Data That Matters: Driving in Runners from 3rd in the Postseason - Part 1

MLB Playoff Pressure

To say MLB postseason games are different than MLB regular season games would be a drastic understatement. Playing in front of 40,000 present fans, millions more on tv, and with the pressure that one mistake could end your season couldn't be more different from a June, Wednesday afternoon in Anaheim. Because of this, the intensity of every pitch rises, the momentum swings look more like a March Madness basketball game, and with every base hit or error, heroes and goats (not G.O.A.Ts) can be made simultaneously. Unlike in any other sport, there is no clock to save you. You have to make all 27 outs to ultimately become the victor of a game. This is part of what makes baseball so great.

The Situation

A situation we consistently go through at Extra Hacks with our hitters is "runner on 3rd base, less than 2 outs". You can learn how we teach hitters to approach this situation here - Situational Hitting: Runner on 3rd Base, Less Than 2 Outs. There are a couple reasons we go over this situation so frequently -

1. It's the difference in games. If your team executes getting a run home in this situation and the other team doesn't, you're likely to score more runs than the other team. That should be the goal for all teams: score more runs than you allow.
2. As a hitter, we have more control over our success in this situation than most. This is because we don't need to get a hit to be successful. This isn't to say we will have times where we do a good job and don't get rewarded for it. As a hitter, we are never totally in control of the result. But we have much more control over our success in this than say, getting a two out hit.

Why it's Important: Momentum

In the playoffs momentum plays A HUGE role within a game. Every base hit or walk is a rally. Every error feels like it could result in 3 runs, not just a baserunner. And EVERY TIME A HITTER STRIKES OUT with a runner on 3rd and less than two outs feels CATASTROPHIC for an offense.

I spent the postseason taking notes on this exact situation for every series. Which teams were most successful in the situation? Which teams failed in this situation and made up for it with 2 out hits? What kind of balls in play (hits, sac flies, etc.) totaled the most successes? All of this and more can be found in the data over the next couple posts.

The Data

In the 47 postseason games that took place in 2025, there were 168 plate appearances that started with a runner on 3rd and less than two outs. This includes all instances with a runner on 3rd, meaning it could be bases loaded, 1st and 3rd, or 2nd and 3rd as well. Of those 168 plate appearances, 83 resulted in successfully getting the runner home from 3rd base (49.4%).

Learning From Successes

Above we said that there were 83 total successes in this situation. Meaning 83 times of the 168, the hitter got the runner home from 3rd. As hitters, it's important to know what kind of batted balls led to those successes. Here are the numbers by batted ball type that resulted in successfully getting the runner home from 3rd base -

Groundballs and line drives in this scenario win the day. This is because with the infield in, the infielders have much less range. With the infield back it's obviously a free run to put the ball on the ground because the infielders are just trying to get the out at first.

What about the actual result of the ball in play (flyout, single, etc.)?

Bunts included in the "groundout" category

Far and away, a simple single (1B) was the most common successful result. What should these charts tell you as a hitter? There is a lot of success found in keeping the approach simple. Don't try to do too much! A groundball single does the job BETTER than a 250 foot fly ball that you just missed.

Learning from Failures

Now to the flip side of the coin. If we had 83 successes in 168 tries, it means there were 85 failures. Let's run the exact same experiment for those 85 missed opportunities. There is an added element to the failures that will be glaringly obvious...

The STRIKEOUT should stand out to you right away and is by far the most negative result in this situation. It literally gives you a 0 percent chance of scoring the run. Obviously. That's why it's not in the above chart regarding successes.

Now I think what may confuse people a little bit is "why are you telling us we shouldn't trying to hit sac flies if a flyball has a lower failure rate than a groundball?" Well a couple reasons -

1. If you actually do the success to failure ratio the groundball and flyball are very close to the same. You can't just look at the failure rate. The groundball success rate is higher than the flyball success rate, so that evens them out.
2. Most hitting coaches will argue, if you're trying to hit a ball in the air, you become susceptible to hard fastballs and that's actually bumping the strikeout rate higher. Trying to hit a groundball results in less strikeouts. This is my opinion and you may find other hitting coaches that don't agree, which is fine 😄. Those hitting coaches probably have or had A LOT more bat speed than you do at the moment too allowing them to catch up to those high fastballs.

We don't need to do the results table, because in this case the batted balls are the results. Every one of these is an out and not a hit. You can get out and still be successful, but you can't get a hit and not be successful.

Summary

Again, we work on this a lot in the cage as part of our game sim work and situational hitting. It's an important part of the game that can end up being season deciding. We'll touch on specific plays from the playoffs in the next post. Keeping your approach simple and not trying to do too much is the most effective way to have success in this scenario. The data backs that up. This was a pretty deep dive into the data, but for a simpler article regarding the approach in this scenario check out this post - Situational Hitting: Runner on 3rd Base, Less Than 2 Outs.

In part 2 we'll go over the team data and some specific examples of how these plays affected the outcomes of games or series.