With the Red Sox forcing a game 7 last night with their win against the Tampa Bay Rays, I thought it’d be fun see just how similar this series looks to last year’s ALCS when the Red Sox played the Indians.

A couple years ago I combined all the Win Probability charts of the 2004 ALCS. Here’s what the 2007 and 2008 ALCS look like when superimposed. 2008 is in red and 2007 is in black.

The Rays have thus far had a much better chance at winning the series than the Indians ever had. In the top of the 7th with Rays runners on 1st and 2nd and no outs, they had a 99.3% chance of winning game 5. The Indians in 2007 had, at their best, a 57.9% chance of winning game 5, and never had better than a 50% chance to win game 6 and game 7.

When compared to the 2004 ALCS, the Yankees at one point had an 83.8% chance of clinching in game 4, and then an 87.8% chance of clinching in game 5.

Update: Just a reminder that we’re still accepting applications. If you plan on submitting an application, please do so by Friday.

FanGraphs is currently looking to hire Fantasy Baseball writers for a soon to be released fantasy baseball blog. These will all be paid, part-time positions with an expectation of 7-15 posts a week.

Please consider the following questions before applying:
– Can you write in a clear and concise manner and self-edit your work?
– Are you extremely familiar with the stats and graphs available on FanGraphs?
– Do you have strong analytical skills?
– Are you available to take on a consistent workload of 7 – 15 posts a week?

In your application please include writing samples, links to current blogs, fantasy baseball experience, or anything else you feel would be useful in evaluating your qualifications.

If you have applied for a position at FanGraphs in the past, please feel free to apply again. Send all applications to david@fangraphs.com with the heading Fantasy Application 08.

Good news! Win Probability and Run Expectancy stats have all been park adjusted for 2008. It looks like the run environment during the season was set a little too high, so you’ll notice batter stats are slightly higher, while pitcher stats are a bit lower. Other than that, not much changed. Manny Ramirez is still #1 in WPA for batters and Cliff Lee is still #1 for pitchers.

This is a few weeks old but I just caught Matthew McGough telling the hilarious story of his first day as the Yankees bat boy on The Moth podcast. It’s definitely worth a listen, especially if you’re a fan of one of the 21 teams already looking forward to opening day 2009.

Pitch Type Abbreviations:

FB – fastball
SL – slider
CT – cutter
CB – curveball
CH – changeup
SF – split-fingered
KN – knuckleball
XX – unidentified
PO – pitch out

About split-fingered pitches: Split fingered pitches include splitters and forkballs.

About the percentages: All pitch type percentages for identified pitches are calculated as a percentage of only identifiable pitches. Unidentified pitches are calculated as a percentage of all pitches.

About the velocity: Next to the percentage in parentheses is the average velocity for the pitch type. If it reads 00.0, it means there is not enough data to calculate the average velocity.

About the leaderboards: On the leaderboards, pitch type percentage and pitch type velocity are broken out into two separate columns for each pitch. The percentage columns are labeled “%” and the velocity columns are labeled “v”.

About the data: All pitch type data is collected and provided by Baseball Info Solutions.

Tangotiger is conducting the 6th annual Scouting Report by the Fans for the Fans. Fill out a ballot to contribute to baseball’s best collective knowledge project!

Just like last year, I’m making a post for the 2008 All-Star game that includes the Win Probability graph and stats since it’s about to go poof from the site.

A couple weeks ago Retrosheet released its 1999 dataset, and now it’s available in the FanGraphs variety.

We now have full win probability statistics for 1974 – 2008.

FanGraphs now has Win Probability statistics for 1974 onward, with the exception of 1999. They are also now park adjusted with the exception of this current year. I’m working on that.

Roger Clemens leads all pitchers in WPA with 75 wins. Greg Maddux is second with 55 wins.

Barry Bonds leads all batters in WPA with 124 wins. The next best batter is Rickey Henderson with 67 wins.

Every week or so I like to take a look at how Tangotiger’s Great Clutch Project is shaping up. For those of you unfamiliar with the project, the gist of it is to find out if fans know which players on their team are “clutch”. You can read all the details over at the Hardball Times and find the daily updated results right here on FanGraphs.

In any case, earlier in the season Tangotiger’s team had a sizable lead over the fans’ choices and it looked like the fans might be in for a rough season. By April 15th, Tangotiger was ahead in every category and was up by nearly 4 wins in WPA and over .200 points in OPS.

One month later on May 15th, the fans’ team had closed the gap considerably and had the lead in some categories including OPS, but still trailed Tangotiger’s team in WPA by .8 wins.

As of yesterday, June 4th, the fans lead in every single major statistic with the exception of home runs, runs batted in, and walks. The fans’ lead in WPA is currently over 2 wins. Here’s what the race has looked like so far:

There’s still a ton of baseball left to be played and the competition is far from over, but after a dubious start, the fans’ team is more than holding its own.