Home Teams in Game 5s, Series-Winning RBI and more ...
Home Teams are 6-10 in Division Series elimination games ... and a lot more to chew on to get ready for NLDS Game 5 Friday night.
There have been 66 best-of-five division series since baseball realigned and added a wild-card team for the 1995 season. Fifteen of those series have gone to a Game 5. The home team in those games is just 6-9.
Only four of those elimination games were in the NLDS, and the home team in those games was 1-3. The only NL road team to lose a NLDS Game 5 is the team that will be in the opposing dugout tonight. In 2001, the eventual World Champion Arizona Diamondbacks held off the visiting St. Louis Cardinals to advance to the NLCS.
(More tidbits to chew on below the chart.)
Here are the 15 Division Series Game 5s (NL in bold):
If you followed the Phillies BoopStats Blogathon following the conclusion of the regular season, you already know most of the following, but we feel the need to "Play It, Again."
♦ No National League top-seeded team (which the Phillies are) has advanced to the World Series since 2004.
♦ No NL top-seeded team has won the World Series since 1995.
♦ No 100-win NL team (the Phils had 102 this year) has won the World Series since 1986.
And a couple more tidbits to pass along ...
♦ Both teams that will meet in the ALCS were outcored in their division series. The Yankees outscored the Tigers, 28-17; and it was Rays 21, Rangers 16.
♦ Roy Halladay enters Friday night having retired the last 21 batters he has faced. The postseason record is 34, by Don Larson, who set down the first seven batters he faced after his Perfect Game. (He had walked the last batter he faced in his outing prior to the perfecto.)
♦ The series-winning run in each of the Phillies' last three playoff victories came as a result of an at-bat by the same player. He had a single to win the Rockie series in 2009, a homer to eliminate the Dodgers that same year, and reached on an error as the winning run scored in the sweep of the Reds in last year's NLDS ... And whatever happened to Jayson Werth.
♦ Since Pedro Feliz had the game-winning hit in the 2008 World Series, that leaves Jimmy Rollins as the only active Phillie to have a series-winning RBI for them. (He won the first two series in 2008.)