"Indeed, each of the Giants' past 13 wins was settled by one or two runs... This trait should help the Giants in the postseason, when close games ordinarily rule the day." - John Shea, in today's SF Chronicle.
People love to toss this supposition around about close playoff baseball, but is it really true? Let's go to Retrosheet and look for playoff games that featured a team with a lead of two runs or less going into the seventh, or at any point in the final three innings. (In other words, because I have to draw the line somewhere, a 3-0 game through 6 innings doesn't count until the trailing team scores at least a run, but a 6-0 game in which the losing team scores 4 in the ninth does count.)
2002:
StL v Az: 2 of 3 games
SF v Atl: 1 of 5
Oak v Min: 3 of 5
NYY v Ana: 3 of 4
SF v Stl: 3 of 5
Min v Ana: 3 of 5
SF v Ana: 4 of 7
that's 34 games, 19 of which were close, not quite ruling the day.
What about 2001?
Atl v Hou: 3 of 3
Stl v Ari: 4 of 5
Cle v Sea: 2 of 5
Oak v NYY: 4 of 5
Ari v Atl: 3 of 5
NYY v Sea: 3 of 5
NYY v Ari: 5 of 7
24 of 35, much closer to ruling the day. (And not only were there a lot of close games in 2002, there were a lot of tense low-scoring games. In the opening round alone, Curt Schilling outdueled Matt Morris twice by scores of 1-0 and 2-1. 2001: a good year to be a baseball fan.)
And, before I have to do some real work, here's 2000:
Stl v Atl: 0 of 3
NYM v SF: 2 of 4
NYY v Oak: 3 of 5
Sea v CWS: 3 of 3
NYM v Stl: 1 of 5
NYY v Sea: 4 of 6
NYY v NYM: 5 of 5
18 of 31. Roughly two-thirds, the emerging pattern seems to indicate. The next question is, how many of those close games are also low-scoring games? That's the second prong of the common assumption about post-season play, and a question I will answer the next time I'm procrastinating, which should be quite soon.
