August 24, 2013: 10th anniversary: best Tigers batting performance.
Ten years ago today, arguably the single greatest one-game clutch performance by any batter in Tigers history occurred.
No, it wasn?t clutch in the sense of having any big playoff repercussions. The 2003 Tigers were as far away from the playoffs as you can possibly be: They lost 119 games. No, this is just in terms of the batter?s impact on the game.
It would be a mathematically verifiable argument, too, as the argument is based on WPA.
WPA?Wins Probability Added?is the ?story stat.? It measures how each plate appearance in the course of a game increases or decreases a team's chance to win the game. Both teams start out with a 50 percent chance of victory, and end with the winner at 100 percent at the loser at 0. It?s a stat designed to quantify how a game feels as it moves along. Therefore, it?s a great way to measure how clutch a player was in a game.
We have WPA for every game for the last 60-plus seasons, and the greatest single-game WPA score ever in Tigers history came on Aug. 24, 2003. The batter was Brandon Inge.
Normally Inge isn?t considered to be a great hitter. In fact, he batted No. 8 for the terrible 2003 Tigers in this game. But on this day he was as good as you could hope for?especially when it mattered most.
On Aug. 13, 2003, the 32-96 Tigers (on pace for the most losses by any AL team ever) hosted the defending world champion Angels. It got off to a rollicking start, with the Angels leading 3-2 after the first inning, and expanding to a 5-2 lead in the top of the second.
The game was rapidly in danger of falling completely out of Detroit?s hands?and then Brandon Inge came to the plate for the first time. With one out and a runner on first and Detroit trailing by three, Inge hit a line drive single to right which outfielder Eric Owens misplayed. Between the single and the error, the run scored and Inge found himself on third.
That?s a funny thing about WPA: the batter gets credit for almost everything that happens to change the course of the game, including errors. Inge?s at-bat shifted Detroit?s chances of winning from 38 percent to 44 percent, and though most of that was on Owens, it tallies in Inge?s favor.
He came up later in the third with two out and a runner on first, but this time harmlessly flew out to end the inning. However, outs in early innings rarely leave big marks on WPA. After all, whoever heard of a third inning fly out being the key play in a game?
Inge next came up in the fifth. Now it was late enough in the game to start getting interesting, in terms of clutch value. And Inge was up at a key moment, indeed. The Tigers had just tied the Angels, 5-5. There were two outs and runners on the corners, so Inge had a great chance help. And help he did. He lashed a single that gave Detroit a 6-5 lead and advanced the trailing runner all the way to third. Just like that, Detroit?s chances for winning leapt from 57 percent up to 71 percent. That?s an impressive move for a fifth inning at-bat.
And then Inge stole second base. A stolen base is one of the few things that doesn?t affect the WPA score of the batter?because it?s all on the runner. It was just a modest uptick in WPA, from 71 to 72 percent, but it was an uptick nonetheless.
The game moved on, and Inge had something that almost never happens in a historically great WPA performance?he made a clutch out. Batting with runners on the corners and two outs (again) in the seventh, Inge made the inning-ending out. That dropped Detroit?s chances of winning down by nine percent, largely?but not fully?negating Inge?s heroics last time up.
Really, it?s a testament to the rest of Inge?s game that he still wound up with the best one-game WPA by a Tigers hitter.
After some more back-and-forth, the Angels took lead, 9-8, and that?s where it stood entering the bottom of the ninth. And that gave Inge his great chance to be a hero.
WPA reckons that the Tigers had just a 20 percent chance to win when the inning began, but a leadoff single boosted it to 34 percent. That?s nice, but a weak pop up and strikeout sent the score plummeting. Just one out from defeat, the Tigers trailed by a run with a man on first. Their chances of winning: just 10 percent.
You can figure out what happened next, right? Right. Inge happened. He worked the count full and then sent a Troy Percival offering over the fence for a Tigers winner. That 10 percent chance to win just became 100 percent.
Overall, Inge had a 1.113 WPA on the day, the only time a Tigers hitter topped 1.000 in one game?s worth of Win Probability Added. And it happened 10 years ago today.
from the Hardball Times
