Highest Leverage PA: 2.3, PA #43, LaRoche 4-3g vs Hamels, Nationals 6th. Highest WPA/LI Value: .204, PA #15, Fontenot 1B vs Jackson, Phillies 2nd. QMAX rating: Success Square (4,3) for Jackson. Bullpen Award: None.Batters' WPA/LI Values:
Harper 0.086 Flores 0.071 Espinosa 0.009 Nady -0.031 Zimmerman -0.041 Ankiel -0.065 Lombardozzi -0.080 Jackson -0.107 Desmond -0.119 LaRoche -0.225Apologies for the week-long AWOL. The absence was partly a consequence of a decision to switch from my own system of 'leveraged win values' to the Baseball-Reference.com method of Win Probability Added/Leverage Index (or WPA/LI for short). I will explain the effect of this change in a subsequent post, but there is one important one. Those games I don't have a chance to listen to in 'real time' can be analysed more quickly with the help of Baseball Reference.
Wednesday's game with the Phillies was another example of those games where the bats let down a decent, rather than good, pitching performance. Edwin Jackson pitched just well enough to have a game that a team will win more often than not, but as WPA/LI shows oh-so-starkly, the Nationals' hitters couldn't hold up their end of the bargain. Three times the Nationals had a runner on third base, but couldn't convert that 'Red Zone' visit into a score. I am growing concerned at the Nationals' difficulty in sustaining a sequential offense, as opposed to the home runs like Adam LaRoche's 9th inning effort. But that's a topic for another post.
