GAMES 162 AND 1

It's the postseason and baseball stats get even more ridiculous than normal. Here are some tidbits from the last regular season and the first ALDS game last night (with some Tiger stats thrown in at the end for fun).

Jeter and Cano went into the final game within striking range of catching Joe Mauer for the batting title but both ended up a little short. In any case, it was fun to watch the averages change by the minute - here's a summary of the order in which events unfolded (the last couple at-bats, after Mauer clearly was going to finish on top, may be missing):

Jeter hit - .34572
Cano hit - .34238
Jeter strikeout - .34516
Mauer strikeout - .34556
Cano hit - .34375
Jeter groundout - .34405
Cano groundout - .34303
Jeter groundout - .34404
Mauer hit
Cano fly out - .34232
Jeter strikeout - .34350
Mauer hit - .34808
...
Bottom line: Mauer .348, Jeter .343, Cano .342

Jeter became only the fifth player in the past 75 years to amass 90 RBIs and 30 steals in addition to a .340 average. And two of the other four were Rockies who accomplished the feat in Coors Field the last decade. The other two are Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson.

The Tigers had the worst final 50 game stretch in history for a team entering the postseason. That's a very interesting stat, but not as surprising as it first sounds, because after all, for the majority of the existence of baseball, only two or four teams made the playoffs, making it much less likely that a slumping team would qualify. Interestingly enough, the Cardinals had the second worst final 50 game stretch of a team entering the postseason. A late slump doesn't necessarily mean much though. The 2000 Yanks went 3-15 in their last games of the regular season but then cruised to a championship.

Derek Jeter and Robinson Cano became the first SS/2B duo in history to hit .340 in a season.

"Murderer's Row and Cano", as Jim Leyland describes it, is not only the best lineup in history, it is also completely balanced, alternating between lefty and righty batters all the way down.

Pudge Rodriguez hit .300 for the season for the 10th time in his career. Only Bill Dickey has more .300 seasons (11). (Jeter has 8 so far.)

2006 was the first complete season in history in which there were no 20-win pitchers.

After going 5-for-5 last night, Jeter became the 6th player to hvae a 5-hit game in the postseason. Check out a pitch-by-pitch breakdown of his efforts yesterday.

And now for some golf. Tiger captured his 6th PGA Tour event victory in a row at the WGC in England in the most dominant fashion in the stretch. His 8-shot victory resulted from immaculate ball striking all week - missing only 12 fairways for the event - including a stretch of 36 consecutive holes without missing a green. If his putter hadn't been balky for stretches, his margin of victory would have been even larger.

Tiger hit an iron from 225 to 3 feet on 2 but lipped out the eagle putt. It was the shortest putt he's missed in over two years. His eagle chip on 18 on Sunday slipped by, ending his consecutive eagle streak on the hole at 3.

He is now 12-for-20 in World Golf Championship events, and an even more absurd 10-for-15 in such events that are played as stroke play.

Tiger has made 200 professional starts on the PGA tour and won 54 times (a staggering 27%). As a comparison, Jack Nicklaus, who some still argue is the best golfer in history, won 12% of his tournaments.