Lookout Landing has another nice writeup of last night's game. Over there they do a Win Expectancy chart for each game:
That makes the game look pretty ugly - which it was, really, considering the Mariners fell behind 4-0 and didn't get on the board until the sixth. They peaked before the first pitch, never again having as good a chance to win as they did prior to Ichiro lining out to lead off the game. Despite Beltre, Boone, and Sexson's best efforts, Carlos Delgado stole the show, driving in all five runs with a double, a homer, and a walk. If there's good news in all this, it's that JJ Putz tossed a rare 1-2-3 inning, the kind of performance you'd like to see repeated, oh, another four dozen times until Hargrove realizes that he's a better pitcher than Jeff Nelson, grand slams be damned. We also saw Mike Morse hit a few balls hard and Adrian Beltre's first three-hit game since April 20th, so it wasn't a total loss.
Biggest Contribution: Bret Boone, +28.5%
Biggest Suckfest: Gil Meche, -22.3%
Most Important Hit: Sexson double, +10.1%
Most Important Pitch: Delgado homer, -18.1%
Total Contribution by Pitchers: -22.6%
Total Contribution by Hitters: -16.0%
Although the pitching staff was more responsible for the loss than the hitters, the bats still didn't do as much as they could have, going 4-18 with men on base and 2-10 with runners in scoring position. Looks like you need more than four runs to win after all, Ron Fairly.
The chart is, of course, upside down. :-)
Earlier in the year I had hoped to do something similar with Win Expectancy/Win Probability Added, but I've found neither the time nor the patience for such an endeavor. If anyone else thinks they could do it, let me know - I'd be happy to walk you through the process and/or to post the results here (or link to them on your site).