Four most exciting Indians games of 2008

by MikeP on Sep 1, 2009 2:07 PM EDT

Pardon me if this has been done before, but I had an idea for quantifying how exciting a game is. Generally, an exciting game is one where the conditions of the game change a lot: lead changes, men on base, and each team's winning chance changing dramatically (this is somewhat different in my mind from a tense game, where the score is close, but there isn't necessarily much action). Now that we can calculate the win probability for any situation, we can also calculate the change in win probability, sum up the changes in win probability. The more the win probability changes, the more exciting the game. As a proof of principle, I went through the Indians 2008 data on Retrosheet, and calculated the cumulative change in win probability, and found the 4 most exciting games from 2008 (2009 data not yet available, win probability graphs from fangraphs.com):

4: April 7th, Indians 4, Angels 6, Excitement Score: 6.76. A low scoring game until the 9th, the Angels led 2-1 before Francisco Rodriguez gave up three runs in the ninth. The Angels won on a Torii Hunter grand-slam off Joe Borowski.

via www.fangraphs.com

3: May 1st, Mariners 2, Indians 3, ES: 6.82. A close game throughought, the Indians got an early lead, but Betancourt blew the save in the 9th to tie the game 1-1. The Mariners scored on a Richie Sexson home run in the 10th, while the Indians countered with a bases loaded walk off Putz to tie it. Asdrubal won the game with a 2-out bases loaded single in the 11th.

2: Sep. 16th, Twins 9, Indians 12, ES: 8.4. The Indians took an early lead off Francisco Liriano, but Zack Jackson tired in the fifth but the Indians still lead 8-7. Rafael Betancourt blew the save in the ninth, and the Indians needed a Sizemore HR to stay in it, but Victor sealed the win in the 11th with a three run walk-off homer.

1: July 30th, Tigers 14, Indians 12, ES: 9.6. The Indians scored 8 runs in the first three innings, and three more in the sixth, but found themselves tied in the 8th as the Tigers scored 4 runs off Ed Mujica. Both teams scored in the ninth, and then the Tigers won in the 12th on a ground out and single. The Indians had loaded the bases in the 9th, 10th, and 12th, but only scored one run.

These results generally make intuitive sense, since high scoring games, lead changes, extra innings games, and close games are all exciting. The most exciting games all of all, had all four of those factors. If you guys like this, I could go back over the past decade of games to find the ten most exciting Indians games of the decade, it being 2009 and all.

(Technical notes: I got win expectancy by averaging the win expectancy from Baseball Prospectus over 2005-2009. Some situations are uncommon, making the expectancy spiky, and I could use better win expectancy data if anyone has it. Analysis was done in MATLAB using custom scripts.

I define Excitement Score as the cumulative change in win probability. Therefore the minimum ES is 0.5, if the away team scored an infinite number of runs before getting an out.)

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Comments

I have a feeling it’s more complicated than this. Sometimes high-scoring games with multiple lead changes aren’t exciting at all. They often involve really bad pitching (and/or fielding), so can be frustrating rather than exciting — watching your team repeatedly blow leads isn’t exciting, although the comebacks are. Then there’s the effect of really good plays in the field, dramatic strikeouts, etc. I don’t think there’s a way to quantify this, but I think exciting games are often the result of high quality play by both teams.

by peter m on Sep 1, 2009 2:57 PM EDT reply actions

I agree that excitement can’t be quantified simply as a number, and that the quality of play surely matters. Watching an error-prone game can certainly be frustrating, and you can’t quantify pitching quality or defensive gems easily. I do disagree, though, that a high scoring game with multiple lead changes isn’t exciting. In that type of game, the result is constantly in doubt until the end, which I think is essential to an exciting game.

by MikeP on Sep 1, 2009 4:34 PM EDT up reply actions

My most exciting game of the past two years was the 22-4 pasting of the Yankees.

by Roger Dorn on Sep 1, 2009 3:27 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs

This.

Who needs affection when you can have blind hatred?

by ClemsonGirl on Sep 1, 2009 3:45 PM EDT up reply actions

by FredOx on Sep 1, 2009 3:53 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs

Interesting. Thanks for the effort.

by Toxicadam on Sep 1, 2009 3:44 PM EDT reply actions

I guess these would be exciting if you look at it completely objectively but I tend to find games much less exciting when we lose, no matter what happened throughout the game.

Who needs affection when you can have blind hatred?

by ClemsonGirl on Sep 1, 2009 3:45 PM EDT reply actions