Make It Official! Twins 3, Athletics 0: Pablo López, Byron Buxton Get Right at Expense of A's

[LambchoP]

Nice to see Pablo and Ober pitching that well, even though it was the A's. I think it's time to either IL Paddack or move him to the bullpen. Give his rotation spot to Festa for a few spot starts. Also think it's time to give up on Varland being a starter after giving up like 11 runs on Sunday. He should be able to help us more in short stints out of the bullpen like last year. Theilbar is a wasted roster spot, he needs to go. Give his spot to Paddack or Varland for now and then trade for a leverage lefty at the deadline. We could really use a good starter too. Would love to get Crochet or Luzardo but I really doubt it unfortunately.

[DJL44]

10 hours ago, knothole61 said:

I do find WPA rather intriguing. DJL, if tweaks were made, such as adding a defensive component, would you be willing to take WPA out of the garbage bin? I'm also wondering if WPA is essentially a "clutchness" index, or am I way off base?    

There are context-adjusted stats that do a much better job than WPA. Player Won-Lost Records is probably my favorite.

https://baseball.tomthress.com/

Quote

Using play-by-play data, I have constructed a set of Player won-lost records that attempt to quantify the precise extent to which individual players contribute directly to wins and losses in Major League Baseball on the baseball field.

That said, I'm not a believer in using context-adjusted stats to assess player value. It adds noise to the signal.

[ashbury]

12 hours ago, JD-TWINS said:

Not here to be difficult but if what you say is true about WPA …….”why did the Team win?”

How does Bailey Ober’s shutout on Saturday not merit a big piece of “why the Team won?”…….he didn’t let the opposition score - seems to be a big reason! I know it’s not your fault…….,but how does this make sense?

Did you watch the game, or merely read the box score?

[DJL44]

2 hours ago, rv78 said:

Against one of the worst teams in MLB. 

It's crazy that the A's are basically tanking the season and there are 3 teams with worse records than the A's.

[jmlease1]

59 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

It's crazy that the A's are basically tanking the season and there are 3 teams with worse records than the A's.

Oakland does have some talent; there are some good hitters over there and their bullpen is quality. The starting pitching, on the other hand...injuries, poor performance and hope that a guy like Hogan Harris has figured it out? oof.

[jorgenswest]

14 hours ago, ashbury said:

 

Are we going to do this every night?

WPA is not a garbage stat.

You're not going to read what I say, so I'll leave it at this: WPA is not measuring what you apparently want it to measure.  It addresses "why did the team win? (or lose?)".  Not "who had a good game?"  There are plenty of other stats for the latter.  Often the two forms of question line up; when they don't, there is insight to be had as to why not.

I would argue it doesn’t measure why a team won. It measures what it says. It measures the change in win probability for each individual event in the game. Isolating those events individually, the most key moments in the game can be highlighted helping to tell the story of the game.

Assigning those moments as the single responsibility of one player can reasonably be questioned. A pitcher needs defense behind him. A batter is helped by runners on base in front of him.

Summing those individual events for a game or season or career is probably not the best use for WPA and is as misleading as it is helpful. It should be used solely to tell the story of the game highlighting the most key moments.

[ashbury]

18 minutes ago, jorgenswest said:

It should be used solely to tell the story of the game highlighting the most key moments.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with what you said leading up to this, what you say here in conclusion seems exactly what the original objectors disagree with.

[JD-TWINS]

15 hours ago, Alex Wilde said:

Because he could have given up 9 runs and they still would have won. That’s basically the whole idea there. He pitched really well but they won more so because the lineup scored 10 runs not because he pitched a complete game.

Not the “complete game” - the opponent didn’t score and that’s the most he, or any other pitcher can contribute to any win, regardless of the score.

[JD-TWINS]

3 hours ago, ashbury said:

Did you watch the game, or merely read the box score?

I watched the last 8 innings……what does that have to do with questions about WPA?

The author says Ober (pitcher) doesn’t get WPA credit because of all of the runs the offense scored.

My question is, why do the offensive players get credit for the run spread but the pitcher gets zero credit for shutting the opponent out????? Why is some guy’s double mean more than a strikeout with a guy on base?

[Mike Sixel]

3 minutes ago, JD-TWINS said:

I watched the last 8 innings……what does that have to do with questions about WPA?

The author says Ober (pitcher) doesn’t get WPA credit because of all of the runs the offense scored.

My question is, why do the offensive players get credit for the run spread but the pitcher gets zero credit for shutting the opponent out????? Why is some guy’s double mean more than a strikeout with a guy on base?

Late in the game, that double wasn't worth squat for wpa. 

[JD-TWINS]

15 hours ago, bean5302 said:

Lopez's brutal stretch... AKA 2024. It's great to get a good start out of Lopez. He's not going to be able to recover to have a decent season at this point, but maybe he can whip himself into shape where he's good for the playoffs again. 

Why, with a 7-6 record & 51% of the season remaining……why is he not going to be able to have a decent season?

His K to Walk ratio is 101-19. 10.3 K’s per 9……1.9 Walks per 9.

His WHIP is only 1.178 - could get to under 1.100 over next 3 months plus.

He’s on pace for approximately 180 innings.

His ERA is up due to 3 really poor outings. He can get it back to around 4.00 - not great but better than the 4.50 mark used for Quality Starts.

15-11 with a 4.00 ERA & 200 K’s with a 1.100 WHIP would be a very nice season in the end - not at all Blue Sky thoughts.

[JD-TWINS]

9 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

Late in the game, that double wasn't worth squat for wpa. 

Mike - my guy that hits a double was rhetorical - an example of my Q, why are random offensive events more important than specific defensive plays? I hear that it’s about RUNS & spread of score but if the pitcher doesn’t allow runs, he’s creating the capability for a “spread” in the score to occur.

It seems to be an “event” stat. A pitcher can’t get 8 outs with one pitch but a hitter can hit a 3 run homer.

Bottom line, for ME, it’s a shallow view of the game.

[ashbury]

42 minutes ago, JD-TWINS said:

Mike - my guy that hits a double was rhetorical

And that seems to be the core of the argument against WPA.  "What if something else had happened?" 

As the game actually played out, the Twins scored a run in the top of the first, for which the batters got suitable credit (surely you agree that scoring the first run in a game brings a significant advantage), and then Ober gave away that advantage with a home run in the bottom of that inning.  The hitters put the game away, for all intents and purposes, in the top of the second.  Ober still gave up a home run in the bottom of that inning too, which was much less damaging, and from there on he was lights out - but by that point they would have likely won (96 times out 100, with that lead, according to b-r.com's tally) even if he or some relievers who followed had been less effective.

Bailey Ober had a fine game. But the hitters won it, and during the brief period the game was still in doubt, Ober was not effective at the job of holding the lead.  "What if those hitters hadn't scored in the top of the second? What if the big inning had been in the top of the ninth?"  Different, non-existent ballgames, those.  It's not Ober's "fault" that he had little opportunity to affect the winning outcome, but that first inning wasn't a plus.

I'm not one to dwell on "clutch" performances too much, but to whatever degree major leaguers are clutch, WPA may reflect it.  Joey Gallo last year had a negative WPA despite positive WAR, because the stats that feed WAR seemed to come only when the team was already comfortably ahead - and that seemed to agree with the eye test of all of us who disliked having him in the lineup.  I'm not going to cast aspersions at Ober now, but merely point out that in this one game, his performance got better when the game was not tight anymore; other games, Ober has done well when it counted.

Pablo pitched his masterpiece on Sunday under much tighter circumstances, clinging to a 1-run lead for six of his eight innings, and did better by surrendering zero runs, not two.  WPA reflects all of that too.  The batters other than Buxton (and Castro and Correa to a degree) didn't win that game, Lopez (to whatever degree we assign anything to one person) did - three runs by the offense loses more times than not.

One final observation, WPA might reflect the fan's mood as the game progresses.  I enjoyed my afternoon in the sun in Oakland in a much different, more relaxed, way with that early lead than if it had been a tight ballgame.  The much-maligned Manuel Margot gave me that luxury as a fan, and he deserves the WPA he earned.

WPA reflects the game, as it actually went, better than the box score and rhetorical arguments do. Does the stat have flaws? Yes!  Is it the one ultimate stat that tells us how good a player is? Not at all!  But criticizing it for not doing things it's not designed to, isn't any more fair than me criticizing RBIs because they don't include defense.

Someone else called it a garbage stat, not you, I believe.  That's no way to start a reasoned discussion.

[Mike Sixel]

9 minutes ago, ashbury said:

And that seems to be the core of the argument against WPA.  "What if something else had happened?" 

As the game actually played out, the Twins scored a run in the top of the first, for which the batters got suitable credit (surely you agree that scoring the first run in a game brings a significant advantage), and then Ober gave away that advantage with a home run in the bottom of that inning.  The hitters put the game away, for all intents and purposes, in the top of the second.  Ober still gave up a home run in the bottom of that inning too, which was much less damaging, and from there on he was lights out - but by that point they would have likely won (96 times out 100, with that lead, according to b-r.com's tally) even if he or some relievers who followed had been less effective.

Bailey Ober had a fine game. But the hitters won it, and during the brief period the game was still in doubt, Ober was not effective at the job of holding the lead.  "What if those hitters hadn't scored in the top of the second? What if the big inning had been in the top of the ninth?"  Different, non-existent ballgames, those.  It's not Ober's "fault" that he had little opportunity to affect the winning outcome, but that first inning wasn't a plus.

I'm not one to dwell on "clutch" performances too much, but to whatever degree major leaguers are clutch, WPA may reflect it.  Joey Gallo last year had a negative WPA despite positive WAR, because the stats that feed WAR seemed to come only when the team was already comfortably ahead - and that seemed to agree with the eye test of all of us who disliked having him in the lineup.  I'm not going to cast aspersions at Ober now, but merely point out that in this one game, his performance got better when the game was not tight anymore; other games, Ober has done well when it counted.

Pablo pitched his masterpiece on Sunday under much tighter circumstances, clinging to a 1-run lead for six of his eight innings, and did better by surrendering zero runs, not two.  WPA reflects all of that too.  The batters didn't win that game, Lopez (to whatever degree we assign anything to one person) did - three runs by the offense loses more times than not.

WPA reflects the game, as it actually went, better than the box score and rhetorical arguments do. Does the stat have flaws? Yes!  Is it the one ultimate stat that tells us how good a player is? Not at all!  But criticizing it for not doing things it's not designed to, isn't any more fair than me criticizing RBIs because they don't include defense.

Someone else called it a garbage stat, not you, I believe.  That's no way to start a reasoned discussion.

Not to mention, Ober got plenty of fWAR and a lower ERA and a win....so he got plenty of stats and credit. 

[jorgenswest]

3 hours ago, ashbury said:

Whether one agrees or disagrees with what you said leading up to this, what you say here in conclusion seems exactly what the original objectors disagree with.

I think they also disagree how each individual event is assigned to a single player on each team. If TD listed the three events that has the most impact on the game instead of player sums I am not sure they would disagree. I also think it tells a better story of the game.

[ashbury]

11 minutes ago, jorgenswest said:

I think they also disagree how each individual event is assigned to a single player on each team. If TD listed the three events that has the most impact on the game instead of player sums I am not sure they would disagree. I also think it tells a better story of the game.

If the complaint is that defense isn't included, tell me a defensive stat that everyone agrees with, and we can improve WPA by using that.

To the degree that the individual events correspond to what the fan experiences, I think WPA usually stacks up pretty well.  The batter gets credit for a base hit. He loses credit for a strikeout. A strikeout to end the inning with runners on base and a close score, well, don't we groan when that happens?  Adding them all up during a game tells one story, listing individual numbers tells another - but for those who call it a garbage stat, nothing TD does will satisfy them. (Individual events will almost always favor the batters, won't they?)

Margot getting thrown out at third base to give Royce Lewis an undeserved additional negative score for what should have been a fly out is just noise in the system, by comparison.  That kind of stuff evens out during the course of a long season.  But people want to throw it all out instead of looking for the information that does get imparted.

[Mike Sixel]

10 minutes ago, jorgenswest said:

I think they also disagree how each individual event is assigned to a single player on each team. If TD listed the three events that has the most impact on the game instead of player sums I am not sure they would disagree. I also think it tells a better story of the game.

I doubt the readers here have put in the time to analyze every play in the history of MLB to determine how much one play changes the odds of a win......which is different than telling the story of a game. No one state does that, or even tries to do that. 

[jorgenswest]

5 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

I doubt the readers here have put in the time to analyze every play in the history of MLB to determine how much one play changes the odds of a win......which is different than telling the story of a game. No one state does that, or even tries to do that. 

I am a little confused. Why would anyone need to analyze? The WPA of each event is readily available.

WPA 6% or greater from yesterday’s game.

1) T1: Margot doubled up on Lewis flyout to LF (-11.3%)

2) T2: Buxton’s  home run (+11.1%)

3) T7: Castro’s single moving Santana to third (+9.2%)

4) T7: Buxton double scoring Santana with Castro moving to third (+8.3%)

Doesn’t presenting in this way put the weight more on Margot? You can also see the impact of the sequence of plays in the 7th inning. 

 

[Mike Sixel]

1 minute ago, jorgenswest said:

I am a little confused. Why would anyone need to analyze? The WPA of each event is readily available.

WPA 6% or greater from yesterday’s game.

1) T1: Margot doubled up on Lewis flyout to LF (-11.3%)

2) T2: Buxton’s  home run (+11.1%)

3) T7: Castro’s single moving Santana to third (+9.2%)

4) T7: Buxton double scoring Santana with Castro moving to third (+8.3%)

Doesn’t presenting in this way put the weight more on Margot? You can also see the impact of the sequence of plays in the 7th inning. 

 

I thought you were arguing WPA was not useful, and we should just let readers tell us about the game? I guess I didn't understand your post at all. My bad.

[DJL44]

The only thing interesting about WPA is the chart. Once it does the accounting to assign credit/debit to individual players incorrectly (and thanks for reminding me that it also ignores baserunning in addition to ignoring defense) it is useless.

[bean5302]

WPA is a stat. It's useful when used in the right way. More or less a better indicator of how a player performs under pressure. Are they racking up their stats in garbage time or are they providing value when it matters?

When you see a 3 WAR player with -2 WPA it tells you a lot about how that player actually performs when the team really needs them.

[DJL44]

49 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

WPA is a stat. It's useful when used in the right way. More or less a better indicator of how a player performs under pressure. Are they racking up their stats in garbage time or are they providing value when it matters?

When you see a 3 WAR player with -2 WPA it tells you a lot about how that player actually performs when the team really needs them.

Or they're a catcher, or a gold-glove SS, or any number of other things.

[bean5302]

1 hour ago, DJL44 said:

Or they're a catcher, or a gold-glove SS, or any number of other things.

Nope.

Say a catcher has 3 WAR because they have a wRC+ of 90 and good defense. If they had a - 2 WPA, it just means the catcher turns into 2024 Christian Vazquez at the plate whenever the team needs a meaningful plate appearance. It's about how that player directly impacted the outcome of games throughout the season.

That's why a guy like Miguel Sano almost always had a lower WPA than his WAR. Important situation? He was an easy out, even if his WAR suggested he was valuable, like in 2019. WPA is just a fancier "clutch" stat IMHO.