So, Chase Utley is having one hell of a Series. After a 2-for-3, 2 HR, 4 RBI performance last night, Utley is batting .333/.429/1.222 (1.651 OPS), with five homers and eight RBI. And yet, had Charlie Manuel decided to go with Brad Lidge rather than Ryan Madson in the 9th inning last night, it's entirely possible that Utley and his Phillies would be going home a loser in just five games. Which got me thinking: what are the best performances ever by a player for the losing team?

Well, right now, there's no easy way (for me) to answer that question. I would love (if only for today) to have one big database of single-series statlines, but I don't have that. What I do have are (a) BBREF's list of all-time Series leaders (though not surprisingly, an overwhelming number of them played for the Series winner); (b) my memory; and (c) the ability to take a few minutes and bum around the single-series stat sheets (since 1959; I'm limiting this to the previous 50 seasons for time reasons), see what I can find. So, this is in no way authoritative. But I'm confident that I reviewed them all, and I feel pretty good about the defensibility of the following list:
(click here to read more)

10. Andruw Jones, 1996. This is one of those subjective throw-ins I can't resist making. Dude was 19 years old and had hit just .217 in his first 106 regular-season at-bats, and then he homers his first two times up in Game 1. Overall, he hit .400/.500/.750.

9. Jack Billingham, 1972. He started two games of the Reds' series against the A's and finished a third, ending up 1-0 with a save. 13.2 IP, 6 H, 4 BB, 11 K, and zero runs allowed. He's one of only two players in the last 50 years to pitch 10 innings or more in one Series and give up no runs (see #3 below). Billingham benefitted hugely from the Big Red Machine; he was about an average starter who was handed a career .562 winning percentage -- better than Don Sutton's, Fergie Jenkins' and Tommy John's. I guess in the 1972 Series, he decided to give something back. Came over from the Astros along with Joe Morgan in an incredibly lopsided trade.

8. Bob Gibson, 1968. Fresh off that amazing 1.12-ERA season, Gibson started games 1, 4, and 7, completing all three. He gave up just 18 hits, walked four and struck out a World Series record 35 in those 27 innings, but went just 2-1, and the Cardinals dropped the Series, because 7/8ths of the Cards offense went flat even by 1968 standards (see #2 below).

7. Bobby Richardson, 1960. Richardson had a horrible regular season offensively (as he usually did), hitting .252/.303/.298. In the Series, though, he hit .367/.387/.667 with a World-Series-record  12 RBI (that's out of everybody, not just losing teams). He probably outplayed the Pirates' second baseman, actually, but Maz got just a little more attention (and understandably so).

6. Mickey Mantle, 1960. .400/.545/.800, 3 HR, 11 RBI (second only to his teammate Richardson all-time) in the Bill Mazeroski Series. It's hard to believe he was only 28 then; it seems, in looking at his career stats and just reading about his knees and so forth, that he was already an old man. Oddly, four years later, at 32 going on 60, Mantle put up an almost-as-great 1.245 OPS in his final Series, a seven-game loser to the Cardinals.

5. Willie Aikens, 1980. Aikens was a 1B only because the Royals already had Hal McRae to DH, and he was either pinch run for or replaced in the field in four of the six Series games. But boy, could he hit. .400/.538/1.100, 4 HR, 8 RBI. Somehow I never realized how short Aikens' career was (perhaps the fact that a search for "Willie Mays" typically also turns up "Willie Mays Aikens" exaggerated his impact in my mind somehow). A former second overall pick of the Angels, Aikens had some really good years with the Royals, but only played in four seasons with them, and only two of those (including 1980) could really be called "full" seasons. He had a great final season with KC, then completely fell apart after a trade to the Blue Jays in 1984. By October 1985, while the Royals were winning their one and only World Series, Aikens was out of baseball.

4. Lenny Dykstra, 1993. Nails was a hero in the Mets' 1986 win, and he was actually even better for the Phillies in this Series, hitting an incredible .348/.500/.913, with 4 homers, 8 RBI, and 4 steals without being caught. His nine runs scored are the most ever by a Series loser. But Paul Molitor was even better, Joe Carter hit that one famous home run, and all was for naught.

3. Whitey Ford, 1960. Wow, how did the Yankees get in a position to lose that Series, with three great performances? Well, one reason could be that Casey Stengel, who always had some really interesting ideas about how to use Whitey, decided to hold him back for Game 3 at Yankee Stadium. Ford responded by throwing complete-game shutouts in both Game 3 and Game 6 (18 IP, 11H, 0 R, 2 BB, 8 K). Had Casey gone with Ford in Games 1, 4 and 7, rather than a combination of Art Ditmar, Bob Turley and Ralph Terry (combined for 18 IP, 28 H, 13 R, 6 BB, 5 K), the Yanks might be going for their 28th championship right now, and Bill Mazeroski may never have made the Hall.

2. Lou Brock, 1968. This is the Series that (along with the stolen bases and the 3000 hits) made everybody think Brock was an all-time great sort of player. And he was, for at least seven games. It's not the famous seven stolen bases (he was actually caught twice, which made all his running just barely worthwhile); it's that he hit .464/.516/.857 against some pretty good Tiger pitching at the end of the worst year for hitters that baseball has seen in the last ninety or so. The rest of his team hit .227 with a .254 on-base percentage, so Brock scored "only" six runs in the seven games.

1. Barry Bonds, 2002. The next-highest loser's OPS, Aikens' 1.638, is 256 points behind Bonds'. Barry had 30 PA, and was walked in 13 of them (7 of them intentionally). That's obviously going to help out his OPS (he reached base 70% of the time), but what that also means is that he was only getting pitched to in situations that were the most adventageous or the lowest-leverage for the Angels. And yet, when he didn't walk, Bonds hit .471 with two doubles, four home runs and six RBI in the seven games. I don't care what you think about Bonds or what he was doing (I mean that sincerely; I always welcome comments, but I'd just as soon skip that conversation), that's just crazy. I don't doubt that Bonds had help, but I also don't doubt that no drug can just create the best ballplayer we've ever seen out of whole cloth. That guy was just from another planet (and often acts like it).

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Seriously, how did the Yankees lose in 1960? Two of their players picked up more RBI than anyone ever has in a single Series, and their best pitcher threw two complete-game shutouts. Wikipedia notes that the Yankees outhit the Pirates .338 to .256 and outhomered them 10 to 4. Really, the Pirates had no business ever getting into the 9th inning of Game 7. That's just amazing. Maybe, say, Pedro Feliz can be this year's Mazeroski? Anyway.

More to the point, if the Series had ended last night, where would Utley's rank? I think you could argue for him for fifth. The five homers are amazing, and he deserves credit for being a great 2B while Aikens was a poor 1B, but the out-avoiding ability of Bonds, Brock and Dykstra push them ahead of Utley in my mind.

But, again, they won last night, so it's all moot. Until at least tomorrow night. For now, here's hoping that Utley doesn't even qualify for this list...

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