Random Baseball Musings

[G. Keenan]

Has anyone ever audited WAR?

How do we even really know if it's telling us something as useful as we think?

[Big Amoco Sign]

That makes for a tough call for the Padres. Do they trade him, or let him walk after this season and get nothing in return?

Whoa why are you discussing Padres moves? This is a Cardinals forum.

Smart move on Manny's part. Screw the Padres, it's about players getting what he's worth. Manny knows he's one of the top 5 players in the game and can get more on the market. He's doing what Arenado probably should have.

Has anyone ever audited WAR?

How do we even really know if it's telling us something as useful as we think?

I feel like you asking this means you have some kind of underlying beef with it. What do you dislike about it? Or let me know if I am reading that wrong.

I feel like "conventional knowledge" of baseball was always bad and we grew up with it so we have a hard time accepting that counting stats on their own suck without considering things like Coors players getting way higher averages than other guys. And run environment around the league. So at a minimum, that's a check in WAR's column of being a great stat. The offensive component being so easy to quantify. The defensive side was shaky but has gotten better with Baseball Savant's ability to use Statcast. And Fangraphs incorporating it more.

[Socnorb11]

That makes for a tough call for the Padres. Do they trade him, or let him walk after this season and get nothing in return?

Whoa why are you discussing Padres moves? This is a Cardinals forum.

Because Manny has been baseball relevant more recently than 4 seasons ago, unlike Cole Hamels??

I think the Padres would be really smart to trade Machado. If they still want to spend the money, give it to Soto. I don't see them paying both guys. The problem is that they've essentially gone all-in, and trading Machado would be a step back from that. That's why I say it's a tough decision for them. It will be interesting to watch, though.

[Magneto2.0]

[WAR God]

“Closer Ryan Helsley had been a stud for STL in his first All-Star season but his first appearance of the 2022 postseason went all wrong. He took the loss by allowing four earned runs, hitting a batter with the bases loaded to start the meltdown.”

[CardsofSTL]

Arbitration is [expletive]

[TGantz]

Arbitration is so [expletive] dumb. Billionaires nickel a diming the people that bring in their income (I know, some players are already millionaires). The way the Brewers handled their top starting pitcher over a few hundred thousand is so short sighted and petty. I wish the worst for any owner constantly pulling this crap over <1M difference in salary.

[Socnorb11]

When do we get to arbitrate the price of a stadium hot dog?

[G. Keenan]

Has anyone ever audited WAR?

How do we even really know if it's telling us something as useful as we think?

I feel like you asking this means you have some kind of underlying beef with it. What do you dislike about it? Or let me know if I am reading that wrong.

I feel like "conventional knowledge" of baseball was always bad and we grew up with it so we have a hard time accepting that counting stats on their own suck without considering things like Coors players getting way higher averages than other guys. And run environment around the league. So at a minimum, that's a check in WAR's column of being a great stat. The offensive component being so easy to quantify. The defensive side was shaky but has gotten better with Baseball Savant's ability to use Statcast. And Fangraphs incorporating it more.

It was a meta question.

I'm just curious if there is a way to actually validate that if player X had 2 WAR in a given season that the team actually won 2 more games than they would have without him. I get that with WAR we can input a bunch of data points and then the formula will spit out how may wins above average that all adds up to . . . but does it really? How can you test that? Perhaps that is unknowable.

Maybe I'm being overly literal. Perhaps the idea is just to approximate how "extra good" a player is and express that as surplus wins to have a kind of currency everyone can understand. But then you have guys like Tommy Edman who do lots of little things well and accrue a surprising amount of WAR compared to what your eyes tell you. And in a hypothetical where you could have 8 Tommy Edmans on the diamond at 6.4 WAR each, I doubt that team is really going to be as good as that.

One wonders to what extent our technological ability to gather and sort more and more data requires the stakeholders in that process to convince themselves it means something that it really doesn't.

[Big Amoco Sign]

If 8 Tommy Edmans all played their position the way Tommy plays SS/2B in 2022.... yes that team would make the playoffs. Can you imagine a gold glove catcher with Tommy's speed?

One wonders to what extent our technological ability to gather and sort more and more data requires the stakeholders in that process to convince themselves it means something that it really doesn't.

Your point is valid. But this is a question for Statistics and Data Science in general. In non-baseball things.

https://library.fangraphs.com/misc/war/ this still holds up. Defense is worth debating still but it's more quantifiable than ever.

2014-2015 Royals are a good study on WAR and a good defense of it as they were such a different style team than the rest of the league. The Foolish Baseball video on that team is so good.