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Sale 6th in baseball in WAR


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QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 04:35 PM)
Starting pitcher WAR doesn't make sense to me. A true ace is going to guarantee anywhere from 10-15 wins even on a bad team.

 

As a pitcher, you alone can't guarantee a win, especially in the AL. If your team doesn't score for you, you can't win.

 

 

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QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 05:39 PM)
Agreed here. fWAR is best for starting pitchers, IMO. I'm not sure I like it for relievers, but at least it takes leverage index into account.

 

When Ben Zobrist ranks as one of the best players in baseball, you know it's a flawed system. I've heard they are going to combine in to one exact calculation at some point, but it hasn't happened yet that I know of. The only flaw I've seen w/ fWAR is that they sometimes favor defense too heavily, but overall everyone seems to agree fWAR is overall far superior than bWAR, which, OF COURSE is the on ESPN cites, so people often discredit WAR all together once they see the funky things like Ben Zobrist being an MVP candidate.

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QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 04:43 PM)
When Ben Zobrist ranks as one of the best players in baseball, you know it's a flawed system. I've heard they are going to combine in to one exact calculation at some point, but it hasn't happened yet that I know of. The only flaw I've seen w/ fWAR is that they sometimes favor defense too heavily, but overall everyone seems to agree fWAR is overall far superior than bWAR, which, OF COURSE is the on ESPN cites, so people often discredit WAR all together once they see the funky things like Ben Zobrist being an MVP candidate.

 

Since the beginning of the 2009 season, only Miguel Cabrera, Justin Verlander, Evan Longoria, Joey Votto, Cliff Lee, Robinson Cano, and Felix Hernandez have better fWAR totals than Ben Zobrist.

 

Ben Zobrist is one of the best players in the game and anyone denying that is incredibly short sighted and ignorant. He is by no means a flashy player, but he is an incredibly good player.

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QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 05:43 PM)
When Ben Zobrist ranks as one of the best players in baseball, you know it's a flawed system. I've heard they are going to combine in to one exact calculation at some point, but it hasn't happened yet that I know of. The only flaw I've seen w/ fWAR is that they sometimes favor defense too heavily, but overall everyone seems to agree fWAR is overall far superior than bWAR, which, OF COURSE is the on ESPN cites, so people often discredit WAR all together once they see the funky things like Ben Zobrist being an MVP candidate.

Ben Zobrist has 2.9 bWAR on the season.

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QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 04:43 PM)
When Ben Zobrist ranks as one of the best players in baseball, you know it's a flawed system. I've heard they are going to combine in to one exact calculation at some point, but it hasn't happened yet that I know of. The only flaw I've seen w/ fWAR is that they sometimes favor defense too heavily, but overall everyone seems to agree fWAR is overall far superior than bWAR, which, OF COURSE is the on ESPN cites, so people often discredit WAR all together once they see the funky things like Ben Zobrist being an MVP candidate.

 

Yeah, I'm actually not that familiar with the differences when it comes to position players. I just know that the primary difference for pitcher's is that fWAR uses DIPS theory and rWAR/bWAR use earned runs, which is the basically the same thing as using wins and losses -- bWAR ends up telling you more "what happened while the pitcher was on the mound" whereas fWAR tells you "what the pitcher absolutely contributed on his own." There definitely appears to be something missing from the fWAR equation, namely a pitcher's ability to consistently suppress home runs relative to other hits, but fWAR is conservative in that it would rather miss assigning some credit to a pitcher than definiftely assign too much credit for the sake of completeness. Which, I think makes sense -- it allows you the flexibility of assigning your own value to the things that the math hasn't been able to nail down. it allows you to be subjective about the subjective things, whereas bWAR attempts to weigh factors that no one has been able to accurately weigh.

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QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 04:35 PM)
Starting pitcher WAR doesn't make sense to me. A true ace is going to guarantee anywhere from 10-15 wins even on a bad team.

 

You're looking at it wrong. It isn't saying Sale is only worth 6 wins, it's saying he's worth 6 wins ABOVE REPLACEMENT. So it's really 6 wins above what a guy like, say, Dylan Axelrod would contribute.

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QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 05:03 PM)
A "replacement player" is worth 0 wins right? A player like Chris Sale is going to guarantee you at least 10 wins by dominating games.

 

No. a replacement player is worth 0 wins above replacement. because he's a replacement player. A team full of replacement players is expected to win like 40-something games.

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QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 06:03 PM)
A "replacement player" is worth 0 wins right? A player like Chris Sale is going to guarantee you at least 10 wins by dominating games.

No. A roster full of "replacement players" would not win 0 games. It'd win something like 40 games.

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I don't see how this is news. ESPN uses bWAR and the stat can be found on ESPN since its inception last year.

 

I do think bWAR place too high of an emphasis on park factor, that's why, according to them, Sale is the second best pitcher this season. Other than Derek Holland ranking ahead of Sale, I pretty much agree with what the fWAR numbers are suggesting.

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QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 05:34 PM)
I don't care about this WAR garbage, I just look at his W/L record, tells you all you need to know.

 

- Hawk Harrleson

 

Right except it absolutely doesn't, lol. It tells you which teams have played the best relative to the ones they've played against. If that's the question you're asking, then yes, it tells you all you need to know.

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QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 05:20 PM)
You know it's a great stat when everybody calculates it differently.

 

They don't though. They are different numbers and you should decide to like or hate them based on their own merits. It makes no sense to say fWAR sucks because bWAR sucks, for example.

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QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 05:40 PM)
Right except it absolutely doesn't, lol. It tells you which teams have played the best relative to the ones they've played against. If that's the question you're asking, then yes, it tells you all you need to know.

W/L record for a pitcher is pointless, it's amazing how many people still use it as a important metric.

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QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Aug 19, 2013 -> 05:42 PM)
They don't though. They are different numbers and you should decide to like or hate them based on their own merits. It makes no sense to say fWAR sucks because bWAR sucks, for example.

 

Well until these geniuses get together and create one standard WAR stat then I say they both suck. :)

Edited by LittleHurt05
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