World Series Win Probability Leaderboards, Day 5

This post is being written a bit later than usual 'cause I spent the morning dealing with a dead car battery. It includes updates from yesterday's two NLDS games, in which the Giants took a 2-0 lead over the Nationals and the Dodgers tied up their series with the Cardinals at 1-1.



Top 10 players by WSWPA:

Eric Hosmer, Kansas City Royals, +11.77%
Matt Carpenter, St. Louis Cardinals, +8.13%
Yusmeiro Petit, San Francisco Giants, +6.98%
Jordan Zimmermann, Washington Nationals, +5.24%
Delmon Young, Baltimore Orioles, +4.93%
Brandon Finnegan, Kansas City Royals, +4.46%
Brandon Moss, Oakland Athletics, +4.29%
Zack Greinke, Los Angeles Dodgers, +4.00%
Brandon Belt, San Francisco Giants, +3.86%
Jerry Blevins, Washington Nationals, +3.71%

The bottom 5 players from yesterday's leaderboard are all gone, entirely because they sat yesterday. Matt Carpenter moved up to the #2 spot on the strength of a second awesome game, in which he went 2 for 4 with a home run and 2 RBIs. The home run came in the eighth inning off J.P. Howell, and it tied the game, spoiling Zack Greinke's magnificent effort. Brandon Belt moved back into the top-10 on the strength of his game-winning extra-inning home run; he had previously featured in the #9 spot on the Day 2 leaderboard. Hosmer, Young, Finnegan, and Moss all sat yesterday and retained spots. Zack Greinke worked seven scoreless innings with what was a narrow 2-run lead most of the time. Then we have the three pitchers who find themselves on this list for their remarkable efforts in the absurd, twice-as-long-as-normal game in Washington. Jerry Blevins had a decent enough night in Game 1 of the NLDS, but then entered in the bottom of the 11th inning last night with Hunter Pence on second base and no outs, and got three outs in short order to get out of the inning with no damage allowed. Jordan Zimmermann pitched 8.2 scoreless innings. Then he walked a batter, an event which cost him a whopping 4.1% of gmWPA, out of the roughly 68% he had accrued to that point. Then he was pulled for a reliever. That reliever proceeded to give up a single and a double, bringing Zimm's bequeathed batter around to score. Formally Zimmermann's charged with the run; in reality, like 90% of it came from Storen.

And then there's Yusmeiro Petit. Breaking with conventional wisdom, manager Bruce Bochy went to his closer Santiago Casilla in the bottom of the 11th inning in a tie game on the road, because the heart of the Nationals' order, Anthony Rendon, Jayson Werth, and Adam LaRoche, was due up. Casilla retired the side in order, but this left Bochy with a bullpen crunch: his only remaining short reliever was Hunter Strickland, the potential closer of the future whom he was saving for a potential save chance. So he went to Petit, who set an MLB record for consecutive batters retired working as a mop-up man earlier this year before transitioning into the starting rotation. And Petit threw six scoreless extra innings before Belt's go-ahead homer let Bochy give the ball to Strickland. He earned the win, but more importantly he put up the highest single-game gmWPA of the post-season and the second-highest single-game WSWPA, only trailing Hosmer's effort in the Wild Card game.

Goddamn Matt Williams.

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

Wainwright, Volquez, and Salas sat yesterday and dropped off the list. Soria, Kershaw, Hammel, Hamilton, Chen, Infante, and Otero sat, and stayed on the list. Ramos and Span move onto the list after a second really lousy day; Ramos is 1-10 in the Division Series and Span is 0-11. Particular indignities from yesterday include, for Ramos, fanning with a runner on second and two outs in the 4th, fanning with one out and a runner on second in the 12th, and also making four other outs with nobody on base, and for Span, well, there weren't any particular indignities, he just made a lot of outs. Like eight of them. (Well okay, there was a double play to end the 10th, that kind of hurt. C'mon Denard Span, speed is your one tool.)

J.P. Howell, meanwhile, who you'll note is a lefty specialist reliever, came into the bottom of the 8th inning in Los Angeles with his team leading 2-0. Due up against him were pinch-hitter Oscar Taveras, leadoff hitter and notorious pesk Matt Carpenter, and Jon Jay. All three are left-handed. Howell faced precisely those three batters. He allowed a single, a homer, and a single. It doesn't get much worse than that for a lefty specialist.

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.

Yeah, this didn't change. It didn't come all that close to changing. The biggest play from the Dodgers game was Carpenter's game-tying home run,  at +3.066% WSWPA. The biggest play from the Nationals game was Belt's game-winning home run, at +3.272% WSWPA. Matt Kemp's game-winning homer in the 8th inning and Pablo Sandoval's game-tying, inning-ending double were also pretty big deals, and Sandoval's knock would've been a bigger one had Posey been safe at the plate or even just stopped at third, but no defining moments of the post-season will have come from last night.

Today saw the third and what appear to have been final games of both ALDS's. Tomorrow will, if the Royals hold on to win, see Game 3's from the NLDS's, one a low-leverage game with the Giants going for a sweep at home and the other a high-leverage game with the Dodgers and Cardinals fighting for the advantage in Game 4. If anything notable happens in that latter game, it'll have a big leg up over the rest of the action so far in the Division Series round. And very soon all the leverage indices will double.