All postseason stats are small sample. All postseason stats also come against a relatively high-quality opponent. And, if you’re a position player, those stats are further challenged by the fact that you’ll be facing the very best relievers in the very best match-ups available half the time.
All of which is to say, I try not to be too harsh on any postseason stats. They are a description of what has happened, sure, but it’s a tough spot with only a small number of chances.
Still, I did want to check in on the first four games of Cubs action to take stock of how the bats are performing, at an individual level.
In a lot of ways, the story these stats tell is the same one most of September was telling:
The guys who’d gotten hot toward the end of the year – Busch, Kelly, Hoerner, Suzuki – are also the guys who’ve had a hot start to the postseason. That could be a coincidence, but it seems at least as likely that these are some guys who were feeling really good physically and mechanically by the time the regular season wrapped up.
By contrast, some of the guys having the biggest struggles so far this postseason – Crow-Armstrong and Tucker, for example – were guys whose second-half struggles were a near daily feature of the discourse.
Ian Happ is a bit of a mixed story, as he had a brutal first two games against the Padres, and then a good finale paired with a dinger in the opener against the Brewers. Maybe that’s appropriate, narratively-speaking, since the end of his season was also mixed. Happ hit .237/.275/.342/72 wRC+ over the final ten games, but hit .266/.368/.491/139 wRC+ in the second half overall.
Meanwhile, Matt Shaw has been bringing up the rear this postseason, still looking for his first hit. He actually hit .263/.349/.526/143 wRC+ in the second half of September, so you can’t accuse him of going into the postseason cold.
Ultimately, none of this “matters” for what comes next. It’s just a discussion of what has occurred, and perhaps a plea that the guys on the bottom of that chart turn it around quickly, while the rest keep doing what they’ve been doing.