Let's see what they would look like just doing the LCS and WS with number of PA revealed...Gehrig 2.30 WPA 150 PA

Player	WPA	PA
David Ortiz	2.16	230
Albert Pujols	2.01	220
Lance Berkman	2.25	128
Carlos Correa	1.43	211
Pete Rose	2.56	279
Jose Altuve	1.48	229
Justin Turner	0.96	202
Carlos Beltrán	1.34	147
George Springer	1.46	183

I don't like it. I'm not sure it adds anything to the discussion. Teams that win by a lot don't have WPA leaders, so a lot of those dominant Yankees teams in the 20s-60s don't have people show up. 

Do you like WPA? I'm not sure I do.

Having said that, any list that is generated by an algorithm, as opposed to, say, Jason Stark, is fun to look at.

This from the redoubtable Robert Arthur at BP:

By WPA, five of the 10 best postseason batters of all time played for the Houston Astros, four of them in the last few years. (These numbers come courtesy of Baseball Reference’s Stathead.)

It’s no surprise that Ortiz would be at the top of the list. But in addition to Altuve and Correa, an unexpected George Springer sneaks in ahead of Lou Gehrig.

(There’s a severe bias towards more recent players, because WPA is a cumulative stat, and the postseason has expanded in the recent past. Instead of a single championship series, we have teams running through up to four rounds of contention, providing many more opportunities to gain WPA than there were in much of baseball’s history.)

There are other ways to slice and dice WPA that would tell a slightly different story. For example, focusing only on games where a player added WPA, Derek Jeter nearly matches Ortiz’s record. But that ignores all of the contests where Jeter was a negative force for his team, and his total net WPA, including both his positive and negative contributions, is very close to zero...

The thing about Win Probability Added is that for every good play, there has to be a bad one on the other side of the ledger. For Altuve and Correa to rack up so much positive value, they had to play in many games, but also in many games that were in doubt, which in turn implies that the juggernaut Astros of the regular season were playing well below their abilities in October. The Astros have fielded (by run differential) some of the best teams of all time in the last decade or so, but have come away with only a single championship for all that regular-season greatness. Down 3-2 to the Braves, they have a chance at another trophy, but not a good one at the moment.

That goes to show how little these postseason heroics often matter. Though moments of individual greatness (like Altuve’s three-homer game in the 2017 ALDS) often stick in our minds for years to come, it’s always a long, winding, and luck-filled road that takes a team from the beginning of October through to the World Series. Altuve and Correa (as well as, to a lesser extent, Springer) have elevated their teams perhaps more than any set of teammates in recent history, but it hasn’t been enough to clinch the dynasty Houston’s regular season performance would suggest.

baseballprospectus.com

Strains quad while rehabbing oblique. Back by the end of the month? If all goes well.

Percentiles: Barrel 81 EV 48 xBA 92 xSLG 95 SO 78 BB 71 speed 82

The Dreaded Drook in his annual paean to fantasy baseball:

> If you’re confident that Tim McLeod will teach George Springer how to say “EH”, you just might be a Fantasy player.

https://rotisserieduck.com

Two years ending at 37, not 39, and more long balls add up to $6M I guess. Makes sense to me.

I'm not an AL guy, but is Springer that much better than DJ? A difference of $6 million a year or is this just an age thing (31 vs 33)?

Springer finds a home in Toronto (or Buffalo), inking a 6-year $150 million deal. The Jays also signed Kirby Yates earlier in the day to a one-year $5.5 million deal. It was a good day to be a Blue Jay fan.