Stat of the Week

Yesterday's Recap

Aghhhh that was a tough one. Third blown lead by the bullpen in as many days. Holliday's offensive was a wasted effort. Just when I though things were getting back to some normalcy. As mentioned the starter's have got to get going so we don't blow through the bullpen in April. When Fuentes blew the lead it was his 5th appearance in 6 days! That is cause for trouble!

Stat of the Week - Win Expectancy

In the history of trying to develop a way to measure player contributions there have been many attempts to quantify this contribution. There has been Win Shares, Value of Replacement Player (VORP), and finally Win Expectancy (aka Win Probability). Of these I find the win expectancy or probability to be the most fascinating. Hardball Times quotes "An average team, at any point in a game, has a certain likelihood of winning the game. For instance, if you're leading by two runs in the ninth inning, your chances of winning the game are much greater than if you're leading by three runs in the first inning. With each change in the score, inning, number of outs, base situation or even pitch, there is a change in the average team's probability of winning the game." At this site you can actually see a team's probability of winning based on a certain setup. This is based on data collected from 1979 - 1990, which is about 50,000 games (hmmm wonder why it hasn't been updated?). In this context then if a player comes up to bat in the top of the ninth and hits a double which gives his team the lead and ups the team's chance of winning from 40% to 87% then that player is credited with 0.47 (and conversely the pitcher who gave up the double loses -0.47! Anyway by tracking this during a game and season you can have a true win contribution for each player on your team. So for 2007 the Roxs Top 5:

Todd Helton 4.75
Matt Holiday 4.64
Brad Hawpe 4.26
Troy Tulowitzki 2.58
Manuel Corpas 2.57

2007 Roxs Bottom 5:
Jamey Carroll -1.17
Josh Fogg -1.24
Yorvit Torrealba -1.38
Jeremy Affeldt -1.41
Jason Hirsh -1.94