from Amazon
Monday, June 06, 2011
“Earning” a hold, while doing a horrible job
J-doug points out:
In yesterday’s game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Washington Nationals closer Drew Storen had what could only be described as a meltdown appearance. If not for the triage work of Todd Coffey, Sean Burnett and Henry Rodriguez, as well as a five-run 11th courtesy of a Rick Ankiel sacks-juiced walk and a Mike Morse grand slam, Storen would have squandered the curly-W.
All in all, Drew Storen’s butcher job amassed a dismal -0.449 Win Probability Added (-0.457 WPA if you ask FanGraphs instead of Baseball Reference).
He also earned the hold.
Wait, what’s that you say? Storen earned the hold even though it was his runners who tied the game? He earned the hold even though he was on the hook for the loss should Coffey allow another inherited runner to score?
Yes, that’s correct. In fact, Storen’s HD is the 10th worst in WPA terms since the stat was invented, and the 4th worst in a winning game. It’s easily the most detrimental hold this season.
And had the Nationals lost in the 9th, Storen would have kept his HD and earned the loss, while Coffey would get the blown save and the Nationals would drop another game below .500. How is this possible?
He also gives us this juicy tidbit:
As further evidence of the absurdity of the hold stat, a whopping 3,278 holds classify as meltdowns since the hold was invented, compared to four saves.
The meltdown that he mentions is the thing I cooked up last year or so. That there is such a non-link between saves and meltdowns, but such a huge link goes to show that a “hold” is often just in name only.
I agree with Jesse that Dewan was obviously well-intentioned. But, does this mean that the mainstream has to continue to accept the Hold stat?
***
A great use of WPA by the way. WPA is great for turning a word description of the game into a nice cold number. It makes analysis much easier.
How is it mathematically possible for a save to be a meltdown? Obviously, since there have only been 4 out of thousands and thousands of saves it is nearly impossible, but since the win probability at the end of a game is always 1, wouldn’t the win probability be greater than 1 when the pitcher entered for him to get a negative WPA? What am I missing?