As if this season couldn’t get any more magical.
When the Indians came to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning down 4-0 against the Blue Jays, FanGraphs had their Win Expectancy at just 1.6%. Not many clubs can come back from a four-run deficit in half an inning.
Even when Travis Hafner stepped to the plate with the bases loaded and Cleveland’s deficit down to three runs, the odds weren’t very good—the Tribe had less than a 1-in-5 chance of pulling off the comeback.
Of course, that was before Luis Perez lobbed a fastball right into Hafner’s danger zone.
It wasn’t quite the most pressure-filled situation possible—it was the first pitch of the at-bat and there was only one out, so it didn’t precisely match the full-count two-out cliché—but Thursday night, Hafner was the very definition of clutch.
The Indians were two outs away from a loss that would have left them just half a game ahead of the Detroit Tigers in the AL Central before Travis Hafner’s moonshot to right field gave the Tribe a walk-off victory.
What if?
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Original Story:
http://www.wahooblues.com/2011/07/07/...
