Rox Talk - WPA Revisited

To put a final nail in the 2007 season, I wanted to compare the weekly WPA numbers I captured last year and compare this to the expected wins and see who really made a difference for the team last year. If you recall WPA is simply I way to look at a player's contribution to a team's success. As a team moves through a 162 game season, each day a player has the opportunity to help or hurt a team. Obviously if you continue to contribute positively you will have a better WPA over the season. So let's start with the starting pitching:

Okay that is a headache of a graph! The blue dots show the expected wins over the season after each day. Obviously winning a bunch of games at the end helps you get to 90 wins! WPA and pitcher's are at somewhat a disadvantage as they only get to improve on their WPAs every 5th day. So one bad start can certainly tank your WPA. Francis was definitely the Roxs pitching MVP especially down the stretch with some help from Jimenez and Morales. Fogg had some good starts at the end but his early pitching woes certainly hurt him over the entire season. Cook was the real disappointment (let's hope the contract extension wasn't too big). Now lets look at the relievers:

Obviously down the stretch it was the Corpas/Herges show. Interesting to see that WPA does in fact mean something in the real world as Fuentes collapsed so did the Roxs right before the All Star Break. And finally the hitters:

I think the big surprise to me was how valuable Helton and Hawpe were down the stretch. Helton especially since he has been beaten down due to his lack of power but he really got the job down along with Holliday. Tulo was a nice additional and although Matsui certainly led the team early in the year he leveled out. Glad we got Yorvit for the handling of pitchers because offensively he ain't it.