Howard and A-Rod tie RBI record
by ZombieMonta on Oct 20, 2009 11:15 PM EDT
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On Tuesday, Alex Rodriguez drove in an RBI for the eighth consecutive postseason game, tying a record that had been set by Lou Gehrig 77 years ago. However, you wouldn't know how rare a streak like this is since Ryan Howard tied it less than 24 hours earlier. The Phillies first baseman has produced a whopping 14 RBI in the first eight games of the postseason, while Rodriguez has driven in 10 runs since he started the streak in 2007.
Rodriguez has done so much already that he can probably play terrible the rest of the way and get away with it -- as long as the Yankees win it all. If they don't, the tabloids will still be hard-pressed to find something to attack him on. For the first time since he joined the Yankees, he looks like he's earning his $200,000 daily salary (or as close as any baseball player can. Can you imagine having $200,000 as walk-around money. Good god is he rich).
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I feel like this is as good a time as any to re-post something I wrote back in March on another blog:
ARod:
Overall: PA 9076, .306/.389/.578, OPS .967
High Leverage: PA 1626, .305/.393/.582, OPS .975 (+.08)
RISP: PA 2602, .303/.404/.553, OPS .957 (-.10)
Close & Late: PA 1207, .279/.375/.530, OPS .905 (-.62)
Postseason: PA 166, .279/.361/.483, OPS .844 (-.123)
Just by comparison, Captain Clutch:
Overall: PA 9093, .316/.387/.458, OPS .845
High Leverage: PA 1462, .327/.408/.448, OPS .856 (.11)
RISP: PA .311/.405/.434, OPS .838 (-.07)
Close & Late: PA .289/.387/.420, OPS .806 (-.39)
Postseason: PA 554, .309/.377/.469, OPS .846 (.1)
Both are slightly better in high leverage situations, both are slightly worse with Runners in Scoring Position, both are a fair amount worse late in close games but are still pretty good. The difference is that Jeter is almost exactly the same player in the postseason as he is in the regular season, while ARod is significantly worse in the postseason than he is in the regular – though it should be noted that "significantly worse" for ARod turns him into…Derek Jeter. Of course, ARod has a much smaller postseason sample size than Jeter does – he was absolutely brilliant in his first 3 postseasons. Not including his 2 ABs in ‘95 as a September call-up, he was a career .337/.402/.594 (OPS .996) postseason hitter, going through the end of the ’04 ALCS against Boston. His next 2 postseasons were dreadful and his most recent one was simply bad, but does that completely rule him out as a "clutch" player? If you look through Jeter’s postseason career, he’s had way more than 3 poor series, I count at least 8 "un-clutch" performances. The difference is he’s had much more opportunity to hide those in his career than ARod has.
I wrote that in March to defend ARod against charges of being unclutch. Those numbers don’t include what he or Jeter have done this season, and I’m too lazy to look them up and edit the post right now, but I think it makes a pretty good point. ARod’s one of the greatest players of all time, and he’s now been outstanding in exactly half of his postseason series and less than good in the other half, which is a much better ratio than Barry Bonds, amongst many other hall of famers. And for the record, I’m a Mets fan who hates the Yankees.
"[The Giants] beat us down. We were beat by a grown-man team, a team we want to be like one day. They came in here and took it to us. Out-manned us, out-gunned us. ... It wasn't even close." - Raheem Morris, 9/27/09
When it comes to clutchness
All a player needs to do is have one or two great series, or game-winning shots, or something in order to be labeled clutch. People used to dog Peyton Manning all the time that he couldn’t get it done when it counted, and really, he’s only had one great postseason, the year the Colts one it all. But now people talk about what a great big-time quarterback he is.
And the same thing applies with Bonds. He had some horrible postseason series in Pittsburgh, but he made up for it in 2002 World Series.
So yeah, clutch is more a subjective label than an actual assessment. In 2007, A-Rod played just as badly as Jeter, and no one was saying boo about Jeter. It was all A-Rod. So you’re absolutely right about that.
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