World Series Win Probability Added Leaderboard Update #10

Looks like I am going to at least do the first single-game update for the World Series. Certainly it's a big update: lots and lots of movement on the leaderboards. That's because there was 31.25% of World Series Win Expectancy up for grabs last night. The previous high for Leverage Index was the 18.8% mark from Games 3 and 4 of the NLCS between the Dodgers and the Cardinals. So yesterday's game was two-thirds more important than the previous most important games in determining who will win the World Series. This is not surprising, of course, it's just striking nonetheless.


Top 10 players by WSWPA:

Hunter Pence, San Francisco Giants, +12.81%
Madison Bumgarner, San Francisco Giants, +11.48%
Eric Hosmer, Kansas City Royals, +10.83%
Wade Davis, Kansas City Royals, +10.11%
Matt Adams, St. Louis Cardinals, +8.97%
Yusmeiro Petit, San Francisco Giants, +8.87%
Jeremy Affeldt, San Francisco Giants, +8.47%
Santiago Casilla, San Francisco Giants, +8.15%
Andrew Miller, Baltimore Orioles, +8.15%
Greg Holland, Kansas City Royals, +7.37%

Davis, Adams, Petit, Affeldt, Casilla, Miller, and Holland all didn't play last night. Travis Ishikawa, who had been in the #9 spot after the LCS round, had a very slightly lousy night, going 0-1 before being removed for defense with his team up big. You know your team is having a good night when you get defensively replaced in the top of the 4th inning. Nevertheless, his 3-1 groundout to start the 2nd inning was enough to knock him behind Holland, so he's off the list. Alex Gordon, meanwhile, came up three times with the bases empty and one out, and got out all three times, doing just enough damage to knock himself one further spot behind Ishikawa. Then there's Eric Hosmer, who has been the top player on this list for literally the entire time I've been doing these updates. Not anymore. He went 0-4, making outs to end the first inning, stranding one (admittedly on a ridiculous catch by Giants CF Gregor Blanco), to leave the bases loaded in the 3rd inning with his team down 3-0, to end the 6th inning, and with one out in the ninth inning. The ground-out with the bases loaded in the third was, comparatively speaking, the "big" blow, at -8% gmWPA; Hosmer overall cost his team just over 10% of gmWPA. Any previous round and that's not a huge deal. This is the World Series, though, so costing your team 10% of a win means costing it 3% of a World Series. That's enough to knock him out of the top spot. Well, it wouldn't have been, had no one else done impressive things last night.

People did, however, do impressive things. Madison Bumgarner threw seven innings of one-run ball, the only blemish a solo homer by Salvador Perez (of all people). He put up 21.5% gmWPA and 6.72% WSWPA, and that combined with his similarly great starts in the Wild Card game and in Game 1 of the NLCS rocketed him in front of Hosmer from outside of the top 10. He had previously featured in the Day 2 and Day 3 leaderboards, on the strength of that Wild Card start, but only just made it back. (It's possible he would've been included in some updates after the first LCS games, but I didn't do those, so oh well.) Then there's Hunter Pence. Alls he did, as Keith Hernandez would say, was go 2-for-3 with a double and a home run, two runs scored, two driven in, and two walks. The home run was the big blow in the game, a two-out, two-run shot in the 1st inning to make it clear that no, Buster Posey's baserunning blunder would not get James Shields off the hook that easily. The out he made was when his team was already up 5-0, so it had a gmWPA of -0%. He basically did nothing wrong and had the big blow of the game. Now, Pence hadn't been hitting especially well in the post-season prior to last night, just 10-for-39 with three doubles his lone extra-base production. But he apparently had enough timely production to have over 6% of WSWPA stored up entering the World Series; that, combined with the home run last night, is enough to put him on top. For now.

Bottom 10 players by WSWPA:

James Shields, Kansas City Royals, -10.96%
Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles Dodgers, -8.92%
Salvador Perez, Kansas City Royals, -8.61%
Randy Choate, St. Louis Cardinals, -7.20%
Steve Pearce, Baltimore Orioles, -6.41%
Zach Britton, Baltimore Orioles, -6.23%
Joakim Soria, Detroit Tigers, -5.91%
Denard Span, Washington Nationals, -5.50%
Jason Hammel, Oakland Athletics, -5.46%
Jhonny Peralta, St. Louis Cardinals, -5.36%

Two changes. First, Sal Perez has another bad game, moving up into the #3 spot. It's actually unfortunate, he only had a -0.49% gmWPA, and he hit a home run, but he made the poor decision to hit that home run after the game was already effectively over. His team was down 7-0; he made it 7-1, where it remained. The home run had a gmWPA of 0%. Ugh. (On the bright side, though, he did just hit a two-run double in a reasonably high-intensity spot, so in tomorrow's update he'll presumably fare better.)

Then there's James Shields. "Big Game" James Shields. He is not having a good post-season. That was already true before yesterday; he had poor though not terrible performances in the Wild Card game (he was mostly responsible for the Royals' being down by four runs to begin with) and to open the ALCS, giving up 4 runs over 5 innings both times. He did have a decent enough start (6 innings, 2 runs, slightly positive WPA) in Game 3 of the ALDS, but overall he was under water prior to last night, though only marginally so. Then he threw a whopping three innings last night and gave up five runs, for a gmWPA of -27.9%. That's not the worst gmWPA performance of the post-season, but everything's different in the final round and with a WSWPA of -8.72% last night he damn near did as much damage to his team's chances as Clayton Kershaw did in his two terrible starts. It was easily the most damaging single-game performance so far; I believe the previous record-holders were Randy Choate and Marco Gonzales's meltdowns in Games 3 and 4 of the NLCS, respectively.

Maybe we should call it the Wade Davis trade now.

Top 5 plays by WSWPA:

NLCS Game 2, bottom of the 9th, no on, no outs, SFG 4, STL 4: Kolten Wong homers to right field off of Sergio Romo. +5.869% WSWPA for St. Louis.
NLCS Game 2, top of the 9th, runners on 1st and 2nd, 2 outs, STL 4, SFG 3: Joe Panik walks off of Trevor Rosenthal, wild pitch, Matt Duffy scores, Juan Perez to third. +5.797% WSWPA for San Francisco.
ALCS Game 1, top of the 10th, no on, no outs, KCR 5, BAL 5: Alex Gordon homers to right field off of Darren O'Day. +5.547% WSWPA for Kansas City.
NLDS Game 4, bottom of the 7th, 2 on, no outs, LAD 2, STL 0: Matt Adams homers to right field off of Clayton Kershaw, Matt Holliday scores, Jhonny Peralta scores. +5.45% WSWPA for St. Louis.
ALCS Game 1, top of the 9th, bases loaded, 1 out, KCR 5, BAL 5: Billy Butler grounds into a double play, shortstop J.J. Hardy to second baseman Jonathan Schoop to first baseman Steve Pearce, Eric Hosmer out at second. +5.359% WSWPA for Baltimore.


Miraculously, this is unchanged! Which is just another way of saying, my god what a boring baseball game. The big blow was Pence's home run, which put up just under 17% gmWPA. To make this list, with a game Leverage Index of 31.25%, he would've needed just over 17% gmWPA. Soooo close. The only other play with more than 10% of gmWPA was Moustakas's double with one on and no outs in the 3rd inning that gave the Royals runners at the corners and a damned good chance to close a three-run gap by one or even maybe two runs. Of course, they failed to do so, miserably, with a couple of good contact hitters striking out to pin the runner on third.


Man what a boring game.


This list, I daresay, will be shaken up quite a bit tomorrow; today's game has been much more exciting.