World Series Win Probability Added Leaderboards, Day 4

Yesterday was quite the day of baseball. Four whole games! Baseball from noon to the wee hours of the morning. And some of the games were quite something. Below the fold you will see some deeply, deeply bizarre figures.


Top 10 players by WSWPA:

Eric Hosmer, Kansas City Royals, +11.77%
Delmon Young, Baltimore Orioles, +4.93%
Brandon Finnegan, Kansas City Royals, +4.46%
Matt Carpenter, St. Louis Cardinals, +4.43%
Brandon Moss, Oakland Athletics, +4.29%
Huston Street, Los Angeles Angels, +3.18%
Christian Colon, Kansas City Royals, +2.81%
Josh Reddick, Oakland Athletics, +2.81%
Jake Peavy, San Francisco Giants, +2.64%
Wade Davis, Kansas City Royals, +2.64%

Now this is starting to be more like it. Now that every team has played at least a game, and some teams have played three, this feels like a real leaderboard, and not just a "who had the best game last night" list. Fully half of the people from yesterday's leaderboard are gone. Moustakas had himself a bad game last night. Billy Butler actually had an awful game, after a bad one after an awesome one, so he's moved off as well. Greg Holland got another save, but it was a three-run save and so he didn't move up enough to keep pace. Alberto Callaspo moved off by virtue of sitting at home watching on TV 'cause his team was eliminated, and Madison Bumgarner moved off by virtue of sitting in the dugout watching his teammates win. There are now no starting pitchers on this list. There are, however, four Royals, along with an Oriole, a Cardinal, two Athletics (somehow), an Angel, and a Giant. The Royals are having a good post-season.

Also, good god Eric Hosmer. In both the Wild Card game and in Game 2 of the ALDS, he's put up more than 5% of WSWPA, fully excusing his mediocre performance in Game 1. Brandon Finnegan has also had three fine games, working in relief each time and putting up no less than +0.64% WSWPA each time. Wade Davis and Huston Street have also had two very solid relief outings in a row, basically opposite each other in games 1 and 2 of that series. Matt Carpenter played the key role in the ridiculous Cardinals/Dodgers game, of which more in just a bit. Colon, Reddick, and Moss are managing to hang in there despite not having played since the Wild Card game; I think Colon is still on the Royals' roster, but just hasn't had a chance to do anything yet. Jake Peavy had, somehow, a dominant start against the Nationals.

Which brings us to Delmon Young, who has done exactly one thing in this post-season and it was more valuable than any other player's combined contributions except for Hosmer. Because what he did was to pinch-hit in the bottom of the 8th inning last night with the bases loaded and one out, with his team down 6 to 4, and yank the first pitch he saw into the left-field corner for a bases-clearing, go-ahead double. You will be seeing that moment below, in the list of biggest plays. See if you can guess how much WSWPA it had!

Bottom 10 players by WSWPA:

Joakim Soria, Detroit Tigers, -5.91%
Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles Dodgers, -5.53%
Jason Hammel, Oakland Athletics, -5.46%
Josh Hamilton, Los Angeles Angels, -4.27%
Wei-Yin Chen, Baltimore Orioles, -3.83%
Omar Infante, Kansas City Royals, -3.78%
Dan Otero, Oakland Athletics, -3.78%
Adam Wainwright, St. Louis Cardinals, -3.45%
Edinson Volquez, Pittsburgh Pirates, -3.11%
Fernando Salas, Los Angeles Angels, -2.99%

One of the things I'm most interested in about this list is where the eventual "champion" will come from. From the losing World Series team? From a team that lost in the first round? I figure the player with the best figure will probably be on the winning team, since that team will have the most WSWPA to spread around. (In fact, they'll be the only team with positive WSWPA when all is said and done.) But given that every losing team loses exactly the same amount of WSWE (once they've made it to the Division Series, at least), I don't know how this is gonna turn out. Someone who plays through all three rounds has more chances to accrue value, positive or negative, but on the other hand they're also more likely to have done at least something positive. So this is definitely something to keep an eye on, especially since we've got three players from the losing Wild Card teams still sticking around. I wouldn't be stunned if Hammel is still there at the end of it all, but I also wouldn't be stunned if he isn't. I just don't know.

Anyway, this list also saw some turnover, but not quite as much as the top-10 list. Doolittle just fell out by attrition. Howie Kendrick, meanwhile, had another lousy game, but not quite lousy enough to keep pace, sort of like Greg Holland above (except the bad version). Torii Hunter, meanwhile, had an actual good game, and Yordano Ventura, who was in the #2 spot yesterday, had a fantastic start against the Angels. Man he looked filthy. Meanwhile, Salas, Volquez, Otero, and Hammel all stuck around despite not doing anything new. Omar Infante would've moved off the list had he sat out, but instead he had his third straight game of costing his team at least one percentage-point of WSWE. (His team is, of course, 3-0 in those games. Thank god he plays on the same team as Hosmer!). Josh Hamilton also would've moved off the list by sitting, but he had his second gawdawful game in a row. He's now 0-9 on the post-season, and in yesterday's 0-4 performance he stranded a runner at 3rd and grounded into an inning-ending double play. It's tough to be having a worse performance as a hitter in two games than what Hamilton's done. Wei-Yin Chen had a distinctly rough start against the Tigers, giving up five runs in just 3.2 innings before Kevin Gausman game on to staunch the bleeding. He opened the fourth inning having just been handed a 2-0 lead, but allowed a single-double-single-homer-homer stretch right away. Yeesh. The only reason he was allowed to get two outs was because the bullpen had such short notice that it was needed.

Which brings us to, well. The over/under on total runs scored in the Dodgers/Cardinals game was 5.5. That's as low as they get, pretty much. Clayton Kershaw and Adam Wainwright were a combined 41-12 this year, with an ERA of 2.09 in 425.1 innings. You can see why they set the line like that. Instead, Wainwright got roughed up for his whole start, letting the Dodgers get lots of runners on before they finally broke through in the third, fourth, and fifth innings for two runs each time, knocking him out of the game after 4.1 IP and 6 earned runs allowed. At the time, Kershaw looked to be cruising, having given up just a weird solo home run to Randal Grichuk in the first inning and letting virtually no one else reach base. That, uh, didn't last. A solo homer to Carpenter in the 6th felt like a minor speed bump at worse, but apparently it made his wheels came off 'cause what he did in the 7th inning was to allow four straight singles to open the frame, then strike out Pete Kozma, then allow another single to Jon Jay, then fan Oscar Taveras, then let Carpenter hit a bases-clearing, go-ahead double to the right-center-field wall. Much like Delmon Young's bases-clearing, go-ahead double, that play had a WPA sufficient to win a whole baseball game. Kershaw was done, though Pedro Baez came on to light any remaining bit of Dodgers' WPA on fire. The result is that the best pitcher on the planet owns the worst single-game WSWPA of anyone this post-season. Baseball, man.

Top 5 plays by WSWPA:

AL WC Game, bottom of the 12th, 2 outs, runner on 2nd, OAK 8, KCR 8: Salvador Perez singles to left field off of Jason Hammel, Christian Colon scores. +4.975% WSWPA for Kansas City.
NLCS Game 1, top of the 7th, 2 outs, bases loaded, LAD 6, STL 4: Matt Carpenter doubles to right-center field off of Clayton Kershaw, Yadier Molina scores, Matt Adams scores, Jon Jay scores. +4.753% WSWPA for St. Louis.
ALDS Game 2, bottom of the 8th, 1 out, bases loaded, DET 6, BAL 4: Delmon Young doubles to left field off of Joakim Soria, Nelson Cruz scores, Steave Pearce scores, J.J. Hardy scores. +4.967% WSWPA for Baltimore.
ALDS Game 2, top of the 11th, 1 out, runner on 1st, KCR 1, LAA 1: Eric Hosmer homers to right field off of Kevin Jepsen, Lorenzo Cain scores. + 3.928% WSWPA for Kansas City.
AL WC Game, top of the 6th, 0 outs, runners on 1st and 2nd, KCR 3, OAK 2: Brandon Moss homers to center field off of Yordano Ventura, Sam Fuld scores, Josh Donaldson scores. +3.975% WSWPA for Oakland.


Remarkably, three of the five top plays have been supplanted! Three of the four games last night featured game-changing blows worth at least 40% gmWPA: two late bases-clearing, go-ahead doubles and an extra-inning, tie-breaking two-run homer. Now all that remains of that crazy game from Tuesday is Moss's second bomb and the game-winner; the earlier 12th-inning antics have faded away. But let me assure you that if I were keeping, say, a top-25 list, most of the top plays would still be from that game. Other games have featured one, maybe two really big blows like that; that game was just rife, start-to-finish, with amazing swings this way and that. Don't let its erosion on this list fool you.


Today will see Game 2's from both NLDS's, hopefully with different results from their Game 1's. Then tomorrow will see a couple of Game 3's in the AL, each featuring a team going for a sweep, so they'll be lower-leverage than the Division Series games we've seen so far. (Well, lower leverage overall; obviously they're higher-leverage for the team facing elimination, but there's less absolute WSWE at stake is the point.)