If there’s one cliché in baseball that refuses to die, it’s that the game changes come playoff time. Conventional wisdom holds that teams need to “shorten up”, put the ball in play, and grind out runs in the playoffs since the pitching is so much better.
Supposedly, you can’t rely on home runs. I’m someone naturally skeptical of conventional wisdom. “This is the way we’ve always done it” is the most dangerous saying in the world. I can’t help but think, especially after watching the last three MLB playoffs closer than any since 2009, that that conventional wisdom doesn’t hold up.