THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, August 05, 2010

WPA discoveries: Art Shamsky

Dave Fleming at Bill James’ site details the 10 highest WPA games by hitters in the Retrosheet era.  At #1, by far, is Art Shamsky, who hit three game-changing HR:

And here’s the really astonishing thing: Shamsky didn’t even start the game. He came on in the 8th inning. All the other guys were starters, who had nine innings to leave their mark on the game. Shamsky came on in the 8th.

Let’s go to the tape.

Shamsky played for the Reds…he came into the game as a defensive substitute at the top of the eighth inning, going into leftfield. The Reds, the home team, were down 7-6 to the Pirates going into the 8th. The Reds pitchers managed to shut down the Pirates in order in the top of the inning, keeping the score Pittsburgh 7, Good Guys 6.

Shamsky hit third in the bottom of the 8th. With a runner on, he hit a two-run homerun to give the Reds an 8-7 lead. That hit represented a 54% swing in the Reds chances to win the ballgame…they went from having a 31% chance of winning to having an 85% chance of winning.

But the pen couldn’t hold it. In the top of the 9th, the Pirates scored a tying run…8-8. In the bottom of the 9th Pittsburgh closer Roy Face struck out the side, and the game headed into extra innings.

In the top of the 10th, Willie Stargell hit a solo shot, giving the Pirates a 9-8 lead.

In the bottom of the tenth, Roy Face struck out the first batter, Johnny Edwards. At that point Face had faced four batters, and all four had whiffed.

The next batter was Art Shamsky. Art Shamsky did not whiff. Art Shamsky hit his second home run, tying the game 9-9.

In the top of the 11th inning, the Pirates scored again. Bob Bailey hit a two-run double to give the Reds an 11-9 lead. The guy who scored that eleventh run? None other than Jim Pagliaroni, the #2 guy on our list. You have to think that he knew something was up. 

So the Reds went into the bottom of the 11th inning, down two runs. Roy Face retired the first two batters. At that point, the Reds had a 99% chance of winning the game.

The next batter walked. Which brought up Art Shamsky. Roy Face was pulled, and Billy O’Dell, a lefty, was brought in to face the left-handed Shamsky. Shamsky homered again, tying the game 11-11. Three at-bats, three game-changing homeruns.

Neither team scored in the 12th inning. In the top of the 13th, the Pirates scored two runs. In the bottom of the inning, with Art Shamsky waiting in the hole, Leo Cardenas grounded into a double play to end the ball game.

So Shamsky, in addition to being the only non-starter on our list, is the only player to carry the day for a team that lost. He doesn’t fit with the others….his game was truly and utterly unique in the history of baseball.

Three times Art Shamsky came to the plate with his team starring into the jaws of defeat, and three times Shamsky hit homeruns to snatch victory from those powerful jaws. It wasn’t enough: his team lost the baseball game. But no player in history has carried the day like Art Shamsky.

This is what WPA is all about: it’s a story stat.  By being able to quantify all the things that happen in baseball into a single number, it makes finding things like this very easy.  I’ve never heard of Art Shamsky.  And for one game, he’s a WPA god.

The WPA-haters will simply never get it.  You may as well hate baseball, since WPA captures its essence better than any stat out there.