JUDGING JUDGE ASYMMETRICALLY IN THE ALL-TIME HALF-SEASON OPS+ PANTHEON...

But before we follow through on that somewhat overwrought title, let's give you more of a basic background concerning Aaron Judge's 2022 season and where it, taken as a whole, fits into baseball history. 

The 62 HR thing is already well-known (73-70-66-65-64-63-62-61-60 is the nine-number sequence for those who've hit 60 or more). Judge, with his freshly-set AL record, ranks seventh all-time.

But let's move on to a more comprehensive evaluation of Judge's offensive performance level. We'll use OPS+ (league & park-adjusted on base plus slugging), still the best basic sabermetric summary widely available to us. Judge's OPS+ for 2022, based on his very easy-to-remember raw OPS value (1.111) is 210. That is the 81st time that a hitter with more than 400 PAs in a season has crashed through the 200 barrier, as show in our time-grid™ table at right.

As you can see from the chart, Judge is the first hitter to do this since 2015--any idea who the last 200+ OPS+ guy was? That's right, it's not Mike Trout. (With his 176 lifetime OPS+, it's amazing that Trout hasn't had a 200+ OPS+ season, but his highest score for this measure is 198, achieved in 2018.) No, the correct answer is Bryce Harper, with a 205 OPS+ in 2015.

The chart also tells you that 200+ OPS+ seasons have become rarer since baseball's expansion. From 1901 to 1960, there were 55 such seasons; since 1961, however, there have been only 26 more.

Adding that up, that gives us 81 player-seasons in which a hitter has achieved a 200+ OPS+ performance. Of course, there are a number of hitters who've done it more than once, which means that those incidences have been done by less than forty hitters since 1901. (For the record, there were 15 more such performances during the nineteenth century, including baseball's first superstar two-way player, Bob Caruthers.)

The exact total of players who done it is 36, now that Judge has joined the club.

As you might expect, Babe Ruth achieved this feat more often than anyone: a total of 10 times. Ted Williams was close on his heels, however, with nine instances of 200+ OPS+ seasons. Barry Bonds has the third highest total of uber-dominant years, with six. Then: Lou Gehrig, five; Rogers Hornsby, four; Ty Cobb, four; Jimmie Foxx, three; Honus Wagner; three; Nap Lajoie, two; Joe Jackson, two; Hank Greenberg, two; and Mark McGwire, two.

So that's one dozen repeaters and two dozen one-timers--a neatly tucked-in ratio that just came into existence thanks to Judge's stellar 2022 season.

It's a list littered with Hall of Famers: the only players beside Judge, Harper and Miguel Cabrera (all still active as of this moment) who aren't in the HOF are Dick Allen (hello, clowns on the Vets Committee), Bonds (one more year of pig-headed moralizing left for us to endure...), Norm Cash, Joe Jackson, McGwire (sigh...), Cy Seymour, and Sammy Sosa.

Now, in terms of ranking within the group of 200+ OPS+ seasons, where on such a list does Judge's "210" score reside?

It's 51st on the ranked list, or a bit of the way down into the second half of the rankings. (And speaking of second halves, you may recall that Judge's performance in the second half of 2022--which we'll put into its own context momentarily--ranked very high when we broke the season into two parts. It was his first half that was not quite so spectacularly superlative.)

The top ten is truly a rarefied list, populated by three names only: Ruth, in the #1, #5, #7, and #10 slots (and #11, too, for that matter); Williams, in the #4, #8, and #9 slots (and #12, too); and Bonds, in the #2, #3 and #6 slots (and #13 as well). The OPS+ values descend from Ruth's record value of 287 in the #1 slot down to Bonds' 236 in that lucky #13 slot. These are the greatest offensive seasons of all time, and these three men own the top thirteen of them--and 17 of the top 20! (Lou Gehrig is the first "non-troika" name on the list, at #15; also cracking the top twenty are Mickey Mantle at #18 and Jimmie Foxx at #19.)

Judge isn't really anywhere close to this pantheon, though 210 and #51 is nothing to sneeze at. We get more interesting results--and a sense of the asymmetry that often exists within seasonal performance--when we break years into halves. 

Remember there were 81 player-seasons--full seasons--where hitters produced a 200+ OPS+. When we break things into halves, we find that there are 161 second-half performances at 200 OPS+ or higher, and 123 first-half performances. That asymmetry can be explained in the data parsing done at Baseball Reference, which uses the All-Star Break as its designator for "halves" for about three-quarters of the years in question. There are often significantly fewer games in the second half of the season due to the placement of the All-Star Game, and this makes it easier for hitters to sustain a peak performance level.

And the second half is where Judge truly excelled (even if he hit more of his HRs--33 of his overall total of 62--in the first half). He compiled an OPS+ of 260, stellar enough for tenth place overall. His slash lines for the second half of 2022 are eye-popping: .349/.502/.785 (for a 1.286 OPS).

Judge's first half produced an OPS+ of 173, which is not exactly chopped liver (as the saying goes...) but, astonishingly, ranks 579th among first-half performances all-time! His slash lines for the first half of 2022 are: .284/.364/.618 (for a .982 OPS).

Interestingly, Judge's first half in his rookie season of 2017 ranks 108th all-time, and cracks the 200 barrier for OPS+ at 201. Put this performance level in tandem with his torrid finish in 2022 and you'd have a season performance that would register in the top 25 all-time. 

We'll be back with more of the first half/second half performance leaders as we continue our "Sizzling Up the Second Half" series as we keep an eye on the 2022 post-season--an arena that Judge and the Yankees will be entering tomorrow...

THE NEW FIRST ROUND: AN ODD CASE OF OVERKILL (AND OTHER DISCONTENTS...)

Amongst those who follow baseball, we may well be in the minority with with what follows...but it's our view that the new first round approach demonstrates a series of flaws that work against the earlier efficacy  of baseball's post-season.

All credit to the Padres, Phillies, and Mariners for going on the road and winning their series: the flaws we'll describe are not due to their performances, which were exemplary. The problem is that the new approach makes it possible for more wild card teams to go later into the post-season than was the case before. 

"Whaddya mean we haven't got a new playoff scheme?
Let's do it right here, right now!

We need to remember that the teams in the post-season are not equal in quality according to their won-loss records in the regular season. Therefore, if wins matter and divisions matter, then it should be harder for the teams with fewer wins and/or the wild card teams to advance in the post-season. That is not how things are set up in the new approach to the post-season, however. For the first time in history, there is a chance that two wild-card teams could win up playing each other in the championship round as well as in the World Series.

Of course, we've had two Wild Card teams play each other in the World Series: it happened in 2002, when there was one wild card team vs. three division winners per league. (In that season, the Anaheim Angels, who ultimately won their first and only World Series, had a better record than several of the division winners; there were no teams with 85-90 wins making it into the post-season that year.)

The point is that we now have a much greater likelihood of wild card teams going deep into the post-season. Baseball is following the lead of basketball here, and swapping out overall quality in favor of greater quantity--more post-season games.

All of which creates an odd case of overkill--and that's what manifested over the weekend, with the possibility of twelve post-season games occurring over a three-day span. Is there such a thing as too much excitement? 

The other problems have to do with the three-game series. This format has never been used before, save for the old NL pennant playoff approach. It is a clunky mechanism travel-wise, and MLB knows it--which is why they opted for the "NCAA seed" approach that would give teams with more wins a much greater home field advantage. (Of course, that notion went up in smoke this year, with three teams prevailing on the road in the first round.)

There is something neither fish nor fowl about this format, however, that seems supremely unsatisfying. Interesting and hard-fought match-ups in the post-season that don't get a chance to develop cheat both the teams and their fans. The Cleveland-Tampa series was fascinating in its minimalism (despite Joe the Poser's carping that it shows how "pitching is too good") and under best-of-5 rules would have put the Rays in a do-or-die game at home for the Game 3 that wasn't allowed to exist. Making the playoffs should reward the home-town fans with at least one game--but baseball took this away when it put in the "do or die" game in the most recent post-season variant. And they've still kept it "in play" with their new approach.

Similarly, the Mariners would have had a chance to win their series against the Blue Jays at home after winning two on the road. 

Too harsh an assessment for Rob "Bozo" Manfred? 
We leave the judgment to you...

Part of the problem here is MLB's inherent greed about scheduling as many single games as possible, which drags the schedule out in most years so that the playoffs do not start right at the beginning of October. If the 2022 season could have ended on Sunday, October 2nd, a best-of-5 first round could be initiated. 

The objection to this, of course, is that might have given the top seeds too much time off. The idea of a "bye round" is inherently a bad one, however, since it can't cohere to both wins and divisional championships. Leave it to baseball to be the first major sport to create a system that befouls and befuddles the basic objectives of the game.

What are the alternatives? Baseball the business is not going to like the first approach we'll mention. If we have to have three wild card teams, then rank them by wins and make the two teams with the fewest wins play that "do-or-die" game to get into the next "wild card" round, where they play the non-division winner with the most wins. In the NL this year, that translates into the Padres playing the Phillies for the right to play the Mets.

At the end of this chain of competition, one wild card team would join the three division winners for what has been the traditional (and, for once, at least, the logical) post-season approach.

There's still the matter of the second wild-card series, though. Is it another "do or die," or a best-of-3, or a best-of-5? To move things along, another "do-or-die" game has the most appeal here, but it creates the least revenue for baseball the business. 

Of course, there are more radical approaches, such as our notions discussed in previous posts, where the game expands to 32 teams, creates four leagues, and builds a more elaborate and flexible playoff structure. Or there's our old "mini-season" post-season, where all eligible teams play each other in a round-robin that leaves two teams standing for the World Series. (We're not going to tout those here now, however, as that would constitute our own "odd case of overkill"...)

The odds are high that we're stuck with this approach for the foreseeable future, however--absent any expansion. It will be interesting to see whether it manages to produce both a wild-card World Series and a wild-card championship series in the first round. Surely the Astros and Dodgers and Braves are not all going to go belly-up on us...or are they? Stay tuned...

FOLKS THINK SIXTY-TWO IS COOL...BUT SEVENTY-(THREE) IS AN ABOMINATION

Be aware from the outset that we are not endorsing the headline above as fact, or as acceptable opinion. If the home run marks achieved by Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds are considered excessive, it's due to the climate that was created by those in charge of the game and the backlash generated by the shattering of a number--60--that had become (and, judging by the the gut reactions of many...) somehow beyond sacrosanct. 

Aaron Judge had a seriously great season in 2022 (with an iconic OPS figure of 1.111) that included a second half that flirted with all-time performance levels. He's been anointed by a vocal minority as the "authentic home run king" as much for how and where he broke the American League home run record as for breaking it itself. The trappings of his achievement are crucial to its acceptance. Consider: 1) He plays for the New York Yankees, the franchise that has "owned" the AL single season home run crown for 95 consecutive years; 2) his first name is the same as the man who broke the all-time homer record--Henry Aaron--and who did so respectfully, without displacing any of the single season marks that had become fetish objects in the minds of fans and baseball insiders alike; 3) the circumstances that evolved around Judge's pursuit of the AL home run record resulted in him doing so as "gently" as possible.

All three of these factors smooth the way for the emotional acceptance of one more blow to the game's long-standing enshrinement of the number 60 as a kind of cosmic lodestone for its "worldview." None of those factors were in place in 1998, when McGwire shattered the home run record by hitting 70--or in 2001, when an arrogant, bulked-up black man (Bonds) followed McGwire's "ripped fabric" and brought the entire edifice down on itself. That wreckage was transferred by journalists and a significant subset of fans onto those two individuals, resulting in their ostracism from the Hall of Fame even as other "cheaters" have been enshrined. 

It's part and parcel of a reactionary turn in America that has been in process for forty years, but that has gained a peculiar form of momentum since 2001, when two adjacent pillars of American might collapsed in a shocking attack on the nation's own home turf--a landscape that has been shielded and sacroscant from harm and invasion in the visceral beings of its citizens ever since the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. The unwritten rule is than only Americans could plunder, destroy and ravage the American landscape; the violation of this tenet led to an absurd "war on terror" that is still reverberating nearly twenty years later.

And the same is true in baseball. The game (and its analytical cadre) found ways to reinstitute home runs into an even more central role without the shock and stigma of the single-season record being constantly threatened. Fixated more than even on the long ball, the game sacrificed and attenuated other forms of offense as analysts began measuring hitting events via terms such as "exit velocity" and "launch angle." It's useful information, but it, too, has been fetishized and distorted into a grotesque form of "sabermetrics" that has always harbored paradoxical and contradictory impulses. 

So Judge rushed up to the AL record with a magnificent spurt in late August that might be among the best two weeks of hitting ever seen in the game's history. From 8/22 to 9/22, he hit .430 (40-for-93), hit 14 HRs, slugged 957 (!), had an OPS of 1.503 (!!) and helped carry a floundering Yankees team once thought to be one of the great juggernauts of all time over a chasm that might have made them the team that suffered the greatest collapse in history. (The Yankees had gone 12-24 in their previous 36 games; Judge's Herculean performance aided them in going 17-10 during his "month on fire" and stabilizing what had begun to look like terminal free-fall.)

That spurt got Judge to 60 HRs--and then things shifted, slowed down, seemingly conforming to the need for a convenient, drawn-out cycle of media coverage. Judge's bases-on-balls percentage (BBP), which had been pedestrian by his standards during the first half of the season (11.3%), escalated exponentially in this phase, peaking in the final two weeks of the season, rising to above 30% during this time frame. 

Ford Frick has an asterisk for you, too...

No one seemed to notice, but Judge's 61st homer came in the Yankees' 155th game of the year--a fact that, had Ford Frick still been Commissioner of Baseball, would have resulted in an asterisk similar to the one that intermittently plagued Roger Maris after he hit 61 in 1961 (but only 59 by game 154). Technically (or, perhaps, not so technically), the record book should still honor Babe Ruth as the American League record holder for most homers in a 154-game season. 

Judge hit #62 in the second-to-last game of the year, on the road (thus preventing the likely possibility of an unseemly stampede by a certain contingent of Bronx denizens) and, after getting one more at-bat, was summarily removed from the game by Yankees' manager Aaron Boone, who also kept him out of the final game the following day. One can always argue this both ways, but let's go here with the perspective that with the pressure of breaking the record removed, Judge had 6-7 more at bats that might have allowed him to put more distance on his Yankee ancestors. But for some reason, we'd come to expect that removing him at such a point was exactly what would happen whenever/if ever he set the record. And so it was.

It strikes me that, as things unfolded, it became silently understood and accepted that #62 would be the number, the extra notch, the break-but-not-shatter-and-destroy instrument of change. And somehow, through a mysterious but not entirely unexplainable set of circumstances, that's how things managed to come about. Breaking barriers and changing things shouldn't be too easy--unless there's a different type of fix in place, of course. (But that's the subject of a longer essay, in a different blog.)

Other little details that came to rest at the end of Judge's labors also tamped down the impact of his achievements. Cheerleaders for him to win the Triple Crown were (thankfully) thwarted when he struggled over the final two weeks; those who'd fetishized his count of total bases, looking for him to crack 400 and to possibly set a record for the greatest distance between his league-leading total and the closest also-ran, were also thwarted: he wound up with 391--a perfectly estimable total. These particular type of media folk, who bend and attenuate their own critical faculties to tailor their own public images, will eventually realize that it's much better this way, since it will make it easier to "domesticate" Judge's achievement, rather than have it stand out too much--which was precisely the "sin" committed by McGwire and Bonds.

We'll put Judge's achievement into a more comprehensive historical context--next time. Stay tuned...

SIZZLING UP THE SECOND HALF/2: 1910-1919

We return to the series we started during an off-day in the epic, just-completed journey with the 1962 Giants-Dodgers pennant race, where we look at the best second-half performances by hitters. We're still tracking Aaron Judge (still at 61 HRs with two games left in the 2022 season) to see where his stellar second-half performance this year will land in the all-time rankings; as he's struggled a bit since our first post in this series (posted on September 24th), his OPS+ value for the last half of this season has slipped to ninth best all-time (it was formerly 6th).

[Before we move on, let's look at the second-half hitter from 1962 who made it to the Top 300. If you were paying attention during the long series, you might be able to guess who it is. 

It's Frank Robinson, who ranks 127th all-time, with a second-half slash line of .344/.428/.663, which translates into a 204 OPS+ for the second half of 1962. (At some point, we'll compile how many second-half leaders wound up as league MVPs. Sadly, Frank's 1962 season won't be one of them.)]

The 1910-19 results that we post in this entry are almost certainly not going to be affected by whatever happens with Judge over the next two days, so we're safe in resuming our look at this intriguing exercise in offensive asymmtery.

As we've seen from our first post, the names of the high achievers in second-half offensive excellence are often quite familiar, but there are always some surprises along the way. Let's get to it...we begin with a look at the half-seasons from 1910-11 that cracked the Top 300 all-time:

1911 (and 1912) represented something of a thaw in the Deadball Era and its "inside baseball" approach, though it was not reflected in the shape of offense just yet (a strong harbinger of that will appear in the 1919 data. But we see some inkling of this in the ISOBAs of Sherry Magee and Frank "Wildfire" Schulte (in case you've forgotten or are coming across this term for the first time, ISOBA is simply the ratio of a player's isolated power, or SLG-BA, to his batting average). Schulte's very modest total of nine second-half homers in 1910 was, as the red ink depicts, the top mark in that stat up to that point in time. 

Unsurprisingly Ty Cobb is here both years, though he had a much more muted performance by his standards in 1911. Joe Jackson is the big news here, with his .434 second half in '11 vaulting him into the Top 40 (remember, the "top 40" really constitutes 43 hitter half-seasons).

In 1912-13 we have many of the usual suspects (Cobb, Jackson, Tris Speaker) but we also get some interesting names one might not expect to see here. In the case of Beals Becker, a mid-season trade from the Reds to the Phillies appears to have been the primary catalyst for his second-half performance; oddly, he did not take advantage of the Baker Bowl that season, as did his teammate Gavvy Cravath.

We'll eventually compile a list of all those who managed to hit .400 or higher in a half-season (first half as well as second). When we do, Hall of Fame second baseman Johnny Evers, not known for his lusty bat, will be among them.

And Ty Cobb's second-half triples total in 1912 speaks to the often startling asymmetry that shows up in this data. From that total of 19 you'd possibly expect that Cobb had at least 30 triples that year; in fact, his season total was only 23. (Of course, we say "only" with tongue firmly planted in cheek, but you get the idea.)

We've seen Speaker, Cobb, Collins and Magee before, but Steve Evans is a new name--this is from his tenure in the short-lived Federal League, where he and Benny Kauff (we'll see him in the 1915 second-half leaders) were the top offensive stars. 

Speaker has the top second-half this year, though it wasn't enough to help the Red Sox overtake the Philadelphia A's, who were shockingly swept by the Boston Braves in that year's World Series. A shame the Sox could not find a way to overtake the A's, as it would have created the only Boston v. Boston World Series in baseball history...

We'll skip through the next four years of the soon-to-vanish Deadball Era, which is primarily dominated by the folks we've seen so many times already: Cobb, Speaker, Collins and Jackson. Ty does set a new record for the highest second-half batting average, however (.443 in 1918). 

1919 is a good bit more interesting, despite the paucity of incidences. This is Babe Ruth's first full season as an outfielder (with a bit of Ohtani-like pitching thrown in) and his second half is already shockingly modern. His ISOBA is over 1.000 (the first time in history, and it was over 1.000 for the full season as well). He sets records for second-half HRs (18) and walks (58). These offensive numbers have a strikingly different shape, and will over time become the norm for what we see in performance leaders (in both full and half-seasons). It stands out in the last year of the Deadball Era like a neon sign in the desert, and is good for 18th place overall in terms of second-half OPS+.

We'll be back soon with a look at 1920-29...

60 YEARS AGO/158: FOUR THE HARD WAY

It's a familiar story to us...because it was a repeat performance. The Giants scored four in the bottom of the ninth inning at the Polo Grounds in 1951 to win a three-game playoff and go on to lose the World Series to the New York Yankees; on 10/3/62, they'd score four in the top of the ninth, win another three-game playoff--and go on to lose another World Series to the Yankees.

But the background of this "repeat performance" has become obscured by the passage of time (and other, more spectacular memories that have intervened). So here is some of what has been pushed aside:

--Johnny Podres pitched for the Dodgers on two days' rest. 

--The fielding for both teams remained on the sloppy side. 

--Walt Alston stayed with his veterans Duke Snider (left field) and Wally Moon (first base). One delivered in Game Three; the other did not.

--Another attempt at a "heroic" relief appearance (four or more innings helping a team to come from behind) fell apart in the final, decisive inning.

The Giants scored twice in the third to get out in front, and it could have been worse. Podres threw wildly to second on Juan Marichal's sacrifice bunt attempt. Johnny Roseboro threw wildly to second when it appeared they had Marichal picked off. Podres induced Orlando Cepeda to hit into an inning-ending double play with the bases loaded to keep the game close. 

In the bottom of the fourth, Snider hit a lead-off double, but had to hold at third on Tommy Davis' single to left because it was hit so hard. The Dodgers were still have problems hitting, however, and they just barely cashed in on this runners at second and third and no out situation; Davis' take-out slide at second allowed Frank Howard to beat out what otherwise might have been a double play. The Giants still led, 2-1.

That changed in the bottom of the sixth, when Snider and Davis teamed up to turn the game around. Snider slapped Marichal's 1-1 pitch into left field for a single, and Tommy D., trying to hang on to his batting title, homered into the left field pavilion to give LA the lead.

Maury Wills. who'd stolen his 102nd base back in the third inning, then manufactured an insurance run for the Dodgers by singling (his fourth straight hit off Marichal), and stealing second. He then took off for third, stealing #104 and coming home to score when Ed Bailey air-mailed his throw past Jim Davenport into left field.

All that led up to the fateful ninth, when Walt Alston decided to stretch Ed Roebuck into a fourth inning. In retrospect, he might have been better off bringing in Ron Perranoski, as the Giants had two lefty hitters among the first three man coming up in the inning. But he didn't do that.

Five batters later, the score was 4-3, the bases were loaded, and Alston brought in Stan Williams, who, in a reversal of his performance in Game Two, was unable to strand any runners, and walked in the go-ahead run. Then and only then did Alston call for Perranoski, who was sabotaged by second baseman Larry Burright booting a grounder, permitting the fourth run to score. (Burright, along with Stan Williams, would find himself playing for different team the following year.)

Billy Pierce, who'd shut down the Dodgers in SF two days earlier, came in for SF and retired the Dodgers in order: ground out by Wills, fly out by Jim Gilliam, and line out by Lee Walls. Final score: Giants 6, Dodgers 4.

--A long winter of discontent set in for the Dodgers, who contemplated changes in management. But cooler heads prevailed; in '63, Sandy Koufax rebounded completely from his injury and late-season ineffectiveness (the Dodgers went 34-6 in the games he pitched), and LA would win three of the next four pennants, including World Series titles in 1963 and 1965.

The Giants, with home field advantage, would play an intermittently exciting, but rain-marred World Series that proved to be most memorable for its disappointing conclusion (Willie McCovey's line drive caught by Bobby Richardson to foil a ninth-inning rally in Game 7 in a game the Giants lost 1-0). 

That frustration would linger for decades, as it took more than twenty-five years for them to return to the World Series (1989, where they were swept by their cross-town rivals, the Oakland A's) and another twenty-one years to actually win one (2010).

60 YEARS AGO/157: FOUR HOURS, FOUR PITCHERS (TWICE)...& "MR. FOUR-EYES" COMES THROUGH

10/2/62 gave us the longest nine-inning game in history--up to that point, at least (but the record set in this game held up for more than forty years)--as it took four hours and eighteen minutes to bring the game to a conclusion.

It started out as a pitcher's duel between Don Drysdale (working on two days rest) and Jack Sanford (who uncharacteristically struck out the side in the first innng). The Giants scored a run in the top of the second when Felipe Alou doubled home Orlando Cepeda, but Drysdale--working much more deliberately than usual--turned back potential Giants rallies in the third and fourth innings. Sanford dodged a bullet in the fourth when Duke Snider's screaming liner to center field was run down by Willie Mays with two men on base.

Drysdale finally weakened in the top of the sixth, walking Tom Haller and leaving a fastball too over the plate to Jose Pagan, who smoked a grounder past Tommy Davis at third for a double. Sanford was up next, and after two unsuccessful bunt attempts, slapped one off Drysdale's glove; Big D ran after the ball, whirled and threw a sinker to home that bounded off catcher Johnny Roseboro's shinguards as Haller lumbered home. The ball got away, allowing the Giants' catcher to score, and the floodgates opened: before the inning was over, Drysdale had been chased and the Giants had opened up a 5-0 lead.

But this wasn't anything close to your normal sixth inning, as the Dodgers were about to prove. Jack Sanford walked Jim Gilliam--and received one of the quickest "quick hooks" in history. As things would turn out, Giants' manager Al Dark had led with his chin, bringing in his erstwhile ace reliever, Stu Miller, as the "first responder." (He certainly wouldn't be the last!

Duke Snider doubled, sending Gilliam to third; Tommy Davis then hit a drive to dead center field that Willie Mays grabbed at the wall, quite possibly preventing a home run: Gilliam scored and Snider made it to third, getting the Dodgers their first run in three days. 

Wally Moon walked; Frank Howard then rifled a single to left that was hit so hard that Moon had to scamper as fast as he could so as not to be thrown out at second. It was now 5-2 Giants.

Dark replaced Miller with Billy O'Dell. which did not "spell relief." Doug Camilli singled to load the bases, and then O'Dell hit Andy Carey with a 2-2 pitch to force in another run and bring up Lee Walls to bat for Ed Roebuck. 

Walls, acquired in the off-season from the Mets, was a kind of poor man's version of Frank Howard: not quite as big (6'3" instead of 6'7") but equally bespectacled. He was supposed to provide some power off the bench against lefties, but he'd failed to hit a single homer all season. O'Dell made him look bad on two curve balls, but on the 1-2 pitch he came with a fastball--which Walls promptly hit off the left-center field wall  to clear the bases, giving LA a 6-5 lead.

That brought in Don Larsen, who gave up a single to Maury Wills to score Walls. Maury stole his 101st base, but Willie Mays threw him out trying to advance to third after Johnny Orsino's throw skipped into center field. Jim Gilliam, who'd started things off with a walk nearly three-quarters of an hour earlier, then flew out to end the inning--but the Dodgers had gotten off the deck for seven runs and now led 7-5.

Of course, they couldn't help but squander the lead in the very next inning, as Ron Perranoski proved distressingly hittable. Things got dicey enough that Walt Alston wound up bringing in the inhabitant of the team's doghouse, Stan Williams, in order to stop the bleeding. Williams did so, but the Giants got two in the inning to knot the game at 7-7.

Stan pitched a strong ninth as well, striking out a couple of batters and finally looking like the pitcher he was back in 1960. In the bottom of the inning, Al Dark would match his total of pitchers in a single inning (4) that he'd already used in the sixth--in a desperate attempt to keep LA from scoring the game-winning run. Here's how it went: Bobby Bolin walked Maury Wills; Dick LeMay walked Jim Gilliam; Gaylord Perry (you remember: "Young Gaylord") was brought into counter Alston's move to bat righty-hitting Daryl Spencer for Duke Snider; Spencer sacrificed, putting the winning run just ninety feet away.

Then Mike McCormick relieved Perry, which left folks scratching their heads. "Why bring in a lefty to face Tommy Davis?" some folks wondered. Why, all the better to issue the free pass to load the bases and allow the southpaw to face the slumping Ron Fairly (a lefty batter). And sure enough, McCormick got two quick strikes on Ron.

But Fairly connected on the 0-2 pitch, driving a liner into center field. Mays raced to his left to catch it, but his throw home was not in time to catch Wills, who scored the winning run to force a winner-take-all game the following day. Final score: Dodgers 8, Giants 7. 

(How often does a manager use four pitchers in an inning two ties in a game? It's a question for the folks at Baseball Reference to answer exactly, but the answer must be: not very darned often. (The other question to ask: what's the team won-loss record when it has to resort to using four pitchers in an inning? Another question for BB-ref, and another that we can likely summarize in three worlds--not very good!)

SEASON RECORDS: LAD 102-62; SFG 102-62

60 YEARS AGO/156: STILL SWOONING BY THE BAY...

Still in shock, the Dodgers took the field on 10/1/62 in San Francisco after a 3-10 stretch in the second half of September that had seen them fall into a tie for first place on the final day of the season. They'd stopped hitting toward the end of that swoon, and the somewhat hasty return of Sandy Koufax had not arrested their fall. As Koufax explains in his autobiography, LA found itself in a drastic situation in terms of their starting rotation as the playoff series commenced:

"Our pitching staff was in terrible shape. [Johnny] Podres had pitched that afternoon [9/30] and had lost a tough 1-0 game. Don [Drysdale] had gone the day before and lost 2-0. During the trip to San Francisco, Walt Alston and [pitching coach] Joe Becker called me over to their seat to ask me if I thought I could go the next day. The message was clear enough: there wasn't anybody else. If I could give them four or five good innings, they could send the bullpen in to finish up."

So Koufax started the first playoff game against fellow lefty Billy Pierce, with a 11-0 record at Candlestick Park in 1962 (his inaugural season with the Giants). It did not go well for LA, and the first reason for this was Koufax, as he notes:

"I had nothing at all. The infuriating part of it was that I knew just where I was, as afar as my conditioning went. I was at the low point of the [spring] training drought. I know it sounds like an alibi, but that doesn't make it any less true. One more start, and I'd probably have been ready to come around.

One of the papers the next day said that I'd try to decoy the Giants by serving up slow stuff. I wish had: that wasn't a decoy, that was my fastball."

Willie Mays hit the first of two homers in the game against Koufax in the first; Jim Davenport hit one in the second, knocking Sandy out of the game. Ed Roebuck kept the game close for the next four innings, but Mays (#49) and Orlando Cepeda (#35) greeted Larry Sherry with back-to-back homers in the sixth, making it 5-0. Jose Pagan hit a bases-loaded double off Ron Perranoski to toss some more sand in LA's wounds. 

The first six hitters in the Dodger lineup went hitless against Pierce, who cruised to his 16th win of the year and 12th at home, throwing a three-hit shutout. The two teams then both boarded airplanes and flew back to Los Angeles, where the remainder of the playoff series (no matter how long or short) would be played. Final score: Giants 8, Dodgers 0.

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 102-61, LAD 101-62

60 YEARS AGO/155: ONE HUNDRED & SIXTY-TWO IS NOT ENOUGH...

Pitcher's duels were front and center on 9/30/62, the ostensible end of the baseball season that year. Things were wrapped up in the American League: the New York Yankees, after a period of sluggish play (and with less "slugg-ish" heroics from the "M&M boys"--63 homers between them, as opposed to 115 in 1961) had pulled things together once again...and, like everyone else, awaited the outcome of the Giants-Dodgers marathon.

The two Sunday afternoon games would take time to unfold, and would not be decided until the late innings. In San Francisco, Turk Farrell tempted fate and took the ball from Houston Colts' manager Harry Craft despite having already lost 19 times; the hard-luck hurler shrugged, suggesting that "20 is a nice round number no matter which side of the ledger it appears on." 

For the Giants, Billy O'Dell had a shot at winning his 20th. "Whatever happens, happens," he said to reporters before the game. "We just need to win, period."

Ed Bailey, part of the Giants' curious all left-handed catcher platoon, hit his 17th homer off Farrell in the fourth. Roman Mejias, Bob Aspromonte, and Jim Pendleton slapped together three singles off O'Dell to the game in the top of the sixth. 

O'Dell's chance for twenty wins ended when he was pinch-hit for by the other lefty-hitting catcher on the Giants, Tom Haller, with men on first and third and one out in the bottom of the seventh. Haller's fly to short right was too short to score the tie-breaking run, but Colts' right fielder Roman Mejias threw home anyway, allowing Chuck Hiller to scamper from first to second to put two runners in scoring position. But Matty Alou popped out to end the threat.

It was up to Willie Mays to push the Giants into place to lock down their 101st win: he left off the bottom of the eighth with his 47th homer of the year off Farrell, who kicked up some dust on the pitcher's mound as the ball left the park. Stu Miller retired the Colts in order in the ninth, and the entire city of San Francisco awaited the news from down south. Final score: Giants 2, Colts 1.

DOWN in LA, the Dodgers still couldn't hit worth a lick. But their veteran lefty Johnny Podres was matching pitches with the Cardinals' crafty southpaw Curt Simmons in a game that saw goose-eggs register on the scoreboard for seven consecutive innings. 

LA wasn't helping itself much when someone made a hit, either. In the second, Lee Walls ran his team out of an inning when he tried to stretch his bloop hit down the right field line into a double: Charlie James threw him out. In the bottom of the seventh, Tommy Davis was picked off by Simmons to foil another scoring threat. 

And then, in the top of the eighth, Podres left a 1-2 fastball up to catcher Gene Oliver, who launched a laser beam to left field that left the park like a lightning bolt. Though it was only the first run of the game, it somehow seemed definitive: Simmons retired the Dodgers in order in their last two turns at bat, and LA was on its way to SF. Manager Walt Alston wordlessly waved off reporters as the team boarded the bus that took them to the airport. They'd be playing the Giants in a best-of-three playoff series in less than twenty-four hours. Final score: Cardinals 1, Dodgers 0.

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 101-61, LAD 101-61

 

60 YEARS AGO/154: THE NOOSE TIGHTENS...

First, a note of correction. The Giants-Colts game reported on in the previous thread was actually part of a day-time doubleheader played in San Francisco on 9/29/62 (Saturday), and not on 9/28/62 as represented in yesterday's post. (The 9/28 game was postponed by rain, which would later become a prominent issue in the World Series.) 

For now we will leave the previous entry alone, using the excuse that both games of this doubleheader were completed before the Dodgers-Cardinals game in LA on 9/29, so that the standings we posted for yesterday were in fact correct after the conclusion of the Giants' 11-5 win over the Colts regardless of what day it was played. 

We pick things up with the second game of the doubleheader between the Giants and Colts, with Juan Marichal facing off against Bob Bruce. Both pitchers were a bit off their game early on: Bruce allowed a home run to Matty Alou, who was riding a late-season hot streak and was now platooning with his older brother. Marichal gave up a run in the top of the first, but his bases-loaded suicide squeeze bunt in the bottom of the second went for a hit and gave the Giants a 2-1 lead.

Norm Larker wiped that out in the top of the third, however, with a two-run homer, and the Colts knocked Marichal out of the game by scoring another run in fifth. Bruce got stronger as the game progressed, allowing just one hit over the final five innings, frustrating the Giants' chances of advancing further in the pennant race. Final score: Colts 4, Giants 2.

The Dodger lead was now set back to 1 1/2 games as they took the field in LA on Saturday evening. Walt Alston decided to go with veterans, moving Tommy Davis to third and putting Duke Snider in left field; he also benched the slumping Ron Fairly and substituted Wally Moon at first. None of it mattered...

...because the Cards' Ernie Broglio tossed a gem, allowing only two hits as he totally stifled LA's offense, striking out nine. Don Drysdale gave up two unearned runs in the second due to Frank Howard's misplay on a Dal Maxvill fly ball; that was all St. Louis was able to manage against him, but on this night that was enough to prevent the Dodgers from clinching the pennant. LA went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position (RISP). Howard, with a chance to redeem himself in the bottom of the ninth, batting as the potential tying run, hit Broglio's first pitch into a game-ending double play. Final score: Cardinals 2, Dodgers 0.

SEASON RECORDS: LAD 101-60, SFG 100-61