2025 MLB playoffs: WPA leaderboard (post-NLCS edition) - ESPN

Let's ignore the fact that the 2025 MLB playoffs began on the last day of September and might end on the first day of November — because it's always October when it comes to playoff baseball — and ask this: Who is this year's Mr. October?

We last checked in after the LDS round and things have changed, not the least of which is that we're now down to the last three teams still vying for a World Series crown. Our leader last time out was the Los Angeles Dodgers' Roki Sasaki and while that's no longer the case, Los Angeles' collective playoff blitz still paints the leaderboard a vivid Dodger Blue.

At least that's the answer through the rubric of Win Probability Added (WPA, a metric that's been around for a while now and has a lot of utility in putting numbers to the narratives that emerge as the October bracket plays out.)

Between Shohei Ohtani's unprecedented performance in the Dodgers' Game 4 win to close out the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series and the ongoing dominance of the L.A. rotation, led by Blake Snell, this WPA exercise has a chance to reverberate beyond the crucible of this one postseason. There is potentially historic stuff happening. Let's dig in.

Jump to:
Methodology | Top 5 | WPA hero of the day
Top 10 for eliminated players | Ohtani tracker | The all-time WPA champs

The way WPA works is that play-by-play during a game, if you do something that improves your team's chances to win, you get a positive credit. If you don't, it's a negative. In small samples, one play can have an outsized effect on WPA. A grand slam in a 10-0 game? Great for your stat line, but the blast does little to change the game's outcome. Hit the same homer with your team down 3-0 in the eighth, and you've