George Springer may be best postseason performer ever

It’s arguable — it would be regardless, there are too many to choose from — but at least by one unit of measurement, he’s already there. With his pennant-winning three-run homer in Game 7 of the 2025 ALCS, Springer raised his career championship win probability added (cWPA) to 90.8, surpassing David Freese (87.2 cWPA) for the highest in postseason history.

Win probability added is pretty self-explanatory (and more easily visualized). The more conceptual championship WPA factors in the importance of an individual game to a team’s odds of winning the World Series. Springer’s home run took the Blue Jays’ win expectancy from roughly 37% to 77%, giving him .395 WPA (a new ALCS record) on the play. Because it came in the seventh inning of a win-or-go-home final game of a League Championship Series, it also improved Toronto’s odds of winning the 2025 World Series by an estimated 19.7% (19.7 cWPA).

On this scale, you’ll notice that one World Series championship is effectively worth 100 cWPA. And since cWPA is a cumulative stat, Springer, now at 22.3 cWPA this postseason, could definitely end the Blue Jays’ current run in triple digits. After all, his last October meeting with the Dodgers helped to produce his personal best single-postseason cWPA (50.6) in 2017, which still ranks seventh all time.

We’ll be the first to acknowledge that emotions run high in October, and news of one club’s postseason legend overtaking another’s isn’t always welcome. Context is important, and Springer’s been at this for a very long time. As a piece of the Astros’ young core in the late-2010s, he was on hand for the first four of what would be seven consecutive ALCS berths for Houston from 2017-23, and he earned World Series MVP honors in 2017 after going 11-for-29 (.379) with three doubles and five home runs.

Now in his 12th MLB season, Springer ranks 22nd all time in postseason games played (78, tied with Corey Seager) and 16th in plate appearances (362, between David Ortiz and Albert Pujols). Freese, by comparison, retired with 230 postseason plate appearances; even Mickey Mantle, who ranks third all time with 83.5 cWPA, “only” had 273, given that “the playoffs” and “the World Series” were still interchangeable terms at the time.

All of this to say, Cardinals fans, that Freese’s 2011 postseason heroics — and the 84.5 cWPA they produced — remain in a league of their own.

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