Analyitics

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Ellsbury

Congratulations to Ellsbury! The celebration at the plate last night was well deserved.

A lot of fan sites, including Joy of Sox and others, are reciting a stat that the last Red Sox player to deliver a walkoff RBI hit on consecutive days was Butch Hobson on Aug. 27-28, 1978. Sounds good, but . . . .

How are these fans forgetting October 2004?

On October 17, 2004, with the Sox down three games to zero against the Yankees in the ALCS, Big Papi hit a walkoff home run in the 12th inning. On October 18, in the fourteenth inning, he drove in Johnny Damon for the game winning RBI.

In any case, I'm glad to see Ellsbury following in Ortiz's (very large) footsteps!

2 comments:

  1. Incredible. Ells is now tied for second on the team in HRs. Where'd he get this power?

    Love those pictures on the JoyofSox, BTW. Classic.

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  2. The statement that Ellsbury was the first player to notch walk-off RBI in consecutive days since 1978 appears to have originated with WEEI.

    Backing up to the ALCS for a moment, if we want to get really technical, Ortiz's walkoff hit during the extra innings of game 4 actually occurred at nearly 2 a.m. on October 18. Game 5, although the longest playoff game ever up to that date, also ended on October 18, since it started early. So, Ortiz hit the two walk-offs on the same day, about 22 hours apart.

    Somehow, though, I don't think that WEEI or the Joy of Sox was slicing things so fine. So, the correct statement should be that Ellsbury was the first player to do it *in the regular season* since 1978.

    Even on this point, though we need to give Big Papi his due: he hit walk-offs in consecutive games in June 2006. There was a day off between the games, though, so they weren't on "consecutive days". As during the ALCS, both of the June 2006 walkoffs were during extra innings.

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