Roy Halladay’s Big Hit
Lost in the incredible drama of Roy Halladay pitching a no-hitter in his first postseason start is the fact that Halladay recorded a hit in his first playoff at-bat. In fact, his second-inning RBI single changed the win expectancy of the game more than any of the 104 pitches he threw. Halladay entered Wednesday’s game with 136 career plate appearances. He has never had an extra-base hit; he has drawn just one walk. And just eight times in his career, Halladay has hit a line drive. Before 2010, Halladay hadn’t hit regularly since he was an amateur in 1995. A game-changing hit was almost as unlikely for Halladay as a no-hitter. Almost.
Like a poker player with a tell, Halladay has one distinct approach at the plate: He goes up looking to swing. Five of his 13 hits this season, including four of his past six, have occurred on the first pitch. If he sees a fastball in the zone on the first pitch, there is a good chance he’s going to offer at it. So, if there was anything that Edinson Volquez should not have done with the first pitch he ever threw Halladay, it was throwing a 93 mph fastball on the inner half of the plate. By doing so, he allowed the ninth line drive of Halladay’s offensive career.
That should have been it for Volquez, though, because the ball hung up toward left field. It was a hit that left fielders should catch, that the vast majority of left fielders do catch. Playing left field on Wednesday for the Reds was Jonny Gomes, one of the worst defensive left fielders in baseball. In fact, using ultimate zone rating, the preferred fielding metric at FanGraphs, Gomes ranked as the fourth-worst defender at any position.
Matt Kemp: -24.3 runs.
Carlos Quentin: -22.9 runs.
Carlos Lee: -17.4 runs.
Jonny Gomes: -16.1 runs.
Trevor Crowe: -15.7 runs.
Gomes got a late jump on the Halladay line drive, and by the time he recovered, it was too late. He attempted a feet-first dive to catch the ball, but he couldn’t glove it, and had no chance to make a throw to home plate. The slow-footed Carlos Ruiz was running from second base, but with two outs, had a good jump toward scoring the game’s second run. When Halladay’s 17th career hit plated Ruiz, the Phillies’ win expectancy odds went from 64.7 percent to 74.3 percent. Before the inning ended, a two-run single by Shane Victorino pushed them to 85.2 percent.
Because Jim Edmonds‘ Achilles injury rendered him unavailable for the first round of the playoffs, the Reds decided Laynce Nix was healthy enough to earn a spot on their playoff roster. Nix returned from an ankle injury on Sept. 22, and made just one start between then and the playoffs, collecting two hits against the Astros on Sept. 29. The left-handed-hitting outfielder made only 31 starts this season, but in a predominantly reserve role, he had the best offensive season of his eight-year career. Generally, when Nix has been able to catch on to a major league roster, it’s because of the qualities he offers as a defender. In nearly 3,000 defensive innings in the outfield, Nix has a positive ultimate zone rating at each outfield position: +0.3 runs in right field, +11.8 runs in center, +8.1 runs in left. This season, in limited time, he was worth 7 runs above average, and 23.1 runs more than Jonny Gomes.
We don’t know if Nix playing left field instead of Gomes would have changed the outcome of Game 1. We don’t know if Nix, traditionally a worse hitter than Gomes (though left-handed), would have done anything to spoil Halladay’s no-hitter. But, given their histories and drastically different defensive abilities, it’s pretty likely that Nix would have caught Halladay’s line drive, and ended the second inning with the score still 1-0.