World Series Win Probability Leaderboards, Update #12

Finally we had a nice close baseball game last night. You'd think that would mean we finally got our big moment, right? You'd think. Anyway, the Royals are going pretty well. The San Francisco Giants, meanwhile, have frittered away about a third of the WSWPA that they entered the series with. Also they're losing again tonight. Which would be bad for them. They'd have to win out. Mostly on the road. Go Royals.



Top 10 players by WSWPA:

Eric Hosmer, Kansas City Royals, +16.13%
Wade Davis, Kansas City Royals, +15.21%
Greg Holland, Kansas City Royals, +14.01%
Hunter Pence, San Francisco Giants, +11.60%
Madison Bumgarner, San Francisco Giants, +11.48%
Kelvin Herrera, Kansas City Royals, +11.34%
Jeremy Affeldt, San Francisco Giants, +10.25%
Matt Adams, St. Louis Cardinals, +8.97%
Yusmeiro Petit, San Francisco Giants, +8.87%
Santiago Casilla, San Francisco Giants, +8.42%

Not a ton of changes. Andrew Miller falls off by attrition; Matt Adams is now the only remaining player in the top 10 who didn't make it to the World Series. And the likes of Alex Gordon, Gregor Blanco, and Travis Ishikawa are coming for him. Hosmer had another slightly-positive night, going 1-for-4 with an RBI single after a remarkable 11-pitch battle that extended the Royals' lead to 3-0 in the top of the 6th. As it transpired, that run was the deciding one. Kelvin Herrera had a very slightly positive night pitching, entering with a runner on second, no outs, and one of those three runs of the lead already erased. He allowed that run to score, got out of the 6th with no further damage, and then bequeathed a baserunner to Brandon Finnegan with one out in the 7th. He also managed to come to the plate once and make an out, though, so he was essentially neutral on the night. Jeremy Affeldt and Santiago Casilla got the final five outs for the Giants without allowing a baserunner, four by Affeldt and one by Casilla, so though it didn't matter in the end they both moved forward, Affeldt moving up a couple of spots and Casilla just solidifying his hold on the #10 spot. Hunter Pence moved back a hair by going 1-for-3 with a walk and a caught-stealing and nothing very exciting.

Then there's Wade Davis and Greg Holland. Davis pitched a scoreless eighth inning and Holland a scoreless ninth to preserve the Royals' one-run lead. In the World Series, those become big deals. Davis got +4.76% WSWPA for his inning of work, and Holland got +6.45%. That allowed Davis to jump into the #2 spot and Holland to jump onto the leaderboard. These Royals relievers have basically just been slow and steady, collecting their rewards for scoreless innings that preserved tie games or narrow leads most every night. Now that we're in the last round, though, there's nothing slow about the kind of progress you make by throwing quality relief innings in a close game.

Bottom 10 players by WSWPA:

James Shields, Kansas City Royals, -10.96%
Salvador Perez, Kansas City Royals, -9.79%
Hunter Strickland, San Francisco Giants, -9.67%
Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco Giants, -9.00%
Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles Dodgers, -8.92%
Jean Machi, San Francisco Giants, -7.60%
Randy Choate, St. Louis Cardinals, -7.20%
Steve Pearce, Baltimore Orioles, -6.41%
Zach Britton, Baltimore Orioles, -6.23%
Buster Posey, San Francisco Giants, -6.18%

Joakim Soria and Denard Span have gotten off this list of infamy through attrition. They were replaced by the Giants' #3 and #4 hitters, Posey and Sandoval. Posey's been having kind of a strange post-season, hitting .268 but with no extra base hits. Most nights he's been just slightly negative, but he was the hero of Game 4 of the NLCS, going 2-for-3 with a walk, a run scored, and 3 RBIs. (Both of his hits drove in runs and he also added a sac fly.) Last night, however, he was 0-4. He did drive in a run, but he did so with a groundout that actually hurt his team's chances of winning. He didn't make any particularly damaging outs, but four negative events is just not a great thing to have in a World Series game. Thus, he finds himself at the bottom of the bottom-10 list. Also, he's been thrown out on the basepaths five times already, though arguably not often like a nincompoop. Sandoval, however, has felt to me like he's been having a good post-season. He's hitting .321/.377/.429, and he had the game-tying double off Drew Storen at what proved to be the half-way mark of the 18-inning game back in the NLDS. Also he's scored 8 runs. But he's only actually driven in three, one of them when his team already led 6-0 in Game 1 of the World Series, and Posey has this annoying habit of making outs on Sandoval's hits. Somehow it all added up to negative value entering last night, though arguably some of that should've been on Posey. Anyway, last night he too went 0-4, including stranding the tying run at third base in the bottom of the 6th. That cost his team nearly 6% of WSWPA, and vaulted Sandoval into the #4 spot here. He and Posey, the team's two biggest stars, coughed up 10.7% of WSWPA last night between the two of them. Oof.

Oh, also, Sal Perez. Remember when he did good things in Game 2? Remember when it was all, heyy, maybe he'll get hot and get himself off this list? Yeah, well, neither does he. He was 0-3, the most damaging of which was a line-out to the outfield with two on and no outs in the 2nd inning. Looks like he's back to not having a good October.

It's kind of remarkable that the team that's leading the World Series has the two players on it who've done the most damage to their team's chances of winning it all. Of course, four of the next eight on the list are from the team they're playing.

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.

Did you think there would be some changes here? Of course you did. There were 37.5 points of WSWPA up for grabs. It only needed a 14.3% gmWPA event to crack this list. The biggest play of the game, however, was Michael Morse's RBI double in the 6th inning, which got the Giants on the board for the first time. It had a gmWPA of 14.0%. Gimme a break.

Spoiler alert, though: we've finally had that Big Blow we've been waiting for! Things have happened in Game 4 that actually managed to crack this list! I don't know how many it'll end up having been, but at least one of them happened. Finally.