FPPI - Final Championship Series Standings

The NLCS took seven games to complete, forcing the Mariners to sweat bullets at the top of the FPPI leaderboard. Did they hold on? The final standings are below!

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I find it remarkable that the Mariners "won" this "battle," even though most former Mariners played for the Yankees. It is pretty clear that the Yankees tanked worse than any other team in the playoffs. It just so happens that the former Mariners on their team were not part of the problem (or perhaps, in the case of A-Rod, they were such a big problem they got benched).

Still, the Marlins and Twins got strong contributions from Tigers players. The Red Sox were buoyed by Marco Scutaro, the NLCS MVP. Other teams high on the list had players on winning ballclubs, which makes sense since WPA measures a team's chance of winning. Somehow, former Mariners contributed significantly to wins even in the midst of losses.

Go (former) Mariners?

FPPI Midweek Update

I'll cut straight to the chase this time. If you want an explanation of what FPPI is, it's basically a quantification of the misery that is watching former players of your favorite team succeed in the playoffs. A more detailed explanation can be found here, along with the initial standings. Below are the rankings as of Tuesday night, with the NLCS tied at a game apiece and the Tigers ahead in the ALCS three games to none:

Click picture for larger size. Click "continue reading" for some musings.

Former Player Pain Index

This time of year, particularly without the Mariners even sniffing the postseason, former Mariners coming up big in big spots becomes painfully noticeable. It stings, because the obvious question is so why exactly did we get rid of him?

It feels like former Mariners succeed in big postseason moments shockingly often. However, I could just be a bitter fan. Maybe I only notice when former Mariners do great things, but never when they struggle.

I am going to put my assumption to the test with what I am calling the Former Player Pain Index (FPPI).

FPPI works rather simply. It is entirely based on WPA, the perfect stat for FPPI because it recognizes that a game-tying home run in the ninth alters a team's chances of winning much more than a home run in the top half of the first inning. Higher WPAs correlate to the big moments I think of in my head when I remember former Mariners in the playoffs.

Essentially, a team's FPPI is the sum of the WPAs of former players for that team. Not all WPAs are weighted equally though, because not every former player is the same. It's one thing for a player to spend one year with a team, and another for them to spend a decade. Recency counts too. The more recently the former player was a current player on a team, the more it stings to watch them succeed elsewhere. The loss is still fresh. FPPI accounts for these two factors by multiplying WPAs by a bonus factor. It is calculated simply by adding up all the seasons a player played for their former team and subtracting how many years it has been since they played for their former team.

For instance, Raul Ibanez played a total of 10 seasons with the Mariners, and it had been 3 seasons (before this one) since he played for the Mariners. Thus, his bonus factor is 7. Ibanez also played multiple seasons for the Royals, but so far in the past that they receive no bonus factor.

The standings through games one and two of the ALCS and game one of the NLCS are below. Click on the graphic to enlarge it. Some analysis follows after the jump: