Sunday, September 13, 2020
Who is John Wockenfuss?
A Bill James reader noted that John Wockenfuss was sixth in the AL in 1980 in WPA, despite only 444 plate appearances.
I started following baseball in the late 1970s, collecting cards, pretty much knowing the names of every player, every year, on every team. Wockenfuss is no stranger to me. Quite the contrary, I could place him immediately. But naturally, this took me for quite a surprise.
WPA measures exactly what it sets out to measures in exactly the way it was meant to. As for John Wockenfuss:
You can sort by the WPA column at the end. And compare to RE24. If it exceeds 1:10, then you know that the performance happened late in a close game.
That top one is +.477 wins added with +1.90 runs added. That would normally mean +.19 wins added, but instead it’s almost +.48. That’s 0.29 extra wins due to leverage.
So, you click the boxscore to see what happened.
And Reference helpfully provided the “top plays”.
And we see he hit a solo HR in the bottom of the 8th to tie the game. Adding 1 run, which should be 0.10 wins in a normal situation is a whopping +0.30 wins here.
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The day before was his 2nd most impactful game. He was a PH: And in the bottom of the 8th, with 2 runners on, he tied the game up with a 3-run HR. In one shot, he added 0.42 wins.
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There’s places to use this stat and places to not use this stat. Just like ANY stat in the world. This is a story stat, and this stat tells the story perfectly. You can talk to John Wockenfuss, and say “Remember those two days in September against the Jays when you were on top of the world? Well, we have this stat that will remind people of it forever.”