I was curious which players had the best games in 2012 for this shitty team we follow. I used Win Probability Added (WPA) from Baseball Reference to compile the list. There's no reason to write more of an introduction than that so here they are.
20. Travis Wood, .395 WPA
Despite Wood's up and down season, he ended up having an OK year and this is only the first of three times he'll appear on this list. In this game Wood threw 7 innings and didn't allow a run in a 6-1 Cubs victory over the Mets on June 25.
19. David DeJesus, .396 WPA
On September 8th the Cubs beat the Pirates 4-3 and DeJesus drove in the tying run in the 8th. He went 2-4 with a walk overall.
18. Travis Wood, .411 WPA
On July 1st the Cubs blanked the mighty Astros behind 7 scoreless innings from Wood. He walked noboby and struckout 4.
17. Anthony Rizzo, .413 WPA
The Pirates return to mediocrity or worse had already hit by the time September 16th rolled around, but hte Cubs came back from a 6-1 score to beat them 13-9. Rizzo was 3-5 with 6 RBI. He hit 2 home runs and a double. Surprisingly, this is the only appearance for him on this list.
16. Travis Wood, .425 WPA
Travis Wood's 2 best games cames agains the Astros. This one was on September 12th. He threw 7.2 innings, allowed 4 hits and a run as the Cubs won 5-1. Wood had the 5th, 6th and 7th highest single game WPA for a Cubs pitcher this past season.
15. Paul Maholm, .430 WPA
On May 9th Maholm bettered Tim Hudson as the Cubs beat the team he'd later play for. Maholm threw 7 innings, allowed 3 hits and no runs. He walked 3 and struckout 3.
14. Alfonso Soriano, .432 WPA
Soriano hit a 2-run home run in the 6th inning to give the Cubs an 8-7 lead on May 28th. They'd win 11-7 and Soriano went 3-4.
13. Darwin Barney, .434 WPA
In one of the very few Cubs games that actually made me excited enough to care about Cubs baseball, Barney hit a game-tying 2-runhome run in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs against the Cardinals on September 21st. It had 2 of the better performances by a Cub this year. We'll get to the other one later.
12. Ryan Dempster, .445 WPA
I guess I haven't been keeping track because this seems like the first game on the list in which the Cubs lost. On May 3rd the Cubs took a 3-0 lead into the 9th inning behind Dempster's great start. Carlos Marmol didn't record an out before the score was tied and Rafael Dolis lost it in the 10th.
11. Alfonso Soriano, .448 WPA
Although Soriano was homerless in April, he did go 3-5 on April 24th. The final of those hits was a walk-off single in the 10th inning against the Cardinals.
10. Bryan LaHair, .449 WPA
Soriano's walk-off hit was made possible by LaHair's game-tying home run in the 9th inning. LaHair was 2-4 with a walk and a home run on the day.
9. Alfonso Soriano. .464 WPA
On June 8th against the Twins, Soriano hit a game-tying home run in the 8th inning. He went 3-5 on the day, but the Cubs lost in the 10th.
8. Ryan Dempster, .506 WPA
On Opening Day the Cubs hosted the Nationals and Dempster threw 7.2 innings, allowed only 2 hits, a run, walked 3 and struckout 10. The Cubs lost 2-1 and Stephen Strasburg who would later be shut down for good because the Nationals were liking their 2012 season too much.
7. Alfonso Soriano, .512 WPA
The Cubs beat the Diamondbacks 8-1 on July 13th thanks to Soriano's 4-4 day with 2 home runs. Not too surprisingly, Soriano appeared on this list more times than any other player though 7th was the highest.
6. Bryan LaHair, .522 WPA
In a June 7th loss in Milwaukee, LaHair hit a game-tying pinch hit home run in the 8th inning. The Cubs would lose 4-3 in the 10th.
5. David DeJesus, .532 WPA
In the game that Barney hit the game-tying home run in the 9th, DeJesus had the walk-off single scoring Brett Jackson in the 10th. DeJesus was 4-6 and had 1 RBI.
4. Darwin Barney, .545 WPA
Barney went 2-3 with a couple walks on May 30th when the Cubs beat the Padres 8-7. Starlin Castro tied the game in the 8th and Barney hit a walk-off home run in the 9th.
3. Jeff Samardzija, .600 WPA
Samardzija's 8 inning, 1 hit, 0 run, 1 BB and 5 K performance on July 23 in Pittsburgh was the single best performance by a Cubs pitcher all season. The teams combined for 6 hits and 2 runs, but the Cubs squeaked away with a win by having only 4 hits. One of the most boring games of the year had one of the best starts of the season. Funny how that works out.
2. David DeJesus, .627 WPA
The Cubs lost 8-7 in 13 innings to the Brewers, but DeJesus was 2-4 with 5 RBI. DeJesus didn't even start the game either. The Cubs trailed 1-0 in the 7th when DeJesus came to bat with the bases loaded. His grand slam gave the Cubs a big lead late in Milwaukee, but Cubs bullpen. Down 1 in the 9th, DeJesus tripled home Ian Stewart.
Joe Mather: better than Josh Vitters
If you can't laugh that Joe fucking Mather had the best game of any Cubs player all season, you have no sense of humor. One of the worst players in all of baseball in 2012 actually managed to have the best game of any Cub in their entire shitty season. I don't know about the rest of you, but that makes me laugh. I've been laughing about it since I decided to write this article. If yiou're wondering why he's here, he had a 2-run single in the bottom of the 9th against the Cardinals driving in the tying and winning runs with 2 outs in the game. Mather was 2-3 with a walk.
I was there as a witness to true legend.
josh wrote:
Shut me right up.
That hit was fucking awesome. Joe rode that shit for the rest of the season. Overall performance be damned!
@ Suburban kid:
English nerd ftw!
I can’t argue with you today.
I’m kind of surprised that Samardzija’s first start of the season didn’t make the list.
@ Berselius:
That was 10th best among pitchers (.382 WPA).
@ Berselius:
I think giving up the homer after Castro made the error dinged him a bunch. Otherwise he probably makes the list for that game.
I’m going to do a 20 worst either later today or tomorrow, but it will just be a list.
The NFL QBs duke it out on Facebook again:
http://profootballmock.com/?p=5020
@ mb21:
What about the game I saw? DeJesus seemed to do well that day. Was it disqualified because it was against the Astros?
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/boxscore?gid=320815116
@ Rice Cube:
That’s pretty damn funny. I have a friend of a friend who always has a “Can’t we all get alone” thing going like Stafford on there. Kinda looks like him too.
Ricky Gervais just won the internet:
@ Suburban kid:
Nevermind. I looked it up and his WPA for that game was .214.
For some reason I thought going 4-4 with 2 HRs would be considered one of the top 20 performances of a year, especially for this Matheriffic team.
@ Suburban kid:
Has a lot to do with the timing of those hits and whether the plays resulted in runs that took the lead or significantly decreased the chances of the other team winning. I didn’t actually look up the play-by-play or the WPA graph though.
@ Rice Cube:
Like, if the team has a 25% chance of winning and the batter hits a grand slam to walk off with the win, that’s obviously a .750 they just got. It was just one hit and maybe some other guy had gone 5-5 and hit for the cycle before that, but that one grand slam gets the WPA of the day because of when it happened.
I imagine because the Cubs won 7-2 and a bunch of the runs were scored early on that most of the WPA was picked up later on by the pitchers and relievers.
@ josh:
The Hope Monster’s name could be Montresor.
@ Rice Cube:
I knew all this intuitively, but clung to the notion that I might have seen a top performance of the season until you articulated it in plain “you’re not special” language.
http://www.theheckler.com/2012/10/08/cubs-to-remove-dugouts-for-extra-seating-in-2013/
(dying laughing)
@ GBTS:
Awesome.
@ Suburban kid:
WPA isn’t exactly fair, although I wonder how well it correlates with “clutch”, i.e. how people always complain that 99.999% of the homers Sammy Sosa ever hit were meaningless.
@ Rice Cube:
Isn’t that the idea of it? Measuring clutchiness?
@ Suburban kid:
Not really. For instance, it also measures things beyond a player’s control such as the game situation. WPA/Li was designed to neutralize that aspect, and the “clutch” rating (on sites like Fangraphs) is comes from the difference between WPA and WPA/Li. (Whether this “clutch” measure corresponds closely to what we call “clutch” is another matter.)
(Frankly, I don’t have much use for WPA for measuring “top performances” either for a game or season.)
@ Rizzo the Rat:
I think it’s kind of fun to look at the WPA graph as a rollercoaster and pinpoint the momentum swing if you weren’t paying attention to the game as it unfolded.
Red team > red team
Fuckin’ Cardinals
@ Rice Cube:
Yeah, I like those graphs, too.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
I’m fine with it. It’s a story stat and tells you who had the most important game. It’s not telling you anything more than that, but it’s not supposed to.
@ Rice Cube:
The best clutch measurements I’ve ever come across do in fact show he was the worst clutch hitter. I believe Mark Grace was the best.
The only thing I really dislike about single game WPA is that for a starting pitcher to have a really high total it will have to be a close game. If the pitcher throws a shutout and his team scores 28 runs it won’t score that high, but there are other metrics to measure that. Not to mention, in a game where the offense scores 28 few are going to remember who the starter was and how he performed.
@ mb21:
Well then Sammy is just a piece of shit, isn’t he? (dying laughing)
Also, fie on the Cardinals for being so randomly good.
/angry Cub fan
That was a sweet play by Zimmerman.
Rice Cube wrote:
(dying laughing) It’s funny that those people think the only way to be valuable to is produce in the clutch. Idiots.
@ mb21:
I think the video game “player of the game” algorithm is broken or at least not based on WPA, because when I have a pitcher throw a shutout while the offense scores 40 runs (yay sliders) with Alfonso Soriano going 5-for-5 with three homers and a couple doubles, it still chooses the pitcher who threw the shutout.
@ mb21:
I just don’t buy that it measures “importance.” For instance, if a starter throws a 1-0 shutout, his WPA is different depending on when his offense scored the run.
@ mb21:
I think looking at WPA out of context (or clutch for that matter) is inappropriate because it might not take into account the fact that Sammy Sosa, for example, had hit a couple homers early on to put the Cubs into that clutch situation in the first place.
Wow, ZImmermann is out already.
@ mb21:
There’s also a known bias in WPA/Li-based measures against home run hitters: http://www.3-dbaseball.net/2012/06/clutch-wpali-and-home-run-bias.html
Sosa still comes out negative when the bias is corrected, but not as negative.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
In a single game, shouldn’t it be? He had a better start because his offense only scored 1 run. He was more responsible for the win than anyone else since his team scored so few runs. Isn’t a 2-run home run when down one in the 8th more important than a 2-run important hit in the 2nd? Yes, the team factors into the score, but WPA isn’t trying to separate individual skill from team skill.
@ mb21:
I’m not sure what you’re saying. I’m comparing his offense scoring in the first vs. the ninth (in a game that finishes 1-0). Either way, the pitcher is equally responsible for the victory, but his WPA is different.
I think Daniel Descalso’s WPA just went up.
@ mb21:
You have to penalize the pitcher somehow, because once you have a 5 ru lead early in the game everyone stops trying to score runs.
/Clevenger
If you have a problem with the team affecting individual WPA, you’d also have to have a problem with reliever WAR, right?
There are numerous ways to put together a list like this. I use WPA though I never use it for anything else and haven’t even checked out Fangraphs scoreboard in about 3 or 4 years.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
Shouldn’t it be? He worked with a lead the entire game as opposed to being tied. He had a little room for error the entire game if the run is scored early and no room for error if it’s not scored until the 9th. It makes sense to me.
If someone wants to say that WPA is measuring skill or talent I’ll disagree
Is TBS providing enough shots of a disgruntled Strasburg in the dugout?
A batter can go 1-4 with a solo home run in the 1st and his WPA will be different than if he’s 1-4 and the home run is hit in the 9th. I seen no problem with this at all. In the context of the game, the 9th inning home run was far away more important than in the 1st. The 9th inning home run gave the team the win or a lead with 1 inning to go as opposed to a 1st inning home run with 8-9 innings to go.
@ mb21:
Except that the pitcher’s WPA is actually higher if the run scored in the first. What “makes sense” to you is the exact opposite of what WPA says.
I might add that I’m not actually complaining about the list or anything (your blog, your criteria), just stating and explaining my preference.
http://m.deadspin.com/5950006/bob-brenly-doesnt-understand-how-the-earths-rotation-works
Bryce Harper —> on the way to a golden sombrero
@ Rizzo the Rat:
Here’s an intuitive way to look at it: when you have a 1-0 lead, every time the pitcher has a shutout inning, it brings his team closer to victory. With the score tied, he gives his team a chance to maybe get the lead.
@ GBTS:
I remember hearing him fucking that up but I was too distracted to laugh at the time.
Unfortunate TOOTBLAN by Harper following Holliday’s high-larious Ibanez-esque spike throw.
@ Suburban kid:
I think it was an attempt at “humor”
awesome
http://jalopnik.com/5949863/truck-with-meth-lab-written-on-it-actually-was-a-meth-lab
Though with BB we use the term very loosely
@ Rizzo the Rat:
Makes sense when you put it that way. Plus, in a tie game the WE for the home team is basically going from .50 to .55 or so. With a 1 run lead it will go from .5ish to .7ish and then all the way to 1. Good point.
@ EnricoPallazzo:
(dying laughing) that’s awesome.
Eric Winston on the fans who cheered Cassell’s injury:
Didn’t the A’s trade Kurt Suzuki? Of course, they were like a bajillion games out at that point, probably.
Still raining in Baltimore.
@ josh:
I used to think they did, but then I realized that they made the playoffs, so they couldn’t have switched catchers.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
looks like they just started warming up.
@ GW:
Right? That violates the first and third law of baseballdynamics.
Long first inning for Chen.
WTF Eetch?
I’m surprised Castro didn’t make the list at all.
@ Rodrigo Ramirez:
I don’t remember him having many big plays this year. It seemed like a quiet year for him.
Are the Jets shuffling QBs? I can’t actually see the game.
http://www.bleachernation.com/2012/10/08/rumor-cubs-fear-zack-greinkes-social-anxiety-issues-make-him-a-poor-fit-for-chicago/
Jets aren’t shuffling. Tebow’s gotten a few plays, but it’s clear Rex wants no part of Tebow throwing the ball.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Rumors! fah!
@ Rodrigo Ramirez:
BUST
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Okay. Fan appeasement? Or what? Why is the nation obsessed with Tebow?
@ josh:
No idea. Probably for the same reason people watch Honey Boo Boo.
Maybe they’re just trying to save wear and tear on the guy. If the only thing Tebow does is run, why not make him a running back? Surely there have been other QB’s turned RB.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
That makes me sad. but not as sad as this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/08/charlie-fuqua-arkansas-candidate-death-penalty-rebellious-children_n_1948490.html
Oooo’s!
http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/community-whitney-premieres-delayed-by-nbc
GW wrote:
Billy Beane took one look at Suzuki’s CERA and he was outta there.
@ josh:
WTF. Then you have the guy who says he doesn’t trust the scientific method sitting on the House Committee On Science
So, Lincecum is out of the rotation in favor of… Zito? What kind of bizarro world is this?
Ermagerd INFIELD FLY
@ Rizzo the Rat:
Whoa, what? the fuck?
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Yes, Evolution is from the pit of hell, after all.
http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/05/14203607-video-shows-scientist-in-congress-saying-evolution-is-from-pit-of-hell?lite
@ josh:
Apparently Zito has been pitching better down the stretch. http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/8480362/2012-nlds-san-francisco-giants-barry-zito-start-game-4-tim-lincecum-bullpen
I thought Jeter didn’t make errors. Silly me.
@ Rice Cube:
He missed one, but JJ wasn’t looking at his coach and missed his chance to go home on it. O’failure.
GAme CEnter has been hung on the 2 minute warning for about 10 minutes.
Wonder when the Yankees’ 7-spot is tonight.
There isn’t one fucking QB in the NFL or college football right now other than Tebow for whom ESPN would do this shit:
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
I’m sure whoever J. Hill is will be smote later.
The O’s have some insurance.
@ Rice Cube:
Up their ass, b/c The O’s are winning this shit tonight.
Derek Jeter —> adds to October legend
Wow. That is an amazing play. By both players, really.
Wonder if it makes sense to bat A-Rod sixth rather than fourth.
who is baltimore’s 8th inning guy?
Why would you bring in Matusz to IBB Cano to get to Swisher and Teixiera (both switch hitters)?
@ Rice Cube:
There’s two outs so they’ll likely get out of it but it’s still silly to me.
Wow. Just…wow:
Why did “Coed” change from “both sexes educated at this facility” to “slutty, female, college age women.” It was porn, wasn’t it? Porn did this.
@ josh:
WE BUILT THIS
New Comic: http://www.obstructedview.net/comics/election.html