Win Expectancy Finder - Major League Baseball.

Links (22)

What is WPA?
Published 4/1/2007 by Dread Pirate Will Young at Will's Title is Too Long
... I plan on posting a WPA graph for each Twins game in 2007, much like I did throughout the 2006 season. However, I also learned that the vast majority of my readers didn t quite understand the purpose or methodology behind the graphs last season. While the simple solution is to obviously speak up and post a comment asking me to explain the graph, apparently everyone likes to be confused in silence. So here s the deal, I get the WPA results for every situation from Christopher Shea s Win Expectancy Finder . Then, I insert every situation into a spreadsheet and assign the differences between each play to the involved players (pitcher and batter usually get all the positive and negative credits of a play). However, because I actually watch all the Twins games (or, if not all, at least 145 of them) I will make modifications to punish/reward players for their defense outside plays a normal player would make. Lest you think tha

Yanks open with a win, 9-5
Published 4/3/2007 by Joseph P. at River Avenue Blues » River Avenue Blues, A New York Yankees Blog
... created to Walk Off Bunt’s WPA calculator. Scoring the game isn’t a ton harder (a few formulas in Excel does the trick), but I’m not nearly advanced enough to have everything sorted by player. If I find someone with the know-how and the time to develop a simple Excel program to help me out, maybe they’ll return. But for now, we’ll just go with the biggest plays of the game and other little tidbits.

Game 8: Cards 3 Pirates 2 in 12
Published 4/11/2007 by Pat at Where have you gone, Andy Van Slyke?
... Also brain dead: calling for a Jack Wilson bunt with runners on first and second and no outs. We'll leave win expectancy alone (win expectancy with runners on first and second with no outs in extra innings of a tie game: .848... win expectancy with runners on second and third and one out in extra innings of a tie game: .829, yeah, a successful bunt actually makes us slightly less likely to win), with the infield seriously shifted to play for a bunt, why not just have Jack Wilson try to poke one through? If the runner is in scoring position already (even if it is Brad Eldred), why attempt to bunt the runners over and give Thompson the ability to pitch around Sanchez or Bay if necessary? Why give up an out? Even if it's Jack Wilson at the plate, why take one less shot at getting the necessary single? I don't get it.

Fun with WPA
Published 5/21/2007 by Jacob Wheatley-Schaller at Vegas Watch
... Recently there has been more focus on WPA. The percentages above were calculated using this site. A couple years ago The Hardball Times' Dave Studeman wrote

By the numbers: Royals 5, Cardinals 3
Published 6/19/2007 by Pip at Fungoes
... was in for Eckstein). But, unlike Wainwright’s fielding transgressions, the error didn’t cost any runs. A play that wasn’t ruled an error but might’ve cost the team was Taguchi’s ill-advised late throw to try to get Perez at the plate (he was already halfway to the dugout, we’re certain) on Teahen’s RBI single. Teahen moved into scoring position on the throw, though he was stranded. Curiously, if Teahen had been held to first, the Cardinals’ chance of winning would’ve been 12.8%; after the advance, they actually increased to 13.2%, according to Walkoff Balk. Taguchi clearly knew what he was doing, so why was everyone booing? ...

What Price An Out?
Published 6/25/2007 by Chris Needham at Capitol Punishment
... an aside in an unrelated post... I think it's interesting, but, for me, it's just not something I want to or need to look at every day. To each their own. But in cases like Saturday night's game, it's kinda fun to look at. It's a pretty intuitive measure of what's happening on the field. And, yes, if you're one of those people who hates when baseball is reduced to petty numbers, you're going to loathe this. The stat is a way of measuring the probability of the actual events on the field. If a player hits a solo homer in the first inning, it doesn't mean nearly as much as if he hits it in the bottom of the 9th with his team trailing a run. Sure, they both count as a run, but one has a significantly larger impact on the team's fortunes that day. This is just a way of measuring how large that impact is, based on how things have played out in the billions of baseball games played since the beginning of the time. For the purposes of this post, I'm using the numbers fount at ...

A Little Exercise about Reliver Utilization (plus Playoff Odds through June 27)
Published 6/28/2007 at Replacement Level Yankees Weblog
... to determine the most crucial situations in a given game. Let's look at two situations in particular. Situation 1: Two teams, we'll call them NYY and BAL are playing in BAL. They are tied heading into the bottom of the ninth. In this situation, the win expectancy for the visiting team (NYY) is exactly .5. So they are even money to win the game. Situation 2: The same two teams are playing again, but this time BAL is leading NYY 4-0 heading into the bottom of the eighth. In that situation, the ...

The Seventh Inning
Published 10/23/2007 by Vegas Watch at Vegas Watch
... 1. At the beginning of the seventh, Boston's win expectancy (or WE, which can be approximated here) was 73%. ...

Day 25: Updated Vegas Percentages
Published 10/26/2007 by Vegas Watch at Vegas Watch
... This ignores how good Papelbon is and other factors like that, but Holliday's little miscue in the 8th decreased the Rockies' chances of winning from about 89% to 83%. ...

I, WPA lover
Published 2/21/2008 by MB at Friar Forecast
... That is a bit strange, no? Well, my defense of WPA here is that it is simply measuring changes in win probability. Let’s use the win probability calculator to take a look here. I remember reading that it’s not great for detailed analysis, but that certainly doesn’t apply here: ...

Get to Know: Win Expectancy
Published 3/30/2008 by David Appelman at FanGraphs Baseball
... FanGraphs uses Tangotiger’s most current win expectancy tables which are available for 3.0 to 6.5 run environments in increments of .5 runs. The league average run environment is used to calculate win expectancy. When the run environment falls in between a .5 increment, the tables are then weighted accordingly to achieve the correct win expectancy. Links and Resources: Hardball Times: The One About Win Probability Walk Off Balk: Win Expectancy Finder The Book Wiki: Win Expectancy

Bunting
Published 4/3/2008 by Chris at Redleg Nation
... A different way to look at it is based on Win Expectations, also based on game data. According to this Win Expectency tool, the Reds had a 33.3% chance of winning the game when EE came to the plate. If he’d sacrificed successfully, the Reds would’ve had (on average) an 28.1 % chance of winning. Again, even in this extreme game situation, where “the book” says a bunt is almost automatic, it doesn’t seem to help you win, on the average. ...

The Visual WPA Project
Published 4/10/2008 by Eric J. Seidman at Statistically Speaking
... To find the Win Expectancy of any game state, look in the Toolshed section of The Book or visit Christopher Shea’s Win Expectancy Finder online. For a great article on WPA, read Studes’ “ ...

Diamondbacks 4, Tigers 3: Byrnes' Night
Published 5/17/2008 by Jim McLennan at AZ Snakepit
... Melvin's liking for the sacrifice also almost cost us big in the seventh, when Ojeda's bunt attempt with men on first and second gave the Tigers a huge out. Let's just take a look at the win expectancy in this bottom of the 7th situation, using a convenient calculator: ...

Diamondbacks 2, Tigers 3 - Stupid Bunts
Published 5/18/2008 by Jim McLennan at AZ Snakepit
... It appears that Melvin had not learned from his mistake of the previous night, and called upon Orlando Hudson to bunt Drew from first to second. This forces me to repeat myself, once again using the Win Probability calculator to illustrate what effect his decisions and their execution had on the Diamondbacks' chances. The basic position is, bottom of the eighth, no outs, man on first and down by one run: ...

Love/Hate With Cito Gaston
Published 8/14/2008 by halejon at The Mockingbird
... out LItsch for the 7th when he’s at 100 pitches so he can reach his 2nd highest pitch count of the season strikes me as one of those decisions made out of respect for him throwing a great game moves that I can’t stand. Especially when we’ve got this lights out….errr…bullpen. But then Downs would have been available to shut the door if he hadn’t been trotted out in the 9th last inning, up by four - a situation where the team with the lead loses 1.3% of the time. ...

Beijing 2008: 14-year-old gymnasts, 11-inning ballgames
Published 8/15/2008 by Pip at Fungoes
... the activities that may be seriously affected." We’ll play along for the sake of argument. Presumably, the purpose of the new rule is to end games as quickly as possible after 10 innings have been played. In that case, though, why choose to have runners at first and second? The best way to ensure a change in game state — that is, the score — would be to begin the half-innings with the bases loaded (all states assume no outs and a tie score). Let’s look at win expectancy: ...

Crashing the Roundtable
Published 8/19/2008 by David Wintheiser (noreply@blogger.com) at The Al Central Blog
... games, 3-run lead: 7 All told, Nathan entered 37 games with a chance to earn a 'classical' save. Something's a bit screwy in the numbers, since Nathan earned 36 saves in 2006 and blew two, which doesn't match up with the 37 save opportunities, but the discrepancy won't materially affect the analysis. The key is that Nathan blew two saves in 2006 in either 37 or 38 chances. Here are the expected win probabilities, based on actual game data from 1996-2006 (taken from this online Win Expectancy Finder): visiting team leading by 1 with 0 out in bottom of ninth: ...

WPA Leaders
Published 9/2/2008 by Lee Panas (noreply@blogger.com) at Tiger Tales: A Detroit Tigers Blog
... hitters credit based on the effect their at bats have on their team's probability of winning. These probabilities vary depending on the game score, the runners on base and the number of outs before and after each play. They are based on the results of thousands of games worth of data looking at every possible situation over and over. More concretely, WPA works as follows. Suppose the Tigers are down by one run with a runner on second and two out in the bottom of the ninth. Using the win expectancy finder , created by the site walkoff balk, they have a .129 (or 12.9%) ...

Michael Kay is No Brilliant Baseball Mind
Published 10/2/2008 by Simon (noreply@blogger.com) at SimonOnSports
... , or not very good. Now I couldn't find a website where I could see what the probability would be after a Fielder walk but I came close with this win expectancy simulator. With 1 out a runner on second down 2 the simulator states that the visiting team has a 6.5% chance of victory. Now, with 1 out runners on first and second down by 2 the visiting team has a 13.7% chance of winning. That's a massive increase. In the actual game, later in the inning the Brewers chance of winning went from 3.9% to 7.5% following JJ Hardy's walk. ...

Well That Just Doesn't Make Sense
Published 10/10/2008 by Brandon Heikoop (noreply@blogger.com) at The Outsiders Look at the Insides of Baseball
... While researching exactly how wrong this commentator was, I fell into an excellent website called Win Expectancy(.walkoutbalk.com). This website allows you to input inning by inning, out by out, situation by situation and calculate what the odds are that a team won. I choose to use the basic tool, which runs from the sample size of 1977 to 2006. Clearly this day and age things are slightly different, but the facts remain fairly constant. ...

Just how improbable was that Red Sox comeback?
Published 10/17/2008 by Peter Bendix at Beyond the Box Score
... WalkOffBalk has a fun win expectancy calculator - just plug in the situation and the score, and it will spit out the number of times the team has won in those circumstances. ...