Proven Postseason Performers, and Other Nonexistent Tongue-Twisters

I probably don’t need to write this article. If you’re reading it, you’ve navigated to FanGraphs, which already implies a certain willingness to “trust the stats” and “look at the evidence,” those kinds of things. It’s playoff time, though, which means that on TV broadcasts across the land, a motley crew of players are being described as Proven Postseason Performers. George Springer, Jose Altuve, Joc Pederson; it seems to simply be common knowledge that they have some secret baseball skill they only activate come playoff time.

One thing that you could do, should you be so inclined, is to simply take people at their word. The world could use a little more magic in it, after all, and there being players who somehow see the ball better when it counts most is a really fun concept.

Sadly, I think they’re just a concept. To wit: take a look at the best hitters from the combined 2017-2018 postseason (among batters who have played in at least one postseason game since, for reasons that will become clear), minimum 25 plate appearances:

Top Playoff Batters, ’17-’18
Player wOBA PA
David Freese .482 26
George Springer .449 121
Aaron Judge .412 79
Mitch Moreland .406 34
Orlando Arcia .398 34
Charlie Culberson .388 31
Jose Altuve .387 117
Chris Taylor .378 119
Justin Turner .373 144
Carlos Correa .360 112
Joc Pederson .354 68
Travis Shaw .354 34
Alex Bregman .351 116
Brian Dozier .351 27
Yuli Gurriel .346 109

There are a lot of Astros and Dodgers here, which makes sense given the composition of those particular playoffs. Extend the list a bit more, and you’d get Christian Yelich, Max Muncy, and Francisco Lindor, three very good hitters. The list of good hitters in the playoffs looks suspiciously like a list of good hitters plus Orlando Arcia.

One quick note: I’m using wOBA here, but you could use OPS if you wanted to, or whatever measure of offensive value you prefer. You won’t find a metric that says David Freese wasn’t a good postseason hitter, or that George Springer’s .327/.352/.682 line wasn’t amazing, so the broad strokes will be the same regardless of what you choose.

If being a Proven Postseason Performer has any meaning, these hitters should continue to be great in subsequent years. Not in every case, of course: it’s baseball, which means that samples get messy and things you don’t expect happen. A list of mostly good hitters who have already performed in the playoffs seems like a good way to predict which hitters will do well in the future.

So long as we limit ourselves to a sample of one, the theory is foolproof. Here’s a stupid list, the top one hitter in the 2017-2018 playoffs plus his performance in the 2019 and 2020 playoffs, along with the number of plate appearances in the second sample:

Top Playoff Batter, Two Years Later
Player ’17-’18 wOBA ’19-’20 wOBA ’19-’20 PA
David Freese .482 .478 8

Yep, Freese is great, we’ve solved it, everyone can head home. Sarcasm aside, Freese was awesome in a brief cameo in 2019 and then retired. That isn’t going to tell us much. Let’s expand the list to the top 15:

Top Playoff Batters, Two Years Later
Player ’17-’18 wOBA ’19-’20 wOBA ’19-’20 PA
David Freese .482 .478 8
George Springer .449 .323 145
Aaron Judge .412 .305 77
Mitch Moreland .406 .478 8
Orlando Arcia .398 .255 11
Charlie Culberson .388 .580 3
Jose Altuve .387 .441 142
Chris Taylor .378 .257 50
Justin Turner .373 .324 76
Carlos Correa .360 .363 129
Joc Pederson .354 .386 42
Travis Shaw .354 .312 5
Alex Bregman .351 .320 134
Brian Dozier .351 .099 7
Yuli Gurriel .346 .243 130

Huh. Springer was great, then average. Judge was phenomenal and then below average. Arcia turned back into Orlando Arcia. There are a few players who kept doing well, and a few who turned it on from an already impressive level, but there’s really not much to see here.

In total, these 15 best batters from the 2017-2018 playoffs have received 967 plate appearances in the subsequent two years. If they performed at the same level they did in 2017-2018, they would compile an aggregate .381 wOBA, an impressive mark. In other words, Freese would contribute eight plate appearances of .482 wOBA hitting, Springer 145 of .449, and so on.

How did they do in real life? They put together an aggregate .333 wOBA, better than average by a hair but hardly otherworldly. To use 2020 batters as an example, they hit like Paul Goldschmidt (.304/.417/.466) in the first sample and Willson Contreras (.243/.356/.407) in the second. Putting up a Goldschmidtian line in the playoffs will get you noticed. Being quietly competent, like Contreras’s 2020, simply won’t.

What a stupid metric, I can hear you saying. They were still above average! That’s true, but we’d expect this group of hitters to be better than average. From 2017 to 2018, and using the same weighting method as before, they hit for an aggregate .365 wOBA. In other words, they basically played like themselves in the playoffs.

This isn’t really evidence of anything. It’s only a few batters, over only a few years. So let’s kick it up a notch. Here are the top batters from 2014 to 2018, again among those who have played in the postseason since:

Top Playoff Batters, ’14-’18
Player ’14-’18 wOBA ’14-’18 PA
David Freese .453 37
Nelson Cruz .439 30
Kyle Schwarber .430 72
George Springer .426 147
Aaron Judge .412 79
Matt Carpenter .402 57
Justin Turner .399 212
Orlando Arcia .398 34
Pablo Sandoval .391 78
Josh Donaldson .387 105
Chris Taylor .378 119
Matt Adams .365 35
Carlos Correa .364 137
Travis Shaw .359 36
Kolten Wong .354 44

This is a group of the best playoff hitters over a five-year span. That’s as long as any “this guy hits in the playoffs” narrative, short of a hitting version of Clayton Kershaw. How’d they do in the subsequent two years?

Top Playoff Batters, Two Years Later
Player ’14-’18 wOBA ’19-’20 wOBA ’19-’20 PA
David Freese .453 .478 8
Nelson Cruz .439 .427 22
Kyle Schwarber .430 .296 7
George Springer .426 .323 145
Aaron Judge .412 .305 77
Matt Carpenter .402 .252 31
Justin Turner .399 .324 76
Orlando Arcia .398 .255 11
Pablo Sandoval .391 .180 4
Josh Donaldson .387 .259 22
Chris Taylor .378 .257 50
Matt Adams .365 .390 4
Carlos Correa .364 .363 129
Travis Shaw .359 .312 5
Kolten Wong .354 .254 54

Yup, pretty badly! Weighted by their ‘19-’20 postseason plate appearances as we did above, we’d “expect” these hitters to compile a .396 wOBA based on their playoff past. Instead, they compiled a .316 wOBA, a below-average hitting line. Kyle Schwarber was postseason bulletproof until the Cubs got Marlin’ed this year. Matt Carpenter and Josh Donaldson were monsters until they weren’t.

While we’re here, let’s do the other side of the sample. How about the 15 worst hitters in the playoffs from 2014 to 2018?

Top Playoff Batters, Two Years Later
Player ’14-’18 wOBA ’19-’20 wOBA ’19-’20 PA
Tyler Naquin .184 .109 8
Jason Heyward .197 .351 8
Yadier Molina .198 .269 51
Austin Barnes .211 .455 13
Brian McCann .211 0.185 17
Russell Martin .218 .769 5
José Ramírez .220 .559 9
Yasmani Grandal .228 .515 18
Brett Gardner .236 .324 62
Travis d’Arnaud .236 .301 73
Trea Turner .238 .265 79
Cody Bellinger .242 .335 73
Howie Kendrick .247 .316 67
Josh Reddick .252 .193 76
Aaron Hicks .255 .354 50

By the weighted aggregate method, we’d “expect” those batters to put up a .235 wOBA in their ‘19-’20 plate appearances. Instead, the aggregate was .305, hardly different than the production of the top 15.

The difference is actually even worse than that, though. I looked at regular season production in 2017 and 2018 to set a baseline for what we’d “expect” each group to produce. That aggregate came out to .364 for the set of great postseason hitters; it’s a list full of MVP candidates and good-hitting DH’s. The poor-performance group checked in at .335; still good hitters, but markedly worse.

In other words, if you came up with a “playoff clutch factor” by seeing how much better each group was than their regular season production, the first group was 30 points of wOBA better than expectation — amazingly clutch! In 2019 and 2020, they were then 48 points worse than expectation — sad times.

The group of playoff laggards was a whopping 100 points of wOBA worse than expectation from 2014 to 2018. What a bunch of bums! In 2019 and 2020, they were only 30 points worse than their regular season statistics would suggest, The playoffs are tough sledding overall, but the “bad” batters saw their production decrease by less than the “good” ones.

Is that some big surprise? Nope, not really. Statistics simply work that way; we all know that these sample sizes, none of which are overwhelmingly large, would produce some outperformers and underperformers even if everyone’s skill level were exactly the same. That’s simply the nature of baseball in small doses; heroes and goats are going to exist regardless of whether they’re actually great or terrible.

Again, you probably didn’t need to hear this. Watching baseball is enough to understand its randomness. Every single plate appearance is a challenge, whether it’s a great pitcher against a terrible batter or vice versa. You can’t take anything for granted; a player is only a goat until he’s a hero. It’s worth remembering, though, before this World Series starts: the playoffs are great, perhaps the best time all year to watch baseball. They aren’t immune to the central math of the game, however: in small samples, everyone is great and anyone can win.





Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Twitter @_Ben_Clemens.

14 Comments
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VinnieDaGooch
3 years ago

David Freese is clutch.

Psychic... Powerless...
3 years ago
Reply to  VinnieDaGooch

Over his career (4,000+ plate appearances):
– Low leverage: 111 wRC+
– Medium leverage: 125 wRC+
– High leverage: 94 wRC+

aldenmember
3 years ago

they don’t call him david ‘medium leverage’ freese for nothing

robertobeersmember
3 years ago
Reply to  VinnieDaGooch

I think the more appropriate interpretation is David Freese performed in memorable clutch moments. David Freese is not, nor is anyone else, clutch.

robertobeersmember
3 years ago
Reply to  Ben Clemens

Do you remember the moments? Were they clutch? Then he did the thing. that time.

Are clutch performances predictive? Can we expect him to continue to be clutch? No and no but we remember the clutch moments nonetheless.

This is an ouroboros-ass way of saying a moment is clutch but a person is not.

cartermember
3 years ago
Reply to  robertobeers

I have a hard time with that line of thinking. I’d say generally speaking players are not clutch, but certainly there are people who shrink up in big scenarios, and players who do not. You always hear about stage-fright, people who cannot do something because they put too much pressure on themselves and their brain makes them unable to perform, so consequently it stands to reason that there are people whose brain works the opposite way.

To give you an example, in college we used to have drug tests for sports. Towards the end of my time there we had to be observed while we were taking the drug test. Not like observed with someone waiting outside the stall, but someone literally watching you. We had people that would cheat prior, bringing in someone elses urine and heating it, etc. So the school made the decision to have someone watch us. I couldn’t pee with someone watching me. Apparently this is a very common thing, but I ended up getting suspended from the team because I couldn’t pee with someone watching me. I was required to see a doctor and then a psych to show that I had anxiety, and eventually they allowed me to to it without someone watching. Hell, there are people in prison today simply because they cannot pee when someone is watching them and they fail drug tests and get parole violations. So to me if there are people who get stage fright so bad that it literally causes them to get sent back to prison, there has to be people that shine in the moment. Or can at least pee.