Author Topic: Stats. Giggity!  (Read 38839 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline JCA-CrystalCity

  • Global Moderator
  • ****
  • Posts: 39371
  • Platoon - not just a movie, a baseball obsession
Re: Stats. Giggity!
« Reply #75: February 04, 2013, 01:33:52 PM »
Nice article on the use and misuse of WAR as a stat, written in response to Jim Caple's ESPN piece objecting to WAR.  I'll excerpt pieces, and highlight some in red.  First, Cameron agrees the stat is misused:
Quote
we’ve probably all seen instances where WAR was used to end a discussion rather than promote one. Caple’s correct that WAR was never designed to be the only statistic that matters, nor should we view it as some kind of infallible truth. It is not a perfect metric; it contains some imperfect inputs and it does not sum up the entirety of baseball in a single number.
Then he asks a basic question about stats:
Quote
However, I think it’s worth talking about why WAR has become so ubiquitous over the past few years, and what its sudden rise in popularity should tell us about every kind of statistic. And I’ll start by leading off with Caple’s final two sentences:

"We need to look at many stats to assess players, and one of them should be WAR. But it shouldn’t be the only stat we look at or cite."

To that last statement, I’ll respond with a question: what is the point of any useful statistic? To me, a good stat is simply the answer to a question that is commonly asked.

Whether it is batting average, strikeout rate, swing percentage, or average velocity, each one was designed to answer a pretty simple question. How often does that player get a hit? How often does he swing? How hard did that pitcher throw his fastball? These are questions that are worth asking, and so we track things in baseball that allow us to answer those questions with data, assuring us of getting a pretty accurate answer in most cases. In fact, I think a litmus test for the usefulness of a statistic can be simply translating the definition into a question and figuring out how often anyone ever asks that question?

Let’s take Wins for a pitcher, for instance. For a long time, they’ve been hailed as one of the most important statistics in baseball, but the actual question that statistic is answering goes something like this:

“How many times did that pitcher complete at least five innings, leave the game with his team having outscored the opponents through the point at which he was removed, and then watch his relievers finish the game for him without surrendering the lead that his teammates helped create in the first place?”

No one would ever ask that question. It’s not something that’s worth knowing, nor does it help anyone understand what actually happened in any real way.


What does WAR answer?  Try this example:

Quote
If someone who didn’t know anything about baseball came up to you and asked you who the best player in baseball was right now, your answer would probably be someone from the group of Mike Trout, Miguel Cabrera, Buster Posey, Ryan Braun, Robinson Cano, Joey Votto, or Justin Verlander. But, what would you tell them if they then asked why?

Well, Miguel Cabrera has the highest batting average of any qualified player over the last three years, but that doesn’t answer the question of why he’s a better hitter than Joey Votto, who is number one in on base percentage. And how would you even begin to explain why Cano’s slugging percentage relative to other second baseman is more impressive than Verlander’s ERA? It’s not just apples and oranges anymore; now we’re mixing in things like sriracha, oreos, and Copper River Salmon, and it’s becoming a question of individual preference.

At that point, when the conversation is just beginning, something like WAR is exactly what you need, because it attempts to answer the very basic question that is being asked: “Is this guy better than that guy?”
...
There are thousands of baseball statistics. Most of them are narrow, precise instruments that provide a single answer to a simple question. Pretty much all of them are incapable of answering the single most asked question in baseball, which is why an all-encompassing metric like WAR has risen to prominence in the first place.

Rather than passing WAR off as the be all, end all, stat to make judgments on a player, Cameron suggests:

Quote
There are simply times when someone asks a general, imprecise question about the value of a certain player, and WAR is the perfect tool to provide a general imprecise answer to that question.
...
WAR is a great place to start that conversation. It is a fantastic filter, grouping players into manageable sizes of comparable performances, allowing for further evaluation of those who are candidates for the answer, depending on what the question is. It is not precise enough that anyone should be declaring a definitive answer based on a decimal point difference. Just like every other statistic in baseball, a one year result does not equal a player’s true talent level, so don’t claim that WAR thinks that Chase Headley is a better player than Miguel Cabrera. Depending on what question you’re asking, you may very well want to give less weight to a player’s defensive rating.

WAR is not the be-all, end-all of baseball statistics. However, it serves a great function as a good answer to a commonly asked question, and at the end of the day, that is really the entire point of a statistic. There are times when one wants to do a deep dive into every aspect of a player’s overall game, and WAR is not the right tool for that job. But, as a quick summary of a player’s overall value, it is the best tool for the job.

Great comment:

Quote
Tangotiger says:
February 4, 2013 at 10:12 am
There is no flaw in WAR. If you use a hammer on a screw, it’s not the hammer’s fault.