This past Wednesday, Carlos Gomez hit for the cycle and Joey Votto hit three home runs. On SportsCenter’s Top Plays, Votto’s performance ranked 10th while Gomez’s performance ranked 4th. That got me thinking. How do they rank their top plays? Obviously, Gomez’s feat was rarer, but hitting three home runs is more valuable than hitting for the cycle.

What about when you put it in the context of their games? Votto’s first home run came in a scoreless game to lead off the bottom of the second. He led off the third with a walk and stole second, but the score was already 5-0. After Brandon Phillips led off the fifth with a homer to make it 6-0, Votto hit his second home run. Then in the sixth with two outs and Phillips on first, Votto hit his third to make it 9-0. He would later ground out to short to lead off the eighth. Since the first home run came in a scoreless game, it obviously impacted the game. In his next plate appearance, the score was already 5-0, so his performance from that point on had little impact on the outcome of the game.

In Gomez’s case, he homered to lead off the game. He struck out for the second out in the third inning of a 1-0 game. He next came to the plate with two outs and a runner on second in the fifth, and subsequently drove in the second run of the game. In the next inning, Gomez would again come to the plate with a runner on second and two outs. He responded with an RBI double to center to make it 7-0. He would later single to lead off the ninth to complete the cycle. His last two ABs came with six- and seven-run leads, but his home run and triple greatly impacted the game.

By placing their performances in the context of their games, it can be seen that Carlos Gomez had a much greater impact on the Twins’ victory than Joey Votto had on the Reds’ victory. Based on this, I decided that I’d start to post the top ten most important plays of the week. I chose the top ten plays using Win Probability Added, which is the change in win expectancy during the play. Without further ado:

1. Mike Lamb 2-R Walk-off 1B in the 9th
2. Rickie Weeks 2-R Walk-off 1B in the 9th
3. David Dellucci 3-R HR in the 8th
4. Chris Iannetta 2-R 3B in the 8th
5. Carlos Lee 2-R 2B in the 8th (2:30 into video)
6. Mark Ellis Walk-off HR in the 10th
7. Pablo Ozuna Bases Loaded Game-Ending GIDP in the 9th
8. Steve Holm 2-R HR in the 7th (first career HR)
9. Carl Crawford 3-R HR in the 6th
10. Ryan Ludwick 2-R 1B in the 9th

A couple of things to note:

1. All but the DP came with two outs in the inning.
2. Only a couple of the top ten plays occurred prior to the 8th inning.

Thanks to Fan Graphs for the WPA stats and thanks to MLB.com for the links to the videos.