That doesn't make sense to me. You are saying, based on how I'm reading it, that the fact that WAR doesn't work because it doesn't value a player you feel like it should. Just because you say that Bench should be as valued as, say, Mel Ott, you've given nothing of substance to back that up other than the common trope that catchers do more than other position players, thus they have to be valued that high. By what standard? What did each specific catcher do that points to that conclusion? clayton mentioned that Bench was good at controlling the running game. Great! That is something at least. Does that mean the deficiencies in WAR calculations really mean he was worth at least 17 more WAR then given on that basis alone?
| ERA #1 | ERA #5 | WHIP #1 | WHIP #5 | WAR #1 | WAR#5 | BPOT | |
| Kershaw | 5 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 1 |
| Seaver | 3 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 8 | 1 |
| alexander | 4 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 0 |
| Gibson | 1 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 1 |
| verlander | 2 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 1 |
| koufax | 5 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| nichols | 0 | 6 | 3 | 7 | 4 | 5 | NA |
You are not going to rank RBs based on their QBR. It is a stat that does not reflect their value of a running back.
An issue with just this process itself is we'd probably have voted in a catcher already if Berra and Bench weren't splitting votes. Not at all a complaint just interesting.
And that is the other thing that really puzzles me on this catcher conversation. Bench's WAR is 75.1 and Berra's is 59.5. How are the two equal?
I've never leaned in to football stats like baseball so I'm not equipped to get your analogy. Besides, it is a total different sport.
Only person who will put up a defense of Koufax over Kershaw is a guy who votes for neither. It would be nice to hear why those voting for Koufax are doing so over Kershaw.
Except Kershaw was able to be dominant for many more seasons than Koufax and, while Koufax wasn't able to pitch for very long, his first 7 seasons were a lot more pedestrian than anything Kershaw has done in the regular season.
I see the argument, but there wasn’t an issue of Bonds and Mays splitting votes. Or Ruth and Gehrig. Bench and Yogi weren’t getting any attention at all until just the last couple rounds.
WAR is very flawed as we have discussed. Post season leadership has to count, Yogi was a 10x WS winner, 18x all star, same OPS+ as Bench, higher OPS, one more MVP (we can play games with who 'shoulda' won that almost every year, although I do agree some years are worse than others).
Vogey is a modern (some-what) comp to Koufax (only about 27 levels lower). He was a journeyman pitcher until he finally figured it out for the last few years of his career where he took the HUGE step to be one of the best pitchers in the game for a short period. Vogey was a legit AS level pitcher for 2 or 3 years where Koufax was a legit AS pitcher for 5 or 6 seasons. And Koufax’s “bad” years were much better than Vogey’s “bad” years.
