The week’s heroes: Yelich, Toro and Kurt Suzuki
MLB’s greatest hits: Sept. 1-7
If Christian Yelich successfully defends the National League Most Valuable Player award he won in 2018, weeks like this past one will be the reason why.
Twice during the just-concluded week, Yelich resuscitated the Brewers’ flagging post-season hopes with a critical late-game hit. Unfortunately for Milwaukee, only one of those hits actually resulted in a win; the Brewers wasted the first of their star’s key hits.
His dual performance highlighted a week of memorable individual achievements around MLB. In Toronto, Houston’s Abraham Toro ratified Justin Verlander’s bid for a third no-hitter with a two-run home run that broke up a scoreless tie. And in Washington, Nationals catcher Kurt Suzuki capped the most unlikely of ninth inning rallies with a three-run home run that staggered the New York Mets.
This countdown recognizes the 10 most game-critical base hits of the MLB’s 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.
From 10 to 1, here’s the full list of the 10 most meaningful base hits of the past week.
10 Max Kepler, 41 percent
Locked in a battle for the AL Central title, the Minnesota Twins need every victory they can get. They certainly can’t afford losses to weak sisters such as the Detroit Tigers.
That’s why Kepler’s delivery of Monday afternoon’s game in Detroit was critical. Stifled by the pitching of Tiger ace Jordan Zimmerman, the Twins trailed 3-2 through seven innings, a loss allowing the second place Cleveland Indians to draw within four and one-half games of the divisional leaders.
It has been only a so-so season for Kepler, who entered the game batting .258 and fanned in two of his first four plate appearances against Zimmerman.
By the seventh, however, Zimmerman was gone, having been lifted at the end of the sixth by Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire after throwing just 90 pitches. Rookie Gregory Soto took Zimmerman’s place to start the seventh, and Buck Farmer succeeded Soto in the eighth. That turned out to be the break the Twins and Kepler needed.
Farmer was in trouble from ‘go.’ He walked LaMonte Ward on a 3-1 pitch, then Luis Arreaz touched him for a line drive single. With the tying and lead runs on base, Farmer fanned C.J. Cron and Jake Cave, only to allow an infield hit to Ehire Adrianza that loaded the bases.
That set up the showdown with Kepler, who got 2-1 count leverage then lined a base hit to left field that sent Wade and Arreaz home.
When the Minnesota bullpen retired the Tigers in order in the eighth and ninth, Kepler’s hit gave Minnesota the hit the Twins needed to remain comfortably ahead of the Indians.
9 Ryan O’Hearn, 41 percent
This was a very bad week to be a member of the Detroit bullpen. On Monday Buck Farmer surrendered Kepler’s decisive hit. The next night, Ryan O’Hearn capped a game that saw the Tiger pen twice undermine their team‘s hopes for a rare victory.
The Tigers led 4-3 entering the bottom of the eighth only to see Alex Gordon single home the tying run against Gregory Soto. Then with two out and Jorge Soler at third, Soto wild pitched the lead run across the plate.
In the top of the ninth, Ronny Rodriguez’s two-out single scored Victor Reyes with the tying run and gave the Tigers a second chance at victory…one the pen would undermine almost at the earliest possible moment.
Zac Reininger, called on to start the inning, retired Brett Phillips on a line out. But O’Hearn followed by hammering Reininger’s first pitch into the seats in left field for a walk-off homer and a 6-5 win. The victory was Kansas City’s first walk-off win since May, and only their third of the season.
But it was a too-familiar story for the Tigers, their ninth walk-off loss of the 2019 season. It also marked Detroit’s ninth loss in the last 10 games, and a second straight by a single run.
8 Kyle Tucker, 42 percent
The Houston Astros didn’t rise to their dominant position in the American League West by playing without heart. So when the visiting Seattle Mariners leaped to a quick 7-0 lead just an inning and a half into the teams’ Thursday game in Houston, the Astros took the deficit as a challenge.
Gradually chipping away at that early edge, the Astros finally tied the game at 8 with a three-run eighth inning capped by Jose Altuve’s two-run scoring triple. In extra innings, though, a second challenge emerged. Kyle Seager homered off Josh James to lift the Mariners back on top 9-8.
In the bottom of the 12th, Zac Grotz took the mound in an effort to protect that one-run lead. He almost made it. After striking out Yordan Alvarez, Grotz walked Yuli Gurriel but retired Aledmys Diaz on an infield out, pinch runner Myles Straw reaching second.
With two out and the tying run in scoring position, the Astros’ chances of eventually winning the game measured just 15 percent. Tucker, a September callup, was the last hope. He fell behind 1-2 to Grotz, then lined a base hit to right that sent Straw across with the game-tying run.
In the 13th, the Astros completed the comeback victory on Michael Brantley’s home run.
7 Christian Yelich, 43 percent
The Brewers opened a two-game series against the AL West leading Houston Astros Monday in Milwaukee. Given the Brewers’ position on the far fringes of both the NL Central and wild card races, they needed every home victory.
But Yordan Alvarez’s sixth inning home run off Brent Suter gave Houston a 2-1 lead, and the Astros bullpen protected that slim advantage through the sixth, seventh and eighth. To open the ninth, Houston manager A.J. Hinch turned the game over to closer Roberto Osuna, whose first assignment was to get Yelich.
The Brewers star came to the plate hitless for the game. But this was the ninth inning of a one-run game, a circumstance made for Yelich’s penchant for dramatics. As he has so often done, he delivered, homering over the left field wall to tie the game 2-2. It was his 43rd of the season.
It was not, however, enough, to spur the Brewers on to victory. After Osuna survived a shaky ninth in which the potential winning run advanced into scoring position, George Springer led off the 10th with a home run of his own. In the bottom of the 10th, Josh James survived a pair of walks by striking out the side, including Yelich among his victims.
6 Abraham Toro, 43 percent
What people are most likely to recall about Houston’s 2-0 Sunday victory over Toronto was that Astros pitcher Justin Verlander threw his third no-hitter.
But don’t overlook the fact that Toro’s hit made Verlander’s no-hitter possible.
Despite Verlander’s stifling pitching, the Astros entered the ninth inning locked in a scoreless tie, having failed to dent three Jays pitchers for anything more significant than three base hits. Toro, Houston’s rookie third baseman, was hitless in three tries with two whiffs.
Under major league scoring rules, even if Verlander completed the ninth without allowing a hit, he would not be credited with a no-hitter unless the Astros scored at least one run.
That fact ratcheted up the tension beyond normal levels as the fourth Jays pitcher, closer Ken Giles, took the mound to start the ninth. Alex Bregman began the inning with a solid double, but Giles recovered to strike out Yordan Alvarez and retired Aledmys Diaz on a fly ball. That left the issue up to Toro.
As he stood in, the chances of an Astro win stood at 48 percent. But with a 1-1 count, Giles left a pitch up where Toro could get it, and he drove it deep into the left field seats for a two-run bomb.
The hit not only flipped the odds of an Astro win to 91 percent, it opened the door for Verlander to complete his no-hitter in the bottom of the ninth. He did so by sandwiching two ground balls around a strikeout.
5 Christian Yelich, 43 percent
If, as appears increasingly possible, the Cubs fail to hang on to their wild card berth, they can blame Yelich.
On Friday, he slammed a three-run home run that erased an early Chicago lead and powered the Brewers to an eventual 7-1 victory.
The situation was substantially more dramatic Saturday night. Cubs starter Yu Darvish held Milwaukee to no runs and three hits, and Addison Russell’s home run gave the Cubs an early leg up.
But Cubs manager Joe Madden felt constrained to lift Darvish after five innings and 72 pitches, entrusting the final dozen outs to that least trustworthy of entities, the Chicago bullpen. The result was predictable: Milwaukee tied the game, Chicago went back ahead, and Milwaukee tied the game again.
That set the stage for Yelich at his favorite moment, the ninth inning of a close game.
Russell himself opened the door, throwing away a potential first out with a bad toss on Tyler Austin’s leadoff grounder. Reliever Brandon Kintzler retired the next two batters, then worked a 2-2 count on Yelich.
KIntzler’s 2-2 pitch was a sinker strategically positioned just off the plate outside. Or so he thought; Yelich reached out and drove the ball to the wall in left. When Kyle Schwarber overran the carom trying to make a desperation catch, Austin breezed around the bases with the winning run.
4 Brett Gardner, 43 percent
In some metaphysical sense, the Oakland Athletics emerged as winners last Sunday. Their injured ace, Sean Manaea, returned from surgery to blank the New York Yankees on one hit over five innings, putting the absolute best possible spin on his comeback.
But the standings don‘t reflect metaphysics. After Manaea was pulled, the Yanks rallied for five late runs to overtake Oakland 5-4 in a game the A’s needed a lot more than the Yankees. The defeat sent them into a tie with Cleveland for the second wild card spot.
Oakland led 4-0 until Gleyber Torres’ sacrifice fly and Didi Gregorius’ base hit pulled New York within a run. Still the Yanks held only a 21 percent chance of winning as the bottom of the ninth began.
A’s closer Liam Hendriks, who had finished out the eighth, faced Gardner to begin the ninth and immediately regretted it. Gardner homered into the friendly right field Yankee Stadium bleachers to tie the game at 4-4.
That hit by itself improved New York’s chances by 43 percent, to 64 percent.
And it didn’t take long to secure that remaining 36 percent. The next batter, Mike Ford, did it with another home run into the right-center field seats, this one on a 3-2 pitch.
3 Kevin Pillar, 46 percent
With the National League’s best record since the All Star break, the St. Louis Cardinals are hard to put away these days. Wednesday night, however, Kevin Pillar finally found a way.
The Giants were experiencing one of those nights visiting teams are so familiar with in St. Louis, where killing the Cardinals seems akin to killing a vampire. The Cards erased 4-0 and 7-4 Giant leads, using a four-run sixth to build an 8-7 lead.
Statistically, the odds of a Giants win had fallen from 85 percent as late as the sixth inning to just 26 percent by the start of the eighth. Coming off 3-1 and 1-0 wins the previous two nights, it looked like another typical Cardinal home performance.
Not this time, however. Facing hard-throwing Giovanny Gallegos, Pillar came to the plate with one out and Evan Longoria at first base in the top of the eighth. He took a strike, then turned around the next pitch for a 440-foot home run that thrust San Francisco on top once again, this time 9-8.
And this time, unlike most of the rest of the evening, the Cardinals would stay dead. Tony Watson and Will Smith combined to retire six of the final nine hitters, Smith working around a pair of ninth inning walks.
2 Russell Martin, 54 percent
Another week, another stunning Dodger rally.
This one occurred during the seventh inning of Tuesday’s 5-3 victory over the Colorado Rockies at Dodger Stadium. The Rocks led 2-0 entering the seventh, but what’s two runs when you are the universe’s best team?
Facing Chi Chi Gonzalez, Cody Bellinger opened the seventh by drawing a base on balls when Gonzalez missed low on a 3-2 pitch. Gonzalez fanned A.J. Pollock, but Matt Beatty rolled a base hit through the middle of the Rockie infield.
That prompted Rockies manager Bud Black to lift Gonzalez – who had allowed just three hits but thrown 101 pitches – in favor of veteran Bryan Shaw. The move looked good when Shaw retired Enrique Hernandez on an atom ball line drive to center. Martin was the next hitter.
The veteran catcher is not having one of his intimidating seasons. Martin, now 36, is batting .218 in backup duty. But he is still occasionally dangerous, as he demonstrated by lifting a belt-high cutter into the seats in left-center for a three-run homer.
That hit turned Colorado’s 2-0 lead into a 3-2 Dodger advantage, which David Freese proceeded to double by backing up Martin’s home run with one of his own. Black called on Carlos Estevez to record the final out, but by then it was too late. As it always it when playing the Dodgers.
1 Kurt Suzuki, 69 percent
Assuming the New York Mets fail to reach the playoffs, their fans will look back on this game as the decisive blow.
More from Call to the Pen
- Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
- Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
- Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
- Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
- 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals
The Mets scored five runs in the top of the ninth inning to build a 10-4 lead with three outs to get. When the bottom of the ninth inning began, the odds of a Washington comeback win were less than 1 percent.
The Mets asked Paul Sewald to get what should have been those perfunctory three outs, only to see their baseball world collapse around them.
Victor Robles opened the inning with a ground single, and one out later Trea Turner doubled the first run home. After Asdrubel Cabrera singled Turner to th8ird, Anthony Rendon also singled to make the score 10-6.
That was enough for Mets manager Mickey Callaway, who summoned Luis Avilan to replace Sewald. He surrendered a ground single to Juan Soto that loaded the bases and brought the tying run to the plate.
At that point, the odds of a Nats win still barely broke out of single digits. But after Edwin Diaz replaced Avilan, Ryan Zimmerman improved those odds measurably with a line double to right that sent Cabrera and Rendon across. Still with just one out, the score was 10-8 and Suzuki came up representing a highly unlikely winning run.
Longest homers of the past week. dark. Next
He worked the count to 3-2, then picked on a Diaz offering and sent it in to the seats down the left field line for a stunning game winner. It was only the second time this season that a team walked off victoriously after entering the ninth inning with a less than 1 percent chance at victory.