Walk It Off

Fascinating chart from baseball-reference.com collecting all the walk-off hits in postseason history. A few notes:
-There were only 3 walk-off hits in the first 20 World Series (1903, 1905-23). First one? A Jimmy Sheckard single off Chief Bender, Game 4, 1910.
-There have only been two walkoff hits while trailing in a winner-take-all game: Francisco Cabrera off Stan Belinda in Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS, and Edgar Martinez off Jack McDowell in Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS. Edgar’s came in the 11th inning – I’d forgotten quite how dramatic that series was.
-The only player with 3 walkoff postseason hits is not that surprising: David Ortiz. The others with 2: Goose Goslin, Paul Blair, Bernie Williams, and Alfonso Soriano.
-Only pitchers to allow 2 postseason walkoff hits: Alejandro Pena, Dan Miceli, Dennis Eckersley, Jack Bentley, Jeff Reardon, Roberto Hernandez, Ron Perranoski, Steve Kline, Tom Niedenfeur, Tug McGraw.

3 thoughts on “Walk It Off”

  1. Re: the 1995 ALDS – I forgot how dramatic it was because I only got to see one game of it. Remember the idiotic Baseball network where they had the brilliant idea of having all four LDS games played at the same time? Well I was in college in Atlanta so got stuck with Braves-Rockies, and saw nothing of Yanks-Mariners until game five. The worst part was they wouldn’t even switch games when your market’s game ended.
    Yeah, I’m still a little bitter about that.

  2. Ortiz’s walk-offs came in 3 consecutive wins (not 3 straight games): Game 3 of the ALDS (to win the series), and then the HR to win Game 4 of the ALCS and the bloop single to win game 5. Not a bad effort

  3. Wait, as an Orioles fan I witnessed Armando Benitez find ways to blow saves. Armando benitez did not give up multiple walk offs in 1997 vs. the Indians? Benitez had two losses in that ALCS, but neither of those losses was the game that he gave up the walk off in. One could argue, he lost 3 games for Baltimore that series.
    https://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/1997_ALCS.shtml

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