A.J. Burnett, the Yankees' $16.5 million per annum disappointment and man responsible for steering his team into the most recent of its various and sundry ALCS jams, initiated his delivery, and his Venezuelan-born batterymate, Francisco Cervilli, smoothly transferred his weight towards the plate's outer half while burying his catcher's mitt behind home plate's low-and-away sector. Bengie Molina, the Rangers' maligned mid-season acquisition-turned-starting backstop and author of a wretched sub-.440 OPS against pitches in said low-and-away sector in 2010, no doubt was looking for something more desirable to his hitting palate than what Burnett/Cervilli were looking to serve up.
And in the span of less than two seconds, everything changed. In launching a badly errant Burnett fastball -- one which missed its intended target by a good 12-18 inches and sailed directly into Molina's up-and-in wheelhouse -- high and deep into the night, Bengie Molina unexpectedly gained entrance to the pantheon of baseball's post-season heroes. That single three-run stroke accounted for a 39.6 percent swing in the Rangers' win expectancy, rendering it even more valuable on that basis than Michael Young's ALDS Game 2 dagger, but it was Molina's entire series of strokes and value-added moments which elevated his evening from heroic to historic.
In sum, Molina notched a 3-for-4, one-HBP performance, amassing six total bases and posting a single-game WPA (win probability added) of .490. When viewed in isolation, this latter mark stands proud and tall as the eighth-best single-game WPA posted by any catcher in post-season history (a sample comprising 2,570 games), but if one were up for a little manipulation in the form of blending context-neutral game performance with WPA, they could eliminate those ahead of Molina on the list who recorded, say, four or fewer total bases. Undertaking this adjustment propels Molina to sixth on the all-time list, a feat which becomes all the more remarkable when you realize that every good thing he did on the offensive side came against right-handed pitching -- a dexterity which killed him to the tune of .213/.253/.292 (54 sOPS+) in 302 plate appearances this season.
[For the especially curious, Molina's .490 WPA performance also goes down as the seventh-highest mark ever against the Yankees in the post-season. Among those bordering him on either side are Duke Snider, Casey Stengel, and Eddie Mathews.]
From a match-up standpoint, Joe Girardi and company certainly had the right idea in mandating the intentional free pass to David Murphy, but there's a reason why gifting free bases to the opposition is generally frowned upon, and I suspect this will be a point of second-guessing for the Yankees all winter long. What last night really exemplified best, however, was baseball's inherent unpredictability -- Bengie Molina, a guy who many observers had seemingly written off by regular season's end as being washed up, is now 10-for-26 with two homers during the Rangers' October run, and was heavily responsible for pushing the Rangers to the verge of capturing the American League pennant.
I can try to wrap my head around it, or I can let it be what it is. This is probably one of those mysteries that is better left unsolved, and although I might remain hard-wired to view everything through an analytical lens, some of this stuff simply defies analysis and reason and expectations. The Rangers are one win away from the World Series, and if ever I'm going to learn how to sit back and delight in the October magic, now is the time to do it.
Original Story:
http://www.bbtia.com/home/2010/10/20/...
