Library Update: Win Expectancy and WPA

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November 21, 2014

Roughly once a week, at least one person in a FanGraphs chat asks about the site’s name. Why do we have “Graphs” in the name if we hardly ever use the graphs section of the site? Well, some of the graphs don’t get much attention but one of the most popular features of the site is a graph. A win expectancy graph, to be more precise. It looks like this!


Source: FanGraphs

These graphs communicate the odds that a team will win from any given point in the contest based on the inning, score, base-out state, and run environment. They tell the story of the game and the changes from one location on the graph to the next is the Win Probability Added of that plate appearance.

This is a long-winded way of saying that the Win Expectancy and Win Probability Added sections of the FanGraphs Library received a makeover this week and now include more detailed information about these two statistics.

As always, feel free to ask questions in the comments section, on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44, or during our weekly FanGraphs Q&A chats (Wednesdays at 3pm).

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Neil Weinberg is the Site Educator at FanGraphs and can be found writing enthusiastically about the Detroit Tigers at New English D. Follow and interact with him on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44.

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Dave StudemanMember since 2017
11 years ago

Hey Neil, thanks for including some of my articles (and spreadsheet) in the WPA section. However, I’m not sure everything in the “What WPA Can Tell Us About Players” article is really spot on. Many of those concepts have moved on.

Can I suggest a second article I wrote instead? It’s this one:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/10-lessons-i-have-learned-about-win-probability-added/

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Neil WeinbergMember since 2020
11 years ago
Reply to  Dave Studeman

Absolutely! Thanks for linking.

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