Matter of Fact: Erik Goeddel latest tragic figure in flawed playoff format
New York Mets reliever and former UCLA baseball player Erik Goeddel was taken off the Mets’ playoff roster with a rare ERA – infinity. (Courtesy of CJ Walker/Getty Images)
By Matt Cummings
Oct. 22, 2015 1:19 a.m.
INF.
Erik Goeddel’s first playoff appearance was defined by three letters lodged rudely at the far right of his stat line – a place typically reserved for numbers.
Goeddel entered in the top of the ninth on Oct. 12, tasked with holding a 13-4 New York Mets lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers. It didn’t go so well. The former Bruin threw 15 pitches – three were laced for singles, another for a three-run homer that just barely scraped over the left-field wall.
Then it was over. Mets manager Terry Collins summoned star closer Jeurys Familia from the bullpen, ending Goeddel’s night before he could record an out.
Zero outs, three runs. Yup, Goeddel finished the game with an ERA of infinity.
Crazy, right? Not really.
This season, 196 different pitchers – none named Erik Goeddel – made appearances in which they gave up an earned run without recording an out. Randy Choate did it eight times. Many of them were left-handed specialists removed after one batter – the case in six of Choate’s eight instances – but plenty remained in the game longer. FIfty-one of the 196 pitchers faced four or more batters, and 61 allowed three runs or more, per Baseball Reference’s Play Index.
Long story short, lots of pitchers made appearances like Goeddel’s this year. The difference: They did it in the regular season, where such tragic small sample size theater is treated as it should be in baseball – with a shrug and a look towards the next game.
But Goeddel’s fiasco came in the postseason, a hyper-scrutinized show where “every pitch matters” and “legends are born.”
To make matters worse, Goeddel was left off the roster when his Mets advanced to the next round – not because of the poor performance but for strategic purposes, I should add.
Of course, maybe he’ll make the Mets’ World Series roster, or maybe he’ll reach the playoffs again, but as a middle reliever with significant injury history, there’s no guarantee he’ll ever throw another pitch in the postseason.
An effective pitcher who strikes out more than a batter an inning and posted a 2.43 ERA this year, Goeddel could easily end up as one of 15 pitchers with a career postseason ERA of infinity.
His plight is just one example of the playoffs’ tendency to shape legacies around arbitrary snippets of performance, infinitesimal bits of a player’s or team’s portfolio.
Baseball is just so random. Unlike in football or basketball, even the worst team in the league will beat the best team a significant amount of the time. The baseball season spans six months and 162 games because that’s what’s needed to separate the cream from the crop. But then we take 10 of the 30 teams, throw them in a month-long lottery machine and pretend whoever pops out is the best team.
The 2005 St. Louis Cardinals were a juggernaut, their 100 victories outpacing all other National League teams by 10 wins. They lost in the National League Championship Series. As if brought about to prove the absurdity of the playoffs, the Cardinals won the World Series the next year after posting an 83-78 regular-season record.
The 2001 Seattle Mariners and their MLB-record 116 wins are perhaps the most famous example of a team wronged by the playoff format, which eliminated them in the American League Championship Series. But how about the 1906 Chicago Cubs, who also won 116 games, back when the season was 10 games shorter? They lost in the World Series.
It extends to college. This spring, UCLA baseball was ranked No. 1 in the nation heading into the NCAA tournament. In the first weekend, the unranked Maryland Terrapins knocked the Bruins out by beating them two out of three games.
Two out of three games. Baseball games. It would be quicker to just flip a coin or roll some dice.
I don’t want to sound like a grouch – the playoffs are really fun. But the outsized importance we place upon a random collection of games has tortured many a soul.
Ask Billy Beane. His Oakland A’s have notoriously struggled in the postseason despite remarkable regular-season success. Beane’s thoughts: “My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is f—ing luck.”
Maybe Goeddel will get lucky. Maybe he’ll make the World Series roster, win the series MVP and be the subject of many more columns.
But maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll never again sniff the playoffs, left with those 15 pitches as a tragic reminder of the cruelty of October.
