Bob Ryan on baseball's WAR

[LongTimeListener]

Gee said it on Page 1, but I think fielding is going to prove to be mostly not measurable. Teams with full scouting departments and huge budgets will be able to evaluate things according to their specific needs and fits and acquire players that way, but a catch-all number that measures everyone in the league against each other for the now-completed season will be too tough. It's like the misguided attempts to apply the approach to football, where there's too much else happening to isolate an individual's performance.

 

[RickStain]

How does range factor account for shifts, whether the dramatic kind where everyone plays out of position for a pull hitter or the more subtle kind where the shortstop moves two steps toward the middle because of tendencies discovered by the front office? Seems like right now, if a guy fields a ball behind the bag he gets a plus mark for range, when the pre-pitch positioning might have made that a fairly routine play.

I recall last year WAR was judging Brett Lawrie to be one of the most valuable players in all of baseball because he was showing his extraordinary range by catching so many balls out of position when he moved over on shifts.

I can't believe I'm letting myself get sucked into this conversation, but yet again:

WAR is not a statistic, and there certainly isn't only one of it. It is an idea, a way to design a scale.

Saying "WAR showed X" doesn't make any sense. One metric, trying to measure player value and using the WAR scale, had a defensive component that wasn't accounting for shifts in any way and caused Brett Lawrie to be severely overvalued.

 

[Dick Whitman]

A concept can't get much more nebulous than "replacement" since it is inherently obvious that "replacement" levels are so massively different between the best teams and the worst teams. To imply otherwise for the sake of a statistical model is asinine, and therefore, they should use deciles or other tiers rather than defining a "replacement level" that can never actually be approximate to more than a handful of teams' minor league talent levels in a given year.

People, including Ryan, get so worked up about the concept of "replacement." I find it the least objectionable thing about WAR. It requires a base line. That's all. Objecting to it is like objecting to the existence of the number zero. If you made replacement values team-specific, then the players wouldn't be measured on an equal footing against one another. Which defeats the purpose.

No, it's not at all like objecting to zero. Zero doesn't constantly change, for one thing.

It's exactly like objecting to zero. "Replacement level" is a base line. It's the functional equivalent of zero. If you disagree with the concept of a replacement player, the only thing that suffers is the accuracy of the figure. The precision - which is what actually matters - remains the same.

I already explained the difference.

No, you didn't.

You explaind a difference.

That difference is not relevant.

Spoken like someone who is happy to abandon all logic in a desperate attempt to justify statistics that don't measure what they claim to measure and rely fair too heavily on subjectivity.

If you can't understand why a baseline being consistent rather than constantly changing is a huge difference, you are truly beyond help.

This is exactly why people like you fail to make a compelling argument for these statistics. You refuse to acknowledge the flaws and you refuse to even try to do it without unjustly attacking the intelligence of those who question them.

It doesn't constantly change. It's the same within every position. It would be flawed if it did change. Someone suggested this. Someone suggested that it should change for each team.

I certainly think WAR is probably a flawed statistic, mostly because of what you said: It doesn't measure what it purports to measure. But it's not flawed because it has a base line. The base line doesn't matter. It affects accuracy, not precision. Name it EWAR (Estimated Wins Above Replacement) and we're solid.

 

[LongTimeListener]

How does range factor account for shifts, whether the dramatic kind where everyone plays out of position for a pull hitter or the more subtle kind where the shortstop moves two steps toward the middle because of tendencies discovered by the front office? Seems like right now, if a guy fields a ball behind the bag he gets a plus mark for range, when the pre-pitch positioning might have made that a fairly routine play.

I recall last year WAR was judging Brett Lawrie to be one of the most valuable players in all of baseball because he was showing his extraordinary range by catching so many balls out of position when he moved over on shifts.

I can't believe I'm letting myself get sucked into this conversation, but yet again:

WAR is not a statistic, and there certainly isn't only one of it. It is an idea, a way to design a scale.

Saying "WAR showed X" doesn't make any sense. One metric, trying to measure player value and using the WAR scale, had a defensive component that wasn't accounting for shifts in any way and caused Brett Lawrie to be severely overvalued.

I understand that, Rick.

But WAR was used almost exclusively to mount the case for Trout as MVP. Not by you, but it is absolutely correct to say that's the kind of influence WAR has in a certain very large and loud segment of the online public.

 

[RickStain]

I just can't get behind temperature. They can't even make their minds up about it, and it's totally arbitrary. Those Fahrenheit guys say that zero degrees is really damn cold, but the Celcius guys say that zero is sort of cold but tolerable. They can't even make up their minds about that, and we're supposed to believe that they have a good system for measuring the atomic activity of objects? Bull****.

I even heard that there was this one temperature scale that said that zero was so cold it couldn't possibly exist in the universe. What more proof do we need that these people aren't living in the real world?

 

[Dick Whitman]

This is exactly why people like you fail to make a compelling argument for these statistics. You refuse to acknowledge the flaws and you refuse to even try to do it.

This post comes like one page after I explained why I like Win Value Added better than Wins Above Replacement.

 

[RickStain]

But WAR was used almost exclusively to mount the case for Trout as MVP. Not by you, but it is absolutely correct to say that's the kind of influence WAR has in a certain very large and loud segment of the online public.

Cool beans. Like I said, I'm tired of WAR. I wash my hands of it. We can burn it at the stake or whatever. Even if we find it necessary to use total value stats, we can just as easily use "Bases above average" or "Runs above zero" or "Outs below perfection" or some other unit/index combination.

It's really dawned on me in the last few years how interesting baseball is and how pointless these arguments are. "Stats vs. scouts" is really just "I typed his name into Fangraphs" vs. "I have a gut feeling that I want to justify and saw several baseball games."

Baseball is really ****ing complicated. The people who really understand it are the ones who spend hours watching it live, then more hours breaking down tape, then more hours pouring over meticulously prepared statistical reports. Every day for years and years on end.

The rest of us are just wanking ourselves if we think we really understand it. I don't need to understand it. I enjoy it.

 

[outofplace]

This is exactly why people like you fail to make a compelling argument for these statistics. You refuse to acknowledge the flaws and you refuse to even try to do it.

This post comes like one page after I explained why I like Win Value Added better than Wins Above Replacement.

After trying that ridiculous argument that replacement works as well as a baseline as zero.

 

[Dick Whitman]

This is exactly why people like you fail to make a compelling argument for these statistics. You refuse to acknowledge the flaws and you refuse to even try to do it.

This post comes like one page after I explained why I like Win Value Added better than Wins Above Replacement.

After trying that ridiculous argument that replacement works as well as a baseline as zero.

How does using replacement value as the baseline negatively affect the precision of the metric?

 

[outofplace]

This is exactly why people like you fail to make a compelling argument for these statistics. You refuse to acknowledge the flaws and you refuse to even try to do it.

This post comes like one page after I explained why I like Win Value Added better than Wins Above Replacement.

After trying that ridiculous argument that replacement works as well as a baseline as zero.

How does using replacement value as the baseline negatively affect the precision of the metric?

That's not what you argued, ****. You compared arguing with the usefulness of replacement to complaining about the existence of zero. There is a significant difference between the two, one you refuse to acknowledge.

 

[Dick Whitman]

This is exactly why people like you fail to make a compelling argument for these statistics. You refuse to acknowledge the flaws and you refuse to even try to do it.

This post comes like one page after I explained why I like Win Value Added better than Wins Above Replacement.

After trying that ridiculous argument that replacement works as well as a baseline as zero.

How does using replacement value as the baseline negatively affect the precision of the metric?

That's not what you argued, ****. You compared arguing with the usefulness of replacement to complaining about the existence of zero. There is a significant difference between the two, one you refuse to acknowledge.

It's a distinction without a difference. Zero provides a baseline for measuring something. RickStain's example was temperature. There's no real reason that what we think of as zero degrees has to be zero. It's arbitrary. At least replacement level isn't exactly arbitrary. It purports to represent something. And even if it doesn't represent it in pinpoint fashion - because that would be impossible - it serves its purpose by giving us a baseline to measure everyone against. Like zero.

 

[Versatile]

I'm just looking for something that explains fielding better than what we have now. OPS I can live with and is easy to understand.

Your problem is your looking for something instead of some things.

OPS is flat. The world is round.

You object to the Jeffrey Hammonds argument, but you present no logical rationale for the objection. No stat is perfect and no "SABR head" would suggest anyone make value judgments based on any one stat.

 

[LongTimeListener]

no "SABR head" would suggest anyone make value judgments based on any one stat.

I guess I don't know how narrowly you define "SABR head," but WAR was the entirety of the argument for Trout against Cabrera.

I believe the term you used for dissenters was Morganites.

 

[RickStain]

WAR was the shorthand for the argument. That argument was that positional scarcity and defense made him more valuable.

 

[Versatile]

no "SABR head" would suggest anyone make value judgments based on any one stat.

I guess I don't know how narrowly you define "SABR head," but WAR was the entirety of the argument for Trout against Cabrera.

I believe the term you used for dissenters was Morganites.

I don't use those types of terms. I describe people as they are. WAR absolutely was not the entirety of the argument for Mike Trout over Miguel Cabrera.

How important is WAR to this argument or this one or this one.

 

[buckweaver]

WAR was the shorthand for the argument. That argument was that positional scarcity and defense made him more valuable.

And baserunning.

[/tryingdesperatelynottogetsuckedintoo]

 

[LongTimeListener]

no "SABR head" would suggest anyone make value judgments based on any one stat.

I guess I don't know how narrowly you define "SABR head," but WAR was the entirety of the argument for Trout against Cabrera.

I believe the term you used for dissenters was Morganites.

I don't use those types of terms. I describe people as they are. WAR absolutely was not the entirety of the argument for Mike Trout over Miguel Cabrera.

How important is WAR to this argument or this one or this one.

I amend my statement. The columns you link are all cases that were made for Trout. Compelling cases, but ultimately those writers knew the thing was subjective.

The ones I'm talking about -- Passan's stands out most prominently but I know there were others, and certainly the chatter on here -- were the ones calling Cabrera voters idiots. And those were about WAR.

 

[dooley_womack1]

Passan was a whiny baby about that. And I often like his stuff

 

[HejiraHenry]

No, it's not at all like objecting to zero. Zero doesn't constantly change, for one thing.

"Zero Celsius, zero Fahrenheit." Drops mic.

Oh hell, RickStain beat me to it.

 

[buckweaver]

So are there any other prominent Trout voters who called voters idiots? Or even non-voters who were partial to Trout? I'll grant you Passan (and even Keith Law, just on principle), because I do remember that whiny column about "stubborn" Cabrera voters that he wrote in November.

Or are we citing some random college kid's post at FanGraphs or BTBS or SB Nation?

Because I also remember Dave Cameron and Nate Silver and Joe Posnanski and Rob Neyer and Brian Kenny and Jonah Keri all laying out a pretty reasonable and strong case for Trout, statistically and through narrative, without much name-calling (and sometimes without even bringing up WAR.) Did they bring up Cabrera's well-known weaknesses in the field and on the bases? Of course. Did they call Cabrera supporters idiots? I'd like to see proof that anyone with any significant standing in the sabermetric community was using those type of mean-spirited tactics in the MVP debate.

We can all find idiots on Twitter and on blogs who say stupid **** all the time. But that doesn't mean the "saber heads" were in lockstep and bashing anyone who thought different.