Hitting in the clutch

There was an interesting quote from Lake Erie manager John Massarelli in a recent article in the Chronicle-Telegram that supported our statistic about Lake Erie's lack of quality starts. Massarelli told the newspaper "You look at the records of the starting pitchers for the four teams in the playoffs and compare them to ours, ours were a lot worse. We lost a lot of games before the fifth inning this year. A lot of them, we were down by five or six. When you give up big innings early, that hurts."

So how did Lake Erie stay in the playoff race until the final weekend if its starting pitchers produced the second-lowest number of quality starts?

The answer is the Crushers might have been the best team at hitting in clutch situations and coming from behind. Lake Erie led the league with 13 last at-bat wins. That means the Crushers scored the winning run in either the bottom of the eighth inning, the ninth inning or extra innings (change the numbers for seven-inning games) more than any other team. This statistic counts not only walk-off wins, but any victory in which a team produced the winning run in its final inning of batting.

Most Last At-Bat Wins
13 - Lake Erie
12 - Evansville
11 - Florence
11 - River City
11 - Schaumburg
 9 - Traverse City
 8 - Gateway
 8 - Washington
 7 - Rockford
 6 - Joliet
 6 - Windy City
 5 - Normal
 4 - London
 4 - Southern Illinois
 1 - Road Warriors