Raul Ibanez batted twice tonight. He hit a game tying home run in the ninth, then a game winning home run in the 12th. His WPA for the game: .827.

We only have postseason data going back to 2002, but from our records, this is the second best single game WPA in that stretch, trailing only David Freese’s amazing performance from Game 6 of the World Series last year. Freese’s performance was the single highest WPA in postseason history, so every other player in the history of the sport is also behind him.

Baseball-Reference’s Play Index goes back further, though, and so using that tool, we can see where Ibanez’s game will rank in postseason history. Per B-R, the current top five are:

David Freese, 2011 World Series, Game 6: .969
Kirk Gibson, 1988 World Series, Game 1: .870
Steve Garvey, 1984 NLCS, Game 4: .854
Lance Berkman, 2011 World Series Game 6: .832
Charlie Keller, 1941 World Series Game 4: .826

B-R uses slightly different numbers to calculate WPA than we do, so by their calculations, Ibanez might be slightly above or below .827, so he might not be #5 on the list when they update the numbers in the morning. But it’s going to be really close.

Not bad for a guy who didn’t hit until the 9th inning.

In the first two games against Baltimore, Alex Rodriguez is 1 for 9 with a walk and five strikeouts. Last night, he came to the plate five times and made five outs, though his first inning double play was a line drive that could have easily been a base hit had it gone a foot further to the left. Still, with his game-ending strikeout that followed a seventh inning whiff with the tying run on first base, the “Alex Rodriguez is Not Clutch” narrative is popping up again. And, after just two games, some are calling for A-Rod to be dropped in the batting order due to his regular October slumps.

The problem, as always, is that the evidence just doesn’t support the storyline.

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On Friday, the Rangers season ended, as the team fell to the Baltimore Orioles in the AL Wild Card play-in game. Josh Hamilton, in what will quite possibly be his final at-bat as a Texas Ranger, was booed by the home crowd. From an outside perspective, a break-up seems inevitable. The Rangers — and their fans — seem to just be tired of the Josh Hamilton Experience.

On one hand, the frustration is understandable. Back in May, I wrote a piece noting that Hamilton’s combination of approach and success were historically unique. That he was destroying opposing pitchers while showing the plate discipline of a three-year-old was fascinating. Then opposing pitchers adjusted, they simply stopped him throwing him anything near the plate, and Hamilton went into an epic two month slump. In August, Hamilton rebounded a bit, and he and his coaches both suggested that he’d made the necessary changes to his approach, even though the evidence suggested otherwise.

Not surprisingly, the success didn’t last, and any notion that Hamilton had made any strides with his pitch selection issues were dashed in the final month of the year, as his monthly totals illustrate:

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The Baltimore Orioles have had an amazing season. They weren’t supposed to be any good, but they kept winning. They were supposed to regress to the mean, but they never did. They spent the entire summer giving Pythagoras the bird, and then, forced to play for their lives on the road against a Rangers team that simply looked to have every advantage, they won handily. Behind Joe Saunders. Against a line-up full of right-handers. The 2012 Orioles are why there’s a Twitter account called “You Can’t Predict Baseball”.

But, now, in a five game series against the Yankees, everyone’s going to bet against the Orioles again. Everything points to New York being the better team. They won more games. They scored 92 more runs and allowed 37 less. They have the best offense in baseball. They’re the Yankees. They have players who we expect to be good.

The Orioles, meanwhile, have a roster full of guys with track records of mediocre performance. This isn’t a team full of fresh-faced kids straight up from the minors — well, besides Manny Machado, anyway — who are introducing themselves to the Major Leagues. It’s a roster heavy on guys who were discarded by other organizations, with histories that suggest that they just aren’t that good.

Perhaps no player typifies the 2012 Orioles more than Tommy Hunter. And it’s guys like Tommy Hunter who are why we need to reevaluate what we know about the 2012 Orioles.

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The Orioles and Rangers square off tonight in a winner-take-all/loser-goes-home showdown. The Rangers are throwing Yu Darvish, who has been their best starter for the last month or so, and has the stuff to dominate on any given night. The Orioles are throwing Joe Saunders, who they acquired in an August trade after he cleared waivers. This seems to be the definition of the word mismatch.

There are some match-ups where you’d be okay with Saunders pitching in a critical game because of the composition of the opposing team’s line-up. For instance, Saunders would be a pretty good match-up against a team that has a lot of thump from the left side that he can neutralize. Because, realistically, Saunders is a situational lefty masquerading as a starting pitcher.

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While the AL MVP discussion has probably reached the point where there’s not much left to say, there are a few other postseason awards that are up for grabs. This year, a good chunk of them are pretty clear cut, with our staff mostly selecting the same guys at each spot, with there only really being one or two races where there was much division among the ranks. We simply asked for winners, rather than a full ballot, so don’t take a player’s absence from the list as a lack of recognition, as there are a few guys who I’m sure were second on a lot of people’s ballots. Without further ado, let’s get to the picks, with the number of first place votes in parentheses.

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Source: FanGraphs

13 games down on June 30th. Four games out a week ago. And now, today, division champs. With contributions from guys like Josh Donaldson and Brandon Moss, and great pitching by Evan Scribner and Ryan Cook.

Seriously, what else is there to say? Baseball! just about sums it up.