To mark the occasion of the Detroit Tigers' recent upset playoff victory over the Yankees, ESPN.com has compiled this list of great Yankees playoff collapses.
I realize, of course, that a key reason why the Yankees have had so many playoff collapses is that they get to the postseason so often (roughly once every two years since pilfering the Babe from the Red Sox back in 1920). The rate at which the Yankees experience catastrophic failure in the playoffs is probably no greater than one would expect based on random chance variation. But that doesn't prevent me from enjoying moments like this! Moreover, 4 of the 10 collapses on the ESPN list have happened in the last six years. Maybe it's just a random blip, but perhaps the incidence of Yankees' collapses is going up.
UPDATE: The ESPN list, while pretty thorough, omits several good candidates, including the Big Red Machine sweep of the Yankees in the 1976 World Series, and the Kansas CIty Royals' sweep of a heavily favored Yankees team in the 1980 ALCS, a fitting revenge for three straight close defeats in the ALCS in 1976-78. Most importantly it fails to include the 1926 World Series, my personal favorite Yankees postseason defeat(with the exception of the 2004 "Reversal of the Curse," of course). In that series, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander came in an put down a bases loaded Yankees rally in Game 7, despite being hungover from celebrating his complete-game victory the night before in Game 6. Then, in the ninth inning, Babe Ruth "clinched" the Cardinals victory by getting caught stealing to make the last out of the series. Anyone who has ever seen a picture of the lumbering Babe knows that a Ruth steal attempt (especially with slugger Bob Meusel at the plate) is not exactly good strategy in a crucial situation!
This entire series of events was immortalized in the 1952 movie The Winning Team, starring Ronald Reagan as Alexander. It's definitely my favorite Reagan movie, for reasons having little to do with cinematic quality:).
Related Posts (on one page):
- Dangers of Moneyball Hiring in Academia:
- Some truly great moments in baseball history:
- A Moneyball Victory:
Torre's style has been successful in the regular season because the Yankees then face many weak pitching staffs. Torre's style fails in postseason play because the Yankees then face pitchers who are less likely to give up bunches of runs.
More evidence of global warming...
Though it is true that the Yanks got about zero breaks, from the blown call and then pickoff and Bernie missing a homer by about a foot in game 2 to the Tigers getting about 5 ground ball singles in a row. Oh, and Arod is being paid how much to suck horribly in the postseason?
You can laud the Tigers pitching. But then you realize that it consists of a rookie and a washed up old guy, both of who got smacked around in the regular season by this same lineup. The series was the Yanks' to lose, and they lost it - had they played well, what the Tigers did would not have mattered.
When your gameplan year after year seems to be little more than overpaying for over the hill talent, you're going to run into situations where your old guys don't perform. And given the rigors of a long season, it's most often going to happen at the end of the year (i.e. during the playoffs). Live by the fire, die by the fire.
Because hockey is essentially a glorified minor-league sport, and relatively few people care about it?
Plus, Torre is the most useless on-field manager in the game (and I'm a huge Yankee fan), however good he may be in the clubhouse (where frankly I have doubts as well).
I finally realized this when he wouldn't bunt to the mound agains the injured Schilling in 2004. That's when you knew he was clueless.
Ruth was never a good baserunner, certainly never good enough to be a good basestealer. In 1926, he stole 11 bases, but was caught stealing 9 times (see stats here), an awful percentage that indicates that his base stealing efforts were a net loss to the Yankees.
Moreover, in 1926 Ruth was 31, which especially at that time was past most players' baserunning prime.
Exactly! Anyone watching the AL Central this year knew how good the Tigers were. I keep hearing how shocking it was for the Tigers to beat the Yankees in the ALDS... Not to me...
But how many times did we hear the 2006 New York Yankees get called "greatest offensive lineup" on ESPN this year?
Eastern Seaboard Propaganda Network...
Whenever TV shows do surveys of "all-time" greats, the recent greats tend to get overrated. Its partly because people remember recent events better. But part of this is also because the footage for the recent greats is typically both more available and cheaper to get. ESPN already has the clips for the recent Yankee collapses. It would have to pay one of the networks to show clips of the Big Red Machine stamrolling the 76 Yankees and Pete Rose getting so far inside of Mickey River's head that Rivers never played as well again after (much like Pujols destroyed Brad Lidge's career last year with one swing).
The Yankees did not just lose, they were blown out. This was not a matter of luck either as an earlier blog attempted to explain post-season success. Detroit had far better pitching than the Yankees.
Interestingly, the Yankees had a lot of elements of the Moneyball type player. Their hitters, in the regular season anyway, generally drew a lot of walks and had high on-base percentages. When a team quickly falls behind because of bad pitching they are usually not as patient though.
Another reason why most of the collapses have come in the past six years is because when there are now more post-season series each year in which a team can collapse. Also, there were no collapses during the DiMaggio years because the Yankees won championships those years.
But, being a long time Tigers fan (I actually have vague memories of the 1968 championship), it was quite a thrill. Now, if we could just do something about the Lions ....
The steal attempt of Ruth was actually a subject of an article by Bill James some years ago. The thrust of his article was that even though the game had changed to a power game, Ruth was still playing small ball in his mind. His quote after the game was that he was doing no good on first base.
This is a testament to the all to human tendency to play by the old rules well after the rules have changed.