It’s been an exciting postseason so far, one packed with plenty of memorable moments including dramatic comebacks, some thrilling clutch at-bats, and no lack of phenomenal pitching performances. This is what baseball is all about. All of that said, I’m still bored out of my mind with the Mets on the sidelines for yet another October.
One of our readers brought something to my attention last week that got me thinking. He pointed out how well Lucas Duda stacked up against the cleanup hitters of the four teams who competed in the AL and NL Championship series. It was worth checking out.
Cleanup Hitter OPS (Min. 275 AB)
1. Lucas Duda, New York – .838
2. Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco – .798
3. Nelson Cruz, Baltimore – .781
4. Billy Butler, Kansas City – .758
5. Matt Adams, St. Louis – .726
Actually, Duda still stacks up very well when I included all ten postseason teams. I discovered that only Victor Martinez of the Detroit Tigers (.984) had a higher OPS. Adam LaRoche, Brandon Moss, Josh Hamilton, Adrian Gonzalez and Neil Walker were all behind the Mets’ cleanup hitter. Amazing…
One more shot before I go… Can you guess which three cleanup hitters posted the worst OPS in the majors? At a combined 2014 salary of $63.125 million dollars, they are Adam Dunn (.721), Ryan Howard (.695) and Mark Teixeira (.676). Unsurprisingly, neither of their teams made the postseason and were a combined 52 games out of first place. You read it here first!
