The voters got one right: Hideki Matsui deserved the World Series MVP award.

Amongst a handful of heroic performances, Matsui’s was most valuable. Chase Utley tied Reggie Jackson’s series home-run record and Cliff Lee turned in the fourth-best fielding-independent start of all-time. But Matsui’s pounding of Phillies’ pitchers provided the most win-probability added of all players.

Matsui propelled the Bronx Bombers with a barrage of base hits, including two hope-crushing home runs off Pedro Martinez and four total in the series, in which the Yankees and Phillies tied the six-game-series record of 17 home runs (New York AL 9, Brooklyn NL 8, 1953). Matsui was responsible for three of the top 10 plays of the series:

Coming into Game 6, Lee had tallied the most WPA, mostly on the strength of his .519-WPA start in Game 1. But Matsui, who had .300 WPA through the first five games, saved his best for last and tacked on another .339 WPA in the deciding game to leapfrog over Lee:

So while Lee and Utley were memorable in the Phillies’ losing effort, and their individual performances will likely endure longer, Matsui earned the MVP. Kudos to Godzilla — and the voters.

This entry was posted by Pip on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 11:30 am and is filed under by the numbers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.