A run on runs

Playoff teams pitch pitching, but scoring's where it's at

ST. LOUIS -- They say that good pitching stops good hitting.

You know. They. The baseball experts. The guys who wrote that book of unwritten rules. That they.

Well, either the baseball experts have strayed too close to a few too many high hard ones or the pitching just isn't very good this postseason. Scoring is out of hand. Homers are out of the park. ERAs are out of this world.

The snapshot: Forget the 4-2, 3-1 and 5-4 games. In 17 of this year's 21 postseason games, the winning team has scored at least six runs. Seven times a team has scored five runs -- and lost.

Many of the games have been way low on the drama scale, too. There have been 12-2, 11-2 and 10-2 games this postseason. Sixteen of the 21 games played -- that's better than 76 percent -- have been decided by three or more runs. There have been just two one-run games this postseason.

You want well-pitched games? There were five shutouts in the first round of the playoffs last season. This year, there weren't any.

In fact, there still haven't been any shutouts, even two games into the league championship round.

Sure, you can find exceptions to the offensive outbursts. The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 2-1 in Game 2 of their National League Division Series. The San Francisco Giants beat St. Louis 4-1 on Thursday in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series.

Those games were just that: Exceptions.

What gives? Besides most of the pitchers out there, we mean?

"You would anticipate [some teams], especially ours, would be high-scoring -- and Minnesota and the Angels -- because they both have very good offenses," said San Francisco manager Dusty Baker. "It's just hard to predict. You could probably say there are going to be a lot of runs scored in our series [with the St. Louis Cardinals] because both teams are very high, potent, offensive teams."

Still, high, potent, offensive teams are supposed to be neutralized by good pitching. Which probably brings us to the root of this particular postseason problem.

The pitching has gone south. Face it. Other than a scattered gem here or there, it's probably not coming back, either.

As Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci points out, the best staffs in baseball are sitting in their living rooms right now, not out there pitching. The top two National League teams (Arizona and Atlanta) didn't make it out of the divisional series. The top team in the American League (Oakland) and the No. 4 team (New York) didn't either.

So what we have in the National League Championship Series, ranking by ERA, is No. 2 (San Francisco) against No. 4 (St. Louis). And in the American League, it's No. 2 (Anaheim) against No. 6 (Minnesota).

Those are still some pretty good staffs and some pretty good pitchers: Jarrod Washburn of the Angels, Brad Radke of Twins, Matt Morris of the Cardinals and Kirk Rueter of the Giants come immediately to mind.

But the highest-rated pitcher left in the AL in terms of ERA? Washburn, whose 3.15 ERA during the season checked in at seventh. In the NL, it's Rueter, whose 3.23 ERA was ninth

"All of our games [in the divisional series], except the last one with the Braves, were pretty much one-sided," said San Francisco first baseman J.T. Snow, "which was kind of odd."

In every game in that series, except for the 3-1 San Francisco clincher in Game 5, the winning team scored at least seven runs and won by at least three runs. All four games of the Yankees-Angeles divisional series were similar (the winning team scored at least eight runs in every one of those four games, the losing team never fewer than five).

It's all made for a postseason where putting up a lot of runs seems to be paramount. And pitching is taking a back seat.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.

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