A year ago, the Oakland A's had one of the best offenses in baseball. But, in a strange quirk, they were easily the league's worst against high-velocity fastballs: a league-low .191 batting average against pitches over 95 mph, a league-low .268 weighted on-base average, a league-low 72.3 percent contact rate.
Strange quirks like this don't matter much in a long season. Only about 12 percent of pitches are over 95 mph, and if you can smash everything else it washes out. But in the postseason, there are far more high-velocity fastballs, and an entire season can come down to one game against a flood of them.