Game Two Was Objectively, Historically Crazy

In terms of significant, game-changing moments, no World Series game in history compares to Wednesday night’s epic between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros. In the sixth inning, Corey Seager hit a two-run homer off of Justin Verlander to break a 1-1 tie. In the top of the ninth, Marwin Gonzalez hit a solo shot to tie the game 3-3. In the 10th, Jose Altuve broke the tie with a solo shot. In the bottom half of that same inning, Enrique Hernandez’s RBI single tied the game, and then in the top of the 11th, George Springer hit a two-run homer that would put the Astros up for good. Each of those five plays increased the scoring club’s chances victory by 25% according to Win Probability Added. That’s never happened before in a World Series game.

Since 2002, only one in three games have produced plays with at least one play with a WPA of .25 or greater. To put that in greater context, consider: there have been only 18 plays total this posteason that produced a WPA of .25 or greater.  Here they are, in order of impact on win probability:

Of the eight biggest plays in the postseason this year, four occurred in Game 2. Hernandez’s single in a losing effort produced the highest WPA of any play in this postseason.

Since 2002, only five plays in the World Series have been more significant:

As illustrated by this table, 19 plays have recorded a greater swing than Hernandez’ single in a postseason game. Notably, all of those in the World Series were produced by the team that ultimately won the game. Hernandez, of course, was on the losing side.

Combining the FanGraphs database with Baseball-Reference’s Play-Index, I went back through every World Series game since 1903. I found only three games in which a batter got a hit with a WPA greater than Hernandez’ own and yet whose team went on to lose the game.

• In 1972, Bobby Tolan of the Cincinnati Reds hit a two-run double off of the relieving Vida Blue to put the Reds ahead of the Oakland A’s 2-1 in the top of the eighth inning. The A’s came back in the bottom of the ninth to score two runs to win the game and take a 3-1 series lead before winning in seven games.
• In 1964, Tom Tresh came to the plate down 2-0 against Bob Gibson with two outs in the bottom of the ninth with Mickey Mantle having reached on an error. He hit a game-tying home run, but Tim McCarver hit a three-run homer in the 10th and Gibson close out the game in the bottom half of the inning. The Cardinals took a 3-2 series lead and won in seven games.
• In 1924, with one out in the bottom of the ninth, Washington’s Roger Peckinpaugh hit an RBI double that tied the game at two runs apiece against the New York Giants. In the top of the 12th inning, New York’s Walter Johnson, who had pitched the entire game, gave up hits to Ross Youngs and High Pockets Kelly. New York won that Game 1, but Washington took the series in seven games. Thanks in part to Frankie Frisch’s efforts on the Veteran’s Committee, 10 players who participated in that series eventually made the Hall of Fame.

On average, there have been 2.4 plays with a WPA over .25 per World Series. Allow me to repeat: that’s not per game, but per series. Wednesday night’s game alone more than doubled that average. Indeed, only one other playoff contest in history has, like Game 2, featured as many as five significant plays. Among all playoff games searched through the Baseball-Reference Play-Index (based on a hit search, so big walks, hit-by-pitches, and errors might be missing), the only other game with five big swings was Game 2 of the 1985 ALCS between the Kansas City Royals and the Toronto Blue Jays. That game featured runs in the bottom of the eighth, the top of the ninth, and both halves of the 10th, as the Blue Jays took a 2-0 series lead before succumbing to the eventual champs in seven games.

Since 2002, there have been only five games featuring at least four hits with a WPA greater than .25. Before Wednesday, only one of those games occurred in the World Series. It shouldn’t be too hard to guess which game that was.

Game 6 of the 2011 World Series had four significant plays above .25, which is one short of Wednesday night’s game. As the graph here indicates, however, there were a bunch of smaller back and forths throughout the entire game.

Compare that to the Game 2 graph:

Wednesday night’s game meandered along a bit due to good pitching performances from both clubs. That’s not to suggest that good pitching performances are undesirable, of course, just to say that they tend to facilitate fewer swings in win probability. The minor back-and-forths in the Cardinals-Rangers matchup, meanwhile, tended to be a bit bigger than the Dodgers and Astros.

Here are the top plays by WPA in each of the two games, pitted head to head:

We know that Game 2 featured (by our somewhat arbitrary measure) five “big” plays. As the table here illustrates, however, Game 6 from the 2011 Series was responsible for a greater share of notable plays outside those top five. Game 6 did go longer, which is one reason it might have produced more in the way of quantity. But looking at leverage index gives us a little more insight into not only what did happen, but what might have happened.

In Game 6 back in 2011, 32 of the game’s 109 plays (29.3%) featured a leverage index above 2.0, and 11 plays (10.1%) above 4.0. On Wednesday, 21 of 95 plays (22.1%) had a LI above 2.0, and only Enrique Hernandez’s at-bat was above 4.0.

Wednesday night’s Game 2 was certainly one of the wilder World Series contests in history. In addition to the two games highlighted here, only two other World Series games have featured four hits with a .25 WPA or greater: the Oakland-Cincinnati matchup from 1972 mentioned above and Game 4 of the 1957 World Series between Milwaukee and New York. The latter series featured inner-circle Hall of Famers Hank Aaron, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Eddie Mathews, and Warren Spahn, as well as Hall of Famers Whitey Ford, Red Schoendienst, and Enos Slaughter.

There might not be that much of a point in debating between the two games. Game 6 in 2011 was a great game. Wednesday’s Game 2 was also great. It would be fair to just leave it at that, although this post proves I couldn’t so I wouldn’t blame anybody else who couldn’t leave it alone, either.