WAR

[msgkings322]

I'm pretty much a novice with advanced stats so I had a couple of questions about WAR.

Is a hypothetical team of all 0.0 WAR players 'supposed' to win 81 games? So then having a 2 WAR guy and a 3 WAR guy projects you to 86 wins?

Is it additive like that, and that simple?

For example, if your 8 starters have WARs of 3.5, 2.5, 2, 2, 1.5, 0.5, 0, -2, and your pitchers have a total of 2 WAR among them, you are projected to win 93 games?

 

[nateistheshi]

I'm pretty much a novice with advanced stats so I had a couple of questions about WAR.

Is a hypothetical team of all 0.0 WAR players 'supposed' to win 81 games? So then having a 2 WAR guy and a 3 WAR guy projects you to 86 wins?

Is it additive like that, and that simple?

For example, if your 8 starters have WARs of 3.5, 2.5, 2, 2, 1.5, 0.5, 0, -2, and your pitchers have a total of 2 WAR among them, you are projected to win 93 games?

I'm starting to get the concept of WAR down, so the answer to your questions are no, no, yes, and sort of. I think that baseball reference and fangraphs both use different formulas for calculating WAR as well as having a different baseline for replacement level. Fangraphs has 48 wins as their replacement level teams win total but I'm not entirely sure about Baseball Reference.

The more I learn about WAR though, the more flawed it really seems that it is. In addition to there being 2 forms of it that don't agree with each other, WAR doesn't accurately account for catcher defense and pitching WAR appears to be all fucked up. Last season fangraphs has John Danks and Gavin Floyd each worth 4.3 WAR while Cain is only worth 4.0 WAR. Cain threw 10 more innings than either of them while walking less hitters and having a K/9 halfway in between each of them and an era of 3.14 compared to 3.72 for Danks, and 4.08 for Floyd. I assume that must be a typo because it's impossible for each of them to be slightly more valuable to their team than a guy who was better for more innings.

 

[msgkings322]

I'm starting to get the concept of WAR down, so the answer to your questions are no, no, yes, and sort of. I think that baseball reference and fangraphs both use different formulas for calculating WAR as well as having a different baseline for replacement level. Fangraphs has 48 wins as their replacement level teams win total but I'm not entirely sure about Baseball Reference.

The more I learn about WAR though, the more flawed it really seems that it is. In addition to there being 2 forms of it that don't agree with each other, WAR doesn't accurately account for catcher defense and pitching WAR appears to be all fucked up. Last season fangraphs has John Danks and Gavin Floyd each worth 4.3 WAR while Cain is only worth 4.0 WAR. Cain threw 10 more innings than either of them while walking less hitters and having a K/9 halfway in between each of them and an era of 3.14 compared to 3.72 for Danks, and 4.08 for Floyd. I assume that must be a typo because it's impossible for each of them to be slightly more valuable to their team than a guy who was better for more innings.

Thanks, that advances the ball for me a little.

Could the example you cited above be due to park and league differences? Those two pitch in a hitters park in the AL so they would be expected to have worse absolute stats.

That said, while Danks to me is comparable (albeit slightly worse than) Cain, Floyd is nowhere near as good. I follow the White Sox pretty closely, so I know a little bit about those two.

 

[tzill]

Thanks, that advances the ball for me a little.

Could the example you cited above be due to park and league differences? Those two pitch in a hitters park in the AL so they would be expected to have worse absolute stats.

That said, while Danks to me is comparable (albeit slightly worse than) Cain, Floyd is nowhere near as good. I follow the White Sox pretty closely, so I know a little bit about those two.

Re: replacement level -- this is NOT a league-average player, but rather a player that is completely replaceable by his team, a AAAA player. The reason that replacement players are used in WAR calculations is that we have a fixed baseline for exactly how much these players are worth--and that is the MLB minimum ($400,000), the lowest possible cost to replace a major league player. A team full of replacement players (25 active, 3 DL) will cost $11,200,000 and will win 30% (or 48.6) of their games. In other words, a team full of replacement players will be horrible. Meanwhile, a team comprised of league-average players would win 81 games. Replacement players suck at the major league level and replacing each one with league-average players is worth about two wins to a team per player. That is, league average players are about 2.0 WAR and valued at about $10MM per year (see: Zito, Barry).

Note also: a player's WAR value multiplied by that year's market cost per marginal win allows one to find the dollar value of a player for that year. Last year, that number was $5.0 million per win as opposed to the average (including non-free agents) of about $2.9 million per MW.

So, the takeaway is that replacing Barry's production through FA would cost about $10MM/yr, but his value to the Giants as a signed player is about $5.8MM. Wins are not linear, meaning that two wins added to a 60 win team are much less valuable than two wins added to a 90 win team.
In that same vein, a two win player for a 60 win team would probably not have that kind of impact on a 90 win team

Hope this helps.

 

[msgkings322]

Re: replacement level -- this is NOT a league-average player, but rather a player that is completely replaceable by his team, a AAAA player. The reason that replacement players are used in WAR calculations is that we have a fixed baseline for exactly how much these players are worth--and that is the MLB minimum ($400,000), the lowest possible cost to replace a major league player. A team full of replacement players (25 active, 3 DL) will cost $11,200,000 and will win 30% (or 48.6) of their games. In other words, a team full of replacement players will be horrible. Meanwhile, a team comprised of league-average players would win 81 games. Replacement players suck at the major league level and replacing each one with league-average players is worth about two wins to a team per player. That is, league average players are about 2.0 WAR and valued at about $10MM per year (see: Zito, Barry).

Note also: a player's WAR value multiplied by that year's market cost per marginal win allows one to find the dollar value of a player for that year. Last year, that number was $5.0 million per win as opposed to the average (including non-free agents) of about $2.9 million per MW.

So, the takeaway is that replacing Barry's production through FA would cost about $10MM/yr, but his value to the Giants as a signed player is about $5.8MM. Wins are not linear, meaning that two wins added to a 60 win team are much less valuable than two wins added to a 90 win team.
In that same vein, a two win player for a 60 win team would probably not have that kind of impact on a 90 win team

Hope this helps.

Very much so. This is an excellent summary for a novice like myself.

So each year the dollar value of a marginal win changes? Is that because of the changing contracts each year, or how the players play, or both? The league in aggregate can only have the same number of wins each year, so is it just in years where guys get paid a lot the $/MW is higher?