Walk (Off) This Way

Of the four major sports, I feel baseball has the best finishes. There is no clock to spoil the fun, and home field advantage means more than any other game. So when the home team secures a walk off victory the spike in elation is unparalleled. However, for every walk off winner someone needs to feel the crushing canyon of sudden loss. The Cleveland Indians have gotten to know that sensation well in Minnesota. After back-to-back walk off losses against the Twins, Cleveland is dripping with defeat. The two failings got me thinking, does the Tribe not walk off like they used to?

Anytime the mid-1990s Indians clubs come up in conversation the mind wanders back to the biggest wins. Manny’s “Wow” homer off Dennis Eckersly. Tony Pena’s dinger in the 1995 ALDS. Omar’s missed suicide squeeze. There was magic at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario. As those teams aged out and new ones came in, the Indians continued to walk off but it didn’t feel the same. I wondered if the two were related; are walk off wins the hallmark or a winning club? Do these early last minute defeats forebode a lackluster season? To investigate, I took a look back at the Indians’ walk off stats since 1994 to see if the numbers back me up and if they make any kind of difference.

The 1994 and 1995 Indians owned the ninth inning and later with 10 and 12 walk offs respectively over Jacobs Field’s first two seasons. Seemingly every night someone else would play the hero, and no lead was too much to overcome. Surprisingly, those numbers dipped after those seasons and the club walked off a mere five games in 1997. However, both ’95 and ’97 resulted in American League Pennants for Cleveland. A look at the variance shows that there is no significant pattern to the club’s walk off wins and their playoff fate. Sure in 2007 the club won ten games in their last at bat and came within a game of the World Series. Four years later the Indians won twelve games at the death, but still muddled their way to a losing record (80-82). If it seemed that 2015 was a particularly weak year for the Tribe in the clutch, the numbers back you up. The team enjoyed a scant two last at bat victories, the lowest count since their current home opened. This graph only tells half the story.

Walk off losses say less about the resilience of your offense and more about the strength of your bullpen. From 1994-2001 the Tribe never lost more than seven games in their opponents’ last ups. In 1995 that number dropped as low as two. Those clubs all enjoyed deep pitching staffs and stalwart bullpens. However, as the number of losing seasons mounted, so too did the walk off losses. In 2004 and 2006 Cleveland surrendered a home plate celebration a full dozen times each. Tribe fans hold no special regard for those seasons as they sit firmly in the forgotten “Eric Wedge Era.” Cleveland’s two most recent playoff seasons, 2007 and 2013, coincide with lowered walk off losses – seven and two respectively. So there may be some fire behind this smoke; after all it stands to reason that bad teams would have bad bullpens that would surrender game winning hits. The opposite is true of good clubs with strong pens.

Taken in tandem, the better years showed a club with a better walk off record than the lousier years. Interesting by itself, but let’s dive deeper. Does a club’s potency in a walk off situation for good or ill portend anything about their overall campaign?

This is probably a good time to mention that correlation does not imply causation. Of the eight occasions when the Indians made the playoffs in the past twenty-two years, their walk off win percentage was at or above .500 seven times. The lone exception is puzzlingly 1997. Now, in the other fourteen seasons when they did not reach October, their walk off win percentage was still in the black eight times. The only times the club had both a negative count in walk offs and also missed the playoffs were 2004-06, 2008, and 2015. The split is even enough that one can argue a higher propensity for late game dramatics does not guarantee a playoff appearance, but they certainly don’t hurt. After all, a win is a win whether it’s a 10-2 laugher or a 4-3 tenth inning mobbing at the plate.

So what does all of this mean? The statistics on walk off wins and losses seem to be more noise than signal. Even 2015’s worst MLB club, a 99-loss Phillies unit, still managed seven walk off wins during the campaign. They took seven walk off losses as well. The Indians’ consecutive walk-off defeats do not herald doom and gloom, but they are to be monitored. Walk off losses seem to tell more of a story than walk off wins. A leaky pen is a surefire way to wind up in the “Sellers” column at the trade deadline. For now the Tribe should keep their heads down and continue to figure out their lineup with a newly healthy Michael Brantley. Walk offs are fun for the home team. Let’s all hope the Tribe has a little more fun at home (plate) in 2016.