How is WAR calculated?

[john doe]

Examining the records of first and even second seasons of MLB expansion teams since 1960 is also interesting with regard to "replacement player" theories, although I would presume those teams would theoretically not perform as well as a roster of MLB "replacement" players. There are some "outlier" performances though, such as the 3rd place finish in the 10 team AL, of the Angels in just their second season, in 1962.

[waynr]

What's batting average good for? It doesn't tell you how many walks a guy has, how many HRs a guy has, how many doubles a guy has, how many triples he has, how many outs he makes, how good he runs the bases, or how good his defense is. So to me it tells very little about a player yet people continue to use it.

that was a Seinfeld quote, but they do have stats for doubles triple homeruns runs scored walks and other catagories just look on the back of any baseball card and You will see them or better yet just watch the games with your eyes and you will know alot more than some made up stat that doesnt really tell you anything either.

[Shelton]

that was a Seinfeld quote, but they do have stats for doubles triple homeruns runs scored walks and other catagories just look on the back of any baseball card and You will see them or better yet just watch the games with your eyes and you will know alot more than some made up stat that doesnt really tell you anything either.

Cioe?

[tiger337]

that was a Seinfeld quote, but they do have stats for doubles triple homeruns runs scored walks and other catagories just look on the back of any baseball card and You will see them or better yet just watch the games with your eyes and you will know alot more than some made up stat that doesnt really tell you anything either.

Caputo?

[EchO]

We are having a mis-communication in one of two ways here.

1) You are not grasping he concept of how replacement level is determined for each position. They are not assigned points because they play a position. They are not assigned points for anything (they earn runs above or below a threshold). This is determined using a formula to determine how many runs a player created for his team.

Lets use Miguel Cabrera playing 3B.
So a replacement level 3B would produce a slash line in the area of .220/.280/.350 and OPS in the range of .630 (this is guess, but I think it's pretty close). That is basically saying what a solid AAA 3rd baseman could produce at the major league level. If this replacement level player played a full season he would create around 70 runs.

So a replacement player at 3B is worth 70 runs. Miguel Cabrera created 139 runs last year, 69 runs more than the replacement player. So his Value of Replacement Player (VORP) is 69. For the sake of simplicity VORP is divided by 10 (roughly) to create WAR (Wins above Replacement. 10 runs = 1 win). So his WAR is 6.9.

WAR is just a way to measure a players performance above a certain threshold. That threshhold being, essentially, a AAA player.


2) You are making the argument that you must account for the the value above the player you are replacing. IE, while Victor Martinez is a 3 WAR player as a DH, he represents a net gain of nearly 4 WAR because he is replacing Delmon Young (roughly -1 WAR).

The misscommunication is coming because I was talking STRICTLY about the points given (or subtracted) due to defensive position.

Look up at Lee's first reply...

(8) positional adjustment

C +12.5
1B -12.5
2B +2.5
3B +2.5
SS +7.5
LF -7.5
CF +2.5
RF -7.5
DH -17.5

My two issues with WAR were...

1) The use of defensive position and...
2) The extent of ballpark factor in WAR calculation.

That is it, Lee addressed both issues and I have a better understanding why those factors are included and what WAR is best suited for. Not to be rude, but your responses had little to nothing to do with what my concern over WAR was about.

[EchO]

Replacement level doesn't necessarily have to do with a player getting replaced. It is just a baseline for comparison. When we ask, "How many wins is a player worth?", we need to have a comparison. We could use average as the baseline: "How many wins is a player above an average player?" If that was the baseline, Wins would be equal to zero implying the player is worthless. That's misleading though because an average player is a good player.

You could choose zero as the baseline. How many wins is a player worth above .000/.000/.000? In that case, a player who batted .120/.150/.175 would have a positive number for wins. That doesn't make sense, because a player batting .120/.150/.175 would hurt his team. Thus they settled on a value in between average and zero.

After being involved in this thread I see that I was definitely putting too much credence into the "replacement" aspect and I also think I had a bias towards WAR because of the Trout vs. Cabrera debate. I understand that defense is important and playing a premium defensive position should be rewarded...I'm just hesitant to put all my trust in WAR because I think that at times it overvalues certain players due to defensive position and ballpark factors.

For example, in 2010 Andre Torres had a WAR of 6.9 which was good enough for 7th overall while Cabrera was #14...no doubt Torres had a superb year but his OPS was only .823. Was his CF defense so great that it should overshadow Cabrera's 1.046 OPS and sub-par 1B defense? Or in 2009 when Ben Zobrist was #2 in WAR beating out the likes of Joe Mauer (who had a higher OPS) because he had an abnormally high defensive rating that year (22 runs above average) which he has never come close to replicating. Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia are similar examples in regards to 2011...both had abnormally high fielding runs above average that year which were a far cry from their 'typical' defensive years. I get these a very specific and limited examples, but they are scenarios where I personally don't think the player was quite as good as their WAR would suggest.

[Shelton]

Best part of this thread is referring to "war; what is it good for; absolutely nothin" as a Seinfeld quote.

[tiger337]

After being involved in this thread I see that I was definitely putting too much credence into the "replacement" aspect and I also think I had a bias towards WAR because of the Trout vs. Cabrera debate. I understand that defense is important and playing a premium defensive position should be rewarded...I'm just hesitant to put all my trust in WAR because I think that at times it overvalues certain players due to defensive position and ballpark factors.

For example, in 2010 Andre Torres had a WAR of 6.9 which was good enough for 7th overall while Cabrera was #14...no doubt Torres had a superb year but his OPS was only .823. Was his CF defense so great that it should overshadow Cabrera's 1.046 OPS and sub-par 1B defense? Or in 2009 when Ben Zobrist was #2 in WAR beating out the likes of Joe Mauer (who had a higher OPS) because he had an abnormally high defensive rating that year (22 runs above average) which he has never come close to replicating. Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia are similar examples in regards to 2011...both had abnormally high fielding runs above average that year which were a far cry from their 'typical' defensive years. I get these a very specific and limited examples, but they are scenarios where I personally don't think the player was quite as good as their WAR would suggest.

Right, I would never recommend just looking at WAR blindly. You need to look at all the components separately and see if they make sense. If a player's defensive runs are out of whack with his career norm, it's fair to question it. It's good to look at multiple measures and multiple years of data when trying to determine defensive value. The offensive components are quite a bit cleaner.

[tiger337]

"War war is stupid
And people are stupid
And love means nothing
In some strange quarters
War war is stupid
And people are stupid"

[Yoda]

Best part of this thread is referring to "war; what is it good for; absolutely nothin" as a Seinfeld quote.

That whole post was brilliant.

[EchO]

Right, I would never recommend just looking at WAR blindly. You need to look at all the components separately and see if they make sense. If a player's defensive runs are out of whack with his career norm, it's fair to question it. It's good to look at multiple measures and multiple years of data when trying to determine defensive value. The offensive components are quite a bit cleaner.

All very fair points. I agree 100% that offensive metrics are quite a bit cleaner and defense (at this point in time) is still somewhat hard to quantify, which is what is lead me to question WAR in the first place. I now get what WAR is/can be used for and its faults/benefits...personally I think its a pretty good indicator of overall player worth or ranking, but if I think personally I will stick to OBP/OPS/UZR/Fan scouting when evaluating players. But when it comes to a single stat that tries to quantify multiple aspects (Hitting, defense, base-running) of the game WAR definitely seems to be in a class by itself...I would just be hesitant to, like you said, put all my eggs in the WAR basket.

[Gehringer_2]

I think WAA makes sense for the average fan who is not attempting to play General Manager. I believe a lot of fans think: "Do we have enough Above Average players to make the playoffs?" rather than thinking about about replacement level. They answer two different questions and there's no reason why we can't have both WAA and WAR.

I've really never thought much about it since as a fan I don't much care about this aspect, but I assume that using the 'replacement player' baseline for WAR is an attempt to produce a metric that is better suited for scaling against salaries?

[tiger337]

I've really never thought much about it since as a fan I don't much care about this aspect, but I assume that using the 'replacement player' baseline for WAR is an attempt to produce a metric that is better suited for scaling against salaries?

Yes, that is the reason for the replacement player baseline. I think it's an important reason from a GM perspective, but not necessarily from a fan perspective. I'm not as interested in the financial part of the game as many modern fans and thus I'm less rigid about the baseline. I'm mostly interested in two things:

(1) Evaluating past performance for the sake of awards or Hall-of-Fame or just for ranking players historically.

(2) Projecting future performance.

Still, it's important to consider the baseline in determining how much weight you to quality versus quality. After all, there is a difference between an average 300 PA player and an average 600 PA player. I'd rather be given different choices of baselines rather than have everything be based on replacement though.

[tiger337]

Again in some cases this would state value more clearly if the missed PA's were the result of injuries. Usually a player that can stay on the field for 162 games is more valuable than one that consistently misses 40 games a year for various reasons.

WAR and WA0 both give players credit for being able to stay on the field. It's a matter of degree. WAR assumes that the player who plays in your place when you're injured is a replacement level player. Thus, the player gets penalized by the difference between his usual production and the production of a replacement player. If he's a good player when he does play, then he'll get penalized pretty heavily for the games he missed. WA0 assumes that the player who plays in your place does absolutely nothing. So, the player would get penalized even more.