Baseball Playoffs, Day 2: Errors and the "Let Down Hit"

An awfully satisfying slate of games today, leaving my preference list and me 5 for 6 so far this October.

Aside from another ho-hum home playoff loss for the Braves, today featured losses by both the Red Sox and the Yankees in strikingly similar forms. In particular, both games featured key errors and key appearances of a let down hit. To wit:

Gets by Graffanino!

As does any error committed by a Boston infielder during October, today's fifth-inning gaffe by Tony Graffanino instantly brought memories of Bill Buckner to anyone with even a modicum of familiarity with baseball history. The error left White Sox on first and third base with only one out. Dad and I always used to refer to such a situation as MOTLOTT: man on third, less outs than two. (This odd wording was chosen because it makes a far more pronounceable acronym than MOTLTOT.) When the offense is in a MOTLOTT situation, almost any reasonable outcome of the next at-bat can score a run. It's a cardinal sin in baseball for the offense to fail to plate the runner on third when they have MOTLOTT.

Yet, the White Sox did exactly this, as leadoff hitter Scott Podsednik—perhaps falsely encouraged by his first home run of the year yesterday—lofted a weak foul popup which was easily caught by Bill Mueller. Now, David Wells and the BoSox had a golden opportunity to nullify Graffanino's error and escape from the inning with a two-run lead. First, though, they needed to avoid an equally deadly yet less well known baseball cardinal sin: the let down hit.

The let down hit occurs after a team in the field manages to harmlessly record the one or two outs necessary to convert MOTLOTT into a more manageable two-out rally. When this happens, the defensive team lets out a collective sigh of relief, a premature reaction so powerful that the next batter often smacks the very next pitch into the outfield for a clean, run-scoring base hit. Today, Wells lasted until his third pitch to Tadahito Iguchi to surrender a let down hit, but when he did, he did it with style. A long fly ball and four bases later, and Iguchi had given the White Sox a 5–4 lead that they would not relinquish. My hat's off also to rookie Bobby Jenks, thrust into the closer's role in lieu of an ailing Dustin Hermanson, who pitched two strong innings to save the game for the good guys.

I still give the Red Sox a 50–60% chance of forcing a deciding game five in this series, but even those odds give the White Sox a good chance of finishing the series off at Fenway over the weekend.

Three hours later, it happens again

The parallels were striking. An early two-run lead for the potent Yankee offense. An error by ARod allows the Angels to tie the game in the sixth inning. And then in the seventh inning, a throwing error by Wang on Steve Finley's sacrifice bunt followed by Adam Kennedy's successful sacrifice gives the Angels runners on second and third with only one out: MOTLOTT! But as seems to be the trend, the Angels don't capitalize, as Ch[Sean]one [1] Figgins's fly ball to centerfield is so shallow that the Angels don't dare challenge the lollipop arm of Bernie Williams. Thankfully, Wang is even more true to the let-down-hit rule than Wells was, as his very first pitch to Orlando Cabrera is lined into centerfield for two RBI. The Angels tack one more run on in the eighth, and KRod escapes in the ninth with the save. The series is tied up heading to the Bronx, where I'm hopeful that maybe the Angels can steal a game.

Tomorrow: two national league games. I'll have more to say about the Braves once they finish losing in the divisional series again, for the umpteenth time.

[1] Thanks to Jeremy for this one.