The Best Game 7 in World Series History

A look behind the scenes of finding the best Game 7 ever, the baseball version of throwing at the one-yard line and more. [View this email in your browser] The Best Game 7 in World Series History On The Hardball Times yesterday, Shane Tourtellotte laid out baseball's [best editions of a World Series Game 7], as calculated by the win-probability based [WPS Index]. He detailed the story of each—including last year's wild ride between the Indians and Cubs—and asked readers to vote for the best. Today, the newsletter asked him a few questions: - Your WPS Index can offer an objective look at the quality of a World Series game, based on the sum of the changes in win expectancies for a game's individual plays. Here, though, you're focusing on the subjective. What do you think makes a great Game 7 outside of those changes in win expectancy? It comes down to one word, that among hard-core sabermetricians can be a bit of a dirty word: narrative. Now, narrative can be a foe to analysis, such as the thought that, because someone hits well in the clutch, that player’s a clutch hitter. But narrative is part of why we watch baseball. It’s the story of the game, which adds to the story of the season, and so on. Narrative is the drama of plays that can’t be encapsulated by a win-expectancy number, like [Harry Hooper] diving to rob a home run or [Mickey Mantle] diving for first base. It’s famous players on the biggest stage – or events that make those players famous (hello, [Mr. Mazeroski]). It’s old veterans like [Walter Johnson] or [David Ross] with a late chance at glory. It’s players redeeming their failures, whether four years before like [Fred Merkle] or two minutes before like [Fred Snodgrass]. So maybe it comes down to two words: ‘narrative’ and ‘personality.’ They may make robot umpires someday, but not robot players. We wouldn’t watch. There would be no point. - Your recaps of the 1912 and 1924 games here are just as narrative and detailed as those of the ones with existing game footage. How did you piece together the stories there? It starts with Baseball-Reference, which has play-by-play results for every postseason game. With that framework in place, I went to newspaper archives, specifically The New York Times. Not only did it have several articles covering each game, but it also had play-by-play records, occasionally even pitch-by-pitch. That both the 1912 and 1924 Series involved the New York Giants probably helped with providing so much detail. After that, my biggest aid was the classic book The Glory of Their Times. Five of the players interviewed for that book were in the 1912 World Series. That provided some great participant and eye-witness accounts, which I still took with a dose of caution. (My next Hardball Times piece will be on that grand old book, some of its stories that hold up to scrutiny, and a few that don’t.) - Last year's game immediately shot to #1 in the voting, with 43 percent of the vote as of 5 p.m. Wednesday. Do you think some of that is recency bias, or does 2016's Game 7 have a legitimate claim to that top spot? I encouraged readers, at the start of my article, to try to judge the games on the summaries I wrote instead of their own memories. After 4,800 words of high baseball drama, though, I think my urgings got forgotten. It’s the very low finish of the two pre-TV games, more than 2016 being on top, that convinces me of this. With that said, 2016 has a defensible claim. If we judge the games solely for themselves, detached from context, which a win expectancy-based system does, 2016 isn’t quite the best winner-take-all game. Add in the historical drama of two trophy-starved teams, the [Aroldis Chapman] overuse bomb that almost blew up the Cubs’ hopes, then that almost ludicrously melodramatic rain delay right before extra innings… how can a game-excitement algorithm produce a number for a rain delay? I personally would not put 2016 at number one: if I had to choose, I think it’d be 1924. But three months after the event, I can still feel a little giddy from astonishment at what I saw that long November night. I’m the wrong person to say that someone who feels a little more giddy over it is wrong. [FanGraphs produces over 400 articles each month, in addition to our ever-growing database of stats and graphs. Support our efforts today!] Throwback Thursday: [The Baseball Equivalent of Throwing on the One-Yard Line] Get ready for the Super Bowl by revisiting how FanGraphs celebrated it two years ago: by figuring out the baseball version of deciding to throw on the one-yard line. (Hint: it's happened in the final game of the World Series before.) [Subscribe to our Podcasts!] Catch up on past newsletters or pass along to a friend [here]. Data Visualization of the Day: [What Can a Full Season of Jonathan Lucroy Do for the Rangers?] The Rangers' pitch framing has consistently been above average. [Jonathan Lucroy] has been among the game's best framers (albeit with a [drop-off] recently, as Jeff Sullivan explored last year). What can a full season of Lucroy do for Texas? Travis Sawchik answers the question today. Excerpt from ["The Nationals Have a Depth Problem"] by Dave Cameron "In fact, it’s hard to find a legitimate contender with as weak a group of reserves as the Nationals. While most of the focus of late has been on their bullpen and whether they’ll acquire a new closer, the Nationals bench is the more glaring weakness." [Forward] [Subscribe] Copyright © 2017 FanGraphs Inc, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the FanGraphs Newsletter. Our mailing address is: FanGraphs Inc 1200 N Hartford St. Apt 312 Arlington, Va 22201 [Add us to your address book] Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences] or [unsubscribe from this list]