Baseball - Swinging for the fences in the playoffs

This is a good article that cuts through the conventional "wisdom". Alan Schwarz is one of the few sportswriters who actually understands baseball.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/sports/baseball/16score.html

October 16, 2005
Keeping Score
Talking About Small Ball, but Winning With a Big Stick

By ALAN SCHWARZ

Joe Torre didn't say much, but he didn't have to. After his Yankees lost Monday night's do-or-die playoff game to the Angels, Torre repeated the oft-cited difference between his team and the one still playing.

"That's the thing about their ball club," he said of the Angels. "Pitches that you may have guys who are trying to hit home runs swing and miss at, they put in play."

Torre, the Yankees and almost all of baseball agree that postseason baseball differs from the regular season: lower-scoring games require more one-run stratagems, more bunts and steals and small ball.

The ESPN announcer Joe Morgan thumps from his pulpit every October, "You can't win in the postseason unless you can manufacture runs."

The masses have listened.

In looking into whether science confirms faith, numerical evidence becomes a handy divining rod.

First, because better pitchers see more innings, postseason games are, in fact, lower scoring and, almost by definition, closer. Since the three-tiered playoffs began in 1995, postseason games have had a healthy 16 percent decrease in total runs, to 8.53 a game from 10.16. About 10 percent more games are decided by one run.

There's actually a more interesting way to measure closeness: the score difference after each inning. After all, a 1-0 game is much tighter, and more pickled in one-run strategy, than a 6-5 game that spent eight innings at 6-0 before a late comeback.

Adding up the score differences after each inning yields a truer measure of how close a game really was. The math will be skipped here, but according to data supplied by retrosheet.org, postseason games rate 9.5 percent closer over all by this method.

So, small ball would appear to be more appropriate in October. But do managers follow their own mantras?

Sure enough, postseason games do have more maneuvers typically designed to score one run. The most obvious evidence is that sacrifice bunts go up 14.2 percent. And on defense, intentional walks skyrocket in October, to 0.87 a game from 0.55, a 56 percent increase.

"During the regular season, you might say, 'Let's go after this guy,' " Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said. "I think you play smarter in the playoffs."

The running game is relied upon less than many would expect. Stolen-base attempts decrease in October by 11 percent, though much of that can be attributed more to a similar decrease in singles and walks.

Managers appear to be slightly more discerning about which of their players they allow to steal - success rates increase a tick to 70 percent from 69 percent, this against presumably better catching arms.

Through all the base-at-a-time machinations and intrigue, though, home runs remain paramount. All hits decrease in October - singles by 10 percent, doubles 21 percent, triples 38 percent - but home runs go down by only 6 percent.

This means that despite all the talk about manufacturing runs, home runs are relatively easier to come by in October, and going deep accounts for a greater portion of total runs than during the regular season.

Although a few series prove nothing, you could probably win a few bucks with a bet on who outhomered whom last week, the all-or-nothing Yankees or the small-ball Angels. (It was the Angels, six homers to the Yankees' four.)

The same was true when the Angels eliminated the Yankees from the playoffs three years ago; they won the homer race, 9-7, yet were cast far and wide as the brains beating the bruisers.

These reputations die hard, and lived in the minds of the Yankees during this year's matchup. Before Game 4, Torre and Derek Jeter suggested that the Yankees had to sublimate their first instincts to win with power in October.

"I think the postseason is a time to think small, yes," said Torre, who emphasized putting the ball in play rather than going for home runs. "You have to really think about fundamentals and be able to think one run at a time."

Jeter echoed Torre. "There's more attention to moving guys over, getting guys in," he said. "During the regular season, all of the home runs get the highlights. But in the postseason, people pay more attention to how each game is won and lost."

How did the Yankees lose? Declaring blame in individual games and even series can be scattershot, but given postseason history, reliance on power should not be the primary suspect. As much as pundits like to laud "cerebral" moves like the sacrifice and steal, swinging hard remains one of the smartest strategies.

"There's an assumption people make that low scoring requires small ball," Dave Smith, the founder of Retrosheet, said. "If you know it's going to be 2-1 in the ninth way back in the second inning, that's great, but you don't. The home run is still the one thing that has unquestioned value. People are going to keep going for the fences."

No matter what they say afterward.

E-mail: keepingscore@nytimes.com