Quote:
Originally Posted by GaryPassamonte
My main interest in baseball is the 19th century. I don't claim to know much about WAR, but it does seem to be unkind to players of the 19th century. How does WAR adjust for shorter seasons and a small ball style of play? Also, defensively, how are players who played before gloves were worn compared to later players who wore gloves. Walks were relatively uncommon, too. There are many other differences I could add. It just seems to me that it is virtually impossible to fairly evaluate players across eras when so many factors and strategies were different. There sure aren't many 19th century players on the top 100 WAR leader board.
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WAR directly reduces the value for 19th century pitchers, because otherwise the lists would be dominated by them and their high inning counts. The shorter seasons lead to hitters having lower values of WAR naturally without the direct lowering it does to punish pitchers. Defensive values use a lot of assumptions to fill in missing datapoints, adding to the many problems.
I think WAR is useless for the 19th century, personally. 19th century baseball is pretty much 1/6 of professional baseball history, but rarely gets anywhere near 1/6 of the star credit or fame or attention, unfortunately.