The Bonkers Game That Probably Shouldn’t Have Been

The Braves and Cubs played a game on Saturday that offered some of the best elements in baseball, including a collection of great young players and an amazing comeback. It also possessed some of the game’s worst possible qualities, including awful weather and incredibly sloppy play likely caused by that same bad weather.

In the end, we saw the Braves jump out to a 10-2 lead and feature a 99.4% chance of winning the game as late as the seventh inning. Despite adding a few runs, the Cubs’ win probability was still just 2.0% in the eighth after Efren Navarro whiffed to record the inning’s second out. Nine two-out runs later, Chicago’s probability of losing was just 2.6%.

Here’s the win probability chart from the game (from this box score):

For five full innings in the middle of the Saturday’s contest, things appeared to be over. Before we get to the craziness of the eighth, however let’s talk a little about the weather. Cubs manager Joe Maddon did not believe the game should have been played and then added his perspective.

“I thought the 2008 World Series game I participated in was the worst. It just got surpassed,” Maddon said. “This is not baseball weather. The elements were horrific to play baseball in. That is the worst elements I ever participated in in a baseball game. Ever.”

Maddon has certainly been around for a while, so his comments carry some weight. His represents merely one opinion, though. What about the players? What about Peter Moylan, for example?

“I’ve been playing since 2006 and never seen anything like that,” said veteran Peter Moylan, the last of the relievers in the inning and the one who threw the wild pitch that let in a run. “We’ve been rained out and been snowed out, but we’ve never had to play through (expletive) like that.”

So, not a big fan. How about Freddie Freeman?

“I don’t understand it one bit. It was the worst game I’ve ever been part of weather-wise.”

And opposing manager Brian Snitker?

“It got to the point where I was worried about the infielders catching the ball because I was afraid they couldn’t get it across the diamond,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “I mean, they literally froze up. You just don’t want anybody to tear their shoulder up or anything like that.”

Weather data isn’t complete historically, but we’ve got every game temperature and wind condition for this century and most of them for another 10 years before that. The game-time temp for Saturday was 38 degrees; the wins was recorded at 24 mph. A search through Baseball-Reference reveals the following games with similar or worse conditions.

In most of the bad-weather games of the 21st century, the teams at least had the courtesy to complete the affair in under three hours. The Cubs-Braves game lasted three hours and 43 minutes, one minute longer than the Twins-White Sox game from four years ago. In something of a coincidence, both of those games took place in Chicago and, in both games, Jose Quintana was the starter for the Chicago franchise. Of the 11 games, five of them took place at Wrigley Field. One more occurred on Chicago’s south side, with one in Cleveland, one in Detroit, and three games in cities where the teams now have domes (Milwaukee and Toronto). When factoring in the weather and the time of game, it might be fair to say the fans who stuck it out on Saturday suffered through more adverse conditions than any fans of the last 20 years.

If any of those fans were Braves fans, the suffering was far worse, as they witnessed their club concede one of the greatest comeback wins of all time. I’ll note that it wasn’t the greatest comeback. There have been a few victories earned following 12-run deficits. Mike Schmidt once hit four homers as part of an 11-run rally that ended in an 18-16 victory over the Cubs. The greatest regular-season come-from-behind win in history might be this one from August 21, 1990, between the Dodgers and Phillies.

Our WPA charts go to the tenths. At the start of the ninth inning, the win probability for the Dodgers was listed at 100.0%. The Phillies’ effort in that game was, almost by definition, incredible; however, this pasrt Saturday’s contest might have featured the biggest half-inning change in WPA that we’ve ever seen before the ninth inning.*

*In the comments kylerkelton alerted everyone to this game in 2000 when the Mets scored 10 runs in the eighth after starting the inning down 8-1. The Mets started the innings with a 0.5% chance of winning and ended at 96.7% which is actually a slightly (0.1%) bigger spread than Saturday’s game though not as big if you start Saturday’s game with two outs. 

Because the Cubs started the bottom of the eighth with a five-run deficit, their chances of winning were set at 2.3%. It actually could have been worse, as the Braves had loaded the bases with one out in the seventh, bringing their chances to 99.4%, but Nick Markakis grounded into a double play. Then, when the Cubs came to the plate in the bottom of the eighth, this happened:

Teams have come back big in the ninth inning to change the odds from 1% or below to 100%, like here and here, but the Cubs changed their odds by 96% without walking off because it was only the eighth inning when they scored nine runs. For those interested in a breakdown of all the play, Michael Clair and Jeff Arnold have provided a recap with a bunch of highlights for Cut 4, but the biggest play of the game, the bases-clearing double by Javy Baez, deserves another look.

Baez absolutely scorched that ball, but it is quite possible the weather and grass helped scoot it to the wall. An examination at Baseball Savant of balls with similar luanch angles and exit velocity reveals that none hit like Baez made it to the wall or went for doubles. This type of contact results in a single almost every time.

The whole of this game was remarkable for one reason or another. For it to have been started in the first place, given the weather, was unlikely. The first few innings were wild, with the Braves jumping out to a huge lead. Ozzie Albies, the youngest player in baseball, is currently sporting a 180 wRC+ and he had at least one RBI in each of the first four innings. The middle innings were a huge, uninteresting, potentially unsafe slog. Then, the bottom of the eighth was bonkers. Nothing about this game was great, but a whole lot of it was unique, which is something.