In comparison, Smyly was merely solid on a consistent basis…yawn

I don’t disagree that Berry will probably disappear (think Nook Logan), but it seemed that his offense faded as Leyland used him more as a late inning defensive replacement instead of giving him consistent at bats.

Ryan Roberts, Hairston, etc

Calculating an RBI or a BA is objective…..there is a hard set of rules as to what’s counted and we’re only comparing an RBI vs another RBI, not getting a group of computer nerds in a room to decide that getting a single and stealing a base has more value than getting a double.

And I work with data every. I work with it in a research setting.

what you’re saying about WAR isn’t true….it “doesn’t changed based on perception or desire or personal bias”? What are you talking about? Of the major stat site that calculate WAR, they can’t even agree on how it’s calculated? Do you even understand the nature of “objective” and “subjective”? The minute you assign relative values to 2 different skills and plug them in to the same formula you have to have subjectivity, perception, and personal bias……because you are comparing 2 things that are not the same and giving them value in the formula.

Again……the WAR people’s favorite battle cry is that non-believers just don’t “understand”. The true-believers just choose not to see what they don’t want to (which IS something that is very common when doing statstical reseach/anaylsis).

Some statistics measure things that are more relevant to winning and production than others.

WAR works just fine because a players CONTRIBUTIONS can be measured, scaled, and combined….and this can be done effectively because there are many decades and tens of thousands of baseball games of data that tell us how particular contributions lead to runs scored or runs prevented….and runs are the currency of baseball.

WAR would not be calculated in a unique fashion for every team, because it is not a team-specific stat.

WAR is not subjective. WAR doesn’t changed based on perception or desire or personal bias. WAR is based 100% on what happened. As an estimate of value, it could be improved….but the fact that it isn’t perfect doesn’t invalidate it’s value.

There are so many dumb things stated in that post….I can’t even cover them all. Suffice it to say that it is clear you don’t work with data, do analyses, or interpret data/results of analyses.

WAR is adjusted and WAR is subjective. WAR is subjective not only because different positions are weghted unequally but because different stats are weighted differently (and no one place can agree on what that formula is).

No one can simply put in a bunch of stats that measure different abilities/strengths and come out with a number that tells you who is better. WAR is more relivant as a tool for GMs that want to measure the traits they like more in a baseball player, as they would weight each area specifically for the team they wanted to build. In theory, WAR would be calculated differently for each team/GM/manager.

You can’t make a statistic that tells you a pear is better than an apple based on an equation that assigns numbers for sugar content, texture, ect. WAR doesn’t work because a baseball player can not be broken down into the sum of his parts. Each part is more or less valuable and baseball players are valuable for different reasons. There is, and will never will be, one stat that tells you who’s better.

Also, if people want to remove the “hypothetical AAA player, r/fWAR can be adjusted against the “average” MLB player. A couple of problems with this are: all calcs have to be adjusted downward, as the average player would put up a 0 f/rWAR as opposed to the 2f/rWAR they usually put up. Also, a lot more players would put up negative numbers, which tends to just look bad.

Would using average MLB player really make that much of a difference?

That argument is fatally flawed because it is a positional statistic. The average, replacement AAA player at 3B is going to provide more wins than would the average, replacement AAA CF because the talent at the position is significantly better

Except you’re wrong, and thus the entire reason for you being against (r/f)WAR is wrong. Both of those metrics use a hypothetical “replacement player” and then build from there. The positional adjustment is added at the end of the formula, not the beginning. So it doesn’t matter if there are better AAA CFs than AAA 3b, as it has no factor in the calculation.

Here’s an entirely too simplistic breakdown of how it works. Take a typical AAA player that anyone has on the roster, this player would put up a line of say, .250/.325/.425 (hypothetical). (f/r)WAR then takes the actual production from our MLB player and calculates his wRAA(1). This is his “offensive” production in the calculation. Next step is baserunning, or UBR(2). After that, we add in the [fWAR] UZR(3) calculation, or “defensive” component. Add to the defensive component a positional adjustment, because playing SS is obviously harder than LF along with an adjustment for time played (more innings in the field = more credit*).

Add those all up, divide by 10, and you have your fWAR**.

1 – http://www.fangraphs.com/library/index.php/offense/wraa/
2 – http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/ultimate-base-running-primer/
3 – http://www.fangraphs.com/library/index.php/defense/uzr/

*This was actually a strong point in Trout’s favor that many didn’t mention. Cabrera got more credit for his games played than Trout, as he should. However, even with that credit, Trout still trounced him in f/rWAR because of how much better Trout was in all aspects of the game.

**rWAR (baseball-reference.com) uses slightly difference calculations. I’m not sure if there’s a primer for it like there is for fangraphs/fWAR, but you might find one on their site. While they use different metrics for the components, it’s calculated in the same manner.

First, I think “metric” is a better term for it that “statistic”. Statistics as a part of my daily life in my job and I took several statistics classes in college. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it a “positional” metric, but that is an issue. To me a “statistic” implies that everyone starts on equal footing…..whichdoes not happen with WAR.

I really like many of the new-school statistics, they really provide a ton of information for us stat people, but I really like a lot of the old-school stats too.

People really need to take all the stats we have and look at each one and draw conclusions on all of them. place importance on whatever stats you want and make and argument…….but you can’t just come up with this one number with a big red bow around it. Trying to smoosh all of those stats into one pretty number doesn’t work, that’s before we mention that it’s not an objective measure in any way/shape/form and that you’re comparing it to this idea of a fictional replacement player which can also be very difficult to quantify. No player, replacement or everyday, is created equal…..how is it that we can just make up a hard line of what that player would be like?

Many of the stats used to make up the WAR are great…..but WAR is flawed. Que the new-schoolers telling me I just don’t understand.

Oh, man. I hope someone can come up with a pun for A-Rod and steroids somehow. Because THAT would be clever.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go catch up on these episodes of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. That guy cracks me up.

The Tigers probably had at least 2 other guys in the minors that could have given them as much or more than Berry, but Berry is 28 and his development won’t suffer from irregular playing time….so he’s the guy they kept on the MLB roster.

I doubt he makes the roster next year.

1) OBP is more important than slugging and should be weighted heavier

and

2) They are on different scales as OBP is from 0-1 and SLG is from 0-4. 100 pts of OBP is not the same as 100 pts of slugging on their own scales,

Therefore, adding them is both bad math and bad baseball understanding, resulting in a stat that is misleading and less valuable than its components.

The argument for Trout wasn’t WAR. It was that he was equally valuable offensively and wayyyyyy more valuable on the bases and defensivley. But this has been hashed out a ton around here already.