Surprisingly low WAR
 

Lou Piniella. 12.4. I thought of him as a pretty good hitter, expected it to be much higher.

Joe Carter (19.5) and Dave Kingman (17.3) were considered important parts of their teams, especially for power, for guys that didn't get WAR respect.

Alfredo Griffin - 3.1. He wasn't a superstar or anything, but there certainly was not a belief that Griffin borderline did not even belong in the major leagues through his long career.

Ryan Howard - 14.7. Difficult to believe this one.

Dante Bichette - 5.6. He only gets 1.2 for 1995. Again, not a real superstar but hard to see him as not really even deserving of being a starter.

Paul Konerko - 28.

Tommy Davis 20.4 in a LONG career and half of it came in two seasons.
Bill Buckner 15.0

I like the surprisingly High WARs. 60 is a reasonable shot at the HOF in most cases:

Kevin Brown 67.8
Willie Randolph 65.9
Reggie Smith 64.5
Willie Davis 60.7
Bobby Abreu 60.2

Can someone please explain Dante Bichette's 1.2 WAR from this year? Just can't understand how it can be that low with those numbers.
NL MVP Voting


https://i.postimg.cc/NLhxmVnd/Screen...erence-com.png

It's primarily because dWAR hates him, the park factor, and that he didn't walk at all. Walks are heavily valued in bWAR.

I think this is a good example of it being a little silly even for a modern player. It's hard to argue that Reggie Sandes was 5X as valuable that year.

Buckner is astonishing. He had 2700 hits. WTF.

He had a career OPS+ of 100. He basically never walked so his OBP was .319 and he had very little power. He was a poor defensive player by the metrics used. And he spent much of his career at 1B which is a position that generally has strong hitters.

LOL don't need metrics to evaluate his defense. Little roller up along first... I can't believe he came back to Boston in 1990.

I was born in 1987, so I did not experience his career, and I know that at times the defensive metrics disagree. That said, I've heard, "and the ball gets by Buckner" many, many times.

Things mentioned above as well as (and because of) his extreme home/road splits.

31 of his 40 homers came at home and his slash on the road was .300/.329/.473

He also played terrible D that year. It was never good, but 1995 was his first year in LF as a regular and it did not go well.

It was 212.4, but he lost 200 coaching the Mariners

Stop. That loss wasnt his fault. The relief pitching sucked.

I grew up with the Bronx Zoo Yankees of the late 1970s. In addition to Randolph, there was Graig Nettles with 67.9 career WAR.

Added in Edit: His more famous teammate on those teams, Reggie Jackson, had career WAR of 74. Reggie was certainly Hall-worthy, but you would think he would be separated from Nettles by more than 6.1 WAR.

It's not "low" low, but
 

You'd think with all those hits, Pete Rose would be higher than 79.5. dWAR didn't hate him, but it did actively dislike him. Look at his base running numbers though, and apparently Charlie hustled himself into a lot of extra outs.

Nightmarish.

Randolph is right there statistically with Biggio and Alomar. Of course if Whitaker can't get in (75 WAR), neither can Randolph.

When I see the strangely high or low numbers, I'm all the more for ignoring this modern-day statistical invention that so many people decided to hang their hats on as the penultimate stat. I didn't need this statistic for all the years prior to its popularity and don't need it now.

If WAR is penultimate, what is ultimate? :)

Nettles comes up in these discussions a lot, I was trying to focus on guys who don't, but I agree. Nettles is tragically underrated.

WAR is a flawed tool that is overused. Steve Garvey's war is only 38 while Willie Randolph's is 65. Does that really tell you the story? Who was the more impactful player? To me, its Garvey by a mile.

It had just been too long since we had a cameo from something in the Bruces' lexicon.

Then again, long before the new metrics, Garvey got little love for the Hall despite all the counting stats.

I'll never understand people who dismiss WAR because it doesn't tell them what they feel is right. Isn't that the POINT of a new stat? Why would we need a stat to tell us what we already knew?

You can argue about it's supposed shortcomings, but to dismiss it out of hand because it disagrees with you instead of learning WHY it disagrees with you doesn't seem to be a productive way of going about things.

Maybe so. But he got more love than current Hall of Famers like Ted Simmons and Jim Kaat (both over 50 WARs)

A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

How about the prototype for the current slugger Adam Dunn? He hit 462 homers, hit 40 homers 5 years in a row and finished with 17.9. Ouch he even walked a lot.

On the pitching side there’s Joe Niekro. He spent 22 years in the league, pitched more than 3500 innings and won 221 games. His career WAR is 29.7.

As a Denver resident (at that time), I can honestly say that it is virtually impossible to comprehend just how bad Dante was in the field.

Adam Dunn's glove cost him. He holds the record (by a lot) for worst single season dWar with an epically bad -5.2 in 2009. While that was his worst season, he was never a plus fielder. Only a valuable hitter gets a chance to cost you that many games with his glove.

Buckner was a very good player for many years! Has won the batting title for 1980 with .324 Avg! He is not HOF worthy, but few are. That’s the point.

Garvey was an out-making machine and a defensive liability! Randolph was a helluva player, a winner (and this from a Yankee-hater).

8 straight all star appearances, but stunningly, in the "WAR7" metric reflecting the peak 7 years, he is 55th among first basemen.

As a Dodger fan, I always felt that Garvey was over rated. When WAR came out , I eagerly checked to see if it would confirm my suspicion that Garvey was the second most valuable member of the that infield behind Ron Cey.

In this case WAR did not confirm my bias. Garvey was third behind Cey and Lopes :p

(note: if you count just their time together instead of their whole careers, it does indeed go Cey-Garvey-Lopes, but this is more fun to say)

I was just discussing Joe Carter with a friend last week.

I realize that the RBI is not a favored new age stat and the “clutch gene” cant really be measured quantitatively, but his WAR seems to really run counter to what I saw when I watched him. He is one of the few on this list where I saw his entire career and it just doesn’t add up.

Check Garvey's post season numbers. He was winner enough. Higher OPS than Mantle in the Post Season.

Getting way off topic, but Garvey also won 4 Gold Gloves. But, I have ceased to put weight on awards like that. The fact that Derek Jeter won 5 Gold Gloves and Jim Kaat won the Gold Glove in 1969 despite a .826 fielding percentage tells me that the GG is often more about flash than fundamentals.

And Palmeiro won one in a year I believe he only played 30 games at the position.

WAR is one of the only newer stats that I actually care about. Some of the others just take the fun out of baseball when people start yapping about them. WAR rewards complete players. If you're slow and awful on defense, WAR reminds you that your team isn't getting the greatest value, despite the offense. One-tool hitters feel the wrath of WAR. Mark Belanger is one of the greatest defensive players ever, plus he had a few decent hitting seasons (mostly due to walks/steals), yet he was 41.0 WAR. Almost all of that is defense.

I'll say the one player who surprised me was Willie Montanez with 1.6 career WAR. I never saw him play, he retired in 1982, so my surprise was from what I remembered as a kid. I got some slightly older cards and remembered seeing the very small print on the back of his 1982 Topps card, with some big RBI seasons (101, 99, 96). I always figured he was a better overall player, but he lost a lot of value for poor defense, plus he's one of the few players with a below 50% success rate stealing bases and more than a handful of attempts. He homered 30 times one year, yet he hit just 139 homers in 14 years.

Wow!

So many of his contemporaies said that Billy Cox was the finest defensive 3B of his era and one of the best ever. You often heard it said that before Brooks came along, Cox was the guy you'd want manning that corner. That's saying something. Brooks himself even wrote me the same thing. That's saying everything! :) He wasn't any sort of terror at the plate, though, yet fared better than Belanger in certain offensive categories. He's at a lowly 10.1. Mark was definitely more of a full-season player than Cox, who unfortunately wasn't most of the time.

I like ops a lot. WAR seems overused and often incorrect. Seems like a starter that plays every day but is decent is going to have an outsized war against a player that for whatever reason is killing it but doesn’t get to play every day.

Alfredo Griffin's last year in Toronto was 1984. He had over 440 PAs and accumulated a grand total of 4 walks, none of which were intentional. His WAR of 3.1 may be on the high side. WAR is a tool, but not the sharpest tool in the shed.:D

Well, just taking Buckner, in 1985 he played 162 games and hit .299, but his WAR was only 1.5. 46 doubles, 16 HR, 110 RBI.

WAR punishes outfielders, 1B, and DHs. It seems to put a huge premium on OBP as well. In other words, sluggers who didn’t hit for average or walk much and played one of those positions tend to have lower WAR than expected. Just as 2B, 3B and SS who didn’t put up great #s can have surprisingly high WAR.

Yeah, but what a glorious 30 (actually 28) games those were.

Carter hit .259 and never walked. Career .258 with 2 outs and RISP and .239 in late & close situations.

He drove in a lot of runs because he got a ton of chances. He had 115 RBI in 1990 in his one year with the Padres - while putting up a .681 OPS. He stunk that season, somehow still had 115 RBI.

Yeah, WAR loves to reward players who happen to be the one good player at their position. Joe Morgan is a perfect example of this. In 1975, he won an MVP after a great season where he hit .327 with a .974 OPS. He had an 11.0 WAR meaning WAR thinks he had one of the greatest seasons ever (19th for WAR among position players ever - ahead of every season in the careers of Ted Williams, Hank Aaron, and Mike Trout). And it's all because he played 2B, a position where two NL starters had an OPS under .600. Morgan had 50 extra base hits in 1975, a fine total that netted him 12th place in total bases. His 50 was a full third fewer than Mike Schmidt's 75 but Schmidt somehow had just 7.7 WAR that year. Morgan had an incredible WAR because his 2B contemporaries all sucked.

Morgan was actually much better in 1976, increasing his extra base hits by 24% while increasing his OPS despite playing 5 fewer games.

His WAR actually went DOWN because of his defense.

I like WAR in general but it has to be viewed with skepticism and put in proper context.

I will say a 2b leading the league in OPS (both of his MVP seasons) cannot be overlooked. That simply didn't happen back then and I feel the WAR accurately represented his value. I honestly feel those seasons are legitimate candidates for all time greatest seasons. He did have 40 less plate appearances in the second season in addition to his fielding being less stellar than the year before. That certainly accounts for a small chunk of possible WAR helping to explain the difference.

Morgan was a much better base runner than Schmidt also. Not just steals, but advancing extra bases and not making outs and not hitting into double plays. That's a very underrated aspect of what adds to WAR, and legitimately adds to someone's value as a player. Schmidt hit into 50% more double plays than Morgan in 1300 less plate appearances.

The early question about Dante Bichette's low WAR in 1995 shows that just playing every day doesn't necessarily lead to a high WAR.

For anyone interested, here's a link to the baseball-reference.com page that shows how WAR is calculated:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/a...position.shtml

Getting back to the original focus of this discussion - Lou Piniella - his low career WAR is probably explained by a fairly short career (he didn't catch on in the majors until he was 29; deducting two meaningless tryout years and two seasons at the end when he was barely a part time player, you get 14 years); a lack of walks; almost no stolen bases; and genuinely poor fielding. He had no range in the outfield. He was, in fact, the stereotypical big, hard-hitting white guy who would be planted at first base so he would cause the least harm, and would clog up the bases if he didn't hit a home run. He was a good player, no doubt about it, but he wasn't as good as many people thought at the time.

It's human nature. We do overrate the players we like.

There is a huge knot of third basemen that should be considered in the Hall of Fame. Their WAR is between around 55 and 70. These include: Nettles, Buddy Bell, Boyer, Bando, Darrell Evans, Ventura, and Hack.

I like WAR in that it gives some context to the era.

In a roundabout way, you're agreeing with me. His season adds up to being really impressive because his contemporaries sucked. If you moved him 70 feet to the right defensively, it would be just another in a long list of MVP-caliber seasons. Again, *50* extra base hits. That's just not impressive number. It was a borderline all-time great season - for a 2B. It's not even remotely in the conversation for greatest overall. Better than EVERY season from Ted Williams? Hard disagree.

That's because you're still hung up over only the traditional numbers. Morgan hit into a total of (without double checking) 5 double plays in those 2 seasons. He stole about 130 bases at an 85% clip and I imagine he stretched a lot of extra bases as a runner, tagging up going to third on a single etc.

Combine that with gold glove caliber defense (In 1975) at a premium position with excellent range vs Ted whose range was what was hit right at him and what Dom could get to in left field and I imagine that Joe was worth more wins to his team in 1975 than Ted in his best season.

Look at it this way. Ted's OWAR was often higher than his WAR. Joe's only was in the second half of his career (amazingly beginning in 1976 which would explain the drop in his total WAR for what appears to be an offensively superior season)

Morgan's best OWAR seasons, while impressive, don't compare with Ted's best. It's just that there's more than offense to the game.

If you want to discuss the best OFFENSIVE players of all-time might I point you in this direction:

https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=350700

Very well stated, Scott.

I'm not hung up on traditional stats. But extra base hits are waaaaaaaay more valuable than stolen bases. Ted had, for example, 368 total bases in 1949 plus 162 walks. That's 530 bases from the batter's box. Joe had 253 total bases plus 132 walks for 385 total. Give him the 67 steals and he's still nearly 100 behind Ted.

Yes, there's more than offense to the game - but offense and pitching are light years ahead of defense in terms of importance.

Joe had a great year in 1975 (and 76) but, again, 17 homers with a high OBP (.450 or higher) has been done roughly a billion times in baseball history. It's been done more than 20 times since 1949. Looks like 10 times by 2B though Baseball Reference is covering up the results for me. Yeah, what he did was really rare in 1975 - because he was a 2B. We wouldn't be having this conversation if played virtually any other position.

Once Ron Santo Got in I thought for sure Boyer would be next ,
Very similar careers

Oddly, If you look up Boyer, Santo is not even on the list of 10 most comparable batters.

Grich 71 never can get my head around that one.

No second baseman has had a higher career OPS+ than Grich’s 125 since he retired in ‘86. Not Biggio (112), Sandberg (114), Alomar (116), Whitaker (117), Utley (117), Kent (123), or Cano (124).

Note that Morgan (132) retired 2 years before Grich, and Carew (131), who played more games at 1B than 2B retired a year before Grich. Altuve is currently at 129.

Grich was also an elite fielder in his early years.

I know the numbers are what they are for Grich but I have a hard time seeing a career 266 hitter with less than 2,000 hits and 250 home runs as a HOFer.

Yep - find player but not HOFer ,
I remember Grich but only after being reminded 🙂 (Spaeth)
Had to look him up ,
He’s in the Orioles Hall of Fame AND the Angels Hall of Fame !

...and Chris Short is on the Phillies Wall of Fame.

Can they really reconstruct every game way back in time to get to these levels of detail on particular at bats? I mean you couldn't do most of this stuff from a box score.

I've always wondered the same thing about the fielding and base running components of WAR for players more than 20 years ago let alone 100 years ago. I think they do the best they can, but it's why WAR is just one way to try to compare players but not the absolute answer that some people try to claim it to be.

Nettles does not get my HOF vote (not that anyone cares). I saw him play for years, and I hated that he made so many great plays against my Dodgers, but consider this:
1. He never batted .300 or better in any full season, his best being .276 in 78'
2. Career .248 hitter.
3. .225 batting average in 53 post season games.
4. 25 HRs in any season should not be a high bar for a third baseman, yet Nettles accomplished that only five times.
5. Career OBP of just .329.

His great defense and longevity (22 seasons) are what helps is WAR, but his very mediocre offense keeps him out of the HOF.

I agree on Nettles. He joins a long list of Yankees who were great for the Yankees but not quite HOFers and I think that's just fine. It's also important to note that unlike many of his fellow Yankees greats not in the HOF, the Yankees did not retire his number like they did with some of his peers like Bernie, Posada, O'Neil or Pettitte. Though he was a captain.

Grich was one of my favorite players, and I always felt he was underrated. As a 2B in the 70s and 80s, he was one of the best at his position, when many 2Bs were not good offensively.

The thing about Grich was his consistency. In his first 9 major league seasons, he had 3,432 ABs and hit 161 home runs and batted .260.

In his final 8 seasons, he had 3,458 ABs and hit 159 home runs and batted .273.

So that's 17 seasons of averaging around 20 home runs per season and batting around .265!

IMO, that's a great player, particularly for a second baseman in the 1970s / 80s.

Is he HOF worthy? Probably not, but a great player nonetheless.

Steve Garvey is an interesting case study. Is he HOF worthy? I think he is. I saw him play his whole career, and although I think it is a close call, he should be in the HOF. I offer the following for consideration:

1. I spoke to Garvey once and he said he could have hit around 30 home runs more often, but he would have struck out more and had a lower BA. he said that hitting for power would have hurt the team's chances of winning, and he valued winning games over his personal stats. And we all know that his teams won a lot!

2. Stat geeks that look at overall career numbers and WAR as well as people who never saw him play are not aware that he was a great clutch hitter! He consistently helped his team win games!
- In 55 post season games, he batted .338 with 11 home runs and 32 RBIs in 222 at bats. How many players can match that???
- batting average with RISP in 1974 - .330
- batting average with RISP in 1975 - .302
- batting average with RISP in 1976 - .297
- batting average with RISP in 1977 - .311
- batting average with RISP in 1978 - .320
- batting average with RISP in 1979 - .322
- batting average with RISP in 1980 - .315
- batting average with RISP in 1981 - .325
- batting average with RISP in 1982 - .291

For me, he was the best clutch player of his generation!

3. Garvey's 2,599 base hits ranks 84th all time! With that many hits, he should be in the HOF, particularly when you consider all of his other intangibles including clutch hitting, durability, his five MVP awards (1974 season MVP, two all-star game MVPs, and two post season MVP awards), and four gold gloves. How many players with that many hits are NOT in the HOF? Only a handful. Unfortunately, his late career start (he was not a regular player until age 25) and the shortened 1981 season due to the player's strike cost him a lot of hits.

4. Garvey was a 10 time all-star! C'mon, when you hear that, you gotta think HOF! He was the National League's starting first baseman in the all-star game for seven straight seasons (1974 - 1980), and he also started for the NL in 1984 and 1985. he was the all-star game MVP 2x (74' and 78'). So for those who say he was overrated or was not a good player, the fans who voted and his performance in those games say otherwise! This was a time with no internet and a limited number of ballots were handed out to fans who had to return them.

5. He played in Dodger stadium that had different playing field dimensions than currently exist. In 2004, they added several thousand seats behind home plate and along the base lines that removed 10,000 square feet of foul territory (a full one third reduction of foul territory!). Hence, the stadium is somewhat neutral in terms of hitting, but in Garvey's time, it was decidedly a pitcher's park. So offensive numbers were suppressed.

6. During Garvey's seven prime years (1974-1980), he had 200 or more hits each season except one (192 in 77'), he batted .311, averaged 161 games, averaged 103 RBIs per season and hit an average of 21 home runs.

7. In his 1981 book, Lawrence Ritter listed him as one of the 100 greatest players of all time.


Garvey's true value, which often gets overlooked, was that he consistently produced runs for his team and hit for a very high average. In other words, he valued hitting for average and driving in runs over hitting home runs. Remember, he grew up in the 1950s and 60s when batting average was more important than hitting lots of home runs. That's why his strikeout numbers were always low (he averaged just 70 strikeouts per season during his prime years).

I found a thread on Garvey here
https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=247372

I kind of agree about Garvey - not real similar to Rose as a player but both were spark plugs and both were good in the post season .
When Rose was on the Reds were good When he was on the Phillies the Phillies were good .
Garvey was good for the Dodgers went to the Padres and was good with the Padres .
For his career he batted .338 in the postseason
Edit :Gregndodgers Already noted his postseason batting average

I don't see a HOFer in Steve Garvey either. Don Mattingly was better than him and he's not getting in.

Garvey is one of those guys who has a "HOF resume" but he's not the only player with one not in the HOF. Johan Santana won two Cy Youngs, has three ERA titles, and a pitching Triple Crown. Sounds like a HOF resume alright but in practice he didn't even survive his first ballot when it came to HOF voting.

Garvey's chances were hurt by his well-documented off field problems. However, I still believe the veterans committee (or something akin to that) elects him into the HOF. He is currently running for to be a U.S. Senator from CA.

So far, he's been on 4 different veteran's committee ballots, and didn't get enough votes to be reported the first 3 times. In 2020, he got 6 out of 16.

War 38. Ops .775. Obp .329. HOF no. That said, his RC will always enjoy some popularity.

When I was a kid in SoCal during the 70's, Steve Garvey was big time. He was the leader of the Dodgers (darn good team). Won the 1974 MVP. And I collected his cards mostly because he always has that nifty "All-Star Logo" on his cards. Only the All Star starters got that All-Star banner/shield/star on their cards.

That was back in the day before Rookie Cards became so dang popular. As kids, the heck with new rookies who you had no clue about. They were tossed aside into the commons box. As kids we all wanted the cards of the top shelf players.

Garvey was the best at his position for a long time. To me, that is a criteria for HOF.

Garvey wasn't just an All-Star. He was the STARTING All-Star for 8 consecutive years - 1974, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80 & 1981.

Put the dude in (HOF).

Yogi Berra has a surprisingly low WAR compared to other top shelf catchers. I kinda don't get it. Everybody loves Bench, he has the highest WAR. But all things considered, I might take Yogi as my #1 all-time catcher. What he did for the Yankees was beyond amazing - the leadership, the handling of the pitching staff, his knowledge of the game, he made his whole team better. And yeah, he also had some pretty darn solid stats. I think he is recognized as the most winningest player in MLB history.

Just looking at Steve Garvey’s MVP season.
Wow, he really didn’t deserve that award. A dozen other guys deserved it ahead of him. Garvey didn’t lead the League in anything and barely cracked the top 10 in many categories.

Schmidt, Bench, Wynn were WAY more deserving.
Garvey may have been one of the most overrated players while playing ever.

Phil Rizzuto - 42 War OPS 706 - Never say never.

That an argument for Garvey is his OPS is a little higher than a defense first shortstop tells one everything they need to know about why Garvey is a poor candidate.

As long as you did not face him in the Post Season.

8 consecutive years starting All-Star - nope. But we have Harold Baines in there. Something just doesn't seem right.

Garvey's post season numbers make him an interesting candidate. He was a dominant player in his era which was not a great offensive era.