Playoffs

One of the things that has always driven my crazy is the assumption that A-Rod is a "choke artist" because he had some crummy playoff series after Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS (before which he was crushing.) I can't argue he might've been pressing some, I do not know what goes on in A-Rod's head, but neither do you. But one thing I DO know in following the day-to-day play of any hitter in baseball is that sometimes you're insanely hot, sometime you're on par for yourself, and sometimes you're insanely awful. And yeah, A-Rod had recently been on a track in the playoffs that was flat-out awful. But you can go into any season and pick out whatever number of at-bats the slump was (e.g. 60 AB or whatever) and you will find a stretch where that player was insanely hot, another stretch where he was on par for himself, and another where he was insanely awful. And if the insanely hot or insanely awful stretches occur in May or August nobody really notices or cares, unlike when either of those happen in October and all of a sudden any sample of at-bats a fan wants to use can be construed to say "oh, this player is great under pressure!" (Jeter) or "this guy is awful under pressure!," (A-Rod) neither idea of which I particularly subscribe to, especially when it comes to guys who have been doing this for about a decade and a half each. It's a romantic notion we like to pick up on re: the idea of players "picking it up a notch!" come the playoffs, but most of that's timing and opportunity and luck; in other words, any player over enough time will eventually have his postseason batting mirror his regular season hitting. And if you're unsure about the uselessness of labeling players as "winners" or "losers" based simply on one handful of games out of the hundreds/thousands they actually play, you should know that the Yankees record for post-season rbi is Scott Brosius (1998.) I mean, camon.

If anybody thinks this hysterical crying is only cause A-Rod's finally broken out of his playoff doldrums, I'm sure a quick search will show that I've posted the same shit over and over in previous years. So, (outta breath, passing out)