How The Cubs Won The NL Wild-Card Game

Ooof — as Chad wrote, that double play dropped Pittsburgh’s win probability by 13 percentage points. But don’t feel too bad, Starling Marte: it only tied for the sixth-costliest double play hit into by a Pirate batter in postseason history.

Arrieta hit a batter once in six different games during the regular season. The Cubs won all six, giving up a total of just six runs. Going back to the end of last year, the Cubs are 8-0 with eight runs yielded, total, the last eight times Arrieta hit a batter. Baseball is weird — Arrieta is really good when he’s not hitting batters, too. Also noteworthy: counting tonight, the last 16 times Arrieta has hit a batter have come when the Cubs are ahead or tied. His HBPs don’t appear to be a product of stress.

That double play at the end of the inning was very costly for the Pirates. Their win probability dropped from 18.1 percent with the bases loaded to 4.9 percent after the double play.