Sunday, July 26, 2026

The Phillies lost to the Dodgers on Tuesday with the final play having the two base runners on 2nd and 3rd getting tagged out resulting in a 0.558 Win Probability Added for the Dodgers. Where does this defensive WPA rank all-time?

With 1 out in the bottom of the 9th the Dodgers were ahead 2-1. Phillies had runners on 2nd & 3rd. The batter hit a ground ball to the 3Bman. He throws home as the runner on 3rd went home.

But the runner ran back to 3rd seeing that the catcher had the ball. The catcher runs him back to 3rd. But Betts ran in from SS. He took a throw from the catcher and tagged out the runner.

By this time the runner on 2nd had run to third but then ran back to 2nd base when he saw the original runner retreat to 3rd base. 

As soon as Betts tagged the original man on 3rd he turned and threw the ball to the 2Bman who tagged the runner trying to get back. Game over.
 
Here is a video 
 
 
 
If you sort by WPA, this play is the highest listed.
 
This link from Stathead has the results from the search In years 1903 to 2026, requiring WPA >= .5, Sorted by Win Probability Added
 
I had selected "non-SO outs->(to Pos) as the Event Type. I also used the "All Outs" option under "Double/Triple Plays." Here are the top plays:
 

Rk

Date

WPA

Bat Tm

Def Tm

1

7/15/1930

0.572

PHI

STL

2

9/25/1948

0.571

BSN

NYG

3

9/10/1973

0.571

BAL

BOS

4

4/8/2018

0.57

NYY

BAL

5

5/1/2000

0.57

CLE

NYY

6

8/4/1921

0.568

BOS

CHW

7

5/11/1997

0.566

MIN

TOR

8

9/24/2000

0.566

BOS

BAL

9

7/1/1939

0.564

STL

PIT

10

8/27/1996

0.564

COL

CIN

11

9/13/1982

0.564

BOS

CLE

12

9/16/1930

0.564

BRO

STL

13

7/2/2021

0.563

OAK

BOS

14

7/21/1999

0.558

CLE

TOR

 
So it looks like this play by the Dodgers ties for the 14th highest WPA ever in the Stathead databse by a defensive team. Also, the search results will allow you to go to to the box scores of the games and it also tells you what the play was and all the relevant situational details. 
 
This most recent play from the Dodgers-Phillies game did not show up on these search results. I asked BB Ref about this and they told me 
"It looks like the event is coded as a "Fielder's Choice", and for some reason, that doesn't show up when filtering for "Non-SO outs". That seems like an error in the codebase, so I'll have our engineering team look into it." 
Also, the actual top 4 results you will see if you click on the link are WPAs greater than one (which makes no sense). I omitted those in the table above. BB Ref told me that "I'll have our engineering team look into the problem" about this issue as well. The 5th one is actually a play in which a run scored on an error on the final play of the game and the batting team won.

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