The 2019 MLB season was a record-breaking year for the longball, but there were a few dingers that stood out a bit more than the rest. Here were the 5 best walk-off home runs of the year.
The event of witnessing a home run was taken to a different level this past season, as the league totaled 6,776 long balls during the 2019 MLB season — almost 1,200 more than the previous season. Really, this current decade has been eye-opening as it pertains to home runs, considering the first season of the decade (2010) ended with a middling total of 4,613 — a mark that was reached in mid-August of the 2019 MLB season.
But we already know this. The influx of home runs has been one of, if not the most, dominant topic of discussion for several years now. Balls just keep leaving the stadium.
We’ve even narrowed down the reasons as to why this home run epidemic has spread, as various reports have surfaced detailing changes to the very thing that’s constantly being slugged out of the park — the baseball.
So whether or not you’re pro-homer or one of the many fans that’s a bit annoyed by all these long balls, a list highlighting such things may not be of much interest to you. But for those of you that still enjoy this now-ordinary event, it can be fun to look back at some of the more impressive home runs hit this past season.
Just any ol’ home run isn’t really much cause for interest, but homers that actually won games or brought a team back from behind… now those are still usually exciting. You could call these clutch or simply important — whatever you like. In this exercise I’m calling them the best, simply because I’m choosing to rank these homers objectively, using a metric to help.
This metric is called Win Probability Added (or WPA), a statistic that measures a player’s contribution to a win, using win expectancy. Each play during a game positively or negatively impacts a team’s win expectancy, and so at any point during a game, each team will have an expectancy to win ranging from 0-100%. WPA is that shift or change in win expectancy caused by the player.
For example: the Braves are batting in the bottom of the seventh inning, down one run with runners on first and second with one out. Let’s say the Braves currently have a win expectancy of 44%, with first baseman Freddie Freeman walking to the plate to take his at-bat. Then, Freeman proceeds to hit a three-run home run, giving the Braves a two-run advantage in the bottom of the seventh. The Braves are now obviously favored, up by two runs, and now the team’s win expectancy is 74% — an increase of 30%, or 0.3 WPA. Freeman is responsible for +0.3 WPA for that hit, as he contributed to a 30% swing in win expectancy for the Braves by giving the team a two-run lead with his home run.
Now that’s purely a random example. Win expectancy is derived from historical data, which basically gives us the odds of either team winning a particular game given the specific game state, based on the score, how many outs are there, how many runners are on base… etc. We don’t really need to get into all of that.
All we’re after in this exercise are home runs that created the most WPA or the largest swing in win expectancy; and to add excitement, we’re after the best walk-off home runs, the ones that won the game.
During the 2019 MLB season there were 77 walk-off home runs, with September being the busiest of months (totaling 16 walk-off long balls) and the LA Dodgers the league’s walk-off leader with seven walk-off homers. Of those 77 game-ending homers, 36 were pulled, 29 hit straight up the middle and 12 to the opposite field.
Take a look at the five best walk-off home runs from the 2019 MLB season, compiled by WPA.