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.

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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