exaggerates this player’s accomplishments during this year, but also often in his entire career. This year I noticed Andy Pettitte seemed to get undue praise everywhere I looked, so I decided to see if he really is the postseason hero many make him out to be.
(Yes, this article is about five months late. But I didn’t have a website back then, and I also am quite lazy. I thought about doing a study of Pettitte about a week before Rob Neyer came out with his piece on Pettitte. Feel free to check out Neyer’s archives to read what he has to say, but I hope to expand upon his work.)
Let’s see what sort of hyperbole Pettitte received during this year’s playoffs. The first quote just reinforces what I believe, while the three after are examples I have found of Pettitte-mania in 2003.
“During the broadcast Thursday night pundits raved about Pettitte’s ability to pitch well in important games. Friday morning, one of the nation’s most respected sportswriter’s raved about Pettitte’s uncanny composure.” Rob Neyer – Easy on the Accolades for Pettitte
“…With Pettitte doing what he always seems to do this time of year – rise to meet just about every moment the Yankees thrust him into.” Jayson Stark – Pettitte Paints Another Playoff Masterpiece “Last year New York’s starters had run out of gas by the time they faced the Anaheim Angels in the ALDS, and they pitched miserably….In every game [this year] the Yankees send a quality starter to the mound: Clemens, Wells, Mike Mussina and Andy Pettitte – all proven postseason veterans.” Joe Morgan – Starters, Matsui Key Yankees “Is there a better ‘gamer’ playing today [than Andy Pettitte]? I don’t think so. He did everything he could to carry the Yankees to the title again.” Jack McDowell
Now, I’m not sure how 2002 was different and 2003 and therefore the proven postseason veterans can be forgiven for running out of gas that year, but I didn’t use to play baseball professionally and Joe Morgan did. Regardless, that’s a quick example of some of the stuff that was flying around about Andy Pettitte (a lot of what I tried to find was no longer archived and I hadn’t saved like the McDowell article) in this postseason.
A is Andy Pettitte’s career postseason pitching statistics. B is Andy Pettitte’s career regular season pitching statistics. His ERA is actually slightly higher in the postseason than it is in the regular season, with a slightly smaller WHIP and a worse K/IP ratio. None of the differences are very noticeable; the biggest would be winning percentage, which drastically improves in the postseason. However, this is nothing that Pettitte can control himself. What he can control himself doesn’t change at all from the regular season to the postseason.
And, if someone was to make the terribly misguided argued that Pettitte is “pitching just well enough to win” in the playoffs, then just point to the World Series.
Again, his career World Series totals are remarkably similar to his career postseason totals and his career regular season totals. If he can pitch well enough to win in the playoffs, why does he suddenly lose that ability in the World Series; the most important games of the year.
A question to be looked at is if there is such a thing as a playoff performer. I don’t really have much evidentiary research to back it up, but my opinion is that most people will likely perform reasonably similarly to their regular season performance in the playoffs. Now, some players will have better stats, and some will have worse stats, but this will be due mainly to sample size, in my opinion, and not actually skill. I also believe there probably are rare examples of players who do, or would, perform consistently noticeably better in the playoffs than the regular season and rare examples of players who would perform consistently worse. I don’t think you’ll ever really know these players either, because of sample-size problems.
This isn’t to diminish what these players have actually accomplished in the playoffs; however, I just don’t think that you can attribute a “gamer” ability to them. Who knows if Willie Aikens would have continued to post a 1.215 OPS in the playoffs (he did in 49 playoff PA, compared to his regular season .809 career OPS), if he had another 50 playoff plate appearances? Or, same with Troy Glaus and his 1.191 OPS in 68 playoff plate appearances, compared with his regular season career OPS of .848?
However, maybe they are right. Maybe, Andy Pettitte does pitch his best playoff games when the Yankees have their proverbial backs against the wall. Maybe, he does rise to the occasion within the playoffs, and pitch his best games when the Yankees need him to. They’ve had a couple of easy World Series victories, and maybe his World Series stats got inflated with some poor performances there.
I present to you every game Andy Pettitte has ever pitched in the postseason, along with his game score (formula calculated by Bill James, a quick-and-easy way to give a rough indicator of how well a person pitched), the score in the series at the time Pettitte pitched, and so forth.
|
