You have to speak for yourself on this, really. I have learned to be a little skeptical about all these metrics, which doesn't mean I don't also see value in them and find them interesting.Originally Posted by S5Dewey
Nobody is forcing anybody to believe anything they don't want to believe, IMO
And for what it is worth, Fangraphs has Betts with 3.6 WAR and Trout with 3.3.
Citing wither player as the "greatest of all time" for bWAR or fWAR or anything like that is a little silly, given the complete lack of defensive data on players like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb..
DEfense is like that.
You have said - and while I don't disagree - that the Sox outfield defense is better with Bradley in CF. But how do you quantify that? What is the margin of error?
Hey, don't ask me. I'm not one of those "trained observers" or even a sabermetriciain. Since I haven't seen every player play every game I'm not qualified to say. Which puts me in the same group with just about everyone else. All I'm doing is pointing out that maybe we should be paying a little more attention to they eye test and our instincts and less attention to a hodgepodge of flawed statistics which get rolled into another flawed statistic... or data.. or whatever.
I respect the statistics and WAR - for what they are - but at the same time I think there's a lot to be said for the years of experience too.
It's a mere moment in a man's life between the All-Star game and the Old Timer's game.
-Vin Scully
Whose years of experience?
I love your final point because it demonstrates your fundamental misunderstanding of WAR. If one player is 1.0 and the other is 1.3, the real point is that they are roughly the same overall caliber even though one may be the better defender and the other the better hitter.
I also object to the implied meaning of "flawed" when you use it because you really seem to mean, "not perfect and therefore to be disregarded." I always liked batting averages, but like OBP even more and OPS even more than that. Each of those stats tells me something that just looking at a player swing the bat will never tell me. Results count in baseball, and stats are for the most part tabulations of results. That said, I do have my doubts about defensive stats like range factor, etc because measuring defense is not nearly as easy as measuring offense.
Last edited by Maxbialystock; 05-21-2018 at 10:06 AM.
Pretty good stuff, moonslav, especially coming from someone who likes stats a lot. And I think your central point is dead on: yes, WAR is certainly flawed, but it's the best attempt so far to measure the whole ballplayer.
As I said earlier, the OP misses the real point, which is that, if Trout and Mookie are rated at 3.9 and 3.6, they are both very good and probably too close to call on who is better because WAR is and must be an approximation.
The eye test is best practiced by experienced scouts, and even they agree they can make mistakes.
When two (or three) different sources give differing values for WAR for a player saying "It's better than anything else", that's a pretty low bar. As you said, every calculation that gets put into WAR is flawed in one way or another so I'll ask it again. When does it become "garbage in, garbage out"?
I guess that's a personal decision.
My opinion is this: while the numbers fed into the system may be imperfect, they are not garbage. When the sample sizes are large enough, most things have a way of evening out, such as bad scorer decisions, strength of opponent and other factors.
All I'm saying is that WAR represents the best number I know of that shows a players overall value and not just hitting, power, defense, running and more...
I'm sure teams have their own formulas, and my guess would be that their results would be pretty close to WAR, in terms of comparative player value.
If you are the type of person that thinks this is not possible or not something you even want, even if "perfect", then WAR would be worth 'absolutely nothing!"
To me, it has value, but it is not the be-all-end-all.
Here is today's update. I don't have a huge amount of time so this will be brief. Here are the 4 players with an OPS over 1:
Trout - 4.0, 1.072
Betts - 3.8, 1.198
Manny Machado - 2.3, 1.070
JD Martinez - 2.3, 1.077
OPS is a stat I've always admired. It's amazing that according to WAR, Trout is worth almost as much as Machado and Martinez combined. I think it's nuts. Let's talk about Manny Machado. He seems to be having one heck of a season:
61 hits (tied for 1st), 14 homers (tied for 3rd), 42 RBI (1st), and this production from the shortstop position. He's awesome. I can't fathom WAR.
Machado looked like shit at SS this past series. JD has played a ton of DH which impacts WAR.
oWAR:
Betts 28
Trout 23.8
Machado 19.9
Martinez 18.9
First of all, 4.0 is not worth "almost" 4.6.
4.6 is 15% higher than 4.0.
Second of all, defense and base running factors into WAR. Machado and JD are both negative on defense.
Helpful hint, if you can't fathom WAR, then don't use it or pay any attention to it.
Last edited by moonslav59; 05-21-2018 at 02:35 PM.
It's runs that count,BAIBIE!
Betts 48
Trout 38
It doesn't. Do you know a stats that does?
It does seem like to take every opportunity to undermine it...
1. WAR does use the "eye test" but against a standard. Many many fans advocate the Eye Test, but not one I have ever heard of has any sort of standard. In fact, too often the eye test degenerates into "I saw that guy make a couple errors once." Sometimes, it just evolves into the Reputation Test, where you hear a guy is an excellent defender so if he does nothing wrong when you watch him, hey, it must be true.
2. Using your instincts leaves you with quantifiable opinions, right? If I asked you who is the best defensive CF, you might say Bradley or Pillar or Buxton or Cain or some other candidate. What would you say if I asked you to support that opinion? Even i I asked you to support Benentendi/Bradley/Betts OF over Martinez/Benintendi/Betts OF, how would you support the opinion - probably shared by many including me - that it was better? This isn't an attack on you or anyone. It's the nature of what we see when watching games and how we all watch them given the massive imbalances in the players we see.
3. WAR most definitely has flaws, but it still is absolutely more encompassing than we are fans are able to achieve by watching games. Especially watching games on TV, where you don't have any option on what part of the play you watch. I see plenty of people talk about the jump an outfielder gets on flyballs - good or bad. That type of evaluation - important for defense - is something you rarely if ever can see from a televised game.
4. In the past, you have often said WAR has too many moving parts, and any system that has more moving parts is more likely to break down. Maybe true, But look around your house. I bet you have a car and not a horse. I bet you have a washing machine and not a washboard. I bet you have a refrigerator and not an icehouse. I bet you have an oven and not a rotatiing spit over a flame pit. I bet you have an air conditioner and not a hand-held fan. Every device I mentioned has more moving parts than predecessor I compared it to. Every device I mentioned is more likely to break down than its predecessor. Yet they all have another thing in common - they all work better than their predecessor, too.
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