Does Mike Trout Have a Chance at MVP?

It's scary, really. Mike Trout has spent 40-something games this year in civilian clothes with a torn ligament in his thumb. And he still might be the most valuable player in the league. 

In all of baseball, actually.

Per game played, Trout is out-performing the amazing Mike Trout. Consider the baseline for that statement. In his first five seasons he has been the best player in the league each season. (The writers have seen fit to bestow upon him the MVP just twice, but he's finished second three times.)

Yet this year, at the ripe old age of 25, he's surpassed even that level of accomplishment.

Trout leads baseball in on base percentage, the measure of how few outs he makes.

He leads baseball in slugging percentage, a measure of power. 

Obviously, he leads in OPS, the measure of all-around hitting prowess. He's hitting 91% better than the average batter. Not including pitchers. 

Trout has also stolen 21 of 25 bases and plays stellar defense in the most demanding outfield position. 

Trout is, by far, the game's best player. 

That is, among the greatest ballplayers on the planet, a collection of hitting and fielding savants whose talents are nearly unfathomable, Trout stands head and shoulders above the most elite of that group. He has been worth six wins above a replacement player in just 102 games. That's a rate of more than nine wins for the season.

That's the issue, though. Even if Trout plays in the Angels' remaining 14 games, he will have missed nearly two months of play. During that time, he contributed as much on the field as you have.

Jose Altuve has missed four games. During the other 42 that Trout was hurt, Altuve was Altuving. 

Altuve is no Trout because no one is. He's merely leading the league in batting, getting on base at a 40% clip and ripping 38 doubles and 23 homers. He's also swiped 31 of 37 bases and earned high marks for keystone defense. 

He's basically Trout light. Or short.

Altuve's performance has been worth seven wins above replacement to the Astros. That's far short of Trout's value per game, but nearly a full win more of raw value over the course of the season. 

We're talking about the Most Valuable Player award. It's Altuve's to lose and there isn't much time left for him to lose it. (I should mention here that Andrelton Simmons is close to Altuve in WAR, but much of that is defensive WAR, which we trust much less. Aaron Judge is a few non-significant ticks ahead of Trout also. Neither will out-poll Altuve.)

So Mike Trout will likely once again fail to win the MVP. At least he's got this: he's now the most valuable player in Angels' team history -- after six seasons. 

And early next season he'll pass David Ortiz's career mark. Just start carving that bust now.

Mike Trout Is About To Pass Nolan Ryan

Every month I attend presentations of my industry trade group's local chapter. Speakers come from out of town and often tell us what we already know but haven't been doing, at least not optimally. I often walk away with a renewed commitment to do some old thing better.

We should likewise check in now and then on the centrifugal force that is Mike Trout. Now in his fifth Major League season at age 24, Trout is #5 on the WAR chart for all who have worn the uniform of the Los Angeles Anaheim California Angels of Anaheim, California. 

Or Is He Fourth?
Read fast, because by the time you are done, he might be fourth. He's a sliver of a win behind Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan, who pitched eight seasons for the then-California Angels.

Or third. He's a larger fraction of a win behind Tim Salmon, whose entire 14-year career was spent with the club, first with California, then with Anaheim, and at the end with Los Angeles of Anaheim.

Being Mike Trout in 2016
Through May 4, Trout was hitting .317, slugging seven homers, sparkling in center field and accounting for about two wins against replacement. At the rate he's going he'll conclude the season in second place all-time among Angel players, leapfrogging Jim Fregosi along the way. It'll take a sixth campaign to overtake Chuck Finley for first place, but that's getting ahead of ourselves.

We don't want to gaze off into the forest and neglect appreciating the mighty redwood standing before us. Or maybe it should be the ocean and the mighty Trout.

OPS Is Dead; Long Live TAv!

Remember when those statistics geeks dragged their pencil necks out of the ooze of their mothers' basements and dropped their complicated nerd numbers on us, numbers like OPS and WAR? They made unreasonable demands on us, like understanding obtuse concepts: "getting on base is good" and "hitting for power is more than home runs."

And then, just when we picked up the spin on those knuckleballs they were throwing us, they began firing heat, telling us OPS wasn't the end-all. No, it turns out we could gloat that they were wrong all along, those Moneyball pocket protectors. We know that science should make a pronouncement and that should be The Truth forever, without any revisions or further inquiry. So now when they decide that wOBA is a more useful statistic, they're just admitting they were wrong.

So now we have wOBA, weighted on base average, which "combines all the different aspects of hitting into one metric, weighting each of them in proportion to their actual run value. While batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage fall short in accuracy and scope, wOBA measures and captures offensive value more accurately and comprehensively," according to Fangraphs.

OPS values slugging as equal to on base percentage, when in fact getting on base safely is nearly twice as important to a team's ability to score runs as slugging is. That's why OPS always over-rated the big lugs who walk, strikeout and go yard and under-rated skeeters who Baltimore-chop their way aboard, steal second and score on a sac fly.

 wOBA is tuned to the pitch of average on-base percentage, or roughly .320. So if you see that Yan Gomes posted a wOBA of .340 last year, you know that the Indians' catcher was an above-average hitter. (He's also a quality backstop worth nearly five wins for the Tribe last year. He's an under-appreciated ballplayer.) Ordinary fans can't calculate wOBA because the formula is complicated and requires facility with the cosmic mysteries of multiplication and division.

For 2015, wOBA will be one of our go-to statistics for hitters. So will TAv, or True Average,  a similar measurement scaled to batting average (where average is .260) that accounts for park factors and league quality, but not for baserunning. It is also beyond the derivation powers of ordinary humans without green eyeshades and solved Rubic's cube puzzles. Potato tomahto.

Sometimes we want total value wrapped up in a single package with a nice ribbon. WAR, wins above replacement, wins the Oscar for best performance in The Theory of Everything, flawed though its performance is. WAR includes a defensive component, which still inspires chuckling, but does compare players to others at their position. An average defender in right field with a .340 wOBA is not nearly as valuable as an average defender with a .340 wOBA behind the plate.

WAR is becoming more popular, and not just because the deformed brains of Boko Haram and Daesh are on rampages that inspire war in their corners of the world. WAR provides one-stop shopping for a player's tangible value to his team in games won, taking into account offense and defense, park factors, league averages and replacement value. And it's becoming ubiquitous, which hikes its value as a statistic, as long as it's consumed with a grain of salt even by those with high blood pressure.

Look for wOBA, TAv and WAr in this space to replace OPS and OPS+, which once upon a time replaced batting average, home runs and RBIs. It's called "learning." Don't tell Boko Haram.

Carlos Delgado Deserves This Homage

He slammed 473 home runs and knocked in 1512 runs in his illustrious career. He posted a lifetime OPS of .929, 38% above average. He earned MVP votes seven times. He was beloved by teammates and above steroid reproach. And even in his final season, bedeviled by hip injuries, he continued his on base and slugging ways, with a .914 OPS.

And yet Carlos Delgado fell like a stone from the Hall of Fame ballot after one appearance.

Delgado was a spectacular hitter. He took walks and pounded mistakes, cracking 38 or more homers seven times and knocking home 100+ runs nine times. In 2000, at age 28, he batted .344, with 57 doubles, 41 homers and 102 walks, and posted an 1.134 OPS, 81% better than average, even in the big bat era.

Delgado lifted his teammates; just ask them. When fellow Blue Jay Shawn Green signed a big free agent deal with the Dodgers, he credited Delgado for his success.

Despite the injuries, Delgado continued slugging and served as an eminence grise with the Mets during their 2006 playoff run, the only one of his career. He left the game with 500 homers in sight but his dignity intact. He remains the Blue Jays' career leader in home runs, RBIs, doubles, walks, runs scored and OPS. ESPN's Jayson Stark calls him "the best player in history to get booted off the Hall of Fame ballot after his first year."

Carlos Delgado wasn't a Hall of Famer. History is littered with immobile sluggers at first base; Delgado posted the 35th most WAR among players at his position. The logjam on the ballot, combined with a paucity of post-season heroics, further conspired against him. But Carlos Delgado deserves to be remembered for his near-great career.

The NL MVP: Stolen By A Pirate

Yadier Molina is the Adonis of backstops. He commands the defense, terrorizes baserunners, and frames pitches. He rakes like an outfielder -- .316 BA with 55 extra base hits.  And as a catcher, he's well-nigh irreplaceable. (His understudy hit .205 with an OPS 300 points lower.)

The green eye shades, however, don't consistently hold Molina's skill set in high regard. Some fielding metrics even ding him for his glove work. None of the valuation systems seem to credit him appropriately for his prowess at the bat despite squatting for 1300 innings a year. Consequently, you would not find Molina's name on the short list of MVP candidates in Seamhead Land. Baseball Prospectus credits Molina with 4.0 wins against replacement. Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference have him at 5.4 and 5.7 respectively.

This seems preposterous for a player who plays a role in literally every single pitch, and it leaves us all wondering how else to value him. Compare him, for example, to teammate Matt Carpenter, who covered second and third base while playing almost every Cardinal game and compiling a .325/.391/.486 line, with a league-leading 55 doubles. Carpenter's 41 point-advantage in OPS over 25 more games are certainly a yawning gap, particularly from a player staffing a low-offense position. Carpenter is credited with about one extra win compared to Molina.

When considering the MVP the one and only consideration should be how much value the player brought to his team. There is one statistic, variously called Wins Against Replacement (WAR) or Wins Against Replacement Player (WARP), that is designed to compile all the elements -- on-base ability, power-hitting, baserunning, defense -- multiplied by the level of competition and the offensive proclivities of the relevant ballparks, all while accounting for replacement level at the player's position. On that last item, a first baseman or right fielder is held to a higher hitting standard than a shortstop or catcher.

We could all take the day off if that one statistic picked the crop, bundled it and carried it off to market. But defensive statistics are still crawling and learning their ABCs; we have limited faith in them. So let's view the candidates through the statistical lens of offense, and season the results with defense.

Matt Carpenter, 2B/3B      .325/.391/.486,   .877 OPS   66.4 VORP   good defensive flexibility
Andrew McCutchen, CF    .317/.404/.508,  .912 OPS   65.0 VORP   highlight-reel defense
Shin-soo Choo, CF            .286/.424/.464   .888 OPS   63.1 VORP    a RF masquerading as a CF
Joey Votto, 1B                 .306/.436/.492,  .928 OPS   55.8 VORP    Gold Glove defense
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B       .302/.401/.553,  .954 OPS   53.0 VORP    superb defense
Jayson Werth, RF            .318/.398/.535   .933 OPS    44.8 VORP   average outfielder
Buster Posey, C                .294/.369/.451   .820 OPS   44.1 VORP    good D at key position
Yadier Molina, C               .319/.359/.477,  .836 OPS   40.6 VORP   elite D at key position
Freddie Freeman, 1B      .319/.396/.502   .898 OPS   39.3 VORP    good defense
Carlos Gomez, CF            .325/.391/.486   .877 OPS   38.7 VORP   superb D at key position


(There is WAR/WARP for pitchers, which filters out defense and examines the underlying performance of the thrower. It's a slow-moving revolution in which you should not invest short-term money.)

There are a lot of legitimate contenders here and reasonable people may pick different names for the top of their ballot. Goldschmidt owns the slugging, OPS, HR and RBI titles for 2013. Votto and Choo are 1-2 in OBP and should be expecting Valentine's chocolates from Brandon Phillips. Carpenter's ability to cover the corner gives manager Mike Matheny options. Posey and Molina have value that seems to elude the system.

But the best MVP catch is The Cutch, Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen. He hits, runs (27 of 37 steals) and flashes leather. He's the key cog in the Bucs' playoff push, turning it on (1.015 OPS) in the last two months. For his mix of skills McCutchen is also the NL leader in WAR, worth 8.2 wins against replacement, a full win better than anyone else.

Before departing, a shout out to three star performers who weren't on the field enough. Hanley Ramirez and David Wright have their bodies to blame; Yasiel Puig languished in Chattanooga for 40 games. Extrapolated to a full season, that trio would rank 1-2-3 respectively in the MVP race.
Ramirez, the Dodger shortstop, posted an OPS over 1000 and was worth five wins in just 86 games. And remember how the league would catch up to Puig? Well, it's catching its breath instead. He ended the season at .321/.392/.537 and 42 extra base hits in less than 2/3rds of a season. Wait until he learns the game...

The Guns of August: Declaring the Wrong WAR

It was inevitable.

Seamheads like me lobby for years to get better measurements accepted into the game of baseball. Ditch the team metrics that accrue to individuals like pitcher wins, runs and RBI in favor of FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching), OPS (On-base average plus slugging percentage) and VORP (batting value over replacement player).

Then, after repeatedly confronted with the vast utility advantage of the new stats, the guardians of baseball finally breakdown and adopt them. Haltingly. Gingerly. Slowly. But they do it.

So now even retrograde outlets like Fox Sports and my little hometown paper reference WAR (wins against replacement) on occasion. Yea!

...And they butcher it. Well, "butcher" overstates the error and understates the problem. Butchery would be easy to correct. They miss the nuance in WAR and as a result, misuse it, mis-perceive it and misunderstand it.

WAR (and its cousin, WARP) does yeoman's work. It purports to wrap a player's entire value -- hitting, pitching, fielding, base running -- into one stat, adjusted for ballpark and competition and defensive position. It's zero-calorie, no-fat, chocolate peanut butter coffee ice cream that's high in Vitamin D and anti-oxidants.

But about every fourth gallon, there's a rat hair in the ice cream. It's a problem. It should make us all skeptical of WAR. More on that momentito.

Now, when Fox Sports or my hometown paper allude to WAR, they do so with tongue in cheek. They don't understand the stat, can't fathom the math, and consequently want to distance themselves from its conclusions. They compare the WAR of two players, but when the results don't reinforce what home runs, RBIs and pitcher wins suggest, they giggle, turn crimson and change the subject.

Here's an example: Orioles shortstop JJ Hardy (.261/.298/.452 with 15 HR) is worth 2.4 WAR while Phillies outfielder Domonic Brown (.275/.323/.552 with 21 HR) is worth just 2.2 WAR. Because my local sports columnist isn't comfortable with the narrative, he mentions the number but examines other elements of their performance before shrugging his shoulders and calling it a toss-up.

Hardy is more valuable than Brown despite a 120-point OPS deficit because a) he's being compared offensively to shortstops, as opposed to corner outfielders, b) he's a good fielder at a higher premium position, c) he plays in a home stadium less conducive to hitting safely and d) playing in the AL East means he faces tougher competition.

Now back to the rat hair in the ice cream. It's the defensive metrics that comprise part of WAR. After a decade-and-a-half of trying, the best minds in baseball research have improved immensely on fielding percentage and eyeballs. The new defensive metrics can help us determine fielding acumen, but still only in the broadest terms. They work well when several different measurement systems are combined and their time horizon is long. 

One player, one season, one defensive measurement system -- that's asking for trouble. You can find dozens of ballplayers who are rated plus-plus fielders in a given year by FRAA (Baseball Prospectus's system) and below average by UZR (Fangraphs' zone rating system) or vice versa. This year, BP has Hardy at replacement level in the field while Baseball-Reference credits him with 1.2 defensive wins.

Consequently, the WAR of players at the margins -- whose defensive numbers are large -- can vary widely depending on whose defensive measures we're using. It can make the difference of two wins in a season, the gap between a 2.5 win regular and a 4.5 win All-Star.

It's even more problematic for pitchers, whose WAR is calculated by very complicated calculations that attempt to quantify the defense behind them and then strip it from their results. (This is what's called Fielding Independent Pitching.) The high margin of error in those equations can polish or stain a whole pitching staff.

We're going to hear a lot more talk of WAR as the season wears on. We should be wary of it, but not afraid of it. We should understand why its use requires a shaker-full of salt. And we should understand that for most players, particularly at high-offense positions, it's a very tasty new treat.

How Great Is Mariano Rivera?

New analytic tools have led us to understand baseball better and in new ways. They have magnified the under-appreciated and shined light on the game's nuances. They have helped clubs work more efficiently and provided their early adapters with an edge on the competition. 

But they have largely failed one area of the game. And that area's name is Mariano Rivera.

There doesn't seem to be any debate today that Rivera is the greatest reliever of all time. He's the all-time saves leader and possesses the lowest ERA relative to the league ever. He's allowed the fewest baserunners per inning in history. He's been well-nigh unhittable in 96 post-season games. He's spun one pitch into 19 dominant seasons. His worst season, at age 37, was merely excellent.

And yet, the analytic tools don't believe he's a Hall of Famer. 

When applied to closers, new analysis asks the following question: where ya been? Appearing for just three outs every other day limits the value of a closer, according to Wins Against Replacement and its ilk, even when his work comes in high-leverage situations. Despite pitching into his 40s, Rivera has just 1200 frames under his belt -- about seven good seasons for a starter. The result is that he has accumulated just 54 wins against replacement, well below the standard for a Hall of Fame pitcher. WAR (or WARP) matters because it's the statistic that comes closest to describing a player's overall value in a single number. 

That 54 is from Baseball-Reference, which is the most credible of the three main Sabermetric sites with regard to relievers. Baseball Prospectus pegs it at 31.4 while Fangraphs is at the median of 38.7. The discrepancy has much to do with whether the measurements use underlying data as the true level of performance; i.e., whether Rivera is given the credit (as he should be) for a career-long outlier BABIP or whether that's dismissed as luck.

By comparison, Fangraphs credits Mark Buehrle with 45.7 wins against replacement. 
 
The problem, of course, is that comparing a closer to a starter because they're both pitchers is like comparing the ACLU to the Teamsters because they're both unions.
Misused and under-utilized though they are, closers can still be fairly analyzed by comparing them to each other. That limits the sample more or less to Rivera's contemporaries, but that should be enough, given his dominance.

Rivera's lifetime ERA+ of 205 is about half-again beyond the next best closer in history, Trevor Hoffman. He has the lowest walk rate, by far the highest strikeout rate, by far the fewest blown saves and nearly double the Win Probability Added of any short reliever in history.

ERA+ measures a pitcher's ERA relative to the league at the time. Rivera has limited opponents to 2.22 earned runs per nine innings at a time when the American League is scoring 4.55 against non-Rivera pitchers.

The bottom line is that this is a SABR problem, not a Sandman problem. Clearly, WAR (or WARP) is not designed to handle closers, or at least to compare them to starters. Whatever number of wins Rivera allegedly added to the Yankees with his bat-breaking contributions, they are not being reflected in the sabermetric record.

WAR on Fox! WAR on Fox!

Mark down this date: April 6, 2013.

That's the date that Fox's baseball coverage included discussions of OPS and WAR. Hallelujah!

Joe Buck introduced both notions without snark or derision. He explained the acronyms (On-base Plus Slugging and Wins Against Replacement) and discussed how they are calculated.

In the first discussion, Buck demurred a bit, noting that OPS is hard to calculate. But Fox inserted Ken Rosenthal into the discussion to explain that sabermetricans and front offices prefer OPS to batting average and home runs. Fox may have been setting the stage for using OBP stats in the future by having Rosenthal aver that on base percentage is more meaningful than batting average.

This is a true advance. But Fox wasn't done.

With Miguel Cabrera at the plate, Buck introduced the viewer to WAR. He explained how -- and why! -- Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera earned just the fourth highest WAR in MLB last year. 

Supported by a Fox graphic listing the top four WARriors in 2012, Buck explained how Cabrera would fare less well because he's only an offensive force. He noted that Mike Trout, first by far on that list with nearly 11 wins against replacement, runs the bases and plays defense.

It's truly a watershed when a major TV network intransigent in its opposition to advanced metrics finally acknowledges that there is a better alternative to batting average and home runs. Kudos to Fox for accepting what has been proven and helping educate average fans.

The next giant leap will occur when Rosenthal explains on air to Buck the other key element of WAR. The three players ahead of Cabrera on the WAR list are center fielder Trout, second baseman Robinson Cano and catcher Buster Posey. Each plays a more difficult position and is being compared to weaker hitters than a third baseman, if that's what you want to call Cabrera.

And the battle will finally be won when they both explain it to the satisfaction of Tim McCarver.

When Models Look Extra Ugly

Democrats are predictably excoriating Paul Ryan these days for his "attack" on Medicare. His voucher plan for the government-sponsored health care insurance for the elderly (and the not-nearly elderly; you can join at 65) diminishes benefits going forward.

Democrats are comparing Ryan's plan to perfection, or to the current system. Neither, of course, is an apt comparison. Medicare is rushing headlong off the financial cliff without reform, and threatening to take the entire American economy with it. Relative to insolvency, which is the ultimate fate of the program under everyone else's plan (i.e., no plan at all), Ryan's proposal is a revelation.

A similar debate is shaking the Sabermetric community these days in the wake of a pair of disturbing arithmetic developments. But the conclusion is the same: the measure of a new idea isn't in comparison to perfection, but to the old paradigm.

First, some context. Ever since Voros McCracken unveiled the idea in 1999 that pitchers have limited control over what happens once their pitch is put into the field of play -- a conclusion now much more nuanced and qualified -- seamheads have been whipping up concoctions to strip luck and defense out of pitching results to determine how well pitchers are actually pitching.

One of the many formulae brewed by the stat wizards is FIP -- fielding independent pitching. Without excavating spreadsheets filled with higher math, it can be described this way: given the number of batters a pitcher has fanned, walked, hit with pitches and allowed to homer, how many runs should we expect to score against him given average defense and ballpark?

In July, Reds closer Aroldis Chapman broke FIP (in the words of CBS Sports). He faced 52 batters in 14 1/3 innings and whiffed 31 of them. He allowed just six hits, two walks, a HBP and nary a run, nailing down 13 saves. Batters posted a desultory .122/.173/.143 line against him.  In other words, Chapman was Superman for a 30-day period. (He's been no slouch under other moons.)

Putting those numbers through the meat grinder yielded a FIP for Chapman of -0.99. That is, Chapman could be expected, given his performance, to yield minus-one run per nine innings. Certifiably nuts.

Others have noted odd sightings in Baseball-Reference.com's WAR (Wins Against Replacement) calculations. WAR attempts to review all of a player's performance and all of the context and measure him against a Triple-A replacement at his position. In mid-August, Cubs keystoner Darwin Barney had a higher WAR than Brewers slugger Ryan Braun. Just for context, Barney is hitting .268/.309/.386, or about 12% below the MLB average. Braun, at .301/.380/.526, is 53% above average. Braun is also superior in the baserunning department and has grounded into fewer double plays. Moreover, Wrigley Field and Miller Park are about equally kind to hitters, and both batters suffer equally in their inability to bat against their own team's woeful pitching staff.

What WAR sees that we don't is defense. It credits Barney for defense double in value of any other second-sacker's, while Braun's left-field stylings more resemble the staccato flight of a pigeon. Subjectively, there appears to be a grain of truth here, but clearly not enough that anyone in Wisconsin would trade Braun for every Barney ever known, including the purple dinosaur. WAR is suffering convulsions and has been put on bed rest, at the very least.

These two developments have led some to observe FIP and WAR's death throes. The projection models have failed and it's time to put them out of their misery. But in the words of that great philosopher Quick Draw McGraw, "Now hold on there just a doggone minute, Baba Looie."

No model is perfection, not even Adriana Lima. Clearly outlier performances like Chapman's make mincemeat of statistical models. As I've mentioned before, quantitative analysis of defense is just in the bloom of its youth, beholden to bursts of impaired judgment. I rarely rely on WAR or WARP and pay much more attention to offensive valuations, leavened by a general sense of a player's glovework.

Nonetheless, FIP is an extremely useful tool, and though the value it applies to Chapman's performance is nonsense, it's not really wrong. FIP says Chapman was virtually unhittable, and by golly, he was. Only 18 batters out of 52 could even put the ball in play.

The real question then is, are these models less imperfect than the old tools? WAR certainly measures something bigger and more relevant than Triple Crown stats do, but whether it measures relative positional value better than Triple Crown stats measure hitting performance would require some sort of study. There's no doubt that FIP tells us much more about a pitcher than W-L and ERA; it's been shown to be vastly better at projecting performance.

All of which presents the same moral that every other development in quantitative analysis has: the state of the art is improving, but will never be perfect. After all, they measure the performances of people.

WAR! What Is It Good For?

In another sign that the apocalypse may be delayed, ESPN has officially adopted Wins Against Replacement, Baseball-Reference.com's all encompassing measure of a player's value compared to a whatever his team might be able to find trolling the waiver wire or Triple-A. 

WAR is a simple concept, trenchantly summarized here by David Schoenfield at ESPN. It's nice to see that the people who are adopting the statistic understand what it means and how it's used.

If you just skipped the link, I encourage you to go back and click it. Schoenfield both describes and demonstrates how WAR can be useful. He also employs it to illustrate what a spectacular rookie year Mike Trout is having at age 20. Of the seven players on the list of best 20-year-olds whose careers are complete, six are all-time greats. The other is Vada Pinson, who was a terrific player in his 20s but tailed off severely thereafter. 

Schoenfield also describes the limits of WAR, and while generally on target, he misses the mark in two places.

First, he is right that WAR is not the be all and end all statistic. It is comprehensive, but imperfect. Some have used this as a knock against sabermetrics, this inability to produce a statistical singularity. But it comes a lot closer than anything that preceded it, and no doubt it will improve.

On the other hand, WAR strips out all the noise -- era, field effects, position -- and helps us make comparisons that standard statistics miss. Schoenfield describes how right fielder Josh Reddick and his .880 OPS for Oakland has been twice as valuable to his team as Prince Fielder and his .888 OPS has been to Detroit.

Schoenfield makes an interesting observation, but also stubs his toe here: 

One, it's my opinion that WAR shortchanges pitchers with durability...take, for example, Roy Halladay. When figuring his WAR, you're calculating his value over a replacement-level pitcher, maybe a pitcher with a 5.00 ERA or whatever that level is these days. But a Triple-A pitcher isn't going to give you seven or eight innings every start like Halladay does, and certainly not 233 innings like Halladay gave the Phillies in 2011. But WAR, the way I understand it, sort of assumes that's the case.

He is right that Halladay, by taking the ball every fifth day and pitching deep into games, provides added value to the rest of the pitching staff beyond the strong results he produces. WAR doesn't calculate the value of keeping relief arms fresh, anymore than it figures the cost that a DH imposes on his team's lineup by forcing the manager to play a lesser hitter in order to cover the defensive position the DH vacates. But WAR does account for Halladay's continued excellence over 233 innings. Compared to a pitcher of exactly equal performance over 117 innings, Halladay's WAR is double.

The core weakness of WAR is the weakness of its constituent parts. Most salient is the defensive component, which is still a mere approximation of actual defensive ability. Indeed, Baseball Reference, Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs all have their own proprietary defensive metrics and they often vary widely on the same player. (One vivid exception is the glovework of Derek Jeter, upon which they all similarly cast aspersions.) Because we have so little confidence in those defensive formulae, it makes a goodly chunk of WAR highly suspect.

Consequently, you will rarely see WAR (or its Baseball Prospectus equivalent, WARP) quoted here.  Defensive calculations will one day provide more insight, but today, they are still too unsteady to lean on. I prefer VORP or oWAR, which calculate only offensive value over a replacement player.

Still, it's another advance for the general understanding of the game that the corporate behemoth agenda setter in sports coverage sees the value in, and offers to the public, a new and revealing tool in player evaluation.

(Thanks to Dick in Charlotte for bringing this to my attention.)

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