A-Rod great, but not in playoffs
Posted: Monday, September 24, 2007 8:42 AM
In writing about the latest rumors that have Alex Rodriguez considering leaving New York for the Cubs, I had to get into his performance in the postseason. Other than a great ALDS against Minnesota in 2004, it’s not been good. In the past two years, he has just three hits and no RBIs. This is not the stuff legends are made of.
My friend, Big Al of Bergenfield, is a lifelong Yankee fan whose childhood hero was Mickey Mantle. He frequently observes that A-Rod is not the Mick, who holds the record for World Series home runs with 18. He also had 40 RBIs in October. To hear Big Al tell it, Mantle never made an out
The truth is a little different. In real life, players have good series and they have bad series. That’s as true in the postseason as it is in the regular season. And the record shows that Mantle was no exception. In 1962 and 1963, he was positively A-Rod-ian, with a combined 5-for-40 (.125) with one home run and one RBI.
And A-Rod’s had some good series; in fact, his .280 batting average in nine series comprising 35 games is better than the Mick’s lifetime .257 average in 65 games over 12 postseasons. (It was the World Series or nothing in those days.)
But Big Al notes that Mantle always seemed to hit in the clutch. He may have hit for a lower average, but he hit for a bigger impact. And, he did hit home runs with a lot more frequency than does A-Rod, who had six home runs and 16 RBIs in his 35 games. That works out to 28 home runs and 74 RBIs over a 162-game season. For Jorge Posada, that’s a decent season, but not a great one. For A-Rod, it’s terrible.
Mantle’s postseason pace would translate to 44 home runs and 100 RBIs, which was an excellent season by the standards of his day – and a darned good one by the standards of any day. Mantle’s postseason slugging percentage was .535; A-Rod’s is .485 – 50 points lower.
Then there’s Reggie Jackson, Mr. October. Like Mantle, he has 18 postseason home runs and 48 RBIs, but he had 77 games and 17 series in which to get them – more than Mantle had. Reggie hit .278 in October and slugged .527 – not quite as good as Mantle.
But in five World Series, Jackson really was Mr. October, hitting .357 and slugging .755 with 10 home runs and 24 RBIs in 27 games. Over 162 games, that’s the equivalent of 60 homers and 142 ribbies. He had some down division and championship series, but never a bad World Series.
Babe Ruth, who had a lifetime .326 average in 10 World Series, had one awful postseason. That was in 1922, when he was 1-for-17 with one RBI. For his career, he had 15 home runs and 33 RBIs in 41 games, and over 162 games that pace would yield 59 home runs – one fewer than Jackson – and 130 RBIs – 12 fewer than Reggie.
Joe DiMaggio, if you’re wondering, wasn’t that great in October. He hit .271, 54 points below his lifetime .325 average, and hit .111 on 2-for-18 in 1949; he hit .231 in 1947. DiMaggio also slugged just .422 and hit just eight homers with 30 ribbies in 51 postseason games.
I’m not sure what any of this means, if anything. It does show that most of the players perceived as great didn’t always shine in October. (Willie Mays and Ted Williams, by the way, weren’t very good in October, while Barry Bonds was fabulous in his one trip to the World Series, but not good at all in his previous playoff efforts.) It also shows that A-Rod really has failed to hit at anything near his regular-season rate when the games count the most. Plus, he’s never even gotten to the World Series to show what he can do there.
Until he does, he can’t shake the rap that he’s great in the regular season and not-so-great in the playoffs. In this case, the numbers don’t lie.
