The intentional walk is mostly dead – except when it’s not. So far this postseason, it’s come back into play, more so than in any October in years. Has it worked?
There have been 23 intentional walks so far in the postseason, with considerable ball yet to be played. Last year, in the entire playoffs, there were 21; the year before, only 13; the year before that, 12. It’s the most intentional walks in a postseason since 2018 had 26, and, while understanding that the playoff structure has changed a little since then, we’re not even to the World Series yet. If we get to 30, it’ll be the most in a postseason since back in 2011.
This, on the heels of a regular season that is essentially tied with the last three seasons for “lowest intentional walk rate ever,” half what it was in 2017, which itself was half of what it was in 2002. While that’s obviously in part due to the elimination of pitchers batting in the National League, preventing No. 8 hitters from being walked in front of the pitcher, it’s also simply just accepted strategy, too. The 2019 Astros, famously, became the first (and to date only) full-season team in history to go an entire year without issuing a free pass, and that was an AL team whose manager made it quite clear what was happening.
“I don’t believe in putting baserunners on for free,” then-skipper manager AJ Hinch said.
Well, OK then. The known bad outcome (definitely putting another runner on base) is more appealing than the unknown possibly worse outcome (maybe giving up a big hit to a big hitter) for some risk-averse managers, but not for everyone.
For all the many things in the game erroneously attributed to “having died due to analytics,” this one really has. As MLB’s senior data architect Tom Tango once wrote in “The Book,” the only real situation where math dictates that an intentional walk benefits the pitching team is in the bottom of the ninth, with runners on second and third (or just on third) and one out, and even then it’s an extremely slight change to win probability. Even that was written back in 2006, when half the sport still had pitchers batting – which is no longer the case.
“If all batters have equal ability,” as was written, “intentionally walking a better … is at best a break-even move … and doing so early in a game is counterproductive, since it increases the odds of a big inning more than it increases the odds of a scoreless inning.”
That’s largely why the intentional walk has died in the regular season. In the playoffs, however, we’re not talking about “a batter of equal ability,” are we? We’re talking about some of the biggest names in the game. Scrubs, for lack of a better term, don’t get issued a free pass for fear of what they might do otherwise. Let’s look into those 23 walks and see what’s happened.
The results, entering Wednesday night, have been …
… which is a batting line of .300/.348/.450. Eleven times, or just under half, at least one run scored in the inning after the walk was issued. The average runs scored in an inning after an intentional walk was .91, close enough to saying “one run per inning.”
That’s a loud batting line. Then again, the 16 hitters who have received the free pass this October are mostly stars. We’re talking MVP candidates like Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh and Shohei Ohtani, but also stellar sluggers like Julio Rodríguez, Riley Greene, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Max Muncy.
Combined, this group hit .274/.350/.506 this year, which is more or less saying “batters who received an intentional walk this October hit like José Ramírez this season,” and Ramírez is a future Hall of Famer who this year was a hitter 33% better than average. With runners on, as was the case in nearly all of these plate appearances, that improved to .286/.362/.523, or something like Ketel Marte, who was 45% better than average, or the seventh-best hitter in the sport. While we haven’t accounted for platoon or individual pitch shape matchup here, the calculus changes a little when these are the aircraft carriers you’re choosing not to face.
Then again, the hitter after a great hitter is, if not as great, likely to at least be a productive one, hitting in the top or middle of the order. As The Book also later said, even accounting for batter ability, “issuing an intentional walk to an outstanding hitter will almost always increase the [batting] team’s run production.”
Only once did setting up the double play actually turn into a double play, which makes sense – eight of these post-walk plate appearances came with two outs anyway. Either way, given the increase (compared to history) in strikeouts and ground balls, 2025 actually saw the lowest ground-into-double-play rate since at least World War II. This isn’t really a good reason to issue an intentional walk, particularly if “setting up the double play” also means ‘you walked the bases loaded,” putting your pitcher in the highest-pressure situation they could be in.
Yet if the outcomes are bad after an intentional walk, remember that the outcomes you’re bypassing were probably pretty bad, too. It’s often a “what’s the best bad strategy I have available” situation.
So this all sounds bad, right? But it’s a lot more complicated than that, because when a team is in a spot to issue a walk, you can bet that at least one of the following things are true – and, most of the time, more than one is.
Which is to say: You’re already in a bad spot. That the outcomes are bad can’t be compared to the theoretical out every single time that you’d like to imagine would have happened had the manager not thrown up the four fingers. They have to be compared to the expectations of the situation you had (the big bat walking to the plate) against the one you’ve created (an extra runner and a theoretically lesser batter).
“It gets more magnified when it doesn’t work, right?,” asked then-Cardinals manager Mike Shildt in 2019. “But you do it to create the best matchup you think you have.”
Quite right. So, looking at the batting line of the next hitters isn’t really the answer, because the question isn’t really “did the next batter make an out or not,” because sometimes the next batter getting a single is still a better outcome than the home run you (potentially) prevented the initial, superior batter from getting. The question is: “Were you better off facing the worse batter with an extra runner on base – or the better batter without that runner?”
Or one question, at least. It depends on the situation, too.
Consider Game 3 of the Yankees-Blue Jays Division Series, when Carlos Rodón, down 2-1 in the third inning, intentionally walked Guerrero with no outs and a runner on second. It didn’t go well; while the next batter lined out, Rodón allowed three consecutive singles, putting four runs on the board and the Jays up 6-2. While the Yankees later staged a comeback to win, a walk that early in the game is generally a big no-no, particularly given what happened after.
Either way, not all of these moments come in game-changing situations anyway. Of the 23 intentional walks, 11 came when the outcome was hardly in doubt, which we’re defining as a Win Probability of 85% or higher – which accounts for the score, inning, runners on and outs. When Milwaukee’s Robert Gasser walked Will Smith in Game 2 on Tuesday, it was in the ninth inning, down 5-1, with runners on second and third and nobody out. Whether or not manager Pat Murphy should or shouldn’t have walked Smith to get to Max Muncy is somewhat irrelevant; the Brewers were in a no-win situation anyway. (The Dodgers did not score, but neither did the Brewers.)
In fact, as it turns out, at least limited to just this postseason: None of this has moved the needle all that much.
Win probability around 2025 postseason intentional walks
While we don’t know about the situations where a manager could have done this and choice not to, by avoiding a star’s plate appearance to add a runner on base ahead of a good-but-lesser hitter with a better (for the pitching team) platoon situation, the pitching team has … well, done nothing at all, in aggregate. Sometimes it’s worked out great (Anthony Banda striking out Brandon Marsh after walking the bases loaded in Game 3 of the NLDS.) Sometimes it hasn’t (Teoscar Hernández’s two-run double after the Reds walked Freddie Freeman). Sometimes it’s barely mattered at all.
At least so far in 2025. Much like lineup decisions, the juice (value) is generally not worth the squeeze (brainpower put into it), though it’s certainly entertaining.
Where this has come up, mostly, is that Ohtani, mired in an absolutely miserable postseason, has received four of those free passes ahead of Mookie Betts. Betts drew a pair of bases-loaded walks, doubled in a run, and was responsible for the only double play. Do teams keep making mistakes here? Not exactly.
For one thing, it wasn’t known that Ohtani would have a poor October in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series on Oct. 1, the day after he’d hit two homers against the Reds in Game 1. For another, much of his lousy postseason has come against a very specific type of pitcher: hard-throwing lefties willing to bust him inside from lower arm angles. Each of the four times the free pass has come out, it’s been with a righty on the mound (Tony Santillan, Quinn Priester, Abner Uribe, Jhoan Duran) better-equipped, at least in theory, to face the right-handed Betts.
Mostly, though, Ohtani is still Ohtani. Being “cold,” especially against a particular type of pitcher, doesn’t change how dangerous he’s proven to be for years. It just turns out that if “letting Ohtani facing a righty with a runner on” is a lousy choice, then “having to face Betts with an additional runner on” isn’t exactly a good one, either. The best way to avoid a poor intentional walk choice is avoiding the situation to have to make that choice at all. Easier said than done, clearly.
