A Pair of 11’s For Los Angeles Dodgers And San Francisco Giants

Didn’t have anything to do last night? Well then, you probably stayed up to watch some good ol’ NL West 7:00 PM start time 11:00PM end time baseball! By now, you know how each game went, and by the good graces of Fangraphs’ Win Probability Added (WPA) graphs, I thought it’d be temporarily cool to look at it (you know, like “you just found those misplaced hair extensions cool”… oh, only me?). These graphs basically take a look throughout the game at a team’s probability of winning their respect match of base ball. Anyway, let’s start with the game you’re familiar with already, since this is a Giants site:

Source: FanGraphs

Apologies if this gives you horrible flashbacks to your investing days, or school, but there it is. Now, the SoCal game:

Now if that graph gave you more relevant flashbacks, well that’s just not fair. Stupid buy-or-sell market.

For a Giants fan, what’s cool about these graphs is you know the game you watched was a roller coaster of a game, as the graph showed. I’m not going to recap it, but you couldn’t just see in the numbers the Giants could’ve had this game, but you could feel it, too. Unfortunately, we were at the bottom of the order and they couldn’t come through in the 8th, ultimately spelling doom for the Giants in this game in terms of getting runs… and you can blame the top of the order in the 11th and the strike zone that inning, too, if you like.

Now the Dodger game is beautiful for the following reasons: Clayton Kershaw, 200 K’s for the third straight season, Clayton Kershaw is good at baseball, and have you seen his curveball? I mean, that’s the stuff that gets you addicted to baseball, folks, and the Dodgers had that game for nearly all of regulation. It was theirs. And then Matt Guerrier went all @MATTYGRRROFL on the game with that tying shot from Grandal. Oh, it was beautiful, just watching Andre Ethier look up like there was nothing he could do to catch it and watch it sail into the All You Can Eat section.

And then the 11th inning happened in LA, and in SF. It didn’t go well for either home team, although the Giants put up more of a fight on the basepaths. It was not to be had last night, though, as the baseball gods have chosen 4.5 as their favorite number for the moment, and now, we just hope Madison Bumgarner can give the bullpen a rest before tomorrow’s day off.

But seriously, that SD-LA graph in extra innings is pretty beautifully awesome.