Quote:
Originally Posted by nat
WAR modifies this figure to account for differences in, e.g., the park a player plays in. It's easier, for example, to hit home runs in Wrigley than in Oakland. You can figure out how much easier by looking at the frequency with which home runs are hit at one park versus another. (And ditto for any other event.) These are called 'park effects', and you use them to adjust an individual players' expected run values. So what you get is that if you have one guy who plays his home games in Wrigley and another who plays his home games in Oakland, if their stats are otherwise identical, the guy playing in Oakland will have a greater number of expected runs. (Because relative to his context - the ballpark that depresses offense - what he did was more valuable.)
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Here's where, to me, there's a slight problem. Let's say it's easier to hit homeruns to left field at Wrigley because it has shorter fences...let's say 320 down the line. So you get more homeruns by right handed hitters, even ones that might not reach the seats at other stadiums. Now lets take the player in questions. Player X hits to left field all the time, but his "normal" homeruns are 380. Those would go out at any left field, so doesn't the "adjustment" actually hurt him and make an unfair statistical analysis?