Wacha Climbing The Ranks Of All-Time Postseason Greats

[Johnnydollaz89]

-Mike Bauman-
BOSTON -- Michael Wacha may be only 22 years old and he may have only nine Major League regular-season starts under his belt. But he is already putting together one of baseball's finest postseason pitching performances.
This may be rare air and lofty company for Wacha. But his already terrific postseason performance was bolstered by another winning outing on Thursday night in Game 2 of the 2013 World Series. Wacha and the St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Boston Red Sox, 4-2, to even the Series at one game apiece.

Wacha had three prior victories in this postseason, winning twice in the National League Championship Series against Los Angeles, in the process winning the NLCS MVP Award. He was 3-0 with an ERA of 0.43 in those three starts, with his other victory coming in the NL Division Series against Pittsburgh.
It is difficult to imagine any pitcher, much less a rookie, working at this level. Statistically, Thursday night's performance was the least impressive of Wacha's four postseason starts, but it was still good enough.
Wacha gave up two runs in six innings. Those runs came on a home run byDavid Ortiz, the opposite way over the Green Monster. This would have been a fly-ball out in some parks not named Fenway. In any case, these were the first runs Wacha had given up in 19 innings, since his victory in Game 4 of the NLDS against the Pirates.
But after four postseason starts, Wacha has an ERA of 1.00.
What Wacha probably needs to do to cement his status among the all-time postseason performances is to win one more decision in this World Series. But what he did more importantly in Game 2 was he gave his team a genuine chance to win and thus even the Series.
As an individual matter, though, Wacha is entering the realm of postseason pitching greatness. Here are examples of the best cumulative postseason performances from the expanded playoff era:

http://mlb.mlb.com/n...6&vkey=news_mlb

At just 22 years old, this kid is having an amazing postseason for the Cardinals. Just 1 of few that were drafted last year and came up this season and he has had an immediate impact for the Cards.

 

[mutigers1fan]

Lets not get ahead of ourselves. Freese had a great post season and has done very little else in his career. I'm very optimistic about Wacha but let's see him do this more than once before we start calling him a great, post-season or not.

 

[poewelch84]

The Red Sox finally got to him, he went away from his change up for some reason his velocity also declined. He seemed fatigued to me, I could be wrong.