Carl Yastrzemski's Amazing Sept/Oct of 1967

Carl Yastrzemski had one of the greatest seasons ever in 1967. He won the triple crown. His WAR of 12.4 is the 4th highest for position players with only Babe Ruth ever having a higher one. See Single-Season Leaders & Records for WAR Position Players from Baseball Reference.

He also had the highest Championship Win Probability Added ever for a single season. More about that later. It means he hit very well later in the season in close games in a close pennant race. His Red Sox had to beat the Twins in each of the last two games of the season or the Twins would have come in first place and the Red Sox would have tied for 2nd place or come in 3rd. Boston won by 1 game.

The table below shows how Yaz did during certain spans. The game numbers refer to game number for Yaz, not the Red Sox but they are close since he played 161 games that year. He played in his 134th game on Aug. 31.

Games	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
1-134	0.308	0.401	0.594	0.995
135-147	0.356	0.442	0.644	1.087
148-161	0.471	0.557	0.863	1.420
148-154	0.385	0.484	0.731	1.215
155-161	0.560	0.633	1.000	1.633

So he had a great year up thru Aug. 31. But then in the first 13 games of Sept. (games 135-147) he was even better. That performance was eclipsed by the next 14 games (also the last 14 of the season). A 1.420 OPS in the last two weeks of one of the tightest pennant races ever.

Breaking down those last 14 games shows that his OPS jumped from 1.215 in the first 7 of them to 1.633 in the last 7.

In his last 27games from Sept. 1-Oct. 1 he had

AVG .417

OBP. .504

SLG .760

OPS 1.265

 

That is amazing considering the context of the season. Below is the league OPS by months for the AL. Sept. was the lowest. Generally the rest of the league was hitting worse that month but Yaz hit much better.

 

April  0.680
May  0.662
June  0.664
July  0.652
August  0.650
Sept  0.630

 

It did not stop there. In the 7 game World Series, Yaz went 10 for 25 with 3 HRs & 5 RBIs. His percentages were

 

AVG. .400

OBP .500

SLG .840

OPS 1.340 

 

Now back to Championship Win Probability Added (cWPA) that was mentioned earlier. What is it?

 

"Given average teams, this is the change in probability, displayed in percentage points. A change of +/- 100% would indicate one world series win added or lost." 

 

See Single-Season Leaders & Records for Championship WPA (cWPA) from Baseball Reference.

 

Here are the top 10 seasons in the BB Ref database since 1912:

 

Player	(cWPA)	Year	Last 14 Games
Carl Yastrzemski	52.14	1967	41.79
Bobby Thomson	50.19	1951	43.42
Willie Mays	45.64	1962	25.72
Babe Ruth	44.9	1921	11.47
Al Wickland	38.87	1915	40.58
Tommy Davis	34.57	1962	15.46
Babe Ruth	31.07	1924	-1.6
Jackie Robinson	30.51	1951	16.21
Ken Keltner	30.08	1948	19.99
Harmon Killebrew	29.42	1967	16.94

 

I included how much their cWPA was in the last 14 games because of how well Yaz did in his last 14 games. It is not surprising that a huge portion for him came then.

 

Thomson has more in his last 14 games but he had 3 games in an unscheduled, tie breaking playoff between the Giants and Dodgers to decide the pennant. His famous "shot heard 'round the world" HR that ended it has 35.56 all by itself. It helps to have such crucial games.

 

Yaz does have the highest cWPA event ever in a scheduled regular season game. It was a single with the bases loaded off of Twins pitcher Dean Chance in the 6th inning of the last game. It drove in 2 runs to tie the score at 2-2. The cWPA was 10.49.

 

Click here to see all regular season cWPA events of 10 or higher. Yaz is only 5th out of 6. But all the others were in an unscheduled tie breaking playoff game.

 

Click here to see the box score for that game. Yaz went 4 for 4 with a double and those 2 RBIs. Red Sox won 5-3 to clinch the pennant.