MLB Rankings: Baseball’s Greatest Hits of Week-16
By Bill Felber
In week-16 of “MLB Rankings: Greatest Hits,” we rank the top 10 base hits in MLB based on their impact on Weighted Win Probability Added.
In this week’s “MLB Rankings: Baseball’s Greatest Hits,” it was a terrible week for some of the game’s best — and most highly paid – closers.
Of the 10 most mission-critical hits of the past week, five – including the top four — were surrendered by celebrated closers. Probably the two names at the top of that list, Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen, were both taken advantage of at pivotal moments.
This has to be a first for the “MLB Rankings: Greatest Hits.”
Fittingly, the guys delivering the hits were also some of the game’s most widely recognized names. Bryce Harper is on this week’s list. So is Paul Goldschmidt.
This countdown recognizes the 10 most game-critical base hits of the past week. Our measuring stick is Weighted Win Probability Added, which is the percentage improvement in a team’s chances of victory brought about by the hit in question. Where ties exist, they are broken by Weighted Win Expectancy, which is the probability of a team’s winning the game at the conclusion of the play.
Weighted Win Probability Added is one of those so-called New Stats, but it’s based on data that’s been around a while. Simply put, every at-bat improves or harms a team’s chances of winning, depending on the game situation and the at bat’s outcome. A home run hit in the late stages of a tight game is far more susceptible to move the Weighted Win Probability needle than the same home run hit in the early stages of a blowout.
Here are this week’s “MLB Rankings: Baseball’s Greatest Hits”.