Game 8 Boxscore breakdown - The Angels are wrecking win probabilty

You knew this boxscore breakdown was coming. I mean, the Angels have already won THREE games they shouldn’t have:

Tuesday: 8th inning. The Angels had just a 5.6% chance of beating the A’s until Danny Espinosa hit a 3-run homer with 1 out in the 9th.

Sunday: 9th inning. The Angels had a 0.2% chance of winning that game going into Albert Pujols’ AB in the bottom of the 9th.

And now last night: The Angels had a 2.4% chance of pulling off a victory by the time there was 1 out int he 8th inning. Even with 1 out in the 9th, their odds were still at 4.3% before Mike Trout narrowly missed being K’d and instead hit an RBI double.

Check out Mike Trout’s plate discipline in that AB:

Trout had TWO strikes on him and let pitches 3 and 4 go which could have easily been called a strike if the Umpire had been just a bit off there (see pitch plot below).

The Angels are pretty much breaking win probability right now and are making Han Solo proud - “Never tell me the odds.”

Win Expectancy (WE) is the percent chance a particular team will win based on the score, inning, outs, runners on base, and the run environment. These percentages are calculated using historical data, meaning if a team is losing and has a 24% win expectancy, only 24% of teams in similar situations in the past have ever come back to win.

And without further adieu:

Source: FanGraphs

That’s a pretty bad ass chart if I’ve ever seen one. You can actually see Texas Ranger fans’ tears in there if you look close enough.

Also, the strike zone look off didn’t it? You can judge for yourself with the below image.

Source: FanGraphs

Pitching remains a concern, so let’s hope this offense and defense can keep carrying the team like last night. This boxscore was pretty lopsided on both ends.