Sale 6th in baseball in WAR

[Eminor3rd]

Would I rather have the guy who consistently 2ER in 7IP instead of the guy with 4ER in 6IP? Well duh. But if the latter guy, over the course of a few seasons, consistently gets wins throwing like that, I'm going to give him a bit of credit for at the end of the day getting the W.

 

This doesn't make sense to me. You've successfully isolated how much of the effort can be attributed to the pitcher, why wouldn't you just judge him on that? Why would you add or subtract credit for how well his teammates played?

[southsider2k5]

1st bolded: Everyone tries to throw a shutout. Some are better at holding onto leads than others, whether that means giving up 4 ER in 6 IP or 2 ER in 7IP.

 

2nd bolded: That's why I said over the course of a few years, not one year, and definitely not one game as you indicated.

 

Would I rather have the guy who consistently 2ER in 7IP instead of the guy with 4ER in 6IP? Well duh. But if the latter guy, over the course of a few seasons, consistently gets wins throwing like that, I'm going to give him a bit of credit for at the end of the day getting the W.

 

I think the gray area would be a little different. Example being that, say your team jumps out to a big lead early on. If you are strike out pitcher do you still pitch to avoid contact and most likely end up with a higher pitch count, or do you pitch more to contact, and look to get outs earlier in the count? In the first example, odds are you give up less runs, throw more pitches, and go deeper into the bullpen. In the second example you give up probably more runs, throw less pitches, and save the pen for another day. The second one is going to reflect more poorly on a pitcher's individual stats, but would probably be more helpful to his team in the long run.

[farmteam]

Why? The offensive production of his team got him the "w", not his pitching.

Because I think there's something to be said for having TWTW, at least on a small scale

 

It's a different way of saying some guys pitch better under pressure. Except in this instance, the pressure is maintaining a lead.

[farmteam]

I have an idea of what you are trying to say. That being able to hold a lead and pitch to the situation is valuable. But it's certainly not valuable enough to determine a pitcher's value when something like that is also not totally up to the pitcher.

Ding ding ding. That's why I said it's not nearly as valuable as many other metrics, and why it would be silly to judge him solely or even substantially on that.

[southsider2k5]

But you can just look at how pitchers perform with runners on or in high leverage situations. Why create a proxy for something when you can just look at the actual numbers?

 

I'm still not sure I get what you want. Is it RA9-WAR? That's a relatively new FanGraphs stat where it calculates WAR based on ERA instead of FIP: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/introducing...ndent-pitching/

 

None of the stats I have seen give me what I want to see. That's the whole point. Take a pitcher, put him into different situations, and see how successful he is when things that aren't his fault are included. Take a guy like Javy Vazquez. Statistics loved the guy, but he always seemed to find a way to lose a game. A guy like Mark Buerhle who was statistically inferior in a lot of ways, usually found a way to win even if something bad happened behind him. I'd like to see a way to statistically quantify how big of a winner a guy is versus how big of a winner he should be for his stuff. Can he over come errors? Can he over come bad offense? Even though stats might say guys are similar, but their results might not be.

[Eminor3rd]

None of the stats I have seen give me what I want to see. That's the whole point. Take a pitcher, put him into different situations, and see how successful he is when things that aren't his fault are included. Take a guy like Javy Vazquez. Statistics loved the guy, but he always seemed to find a way to lose a game. A guy like Mark Buerhle who was statistically inferior in a lot of ways, usually found a way to win even if something bad happened behind him. I'd like to see a way to statistically quantify how big of a winner a guy is versus how big of a winner he should be for his stuff. Can he over come errors? Can he over come bad offense? Even though stats might say guys are similar, but their results might not be.

 

Did you read the RA9 wins articles? I think comparing Ra9 wins to fWAR might be exactly that.

[Eminor3rd]

Because I think there's something to be said for having TWTW, at least on a small scale

 

It's a different way of saying some guys pitch better under pressure. Except in this instance, the pressure is maintaining a lead.

 

I think the TWTW is real, I just don't think that the Wins statistic quantifies it.

[IlliniKrush]

This doesn't make sense to me. You've successfully isolated how much of the effort can be attributed to the pitcher, why wouldn't you just judge him on that? Why would you add or subtract credit for how well his teammates played?

Exactly this.

[nickofypres]

Not to sound like a total n00b here, but what is the diff between fWAR and bWAR and when should they be applied, and to whom?

 

Sorry if its been answered already, I'm too lazy to read through this mess.

[chw42]

Not to sound like a total n00b here, but what is the diff between fWAR and bWAR and when should they be applied, and to whom?

 

Sorry if its been answered already, I'm too lazy to read through this mess.

 

The main difference is how they evaluate defense and pitching.

 

For fWAR (FanGraphs WAR), FIP is used to calculate pitcher WAR (for relievers, leverage index is also taken into account to give closers more value) and UZR is used to evaluate player defense. FanGraphs took the all or nothing approach. Since ERA is defense dependent, they won't use it. Instead, they only take into account what the pitcher can control (components of FIP, which are HR, BB, HBP, and IP).

 

bWAR (Baseball-Reference WAR) uses ERA and a team's fielding to determine pitcher WAR and Total Zone to evaluate player defense. This may sound good in theory, but the validity of applying Total Zone to pitchers over a sample size of 200 innings seems iffy, IMO.

 

I'm actually not sure what differences there are offensively (I've never really delved into that part for bWAR).

 

Usually, bWAR gives you some very odd WAR leaderboards at the end of the year (Darwin Barney was worth 36 runs above average on defense last year...WHAT?). As does fWAR, but to most statheads (at least on this site), fWAR is much more popular and much more agreed upon.

Edited August 21, 2013 by chw42

[nickofypres]

Thanks, man.

Edited August 21, 2013 by whitesox901

[witesoxfan]

Regarding bWAR and fWAR for hitters, it appears the biggest differences are defensively. Both use wRAA (and wOBA to calculate that) to calculate the batting value.

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/library/misc/war/

http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/wa...ined_wraa.shtml

 

fWAR uses UZR to determine defensive value, bWAR uses DRS for players after 2003 and TZR for players before 2003.

 

Also, the positional adjustments are slightly different as well. Here's fWAR

 

Catcher: +12.5 runs (all are per 162 defensive games)

First Base: -12.5 runs

Second Base: +2.5 runs

Third Base: +2.5 runs

Shortstop: +7.5 runs

Left Field: -7.5 runs

Center Field: +2.5 runs

Right Field: -7.5 runs

Designated Hitter: -17.5 runs

 

and here's bWAR

 

1.C: +10 runs

2.SS: +7.5 runs

3.2B: +3 runs

4.CF: +2.5 runs

5.3b: +2 runs

6.RF: -7.5 runs

7.LF: -7.5 runs

8.1B: -10 runs

9.DH: -15 runs

10.P: see Pitcher Positional Adjustment

 

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

Rather than start a new thread I'll just put this here. This is a "what if" article. The "what if" being what if Scherzer pitched for the White Sox and Sale pitched for the Tigers this year. It's not scientific by any means. The writer just switched some game stats around. His conclusion : Scherzer would be 15-7 for the Sox and Sale would be 19-2 with the Tigers. http://www.platoonadvantage.com/2013-artic...iel-zarchy.html