The Killer B’s Reply

There’s a preseason review of the NL Central over at Baseball Analysts, which reminds me about something I’ve wanted to mention and haven’t seen anywhere else.

In his Big Book of Baseball Lineups, Rob Neyer called Houston’s Killer Bees the “biggest flop in postseason history.” At the time of publication, Bagwell, Biggio and Bell/Berkman had played 40 games in the postseason and compiled a batting line of .139/.253/.167. That’s an OPS of .420, which is really, really bad. As Rob said at the time, this was probably due to “nothing more than plain old shitty luck.” That Rob has quite the mouth.

But he was right. The Killer B’s played 12 games this past offseason, and accounted for themselves quite well. In 147 at bats, they compiled a line of .299/.372/.530. And if you include Carlos Beltran as one of the Killer B’s, it’s .331/.411/.648. Which brings their career postseason record to .250/.303/.442. Still not great, but no longer the biggest flop in postseason history. Which is how it should be.