October Baseball Is a Different Sport
More velo, shorter starts and the worst hitting we've seen in years. Why one October run is worth a five-point field goal, and why a few managers are finally starting to play like it.
Playoff baseball is an entirely different sport compared to its regular season counterpart. In the NFL, when the playoffs roll around, you don’t see Sean McVay or Andy Reid change their entire game plan. In the NBA you see some changes: stiffer defense, and your bigger names playing more minutes, but nothing that really makes you feel the way baseball does in October.
So why is baseball so different come October?
The numbers say it really is a different sport
I don’t just mean it feels different. Since the Statcast era took over in 2015, both regular-season and October baseball have changed, but October has changed substantially. Pitchers throw harder, starters get pulled sooner, and hitters strike out more than they do over the course of 162.
Start with the obvious one. Postseason hitters have hit worse than regular-season hitters in 19 of the last 21 years, and this October is one of the worst yet.
- Regular season
- Postseason
Source: MLB Stats API box scores
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| Season | Regular season | Postseason |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 0.269 | 0.250 |
| 2007 | 0.268 | 0.258 |
| 2008 | 0.264 | 0.249 |
| 2009 | 0.262 | 0.247 |
| 2010 | 0.257 | 0.227 |
| 2011 | 0.255 | 0.255 |
| 2012 | 0.255 | 0.227 |
| 2013 | 0.253 | 0.231 |
| 2014 | 0.251 | 0.239 |
| 2015 | 0.254 | 0.227 |
| 2016 | 0.255 | 0.224 |
| 2017 | 0.255 | 0.223 |
| 2018 | 0.248 | 0.218 |
| 2019 | 0.252 | 0.230 |
| 2020 | 0.245 | 0.234 |
| 2021 | 0.244 | 0.244 |
| 2022 | 0.243 | 0.211 |
| 2023 | 0.248 | 0.241 |
| 2024 | 0.243 | 0.231 |
| 2025 | 0.245 | 0.231 |
| 2026 | 0.244 | 0.213 |
Through the first 28 games of this postseason, hitters are batting .213/.295/.337. Compared with every October since 2006 at this same point, that’s the second-lowest average (only 2022 was worse) and the lowest slugging percentage. And it’s mostly been the Division Series:
| 2026 round | AVG / OBP / SLG | Runs per team per game | Norm for that round (2006–25) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wild Card (9 games) | .235 / .303 / .388 | 4.17 | 3.49 |
| Division Series (16 games) | .192 / .284 / .304 | 3.06 | 4.08 |
| LCS (first 3 games) | .254 / .333 / .363 | 4.00 | 4.20 |
Hitters batted .192 in the Division Series. Teams scored about one run per game less than a normal DS.
Why? Look at who’s throwing
October fastballs aren’t just faster than they used to be. They’re faster than the regular season every single year, usually by 1 to 1.5 mph. The bullpen arms you see once, maybe twice a week in June are the guys you see every night in October.
- Regular season
- Postseason
Source: Baseball Savant pitch-level data
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| Season | Regular season | Postseason |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 91.9 | 93.0 |
| 2009 | 92.1 | 93.4 |
| 2010 | 92.2 | 92.9 |
| 2011 | 92.4 | 93.4 |
| 2012 | 92.5 | 93.0 |
| 2013 | 92.7 | 94.2 |
| 2014 | 92.8 | 93.9 |
| 2015 | 93.1 | 94.3 |
| 2016 | 93.2 | 94.0 |
| 2017 | 93.2 | 94.5 |
| 2018 | 93.1 | 94.7 |
| 2019 | 93.4 | 94.9 |
| 2020 | 93.4 | 94.9 |
| 2021 | 93.7 | 95.0 |
| 2022 | 93.9 | 95.2 |
| 2023 | 94.2 | 95.0 |
| 2024 | 94.3 | 95.4 |
| 2025 | 94.5 | 95.8 |
| 2026 | 94.8 | 96.4 |
This October’s average four-seamer is 96.4 mph, a record. The strikeouts follow. Postseason strikeout rates have been higher than the regular season in every year of the Statcast era except 2024, when they tied:
- Regular season
- Postseason
Source: MLB Stats API
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| Season | Regular season | Postseason |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 16.8% | 16.4% |
| 2007 | 17.1% | 20.3% |
| 2008 | 17.5% | 20.2% |
| 2009 | 18.0% | 19.2% |
| 2010 | 18.5% | 23.0% |
| 2011 | 18.6% | 20.0% |
| 2012 | 19.8% | 22.3% |
| 2013 | 19.9% | 23.6% |
| 2014 | 20.4% | 19.5% |
| 2015 | 20.4% | 24.2% |
| 2016 | 21.1% | 24.4% |
| 2017 | 21.6% | 24.8% |
| 2018 | 22.3% | 24.7% |
| 2019 | 23.0% | 26.2% |
| 2020 | 23.4% | 25.7% |
| 2021 | 23.2% | 25.0% |
| 2022 | 22.4% | 27.0% |
| 2023 | 22.7% | 23.8% |
| 2024 | 22.6% | 22.6% |
| 2025 | 22.2% | 23.9% |
| 2026 | 22.1% | 24.9% |
Interestingly, walks don’t fall off. Postseason walk rates usually match or beat the regular season. Hitters still take their walks in October. It just doesn’t help much when the next guy up goes down swinging.
- Regular season
- Postseason
Source: MLB Stats API
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| Season | Regular season | Postseason |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 8.4% | 8.4% |
| 2007 | 8.5% | 9.7% |
| 2008 | 8.7% | 9.7% |
| 2009 | 8.9% | 9.4% |
| 2010 | 8.5% | 7.5% |
| 2011 | 8.1% | 8.7% |
| 2012 | 8.0% | 7.5% |
| 2013 | 7.9% | 8.0% |
| 2014 | 7.6% | 7.6% |
| 2015 | 7.7% | 7.4% |
| 2016 | 8.2% | 7.7% |
| 2017 | 8.5% | 9.4% |
| 2018 | 8.5% | 10.0% |
| 2019 | 8.5% | 9.2% |
| 2020 | 9.2% | 9.6% |
| 2021 | 8.7% | 8.0% |
| 2022 | 8.2% | 7.6% |
| 2023 | 8.6% | 9.0% |
| 2024 | 8.2% | 10.1% |
| 2025 | 8.4% | 9.0% |
| 2026 | 8.9% | 9.3% |
And then there’s the hook. Managers treat October like a bullpen game with a long opener. In the regular season, 82% of starters still get a third look at the lineup. This October, 46% do. That’s the lowest share in the 19 years of pitch-level data.
- Regular season
- Postseason
Source: Baseball Savant pitch-level data
Show the data
| Season | Regular season | Postseason |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 93% | 89% |
| 2009 | 93% | 90% |
| 2010 | 95% | 89% |
| 2011 | 95% | 83% |
| 2012 | 93% | 88% |
| 2013 | 94% | 89% |
| 2014 | 95% | 83% |
| 2015 | 92% | 81% |
| 2016 | 92% | 73% |
| 2017 | 90% | 63% |
| 2018 | 86% | 71% |
| 2019 | 84% | 77% |
| 2020 | 70% | 60% |
| 2021 | 78% | 49% |
| 2022 | 83% | 81% |
| 2023 | 84% | 66% |
| 2024 | 86% | 58% |
| 2025 | 85% | 53% |
| 2026 | 82% | 46% |
That’s what “leveraging every matchup” looks like in numbers. In June you face a team’s fourth starter going through your order three times. In October you face their ace for 15 outs and then three guys painting 99 with a 92 MPH slider following suit.
So what is one October run actually worth?
Lying in bed one night, I had a thought: what is a postseason run worth compared to a regular-season run? And what would it be in another sport’s points?
Against the regular season: this October, a run is worth about 1.19 regular-season runs. That ties 2006 for the biggest gap in 21 years. In a normal year, the October premium is closer to 1.08. It isn’t trending up over time. It just depends on how dead the bats are that year (or how juiced the balls are that year), and this year they’re about as dead as it gets.
Source: Wheelhouse analysis of MLB Stats API data; see “How I did the math”
Show the data
| Season | October run value |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 1.19× |
| 2007 | 1.03× |
| 2008 | 1.07× |
| 2009 | 1.05× |
| 2010 | 1.15× |
| 2011 | 0.91× |
| 2012 | 1.17× |
| 2013 | 1.12× |
| 2014 | 1.01× |
| 2015 | 0.98× |
| 2016 | 1.15× |
| 2017 | 1.06× |
| 2018 | 1.08× |
| 2019 | 1.14× |
| 2020 | 1.04× |
| 2021 | 1.04× |
| 2022 | 1.12× |
| 2023 | 1.09× |
| 2024 | 1.03× |
| 2025 | 1.08× |
| 2026 | 1.19× |
Against other sports: this is where it gets fun. Late in a postseason game (8th or 9th inning), one run moves the needle as much as:
- In the NBA playoffsSteph Curry hitting a five-pointer
- 4.8 pts
- In the NFL playoffsA field goal worth five
- 5.3 pts
- In the NHL playoffsMost of a goal
- 0.82 goals
Picture that. Every run in the 8th or 9th inning of an October game is a five-point field goal from Brandon Aubrey. It’s a Curry baaang from the logo, and the shot counts for five.
Leads translate the same way. A one-run lead entering the 9th inning of a postseason game has held about 90% of the time (71 of 79 games since 2015). For an equivalent, that is about as safe as an NFL playoff team up eight with 6:00 left to play, or an NBA playoff team up eight with 5:00 left.
Which brings me to the “little things”
Through the regular season, and in plenty of articles you’ll read, the gospel is:
- Pitchers: throw as hard as you can
- Pitchers: generate as much swing-and-miss as you can
- Hitters: swing as hard as you can
- Hitters: a strikeout isn’t the worst thing in the world if it buys more homers
But come October it seems like teams throw that out the window, and it does make me wonder why. We’re beaten over the head with “bunts are free outs,” yet in the postseason you see teams do the little things your middle school coach preached: work the count, move runners over, sac bunt, put the ball in play, hustle out every ball put in play.
Here’s what the data says:
Teams league-wide do bunt more in October, at least since 2022. With a runner on first and nobody out (pitchers excluded), postseason teams have bunted 8.5% of the time since 2022, versus 5.1% in the regular season. This October it’s 10.1%.
But as a group, they don’t actually “move runners over” more. Outs that advance a runner from second happen at the same rate or less in October. Hitters strike out more and put fewer balls in play. The pitching just doesn’t allow it in the modern game in most cases.
What changes is a handful of teams that play small ball on purpose. And this October, two of them stood out:
| Team (manager) | Sac bunts per game, Oct. | Sac bunts per game, reg. season |
|---|---|---|
| Braves (Walt Weiss) | 0.43 | 0.07 |
| Brewers (Pat Murphy) | 0.50 | 0.23 |
| Yankees (Aaron Boone) | 0.20 | 0.06 |
| Rays (Kevin Cash) | 0.25 | 0.28 |
| Red Sox, Cubs, Phillies | 0.00 | 0.06–0.22 |
The Braves bunted about six times as often as they did all season, before the Dodgers knocked them out in the Division Series. The Brewers are bunting twice as much and running more than any other playoff team (1.5 steal attempts a game). The Padres under Craig Stammen have tried the most bunts of anyone this October (eight).
So does bunting more actually win in October? It doesn’t take a genius to know that teams that play more October games get more chances to bunt, so raw totals can’t answer that. Instead I looked at bunt attempts per plate appearance for every postseason team since the universal DH arrived in 2022.
The bunt-happy teams do show up late. Half of the eight World Series teams from 2022 to 2025 came from the most bunt-happy third of the field, including the 2022 Astros (champions), the 2023 Diamondbacks and the 2025 Blue Jays, who all ranked third in their October in bunt rate. But the 2023 Rangers won it all ranking 10th of 12.
Go series by series and it’s a coin flip. In the 41 series where one team bunted at a higher rate than the other, that team won 21 of them (51%). Bunting more often doesn’t win you October, and it doesn’t lose it for you either, which is exactly what the math below says it should do.
So are bunts “just free outs”?
In June, yes. In October, it’s a push.
In a tie game in the 7th, 8th or 9th inning of a regular-season game, a successful sac bunt actually lowers your chance of winning by 0.5 to 2 percentage points if you believe in win probability metrics. In the postseason, with runs this scarce, it’s roughly break-even. The one spot where it clearly pays is the bottom of the 9th, and even then the bunt has to work about 91% of the time. October bunts in that spot have worked 68% of the time.
So the analytics crowd is right about June, and roughly a push in October. However for my own personal bias I’ll keep rooting for the 26th man on the roster who lays them down in the summer time.
The Arraez problem
This is the part that bugs me most and is going a little off topic but here I go anyway. Luis Arraez won three straight batting titles from 2022 to 2024 (.316, .354, .314), and he’s hit over .300 in six of his eight seasons. Yet the analytics crowd never treated him as all that valuable. In 2024 and 2025 he was worth about one win a year: 1.1 and 0.9 WAR by FanGraphs, 1.1 and 1.4 by Baseball-Reference. Then this year his defense suddenly grades out great (+10 runs by FanGraphs, +12 Outs Above Average), and now he’s a 4-win player on FanGraphs.
Even now, the stats can’t agree on him. Baseball-Reference’s defensive metric still has him below average, so it calls 2026 a 2.9-WAR season.
While his WAR is better with the increase in defense, I struggle to see how a guy who puts the ball in play and hits .300+ has such little value to a team, especially in October, where everyone else is striking out a quarter of the time. If you were to read X last offseason when he finally found a home in San Francisco, you’d think the Giants had just signed a pitcher to hit in their lineup. That home lasted until Aug. 3, when the Giants traded him to Philadelphia for the stretch run. Sure, I’ll concede a lineup of 9 Luis Arraez may not be the most productive, but on a team that balances the long ball and getting guys on base, he’d be a top option for me.
Every team is starting to look the same
I’m not anti-analytics. I love numbers and I love efficiency in sports. But I do think it has led to a stale viewing experience.
In baseball, the data backs that up. The gap between the most and least powerful offenses has never been smaller: across the 30 teams, home-run rate and batting average are the most bunched together they’ve been in 21 years. Whether you have a $500 million payroll or a $50 million one, you try to fit as many three-true-outcome guys onto the roster as you can.
With the exception of the Brewers. In 2026 they’re first in batting average, first in walk rate, dead last in home-run rate, third in steal attempts and fourth in bunt attempts. They’re the closest thing left to a team built for October on purpose. With the CBA expiring December 1 and a lockout looming, maybe new rules agreed upon by MLB and the MLBPA will allow baseball roster building to open back up. Teams follow trends. If Milwaukee or Tampa Bay can get the job done, I think you’ll see teams imitate their style of play heading into next year.