The Increasing Over Reliance on WAR

[zitothebrave]

Which brings us full circle to - the delta between the best and worst fielder is nowhere near as great as that with offense. Could you imagine Simmons going negative?

No, becuase he's consistently produced at a high level. Great defense is easy to repeat. Guys having solid careers then exploding (like Parra) typically come back to earth. Just like Chris Davis who was a solid hitter before then something happened that clicked that year and he was great, now he reverted back, and back hard.

[GovClintonTyree]

No, becuase he's consistently produced at a high level. Great defense is easy to repeat. Guys having solid careers then exploding (like Parra) typically come back to earth. Just like Chris Davis who was a solid hitter before then something happened that clicked that year and he was great, now he reverted back, and back hard.

Right. You don't explode on defense. Incremental progress or deterioration. But a guy shouldn't go from average to elite to below average, wouldn't you say?

[chop2chip]

I don't agree with your comments. Stats should be easily understandable. It shouldn't require a whole lot of qualification.

And I'll promise you I've read 100 articles this offseason on trades, free agents, and potential deals in which the columnist blithely uses them as absolute. Kinda like the tag of the new mattress that says "don't remove under penalty of law." Doesn't work. People tear off the tag.

Stats are easy to understand. And they are just as easily misused. Again, the premise of this thread. WAR attempts to takes arguably the most difficult question in player evaluation and tries to funnel into one use all stat. It's just not the best approach and I would argue that using one stat should never be the best approach.

[zitothebrave]

Right. You don't explode on defense. Incremental progress or deterioration. But a guy shouldn't go from average to elite to below average, wouldn't you say?

Guys can have seasons where things flat out click better. Uggla the year he was OK for us being a great example, if you watched him play, you saw him physically play better. Sometimes it's crappy play around them, sometimes it's jsut getting lucky a handful of times and being solid the rest. But just like there's variance offensively, there will be defensively as well. The Greats offensively (Trout, Miggy, Stanton) usually stay great and the same is true defensively.

[kurganbravo]

My thoughts........

War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Uh-huh
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again, y'all


War, huh, good God
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me


Ohhh, war, I despise
Because it means destruction
Of innocent lives


War means tears
To thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go to fight
And lose their lives


I said, war, huh
Good God, y'all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again


War, whoa, Lord
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me


War, it ain't nothing
But a heartbreaker
War, friend only to the undertaker
Ooooh, war
It's an enemy to all mankind
The point of war blows my mind
War has caused unrest
Within the younger generation
Induction then destruction
Who wants to die
Aaaaah, war-huh
Good God y'all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it, say it, say it
War, huh
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me


War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Uh-huh
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again y'all
War, huh, good God
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me


War, it ain't nothing but a heartbreaker
War, it's got one friend
That's the undertaker
Ooooh, war, has shattered
Many a young mans dreams
Made him disabled, bitter and mean
Life is much to short and precious
To spend fighting wars these days
War can't give life
It can only take it away


Ooooh, war, huh
Good God y'all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again


War, whoa, Lord
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me


War, it ain't nothing but a heartbreaker
War, friend only to the undertaker
Peace, love and understanding
Tell me, is there no place for them today
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But Lord knows there's got to be a better way


Ooooooh, war, huh
Good God y'all
What is it good for
You tell me
Say it, say it, say it, say it


War, huh
Good God y'all
What is it good for
Stand up and shout it
Nothing

Guess i'm just ready to watch my team (however they turn out) lace em up and go to work..........

[Runnin]

I just don't like how WAR factors in defense. Both for pitchers and hitters. If a starting pitcher puts up a 3.00 era with a 4.00 FIP he had a better year than someone who had a 4.00 era with a 3.00 fip. When we start disregarding actual runs scored in favor of number of runs we think should have scored when talking about present or past stats I think we have gone too far.

If Shelby Miller gives us 200 innings with a 3.40 era I don't give a rats ass if that comes out to 1 war or 6 war.


With Heywood defense relative to offense is hard to calculate. Just going by put outs Heywood made 70 more outs than Markakis in 3 more innings. That's just depressing, but who knows if even Heywood will be that great defensively again. Andrelton couldn't repeat his magical 2013 defensive season. Heywood wasn't this good previously in the field.

Had me until Heywood.

[Metaphysicist]

Now you're just being an asshole. Why are you so vested in this?

Gerardo Parra, 2013. Also find it interesting that he's worth 4 dWAR that year, then he's minus the next year. How can I possibly figure out what to spend based on that? At $9m a WAR in ***y this off season, he was worth $36m for defense alone that year! And now he's negative? I overpaid!

He wasn't that good then and he isn't that bad now.

I don't mean be assholish; I'm just being honest. If you tell me you aren't going to bother to understand the think you are criticizing, I don't expect your criticism to be very well grounded. That's true about basically anything.

You shouldn't pay for a one year defensive outlier. We agree on this. If you want to predict what kind of defense someone will have next year you should use multiple previous years. But we disagree that this means dWAR is faulty. Defense varies by year, just like hitting varies by year. Chris Davis had an OPS of over 1.000 in 2013, but then he had a .700 OPS hitter in 2014. Does that mean OPS is flawed? No, it means Davis had a good year followed by a crappy year. The value you should pay him should be somewhere in between, but that doesn't mean the stats themselves are wrong.

[Metaphysicist]

What a ****ing job. What do they do in May when the video scouts commit suicide?

The computer does the actual comparing. The scouts just input the data.

[Metaphysicist]

Your Adam Dunn comment is at the crux of my point, Meta. I don't think even The Big Donkey gave back what he created. Not even close. Cause mostly what he did was catch routine fly balls and catch throws at 1B. I know he was a ****ty fielder and I know it matters. I don't think it matters that much.

I value defense, and I've coached and played as much as anyone on here. There's something wrong with the relative weighting of offense and defense in the stat.

I think it is hilarious that the statnerds are now the ones who have to point out how bad Adam Dunn's defense is... Oh, if TallahaseeBravo could see us now...

Anyway, Dunn doesn't lose ALL his value to defense. But towards the end of his career he was AWFUL out there, and cost his team a ton of runs.

[MadduxFanII]

I tend to look at WAR as more of a provider of broadly accurate insights than a teller of Oracular truths*. I don't know that I buy that Jason Heyward has saved 3,891 runs above average on defense over his career and has contributed approximately as many runs on the bases, or that Andrelton was one of the greatest defensive players in Major League history in 2013. But that Heyward contributes significant, meaningful value with his legs and glove and that Simmons is a truly extraordinary defensive player are insights that I credit.

There is kind of an irony to the WAR/defensive statistics discussion, in that many of the skeptics sound like the most strident statheads from the turn of the millennium. It was a long time ago, of course, but when sabrmetrics began gaining a hold on baseball fans around 2000-2002, the fundamental stathead position was essentially offense uber alles. I remember a loooooooooot of message board discussions sparked by stathead types saying some variation on, "Look, I know Player A is a good defensive player, but there's just no way that he's better than Player B. Player B hit .290/.400/.500 last year! His OPS was 150 points better than Player A's! There's just no way Player A's glove can fill that gap."

In a lot of ways, those sorts of positions have steadily reversed themselves over the last decade. If you had suggested to 2001 MadduxFanII that Brian Jordan was approximately as valuable as Gary Sheffield** that year (4.4 WAR to 4.3), or that Jordan actually contributed non-negligible value in 2000 (2.0), I would have smacked you for your sacrilege. Now? It's not a huge issue for me to believe that, just as I can conceive of the possibility that Heyward and Giancarlo Stanton have contributed approximately the same value over their careers in spite of Stanton's huge edge in offensive statistics.

*Especially since "Oracular truths" tend to be all opaque and confusing and ****. "To evaluate Heyward's defense, measure from the fog to the pine, then tread the grass on shoes of gold."

**On the other hand, hurray for Bobby and our crew for mitigating Sheff's defensive deficiencies while here

[jpx7]

*Especially since "Oracular truths" tend to be all opaque and confusing and ****.

Not to mention both chemically and narratively toxic.

[50PoundHead]

Thanks kurganbravo (love the moniker by the way)! I'm old enough to remember the gun-and-bullet (and napalm) war that song was written to protest. I almost had to serve in that little enterprise.

[thewupk]

**On the other hand, hurray for Bobby and our crew for mitigating Sheff's defensive deficiencies while here

That credit goes to Andruw

[zitothebrave]

I think it is hilarious that the statnerds are now the ones who have to point out how bad Adam Dunn's defense is... Oh, if TallahaseeBravo could see us now...

Anyway, Dunn doesn't lose ALL his value to defense. But towards the end of his career he was AWFUL out there, and cost his team a ton of runs.

I'm fine with debating on where the goalposts are in terms of runs saved and credit that goes to the fielder, but the idea is comical now that Adam Dunn isn't a statheads baby anymore. I guess some people just like to be contrarian. When defensive metrics came out about what about a decade or so now a lot of statheads started paying attention to defense, when it became, Ryan Howard isnt' a great player, he's a total butcher in the field, all of the sudden guys like Ryan Howard were heroes for the anti-stat movement. Michael Bourn who should have been a scouthead's dream, he had an amazing glove, was fast, stole a ton of bases, but they all seemingly deserted him for Upton when the statheads here seemed largely if not entirely backing Bourn (I think a few wanted in on Span or Revere)

[Julio3000]

That credit goes to Andruw

Yeah, I think was mostly Andruw, with a smattering of extra motivation from playing for a good, competitive club, under a manager whose respect he wanted to earn and maintain.

[50PoundHead]

I'm fine with debating on where the goalposts are in terms of runs saved and credit that goes to the fielder, but the idea is comical now that Adam Dunn isn't a statheads baby anymore. I guess some people just like to be contrarian. When defensive metrics came out about what about a decade or so now a lot of statheads started paying attention to defense, when it became, Ryan Howard isnt' a great player, he's a total butcher in the field, all of the sudden guys like Ryan Howard were heroes for the anti-stat movement. Michael Bourn who should have been a scouthead's dream, he had an amazing glove, was fast, stole a ton of bases, but they all seemingly deserted him for Upton when the statheads here seemed largely if not entirely backing Bourn (I think a few wanted in on Span or Revere)

But that's the friggin' point Z. I remember all the arguments about Adam Dunn when the deep stats crowd were doing the "three true outcome" thing to death about a decade ago and Dunn was the Pope of that particular baseball denomination. Those of us who had watched baseball for a long time (and appreciated the value of much of what the expansion of statistical analysis was accomplishing) saw Dunn as a one-way player who would have to end up in the AL It's like all of a sudden the stats movement discovered what those of us who liked, but weren't absolutely devoted to, statistical analysis knew all along.

And don't lump me in with anyone who ever wanted anything to do with Melvin Upton. I didn't think he would be this pathetic, but Wren was an absolute idiot to give a contract of that size and length to a non-core player. I was in on the Span/Revere thing. If we had gone that direction, we could have opened the vaults for Heyward.

[Dalyn]

under a manager whose respect he wanted to earn and maintain.

This part is so underrated. The Braves received FAR more Bobby discounts from players than hometown discounts.

[MadduxFanII]

I think the entire Adam Dunn experience, vis a vis stathead expectations vs. reality, came down to a few factors:

1. As mentioned, statheads (and I'll just throw myself in this group and say "we" from now on) didn't really care about defense when he came up. In 2001, Dunn's debut season, we were all still in Three True Outcomes mode, and we didn't credit defense with much value.

2. Dunn wasn't actually a horrific fielder when he came up. It's easy to forget now, but there was a lot of talk about Dunn's athleticism when he was called up- he was a former high school QB, one might recall, and he actually stole 19 bases his first season. Through the first three seasons of his career, Dunn was basically hovering somewhere between average-ish and slightly below. It was only around 2005 that the defense really starting sapping his value.

3. We just plumb overrated Dunn as a hitter. I mean, there's nothing wrong with a career .237/.364/.490 line and a 123 OPS+, but it's not really what we were expecting from Dunn. We were expecting a lot of seasons around, say, .265/.420/.550 or so, with a couple flukish high-BA seasons which saw him around a 1.000 OPS. And on the occasions where he did hit .260 or so, his total line was quite good. But he never could consistently keep the batting average high enough to make his offense elite instead of pretty good, and he needed to be an elite hitter to carry his glove.

[MadduxFanII]

That credit goes to Andruw

In fairness, Andruw also had Chipper on his right. There's a limit to how much even Andruw can shade to both directions.

[thewupk]

In fairness, Andruw also had Chipper on his right. There's a limit to how much even Andruw can shade to both directions.

What a horrible experiement that was