2011 World Series: How Statistically Improbable Was the David Freese Home Run?

After Game 6 of the World Series, I think that baseball fans of the world are still speechless. Who would have thought that David Freese would have come up so big?

I don't mean to sound like I am picking on him however. I just want to emphasize the fact that in his major league career of just 184 games, he has only had 15 home runs and driven in 98 runs.

This season was really the first where he received substantial playing time, and he responded by hitting .298 with 10 of those home runs and 55 of those RBI.

Now, he had 333 at-bats this season and 24 walks. That means he had 357 plate appearances in 2011. That equates to a home run every 35.7 at-bats. This is a probability of .028 that he hits a home run in a single at-bat. What are the odds of that one home run coming in this one moment when the team needs a hero? It is definitely remarkable.

Of course, I am a statistics major, so I like this probability stuff, and I think that the odds of this happening made it even more amazing.

However, there is something different about this postseason in general for him. He has five home runs in 66 plate appearances. This corresponds to a home run every 13.2 at-bats, or it can be viewed as a probability of .076. I won't try to be a professor here and go into all of this statistical significance of this stuff, but it will suffice to say that there is a definite difference here.

This is something remarkable. That type of increase is only appropriate for a team that also defied the odds to even make it into the postseason.