World Series Win Probability Added Leaderboards, Day 6

Two ALDS Game 3's yesterday, each with the perceived underdog team holding a 2-0 lead. Two sweeps. Yeah. The Detroit Tigers and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have officially recorded aggregate WSWPA figures of -12.5% for the post-season, dropping from, well, a 12.5% chance to win it all to a 0% chance. The games were pretty low-leverage, though (in the sense of total WSWE points up for grabs, if not exactly from the perspective of the losing team), so they didn't make a huge difference to the existing leaderboards.



Top 10 players by WSWPA:

Eric Hosmer, Kansas City Royals, +12.20%
Matt Carpenter, St. Louis Cardinals, +8.13%
Yusmeiro Petit, San Francisco Giants, +6.98%
Jordan Zimmermann, Washington Nationals, +5.24%
Delmon Young, Baltimore Orioles, +4.46%
Brandon Finnegan, Kansas City Royals, +4.46%
Brandon Moss, Oakland Athletics, +4.29%
Zack Greinke, Los Angeles Dodgers, +4.00%
Nelson Cruz, Baltimore Orioles, +3.93%
Brandon Belt, San Francisco Giants, +3.86%

Not much change. Hosmer had another decent game highlighted by a 2-run homer in the third inning and extended his lead. Delmon Young, getting his chance to see a second pitch in the post-season, had a mediocre one (0-3), slipping back a little but not quite enough to fall behind Finnegan. The only actual change was that Nelson Cruz had a third straight solid game, going 2-for-4 with the two-run home run that scored all of the Orioles' runs. He hit .500 in the Division Series, going 6 for 12 with 2 homers, and put up a 1.000 slugging percentage. His career slugging percentage in the post-season is .710. Yeah. That'll do.

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, -4.88%
J.P. Howell, Los Angeles Dodgers, -4.23%
Wilson Ramos, Washington Nationals, -4.02%
Denard Span, Washington Nationals, -3.94%
Omar Infante, Kansas City Royals, -3.92%
Wei-Yin Chen, Baltimore Orioles, -3.83%
Dan Otero, Oakland Athletics, -3.78%

Really not a lot of change here. Actually, this is the same 10 names, and only differs from last week's by one flip-flopping of consecutive names. Basically what happened was that Omar Infante had another mildly lousy game, going 0-3 with a walk in fairly unimportant spots, allowing him to move just in front of Wei-Yin Chen. Josh Hamilton, meanwhile, had another terrible game, going 0-4, and ended the Division Series with a whopping zero hits. Or walks. His slash line was .000/.000/.000. He did, however, get an RBI last night, apparently. So there's that. But somehow his 0-4 last night was only worth about -10% gmWPA, and therefore about -0.63% WSWPA, not enough for him to move in front of Hammel.

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.

Hahah yeah, this didn't change. Wanna know how not close to changing this came? The biggest event of the night was the game- and also series- and also season-ending double play the Tigers grounded into with 1 out and 2 on in the 9th inning. At the time they had a 34.4% chance of winning the game, being down by only one run. They therefore had a 2.15% chance of winning the World Series, since if they did win the game they'd have a 1-in-16 chance of going all the way. So the play had a 2.15% WSWPA for the Orioles. That's just barely more than half what would've been needed to make this list--which does, of course, mean that had this game had a 12.5% Leverage Index, as the Wild Card games did and as tonight's Game 3 between the Dodgers and the Cardinals will, it would've made the cut.

The other interesting thing about that play was that I'm pretty sure that it was the worse offensive event of the post-season, by gmWPA if not necessarily by WSWPA. Every other game has seen its biggest play be something good the offense did, usually its biggest handful of plays. Certainly at no time has something that was bad for the team at bat made this top-5 list. This makes a certain kind of intuitive sense: pitching success is more drawn-out than hitting success. A go-ahead home run is one event. Getting out of, say, a bases-loaded, no out jam is (typically) spread over three events. The Cardinals' rally off of Kershaw was kind of unusual in that, except for Carpenter's go-ahead double, it was mostly made up of individual little events, just single-single-single-single-single-etc. This play was kind of a perfect storm of hurting the offense, because usually the last out of a game, which sends your Win Expectancy to 0%, comes when you're already essentially certain not to win. But a base hit here would've tied the game, and an extra-base hit would've won it--and a mere strikeout would've preserved the Tigers' chances of getting one of those hits. A certain kind of ground ball would've set it up for a single to win the game. Instead, Hernan Perez sent the Tigers from a genuinely realistic chance to win to packing their bags for the winter in one fell swoop. Incidentally, Perez put up -2.73% WSWPA for the Tigers, in all of two plate appearances, the vast majority obviously in this one. That puts him about 20th-worst of the post-season, but it's really impressive on a rate basis.


Today we have Game 3's from the NLDS: the Nationals hoping desperately to stave off a sweep, and a more even contest between the Dodgers and Cardinals. Higher-leverage games will soon be upon us!