UMEBA Players of the Game 2046

[woods]

In my first attempt at a regular feature, we’re going to dismiss real baseball stats for the moment, and take a look at a stat completely inherent to OOTP, the “Player of the Game” award.

As you probably know, OOTP awards a “Player of the Game” for every game its engine spits out. This is a subjective award usually awarded to the best-performing player on the winning team, but it occasionally goes to a player on the losing team if there is a truly exceptional performance.

I counted all the Player of the Game awards throughout the whole season in the UMEBA to see what I’d end up with. Turns out, it’s a pretty complete list of the top players in the league, though it tends to slightly favor starting pitchers.

PLAYER OF THE GAME AWARDS

Player	Times Won
Allan Stallard (BGH)	18
Neill Fenomore (BUC)	16
Mahad Einan (TRI)	16
Adam Backhouse (JER)	14
Joshua Koka (MAN)	13
Weaver Ripley (MUM)	12
Susila Kartosuwiryo (MAN)	12
Owen Geddes (BUC)	12
Frank Mahaffey (MUM)	12
Hsuang-Tsung Xú (JER)	11
Gary Goodchild (JER)	11
Alejandro Cruz (BEI)	11

One thing you’ll notice about this list is that it’s closely tied to team wins, since the Player of the Game award is usually given to players on the winning team. I think this is a good thing if we think of this list as a ranking of value. These are the players you’d consider for the Pitcher/Position Player of the Year awards, since they did the most to help their team win games, which is the whole point anyway.

But the downside of this list is that it’s a little too pitcher-heavy. OOTP’s formula is a sucker for things like Quality Starts, and it doesn’t consider the leverage of individual situations, instead simply looking at the game as a whole and telling us who had the best stat line.

We can add something to this, though, which can also be found on the game recap page. In the game recap text, after the Player of the Game and the winning and losing pitchers are announced, OOTP tells us what the top WPA play of the game is, and the player responsible for it. It’s a paragraph that looks like this:



Or, in cases where the top WPA play is an out being recorded, it can also look like this:



I tallied up all these Top WPA plays and fashioned these into their own list. Here are the players with the most Top WPA plays this year:

TOP WPA PLAYS

Player	Top WPA Plays
José Serrano (TRI)	14
Frank Mahaffey (MUM)	13
Mario Guerrer (MAN)	12
Bert Cleaver (BGH)	11
Alberto Robles (ATH)	11
Mitch Dalrymple (BUC)	10
Adam Backhouse (JER)	10
Raúl Hernández (BGH/MUM)	9
Virgil Shafer (TRI)	8
Miguel Angel Perales (BGH)	8
Kevin MacKeith (TRI)	8

These are the walk-off hits, game-winning RBIs or key outs that the first list was missing. Each play on the list represents a crucial contribution in a game that player’s team would go on to win.

Quick note: I only counted a Top WPA play for a player if that player didn’t also win Player of the Game (this will be important in a minute).

Now, since these are almost exclusively batting events, you won’t find many pitchers on this list. There are a few instances of a pitcher making the top WPA play, like Gary Goodchild escaping a jam on July 4th, but for the most part it’s all offense.

So let’s combine this list with the first list, with each of them weighted in a way that gives both pitchers and hitters roughly equal representation. That should give us a balanced list of the most valuable players in the league.

Here’s a list with the Player of the Game awards weighted at 1, and the Top WPA plays weighted at 0.5.

PLAYER OF THE GAME + TOP WPA PLAYS, WEIGHTED

Player	PotG	TopWPA	Total Weighted
Adam Backhouse (JER)	14	10	19
Frank Mahaffey (MUM)	12	13	18.5
Allan Stallard (BGH)	18	0	18
Joshua Koka (MAN)	13	7	16.5
Neill Fenomore (BUC)	16	0	16
Mahad Einan (TRI)	16	0	16
Weaver Ripley (MUM)	12	7	15.5
Mario Guerrer (MAN)	9	12	15
Susila Kartosuwiryo (MAN)	12	0	12
Owen Geddes (BUC)	12	0	12
Gary Goodchild (JER)	11	1	11.5
Tai Minh (BGH)	10	3	11.5
Masaki Sato (RIY)	8	7	11.5
Mahdi Kojo (BUC)	8	7	11.5
Raúl Hernández (BGH/MUM)	7	9	11.5
Hsuang-Tsung Xú (JER)	11	0	11
Alejandro Cruz (BEI)	11	0	11
Vinnie Youngberry (ATH)	8	6	11
José Serrano (TRI)	4	14	11
Ronald Eglinton (MUM)	10	0	10
Liam Dalton (BEI)	10	0	10
Johan Trojka (CAI)	10	0	10
Jayden Nicholls (TRI)	10	0	10
David Díaz (BEI)	10	0	10
Bert Hackworth (RIY)	10	0	10
Wally Geoghegan (MAN)	9	2	10
Luis González (MUM)	7	6	10
José Figueroa (JER)	7	6	10
Mitch Dalrymple (BUC)	5	10	10

Though the weighting is admittedly arbitrary, I think this is a nice balance, and it allows the guy who we all know to be the MVP of the UMEBA to rise to the top. Though it should be noted that if the WPA Plays were weighted slightly more heavily, the top spot would belong to Frank Mahaffey.

What insights can we take from this? Well, in general, if a guy is listed higher than you’d expect, it means he produced in key spots more often, maximizing his value for his team. Conversely, if you see a player with good numbers surprisingly low or absent from the list (Jeremy Owbridge or Éamon Sherrill, for instance), it means his team didn’t win when he produced, or that he got more of his hits in blowouts when it didn’t impact the game.

It also helps put a number on the commonly-posed question, “Where would (team) be without (player)?” In the case of, say, Tripoli and José Serrano, there are 18 wins in which he either was the Player of the Game or had the top WPA Play, and that’s a pretty big impact.

Context is an important thing, and context-independent stats like WAR don’t always tell the whole story (although both should be taken into account when evaluating a player’s contribution, since WAR includes defense and this doesn’t).

Full lists are available upon request; I truncated them to keep the post a manageable size.

[usnspecialist]

This is an interesting concept and frankly I always wondered how they chose the seemingly arbitrary paragraph for the game write up.

[Fat Nige]

Nice one Woods, hope this becomes a regular end of season series, well worth the 3 ppts

[tylertoo]

This is a great idea, and well executed.

It also helps put a number on the commonly-posed question, “Where would (team) be without (player)?” In the case of, say, Tripoli and José Serrano, there are 18 wins in which he either was the Player of the Game or had the top WPA Play, and that’s a pretty big impact.

Funny you should mention that. I traded for Serrano in the off-season, hoping he could be somewhat productive. He obviously greatly exceeded my expectations, was a great complement to Michael Best and Virgil Shafer, and I've no doubt that without him, the team would not have earned the wildcard. Now your data bears this out.

[mragland]

This touches on some of those old questions regarding leverage (which we can only see clearly in hindsight) and clutchness (a thing? not a thing?).