You know that old saying “It’s better to be lucky than good?” Yeah, that definitely applies to the Guardians’ Wednesday night win against the Tigers. It’s hard to argue with what Matt Lyons wrote in our recap: “Just so many dumb, improbable things happening at once.”
But just how improbable was this eighth inning? Let’s dig in.
91.3%
To start, consider the Tigers’ win probability. At the beginning of the eighth, the Tigers had an 84.4% probability of winning, which rose to 88.5 and a game-high of 91.3% after consecutive strikeouts from Owen Miller and Andrés Giménez.