Game Notes – 2024 Postseason Leftovers

The start of the 2024 postseason got rolling on the same day October did, when eight clubs began marking their routes toward the very same dream destination.  After just a few days had passed, four had woken up to a dim reality – end of the road – while four new entrants settled in for what they hoped would be a long trek.  A week later, the entire caravan had whittled to four, and then one additional week was needed to slim even further – down to a pair of pennant winners with an extraordinary history of dueling in the Fall Classic.  Five contests later, the 2024 campaign had its champ.  All told, 43 postseason games were played this October, with more than a fifth of them being decided by a single run – including the very last one, played near the close of the month.  End of October, end of journey.   

Drama borne from home runs to initiate games and end them; tension created by hurlers commanding the action; glovework – both sterling and ugly – infiltrating the scene; decisive thwacks being struck by stars and role players:  the 2024 postseason was, like the 119 that came before it, filled with the unforgettable and the everlasting.  

Each postseason is an almanac – structured by however many box scores are needed – of who did what, when, and how.  The beauty of the annual collection is that it’s alive, for whenever another year of playoffs adds to the record, all of the connectivities are put into play and layered into the overall picture.  This October’s Game Notes have been one account of the who, what and when – how this year’s postseason united with what has come before.  One last installment will close things out.

The 2024 postseason had plenty of home runs and was crammed with drama, but it didn’t feature much in the way of starting pitchers etching their names in the historical record.  

~This year’s playoffs saw 14 starters pick up a win, tied for the second fewest in any of the 30 postseasons since 1995, when the Division Series was (re)introduced and implanted for good.  Only 2014 saw fewer, 13.  2021 also submitted a mere 14.  Michael King, last seen throwing in the NLDS for the Padres, tied for the most wins as a starter, with two.  Mets left-hander Sean Manaea and Dodgers right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto also picked up a pair.  

~For the fifth straight postseason, no game produced a dominating pitchers’ duel – a contest featuring each starter going deep and just mowing batters down with few baserunners and a lot of strikeouts.  Using Game Score, no playoff game has witnessed both pitchers notch a 75 since Game 3 of the 2019 NLDS saw the Braves’ Michael Soroka and the Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright reach that bar.  

Grand slams did have a significant paragraph in this year’s storyline, with six of them being struck.    

~The 2024 postseason saw more slams than any other playoff year, eclipsing the five from 1998 and 2021.  

~Three of the six slams this year turned a deficit into a lead (these were clubbed by Francisco Lindor in the NLDS and World Series participants Freddie Freeman and Anthony Volpe). No other postseason had ever produced more than one of these, and it took 61 Fall Classics to witness the first such slam (Ken Boyer, 1964 World Series in Game 4).  Maybe something changed when Y2K passed:  there’ve been 14 grand slams in postseason history that have transformed a deficit into a lead, with 10 of them taking place in the 21st century.  

20th century:  4 such slams occurring over the course of 939 postseason contests 

21st century:  10 such slams occurring over the course of 892 contests

Leadoff home runs – smaller on the runs-produced scale than their grand slam cousins but similarly effective for the sit-up-and-take-a-bow nature – were also a starring character in the 2024 postseason.  In all, there were four of them in the playoffs, one off the all-time high mark for a single year (set in 2007).   The four this year came from the bats of Jackson Chourio, Kyle Schwarber, Francisco Lindor and Shohei Ohtani.

Special mention should go to Francisco Lindor, the Mets leadoff hitter who filled both the grand slam and leadoff homer slots in 2024.  The dynamo became just the third player in postseason history to have one of each in the same year, after a pair of Red Sox:  Johnny Damon in 2004 and Kyle Schwarber in 2021.  With his bases-loaded longball this year, Lindor (who also had one for Cleveland in 2017) matched Jim Thome and Shane Victorino as the only players with multiple slams in their postseason careers.   

On the eve of the 2024 postseason, Giancarlo Stanton stood tied for 32nd all-time with his 11 playoff home runs.  By the time the Yankees bowed out in ‘24, the slugger had pummeled his way into the top-10, paired with Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, Nelson Cruz and Carlos Correa (all with 18).  Aside from having more dingers, the men ahead of Stanton also share a commonality that still eludes the Yankees DH:  a World Series title.  Despite the lack of a ring, Stanton established himself as a markedly big-time presence at the playoff dish, supported by the following numerical standards:

~Stanton established a new Yankees high mark for homers in a postseason, with seven.  He passed Bernie Williams (1996), Álex Rodríguez (2009) and himself (2020), all stuck at six.  Stanton also posted the third-most extra-base hits (10) in franchise history and tied for the third most total bases (39).  Among Yankees with at least 40 plate appearances in a single postseason*, Stanton’s .709 slugging percentage is fifth highest and his OPS 10th  best.  

SLUGGING %
.808 Álex Rodríguez     2009

.806 Reggie Jackson    1978

.765 Hideki Matsui        2004

.750 Reggie Jackson    1977

.709 Giancarlo Stanton 2024

OPS

1.317 Reggie Jackson    1978

1.308 Álex Rodríguez     2009

1.221 Hideki Matsui        2004

1.155 Reggie Jackson    1977

1.142 Bernie Williams     1996

1.136 Hideki Matsui        2009

1.102 Juan Soto              2024

1.078 Gleyber Torres      2019

1.060 Scott Brosius        1998

1.048 Giancarlo Stanton 2024

*using 40 PA, this list of candidates begins in 1976 – no Yankees World Series participant from 1921-1964 ever had that many in a season.  

~Stanton closed out his sixth postseason with a .662 slugging percentage for his career.  Using the 100 PA threshold, Stanton’s mark has few superiors:  just the tandem of Babe Ruth (.744) and Lou Gehrig (.731), plus Randy Arozarena (.690).

Juan Soto showed up in that NYY top-10 list, thanks to his 1.102 OPS in the entirety of the 2024 postseason.  Instead of focusing there, let’s instead look into the totality of his World Series career, now built of 12 games, 55 plate appearances and a .326/.473/.674 line.  

~There are 58 players in World Series history to have accumulated at least 50 plate appearances before turning 27 years old.  

*Among these 58, Soto ranks second in OPS.  He is one of eight players on the list to have an OPS of at least 1.000.

1.354   Lou Gehrig

1.147   Juan Soto

1.094   Charlie Keller

1.071   Billy Martin

1.056   Joe Gordon

1.034   Jimmie Foxx

1.033   Goose Goslin

1.017   Henry Aaron

*Soto’s individual ranks among the 58:  

Fifteenth in batting

Second in on-base, trailing Lou Gehrig

Third in slugging, behind Gehrig and Charlie Keller

Mookie Betts completed the 2024 postseason as the Dodgers’ leader (either outright or in tandem) in runs (14), total bases (35), home runs (4), RBI (16), extra-base hits (9) and times on base (29). 

~In other words, the right fielder was an integral part of Los Angeles capturing the title – its second in five seasons and one that elevated a number of this club’s members into an association of position players who played in multiple World Series titles for the franchise.  Organized by year of the player’s first title, the list also starts with the only guy to claim as many as four:

Jim Gilliam           (1955, 1959, 1963, 1965)

Carl Furillo           (1955, 1959)

Gil Hodges           (1955, 1959)

Duke Snider         (1955, 1959)

Don Zimmer         (1955, 1959)

Ron Fairly            (1959, 1963, 1965)

Wally Moon          (1959, 1965)

John Roseboro    (1959, 1963, 1965)

Maury Wills          (1959, 1963, 1965)

Willie Davis          (1963, 1965)

Dick Tracewski    (1963, 1965)

Steve Sax            (1981, 1988)

Mike Scioscia      (1981, 1988)

Mookie Betts        (2020, 2024)

Kiké Hernández   (2020, 2024)

Max Muncy          (2020, 2024)

Will Smith            (2020, 2024)

Chris Taylor         (2020, 2024)

~Betts’ tallies spurred some curiosity about who else assembled such numerical bars in a postseason.  Again, Betts scored 14 runs, drove in 16, reached safely 29 times and recorded nine extra-base hits and 35 total bases.  There have been four others to reach all of those levels in a postseason, including one that had Betts as a first-hand witness:

2002   Barry Bonds          18 R   16 RBI   43 ToB   11 XBH   44 TB 

2009   Álex Rodríguez     15 R   18 RBI   34 ToB   11 XBH   42 TB

2011   Albert Pujols          15 R   16 RBI   38 ToB   13 XBH   47 TB

2020   Corey Seager        20 R   20 RBI   34 ToB   12 XBH   50 TB

So much has been observed about Freddie Freeman’s historic run through the 2024 World Series – tying the record for RBI; setting new records for homer streaks to open a Fall Classic and longball streaks across any World Series; the grand slam to walk off the Game 1 victory.  I wanted to peer elsewhere for additional context.  

~Starting with that grand slam, Freeman had three homers in the 2024 Fall Classic that gave his team a lead.  Six others have had that many in a single year.

1926  Babe Ruth

1928  Lou Gehrig

1972  Gene Tenace (he had 4)

2015  Curtis Granderson

2017  George Springer

2021  Jorge Soler

2024  Freddie Freeman

~Freeman’s three go-ahead homers in 2024 quickly brought him near the all-time leadership for the Dodgers franchise.  Only Duke Snider – with four – hit more while representing Brooklyn/Los Angeles in a Fall Classic.  Gil Hodges, Ron Cey and Justin Turner also had three.  

Duke Snider:          1952 (2), 1955, 1959

Gil Hodges:            1955, 1956, 1959

Ron Cey:                1977, 1978, 1981

Justin Turner:          2017, 2020 (2)

Freddie Freeman:   2024 (3)

We’ll finish with the man who threw the final pitch in the 2024 World Series:  right-hander Walker Buehler.  

~Like Betts, Buehler’s efforts in 2024 helped secure his second title with Los Angeles.  He’s one of nine franchise hurlers to have appeared in multiple successful World Series runs.

Roger Craig         (1955, 1959)

Clem Labine        (1955, 1959)

Johnny Podres     (1955, 1959, 1963)

Don Drysdale       (1959, 1963, 1965)

Sandy Koufax       (1959, 1963, 1965)

Ron Perranoski     (1963, 1965)

Walker Buehler     (2020, 2024)

Brusdar Graterol   (2020, 2024)

Blake Treinen       (2020, 2024)

~When Buehler recorded the final out of the 2024 World Series, he joined a list of 15 others who had a World Series line that included at least one save and at least one win as a starter.  We’ll work backward with this chronology:

2024  Walker Buehler

2014  Madison Bumgarner

1974  Catfish Hunter

1972  Jack Billingham

1958  Bob Turley

1954  Johnny Antonelli

1952  Allie Reynolds

1950  Allie Reynolds

1949  Allie Reynolds

1948  Gene Bearden

1931  Bill Hallahan

1927  Wilcy Moore

1926  Pete Alexander

1924  Hugh McQuillan

1923  Herb Pennock

1906  Doc White

Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.