As a follow-up to my post yesterday, where I analyzed the best and worst performances by Jays' players, today I am going to analyze the best and worst performances so far this year by players against the Blue Jays. Again, I am going to use WPA as a measuring stick, as it is the most useful game-to-game statistical tool.
The best hitting against the Jays so far was Mark Teahen of the White Sox on April 12. Teahen went 3 for 5, with a single, triple, and home run, and 3 RBIs. His leadoff homerun in the top of the 9th inning tied the game at 7, and raised the probability of the White Sox winning by 33%. Then, in the 11th inning, Mark Kotsay led off with a single, and Teahen drove him in with a triple, again raising the probability of the White Sox winning by 33%. Overall, he had a WPA of 0.761, on the day, easily the highest WPA by a Jays' opponent this season.
The best pitching performances against the Jays so far can be found here. Ervin Santana's complete game win on April 18 (boy, was that a bad week for the Jays!) has been the best performance so far. In the Angels' 3-1 win, Santana only allowed 4 hits, and the only run was an Adam Lind solo home run with 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. Santana never faced more than 4 hitters in an inning, and before the home run had retired 17 Jays in a row (a Lind single in the 4th was the last hit). He steadily gained WPA over the course of the game, and since the Angels were already up 3-0 and only needed one more out to win when Lind hit the home run, his WPA barely dropped. He ended up with a WPA of 0.675, pretty easily the top pitching performance against the Jays this year. Surprisingly, the performance only merited a Game Score of 81, and is only the 4th best pitching performance (measured by Game Score) this year by an Angels' pitcher.
Now that we have taken a look at the best performances (well, the worst from the Jays perspective), we can take a look at the worst performances so far this year against the Jays. This shows the worst hitting performances, and Mike Sweeney's 0 for 5 performance on May 19 leads the way. He was already 0 for 3 with a strikeout when he came to the plate in the bottom of the 7th in a 3-2 game (Jays leading) with runners on second and third and 2 out, and when he popped out to second the Jays probability of winning increased by 13%. Then, in the bottom of the 9th, with the Jays still leading 3-2, there were runners on 1st and 2nd and two outs when Sweeney flew out to deep left, increasing the Jays probability of winning by 17% (to 100%). Those two outs were key in his WPA of -0.381 for the game. His aLI was 2.790 for the game, which means that because he made key outs at key points in the game, his WPA took a tumble.
Finally, the worst pitching performance against the Jays so far this year belongs to Bobby Jenks on May 9. Jenks entered the game in the top of the 9th inning with the White Sox winning 7-5, and did not record an out while giving up 4 hits and 4 runs (3 earned). The inning went like this: ground-rule double, single, home run, single, and that was it for Jenks as Scott Linebrink replaced him. The 3-run home run by Fred Lewis single-handedly increased the Jays winning probability by 51%, from 31% to 82%. Overall, Jenks had a WPA of -0.767, and the Jays ended up winning the game 9-7. Interestingly, Jonathon Papelbon's disaster of a ninth inning yesterday finished second on the list of worst pitching performances with a WPA of -0.739. I will be doing a post later this week about last night's game and blown saves.
So there are your best and worst performances by a Jays' opponent so far in 2010. The best performances seemed to occur mostly in April, while the worst performances happened in May (which probably have a correlation to the Jays 12-12 record in April and 19-10 record in May). Surprisingly, none of the games discussed yesterday were repeats today, but some of them were lower down on the list of good and bad performances.
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