The best single-postseason hitting performances of all time

All right, now that we’ve got all the negativity out of the way, let’s return to the study of legends. Here are the ten best hitting performances in a single postseason, chosen as always by Championship Probability Added.

The worst single-postseason hitting performances of all time

Well, we covered bad pitching in the last entry, so let’s switch gears back to good pitching – or at least, to hitters who made pitchers look good, which is perhaps not quite the same thing.

Either way, that’s what we’re doing. Brace yourself for the ten worst single-year postseason efforts by hitters, as measured by Championship Probability Added.

The worst single-postseason pitching performances of all time

Since the last installment in this series was the exploration of the ten best Championship Probability Added scores ever achieved by a pitcher in a single postseason, the natural (if slightly morbid) successor to that topic is the opposite: the pitchers who did the most harm to their teams’ chances of winning the title. Here they are, in worsening order:

The best single-postseason pitching performances of all time

As promised, we’re following up on the discussion of 2014’s best performers by addressing the question that arises from an analysis of Madison Bumgarner’s exemplary work throughout this October: Just how historically rare was the effort we just saw?

The short version: Very. For the long version, I present the ten best Championship Probability Added scores ever accrued by a pitcher in a single postseason.

The Best and Worst Players of the 2014 Postseason

The 2014 postseason was a strange one. It started off with one of the greatest single games in playoff history, and contained a number of other exceptional contests, including one that tied the record for most innings in a playoff game – but the series in which those games occurred were predominantly brief. Through the LCS round, none of the six multi-game matchups included more than one win by the team that lost the series. The World Series broke that trend, lasting the full seven, but it did so while having the average game become far duller than those involved in the briefer clashes that preceded it.

On the other hand, the individual performances seen in October 2014 were often quite memorable. And this space has previously explored Championship Probability Added (CPA), which is designed to analyze just those sorts of performances. So… let’s do that!