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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.