Thursday, April 29, 2010
And that went up and down
Posted by Dave StudemanHere is the Win Probability graphic of that Phillies/Giants game, courtesy of Fangraphs:
The Giants had a 4-1 lead with two out and a runner on first in the ninth and a 99% probability of winning. Then Brian Wilson (who led the majors in tough saves last year) loaded the bases on a grounder and a walk and Jason Werth hit a game-tying double to right.
The other crazy thing about this game was how tense the two extra innings were (check out the red leverage index bars). The Phils took the lead in the top of the tenth only to give it up in the bottom. Then they scored two in the top of the eleventh, just to be sure, and the Giants then came back and scored one run and had runners on second and third with only one out in the bottom of the eleventh (putting win probability slightly in their favor) before finally giving up on two grounders.
Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.
I said something similar to this at The Book Blog, but this game graph does not come close to describing how crazy this game was. Baseball is said to be a game of inches, but rarely does that refer to a fan reaching out and just barely missing an excuse me, bases clearing double with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th. And rarely is the deciding run the result of a dropped fly ball from the same guy who dropped a ball the play before (on an admittedly much harder play).