And That’s Why They Play the Game

The Nationals just had a great comeback against the Marlins this afternoon. The final game graph (unofficially) looks like this:

The Marlins newly acquired Jorge Julio pretty much blew the entire game for them with a WPA of -.903 wins. The Nationals low point in the game was in the bottom of the 6th with 2 outs when they had a mere 3.7% chance of winning the game.

But let’s draw our attention to one very specific play at the end of the game: the sacrifice bunt when the score was 6-5 in the bottom of the 9th. Before the sacrifice bunt there was a runner on first with no outs. The Nationals at the time had a 34.4% chance of winning. Manny Acta, the Nationals new manager, had Felipe Lopez hit a sacrifice bunt. It was successful, but it didn’t improve their chances of winning the game. Instead of increasing their chances, it actually decreased it by 6% to give the Nationals a 28.8% chance of winning.

If you were watching the game on FanGraphs, you got to see exactly why the following is true:

To quote The Book: “With a non-pitcher at the plate, and a runner on first and no outs, advancing the runner in exchange for an out is a terrible strategy. It significantly reduces the RE in almost any run environment. It also reduces the WE in almost any run environment, even late in a close game.”

Fortunately for Nationals fans (while unfortunate my hopes and dreams), they ended up winning anyway.