Freese Play

By one measure, David Freese on Thursday had the greatest game in postseason history.

Freese had a Win Probability Added total of 0.969. Here’s how that works: In the ninth inning, when the Cardinals trailed by two with two outs and men on first and second, they had an 8 percent chance of winning; after Freese’s game-tying triple, they had a 62 percent chance, giving him a WPA of .54 for that at-bat. Going into the bottom of the 11th, St. Louis again had a 62 percent chance of winning, and Freese’s homer gave the Cardinals a 100 percent chance and gave him an additional WPA of .38.

Add in his earlier relatively inconsequential at-bats, and his WPA for the game was .969, by far the best in playoff history.

According to the link above, the next-best was .870 by Kirk Gibson in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. Gibson, you might have heard, did that with one at-bat, taking the Dodgers’ chance of winning from 13 percent to 100 percent.

By the way, Lance Berkman’s first-inning homer and 10th-inning game-tying single helped him post the fourth-highest WPA in postseason history in Game 6.