Poll

Which WAR(P) are you?

fWAR
brWAR
WARP
WAR - What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!

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Offline Lintyfresh85

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What WAR(P) are you?
« Topic Start: December 14, 2012, 12:04:18 PM »
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19163

Quote
Much, perhaps too much, is made of the multiple models existent that attempt to characterize a player's value relative to replacement level. "A man with one watch always knows the time, while a man with two watches can never be sure," is an expression. Most of the time, though, WAR, WARP, and WAR are close allies.

For those that are unfamiliar with WAR(P)

fWAR - Is Fangraphs attempt at assigning value to a player.

Quote
Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is an attempt by the sabermetric baseball community to summarize a player’s total contributions to their team in one statistic. You should always use more than one metric at a time when evaluating players, but WAR is pretty darn all-inclusive and provides a handy reference point. WAR basically looks at a player and asks the question, “If this player got injured and their team had to replace them with a minor leaguer or someone from their bench, how much value would the team be losing?” This value is expressed in a wins format, so we could say that Player X is worth +6.3 wins to their team while Player Y is only worth +3.5 wins.

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

brWAR - Is Baseball Reference's attempt at assigning value to a player.

Quote
The idea behind the WAR framework is that we want to know how much better a player is than what a team would typically have to replace that player. We start by comparing the player to average in a variety of venues and then compare our theoretical replacement player to the average player and add the two results together.

There is no one way to determine WAR. There are hundreds of steps to make this calculation, and dozens of places where reasonable people can disagree on the best way to implement a particular part of the framework. We have taken the utmost care and study at each step in the process, and believe all of our choices are well reasoned and defensible. But WAR is necessarily an approximation and will never be as precise or accurate as one would like.

We present the WAR values with decimal places because this relates the WAR value back to the runs contributed (as one win is about ten runs), but you should not take any full season difference between two players of less than one to two wins to be definitive (especially when the defensive metrics are included).

http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained.shtml

WARP - Is Basebal Prospectus's attempt at assigning value to a player.

Quote
Wins Above Replacement Player is Prospectus' attempt at capturing a player' total value. This means considering playing time, position, batting, baserunning, and defense for batters, and role, innings pitched, and quality of performance for pitchers.

Perhaps no sabermetric theory is more abstract than that of the replacement-level player. Essentially, replacement-level players are of a caliber so low that they are always available in the minor leagues because the players are well below major-league average. Prospectus' definition of replacement level contends that a team full of such players would win a little over 50 games. This is a notable increase in replacement level from previous editions of Wins Above Replacement Player.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/glossary/index.php?search=WARP

Comparison sheet by BR that explains all the differences - http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained_comparison.shtml

Offline zimm_da_kid

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #1: December 14, 2012, 12:26:02 PM »
Fangraphs all the way

Offline wpa2629

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #2: December 14, 2012, 12:47:17 PM »
Win Probability Added - it's the only thing that matters

WPA all the way for me ...

:thumbs:

Offline Mattionals

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #3: December 14, 2012, 01:46:31 PM »





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Offline Count Walewski

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #4: December 14, 2012, 02:46:33 PM »
Didn't this used to be called VORP? I also thought there were WARP2 and WARP3 stats.

I don't use these advanced stats for the same reason I don't use the metric system: I acknowledge their theroetical superiority, but I don't have a sense in my head of what's a high number and what's a low number. I know what 100 feet is, I can visualize that, I don't know what 3 meters is, I can't visualize that.

So what is a respectable OPS or WAR? Which numbers should impress me here?

Online HalfSmokes

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #5: December 14, 2012, 02:49:20 PM »
Didn't this used to be called VORP? I also thought there were WARP2 and WARP3 stats.

I don't use these advanced stats for the same reason I don't use the metric system: I acknowledge their theroetical superiority, but I don't have a sense in my head of what's a high number and what's a low number. I know what 100 feet is, I can visualize that, I don't know what 3 meters is, I can't visualize that.

So what is a respectable OPS or WAR? Which numbers should impress me here?

I think VORP is BP's proprietary stat

Offline blue911

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #6: December 14, 2012, 02:54:21 PM »
VORP is offense only.

Offline houston-nat

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #7: December 14, 2012, 02:56:59 PM »
So what is a respectable OPS or WAR? Which numbers should impress me here?

For fWAR, wins over a replacement player, I tend to think of it as something like

1-2: meh, decent, beats a AAAA guy
3: pretty solid regular
5: really good regular, potential All-Star
7+: seriously great

This is roughly borne out by a look at the 2012 Nats
5.4 - Gio Gonzalez
5.4 - Ian Desmond
4.9 - Bryce Harper
4.5 - Ryan Zimmerman (WAR obviously doesn't know he was injured; in 2009-10 he was over 7 WAR per year)
1.9 - Roger Bernadina
1.8 - Ross Detwiler

For relievers, anything above 2.0 WAR is flat-out crazy awesome, like 8 WAR for position players or starters. Thus Craig Stammen = 0.8 WAR, Craig Kimbrel = 3.6 WAR.

Offline The Chief

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #8: December 14, 2012, 02:59:31 PM »
Warp speed, Mr. Sulu.

Online HalfSmokes

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #9: December 14, 2012, 03:01:05 PM »
With pithcers, WAR loves Ks (based off of fip, so what could have happened means more that what did happen), so Edwin Jackson (4.03 era over 189 innings) has a 2.7 WAR while a guy like Lannan can pitch 184 innings with a 3.7 ERA and come out with a 1.4 WAR

Online nobleisthyname

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #10: December 14, 2012, 05:55:24 PM »
Yeah pitcher fWAR isn't all that great but I like it a lot for position players. Of course, it's still not the end all be all stat it tries to be.

Online nobleisthyname

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #11: December 14, 2012, 06:04:53 PM »
So what is a respectable OPS or WAR? Which numbers should impress me here?

Houston-Nat broke down WAR well enough. As for OPS a better stat to use is .wOBA (weighted on base overage). It's more complicated to calculate but the general consensus is that it is more accurate as OPS weighs slugging and on base percentage equally when it has been shown that being able to get on base is nearly twice as valuable. wOBA accounts for this. Plus it is on a scale we are more used to (OBP).

But to answer your question anyway, it really depends on position. An OPS or wOBA that's considered great at one position (SS, CF) may be mediocre or worse at another position (1B, LF, RF). Here's a quick scale for reference:

OPS:

Excellent - 1.000
Great - 0.900
Above Average - 0.800
Average - 0.730
Below Average - 0.700
Poor - 0.600
Awful - 0.550

wOBA:

Excellent - 0.400
Great - 0.370
Above Average - 0.340
Average - 0.320
Below Average - 0.310
Poor - 0.300
Awful - 0.290

SOURCE: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/index.php/offense/

Offline Nathan

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #12: December 14, 2012, 07:24:27 PM »
Warp speed, Mr. Sulu.

Aww, you beat me.  But I was going to reference a real captain instead...

Warp 7,


Offline Vega

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #13: December 14, 2012, 08:00:05 PM »
I do not know how WAR is calculated, but from what I understand about the stat, it's sort of a summary stat that generalizes a player's productivity. It's sort of useful I guess, but if one wants to really understand a player as well as possible, one should look at other more specific stats too. In short, it's a neat stat, but people who worship it are silly.

Offline spidernat

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Re: What WAR(P) are you?
« Reply #14: December 14, 2012, 08:52:40 PM »
Warp speed, Mr. Sulu.

Aww, you beat me.  But I was going to reference a real captain instead...

Warp 7,

(Image removed from quote.)

You both beat me to it.

"steady as she goes"