JABO: The History of Slugging Teams in October

Late on Monday night, the team with the best offense in baseball and a questionable pitching staff made a blockbuster trade, but not for the frontline starting pitcher that everyone expected. Instead, Toronto Blue Jays GM Alex Anthoplous used one of his best trade chips — 2014 first round pick Jeff Hoffman — to acquire Troy Tulowitzki from the Rockies, adding another legitimate offensive weapon to a team that has had no problems scoring runs thus far.

In my write-up of the trade, I primarily focused on drawing attention to the non-linear nature of run scoring, noting that adding a good hitter to an already high scoring offense produces a larger benefit than importing that same hitter into a weak offense. Good hitting begets good hitting, and with another good hitter in the mix, there will be more at-bats with men on base — when nearly every hitter performs better than he does with the bases empty — and the addition of Tulowitzki to the Blue Jays offense should have a positive effect on the other hitters in Toronto’s line-up as well.

But there is one aspect of the decision to go after Tulowitzki, instead of a guy like Johnny Cueto, that I didn’t address; the postseason effect. After all, the Blue Jays are giving up significant parts of their farm system not just for the hope of getting to the playoffs, but of advancing deep into October, and constructing a roster for the long haul of a 162 game regular season isn’t the same thing as constructing a roster for the postseason. Due to the drastic differences in off-days during the playoffs, teams can allocate a much larger percentage of their innings pitched to their best arms, making the impact of a premium hurler larger in October than any pitcher can have from April through September. For a recent example, simply recall what Madison Bumgarner did for the Giants last fall.

Bumgarner’s dominance, and other performances like it, have given rise to the idea that pitching is what wins in the playoffs; if you’ve watched baseball for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly heard the “good pitching beats good hitting” truism. The Blue Jays are clearly not buying into that cliche, and are betting on a great offense to make up for a mediocre pitching staff. But does that kind of team actually win in October? Let’s look at some data.

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