Randy Johnson, who has announced his retirement from baseball, pitched some of the most dominating games that the sport has seen in the last two decades, and perhaps of all-time. Here are his greatest hits by Fielding-Independent Game Score (FIGS):

His 5/8/2001 masterpiece is tied for the best since 1954, and perhaps best ever:

And unlike one-hit wonders like Ramon Martinez and Frank Tanana, Johnson has three of the top 25 games since 1954 (all as a Diamondback).

Albert Pujols won his third Most Valuable Player Award from the Base Ball Writers Association of America. He also won his third Sabermetric MVP, although they haven’t been in the same years. Following is a list of our NL Sabermetric winners alongside the writers’ choices (italics denotes where the two picks differed). Pujols’s Sabermetric score and rank is also shown.

In addition to the remarkable achievement of winning three MVPs (by each standard), Pujols has finished in the top three of the Sabermetric rankings for the last seven years; he has a similar record with the writers, though they regrettably voted him ninth in 2007. Pujols’s 2009 Sabermetric MVP score was the second-best of his career and of any winner since the chemically-altered seasons of Barry Bonds:

The voters got one right: Hideki Matsui deserved the World Series MVP award.

Amongst a handful of heroic performances, Matsui’s was most valuable. Chase Utley tied Reggie Jackson’s series home-run record and Cliff Lee turned in the fourth-best fielding-independent start of all-time. But Matsui’s pounding of Phillies’ pitchers provided the most win-probability added of all players.

Matsui propelled the Bronx Bombers with a barrage of base hits, including two hope-crushing home runs off Pedro Martinez and four total in the series, in which the Yankees and Phillies tied the six-game-series record of 17 home runs (New York AL 9, Brooklyn NL 8, 1953). Matsui was responsible for three of the top 10 plays of the series:

Coming into Game 6, Lee had tallied the most WPA, mostly on the strength of his .519-WPA start in Game 1. But Matsui, who had .300 WPA through the first five games, saved his best for last and tacked on another .339 WPA in the deciding game to leapfrog over Lee:

So while Lee and Utley were memorable in the Phillies’ losing effort, and their individual performances will likely endure longer, Matsui earned the MVP. Kudos to Godzilla — and the voters.

Alex Rodriguez has apparently “learned” clutch-hitting skill after all of these years. By the way, if ARod can suddenly stop being a playoff choker, does that mean that Chase Utley could someday lose his clutch-hitting skill?

Stats from Fangraphs

Considering the ballparks where this year’s World Series is being played, it’s not surprising that multiple balls are flying out of the yard each game. By regular-season rates, the Yankees and Phillies are right on pace for their expected number of circuit clouts this series and could set a World Series record.

Although more sophisticated park factors normalize home-run rates by making them team-independent, such normalization isn’t necessary when estimating how many home runs the particular World Series teams might hit. Instead, let’s simply look at the number of home runs per game in the regular season, in which Yankee Stadium and Citizens Bank Ballpark led their respective leagues. We’ll then extrapolate how many home runs the series might have, based on the number of games played at each park (e.g., for a six-game series, three at Yankee Stadium and three at Citizens Bank):

With 12 home runs between them in the four games played thus far, the Yankees and Phillies are one ahead of their regular-season rate and are now within striking distance of the record for combined home runs in a five-game series of 15 (Baltimore AL 10, Cincinnati NL 5, 1970). Although neither of the Game 5 starting pitchers, AJ Burnett and Cliff Lee, has allowed a home run in the playoffs, Burnett has a 39.2% flyball rate (11th in the league and the highest of his career since at least 2002) and Lee has a career rate of 42.3% (though only 36.5% in 2009). So unless they miss bats all night (like Lee did in Game 1), chances are decent that at least one plate appearance will end in a trot around the bases.

If the Phillies prevail tonight, the teams will eye the six-game-series record of 17 (New York AL 9, Brooklyn NL 8, 1953). The seven-game series record is 21 (San Francisco NL 14, Anaheim AL 7, 2002).*

The flip side of having so many home runs is that the series has had no triples, one of the game’s most exciting plays, and which the two host parks offer few of (Citizens Bank had the fourth-fewest in the NL , and Yankee Stadium was dead last in the AL with only 13 triples all season). If the series ends with nary a three-bagger, the Yankees and Phillies will tie the record held by several teams.

*Records courtesy of The Sporting News 2008 Baseball Record Book.