Jo Adell Gets Robbed

Jo Adell performed a miracle. Let’s turn it into math.

Adell robbed the Mariners of three home runs on Saturday. He got Cal Raleigh in the first inning, Josh Naylor in the eighth, and J.P. Crawford in the ninth. Sports Info Solutions has tracked home run robberies since 2004 and only twice had an outfielder robbed even two home runs in a game — nobody had ever robbed three.

Each catch was crucial. The Angels wound up winning 1-0, with Zach Neto’s leadoff solo shot in the first inning being the only run of the game. That means Adell was thrice the difference in the Angels’ narrow victory.

Win Probability Added doesn’t agree. It suggests Adell overall hurt the Angels’ chances of winning by about 3%. Position players only gain WPA on offense — Adell went 1-for-3 with an irrelevant single — so he didn’t get credit for any of these catches. WPA instead gives all the glory to the pitcher, with the assumption that an out is an out on defense, and the only thing that can be known about an out is who threw the ball (in this case, Jack Kochanowicz, Sam Bachman, and Jordan Romano).

While this assumption makes sense for nearly all plays and scenarios, home run robberies are a bit different. They’re definitive. We know what the outcome was, and we know what the outcome would have been had Adell not intervened.

How much was each catch worth? And how much credit does Adell deserve? Let’s take a look.

Robbery #1

Adell’s first catch came in the top of the first inning with one out and nobody on. Raleigh got a hanging breaking ball and lasered it to right at 105 mph with 28 degrees of launch. Adell, playing deep, shuffled back with a few long carioca strides, timed his leap with a bunny hop, and flung his arm into the air and body into the wall. He landed on his feet before tentatively raising his mitt, as if he’d just staggered on ice in front of 44,084 people and was hoping none of them saw it.

Like many home run robberies, it lacked a bit of grace. I’m sure Hyundai didn’t mind.

There are two ways we could go about giving Adell credit for this play. The first is by assigning the value of the out itself, that being the actual WPA of the play (otherwise assigned to the pitcher). In this instance, the out was worth .016 WPA. That’s not much because the game simply progressed from one out and nobody on in the first inning of a tie game, to two outs and nobody on in the first inning of a tie game.

But we know the Angels would have fallen behind 1-0 had Adell missed the ball. For that reason, we could credit Adell for both the out and the run he saved by comparing the Angels’ win expectancy for two possible outcomes:

A) Catch: First inning, nobody on, two outs, tie game
B) Home Run: First inning, nobody on, one out, Angels down 1-0.

That run-saving scenario results in a WPA of .116, meaning the non-run was worth an additional 10 percentage points toward victory on top of the out itself. Again, WPA doesn’t include this context because it’s generally unknowable. For instance, Josh Lowe and Oswald Peraza each made great defensive plays during the game on would-be singles, but we can’t presume to know what would have happened had those hits landed. The difference with home run robberies is this clear line between all or nothing.

Robbery #2

Adell robbed his second home run with one out in the top of the eighth and the Angels up 1-0. It looked a lot like the first play. Naylor turned on a hanging breaking ball and drove it to right field at 98 mph with 29 degrees of launch. Now, this ball wasn’t hit nearly as well (xBA of .380 vs .900 for Raleigh’s), and it hung up for a second longer. But rather than moving straight back, Adell had to move back and to his right.

This time he looked more confident, taking the same few shuffle strides before timing his leap and extending — briefly flailing — then landing with intent, pumping his fist in the air.

There are still two main ways to credit Adell for this play. Again, we could give him the value of the out like standard WPA. Or we could give him the value of both the out and the run.

Now, I want to propose a third way to value this play, which I’ll explain in a moment. What if we assume Adell hadn’t made the catch in the first inning and only made the catch in the eighth? In other words, we’d be crediting him with saving a 1-1 tie rather than saving a 1-0 lead.

This third scenario makes the catch even more valuable, as a home run there (on top of the homer in the first) would have put the Angels behind 2-1 with just two turns at the plate to go.

Why would we do it this way? Well, we wouldn’t. Adell made the play in first, and that’s the context in which he made the play in the eighth.

Still, I think it’s interesting to consider. It’s incredibly rare, if not entirely unprecedented, for an outfielder to rob three home runs in a game. And the value of each catch influences the value of the ones that follow. What this scenario asks is, if Adell had made only one catch, how much would each have been worth? From that perspective, the catch in the eighth inning was nearly three times more valuable than the catch in the first inning.

Robbery #3

The third play was the most exciting. Thanks to Adell, the Angels still held a 1-0 lead in the top of the ninth. Crawford got a hanging slider to lead off the inning and floated a fly ball down the right field line at 93.5 mph with 35 degrees of launch. The threat wasn’t necessarily the quality of the hit (.060 xBA) but the nature of Angel Stadium, with a shallow corner and short fences, turning what’s normally a weak fly out into a potential run.

Adell galloped 95 feet toward the corner, slowing at the warning track with a few stutter steps. He leapt from his toes and hoisted his arm as he hip-checked the wall, see-sawing over the top and sliding into the crowd. There was nothing for a second, maybe two, before an arm shot up, revealing Adell with the ball and the out. He stood frozen for a moment, holding his trophy for all to see, perhaps in disbelief as fans swatted him on the back for a job well done. He pounded his chest and hopped back into the field.

The crowd was electric, roaring with approval. Crawford stood at first in awe. Mariners first base coach Eric Young Jr. tipped his helmet. Angels assistant general manager Torii Hunter, an elite robber of home runs in his day, said after the game that he almost passed out. The play was reviewed and eventually confirmed, giving Adell time to soak in the atmosphere, unable to hide the smile from his face.

OK, so we have the same three ways to value this catch, plus a new one. Again, we can give him credit for the out, the out and the run, or the out and the run while assuming the other plays had not been made. The third option is actually a bit lesser here, because if Adell had not made the two previous plays, the Angels would have been behind 2-1, and the robbery would have merely maintained the margin of a late deficit.

The final scenario is kind of goofy, but let’s do it just for fun. In the previous counterfactual, where we’re assuming Adell hadn’t made the other catches, we’re essentially inventing extra outs to ensure each play would have come in the same game-state (the only difference being the score). We could instead factor how the game would have progressed using the observed outcomes.

Why didn’t we do this for the robbery in the eighth? Well, the Mariners were bad at the plate most of the game and didn’t reach base often. If we assume this two-out fielder’s choice in the third inning by Randy Arozarena would have been a double play (in the scenario where Raleigh homered and the game progressed identically thereafter, offset by an out), then Naylor would have stepped to the plate in the eighth inning at the exact same moment.

But if Adell also had not robbed Naylor, Crawford would have stepped to the plate with two outs in the eighth inning and a runner on first, rather than leading off the ninth. In that scenario, Adell’s catch would have been slightly more valuable, because it would have kept the Angels in the game with still two more turns at the plate.

Did you follow all that? Did I?

Again, the main consideration here is whether to give the Adell the credit for the out, or for the out and the run. If it’s the former, he was worth .128 WPA in the field. If it’s the latter, he was worth .822 WPA. My gut says .822 WPA feels more correct.

The side consideration is estimating which catch was worth the most. His stage dive in the ninth inning appears the most valuable, but only because he’d already made the two catches earlier in the game. If he and the Angels could pick only one catch for him to make, though, I think it should be the one in the eighth.

There are other ways to guess at the data. Adell could have made two catches, or he could have knocked one of the balls back into play, or he could have been substituted, or he could have done all sorts of things to shift the impact of the moment. If we simply ignore the spreadsheets, however, we arrive at a far simpler truth: Adell made each catch, and the Angels won the game.