WAR Question:

[Peter_Spaeth]

Grich's lifetime WAR is nearly double that of Steve Garvey's. Sorry, I know all the rap on Garvey, but that just does not square with reality IMO.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Grich's lifetime WAR is nearly double that of Steve Garvey's. Sorry, I know all the rap on Garvey, but that just does not square with reality IMO.

Agree totally.

[nat]

Grich had a bunch of little things going for him. None of them really dramatic, so they don't catch your attention, but add them all up and he ends up being really valuable. Some of them have already been mentioned. He was a good defensive player, especially when he was young. Another is that he drew a lot of walks. That will help make up for his low batting average. By comparison, he had about the same ability to reach base as Pete Rose. (Although obviously Rose played longer and so reached base more times.) He had good power for a second baseman; not "set HR records" kind of power, but a lot more than your ordinary skinny middle infielder of the 1970s. Indeed, he led the league in HRs once. Also, being compared against other second basemen helps. Sure, he's being compared to Rod Carew, but he's also being compared to Bucky Dent.

Players who are good at everything but not outstanding at any particular thing are easily overlooked. The hall of fame, for example, has had a terrible time recognizing them. They finally got one right with Alan Trammel, whose case sabermetic types have been championing for a long time. Actually, a comparison between Trammell and Grich may be instructive. Trammell was the better fielder and Grich was the better hitter, but in both cases they were the sum of a bunch of little parts. Contrast this with guys like Jim Rice or Tony Gwynn, who will catch your attention because there's one particular skill that they excel at.

And yes, there's also a margin of error around WAR. Grich had 71.1, Trammel had 70.7. That's a tie. Seeing thing in tiers instead of a ranking is a good idea.

Since WAR is just a number that Grich and Trammel weren't flashy players doesn't matter to it, all it knows is that a bunch of relatively little numbers (which reflect their fielding, their ability to reach base, their power, and so on) can add up to one big number.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by nat

Grich had a bunch of little things going for him. None of them really dramatic, so they don't catch your attention, but add them all up and he ends up being really valuable. Some of them have already been mentioned. He was a good defensive player, especially when he was young. Another is that he drew a lot of walks. That will help make up for his low batting average. By comparison, he had about the same ability to reach base as Pete Rose. (Although obviously Rose played longer and so reached base more times.) He had good power for a second baseman; not "set HR records" kind of power, but a lot more than your ordinary skinny middle infielder of the 1970s. Indeed, he led the league in HRs once. Also, being compared against other second basemen helps. Sure, he's being compared to Rod Carew, but he's also being compared to Bucky Dent.

Players who are good at everything but not outstanding at any particular thing are easily overlooked. The hall of fame, for example, has had a terrible time recognizing them. They finally got one right with Alan Trammel, whose case sabermetic types have been championing for a long time. Actually, a comparison between Trammell and Grich may be instructive. Trammell was the better fielder and Grich was the better hitter, but in both cases they were the sum of a bunch of little parts. Contrast this with guys like Jim Rice or Tony Gwynn, who will catch your attention because there's one particular skill that they excel at.

And yes, there's also a margin of error around WAR. Grich had 71.1, Trammel had 70.7. That's a tie. Seeing thing in tiers instead of a ranking is a good idea.

Since WAR is just a number that Grich and Trammel weren't flashy players doesn't matter to it, all it knows is that a bunch of relatively little numbers (which reflect their fielding, their ability to reach base, their power, and so on) can add up to one big number.

Is that why Trammell and Steve Garvey received over 40% on HOF balloting and Grich received less than 3% his one year on the ballot? Or why Trammell and Garvey were on the last VC ballot and Grich wasn't? WAR is just one person's opinion of what is valuable. Baseball Reference and Fangraphs disagree on what makes a player "valuable."

[Peter_Spaeth]

Trammell hit .300 7 times. How do you figure Grich is the better hitter?

[nat]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Trammell hit .300 7 times. How do you figure Grich is the better hitter?

Trammell had a career on-base percentage of .352 against a league average of .330.

Grich had a career on-base percentage of .371 against a league average of .324.

So Grich was both better at getting on base than Trammell, and had to do it in an environment in which getting on base was harder to do.

A walk isn't as good as a hit, because hits can move runners along. So let's look at their respective abilities to do that.

Trammell had a career slugging percentage of .415 against a league average of .401.

Grich had a career slugging percentage of .424 against a league average of .384.

So Grich picked up more bases each time he came to bat than did Trammell, and he did it in an environment in which hitting for power was harder. Trammell was better at hitting singles than Grich was (that accounts for the difference in batting average), but that's more than made-up for by Grich's superior ability draw walks, together with the fact that he hit for more power.

[Peter_Spaeth]

So what's your theory on why Trammell is in the Hall and Grich never even registered with the voters or the VC?

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Trammell hit .300 7 times. How do you figure Grich is the better hitter?

Trammell was the better pure hitter if you go by AVG alone. But hitting is not just AVG, of course. Ted Williams knew this: if you can't hit safely, get on base. What's the line from Moneyball? "He gets on base a lot. Do I care if it's a walk or a hit? No, I do not." Trammell had a .285 career AVG, and his OBP was .352. Grich hit .266, but with all those walks, his lifetime OBP of .371 dusts Trammell's. He got on base more. Grich also had a better SLG (.424 vs .415 for Trammell) playing in an era where hitting was at a premium. If you adjust for league averages, Grich did more damage at bat than Trammell. Significantly more.

Consider this. Three guys playing premium positions (short and second).

Player 1: lifetime 72.4 WAR. 115 Career OPS +. Hall of Famer
Player 2: lifetime 70.7 WAR. 110 Career OPS +. Hall of Famer
Player 3: lifetime 71.1 WAR. 125 Career OPS +. Not a Hall of Famer

If this is the era of advanced metrics, players three, Bobby Grich, is clearly on par with players one and two, Derek Jeter and Alan Trammell. If the argument is that Jeter is an automatic inductee because of his 3,000 hits (and Grich got only 1,833), how much value did Derek Jeter really give the New York Yankees during his career? WAR is clearly an imperfect metric. It can't be considered otherwise until there is one standard formula. What WAR does, however, is force baseball fans to look at things differently. I think that's a good thing.

So, maybe Grich deserves to be in the Hall. Before you scoff, think of this. What am I always harping on? Context!

If you look at the numbers like home runs, batting average, it might seem that Grich was a slightly above average player. But numbers can be deceiving. Consider this.

Carl Yastrzemski won the batting title in 1968 with a .301 AVG. The next best hitter in the American League was Danny Carter at .290. Yaz also led the league with a .426 OBP. Frank Robinson was next best at .390. Did Yaz have an off year in 1968? No. The pitching was that good.

Well, Bobby Grich came up to the Majors in 1970. He started off in that same pitcher dominated era.

Look at the average runs scored per game in the AL by year.

1968 3.41 (lowest in AL history)
1969 4.09 (MLB institutes a change to mound height across baseball)
1970 4.17 Bobby Grich plays in 30 games
1971 3.87
1972 3.47!!
1973 4.28
1974 4.10
1975 4.30
1976 4.01
1977 4.53
1978 4.20

Between 1970 and 1978, Grich puts up a 122 OPS +. His actual OPS is only .763 (.369 OBP, .394 SLG), but pitching dominates so much, even after MLB institutes the mound height adjustment, that offense is at a premium. Hell, in 1976, his .790 OPS is 38% above American League average.

Bring Carl Yastrzemski back into the conversation.

Yaz's .922 OPS In 1968 was worth a 171 OPS. He was 71% above league average.
In 1981, Bobby Grich led the American League with a 165 OPS +. He had a .921 OPS.

See the difference? Yaz and Grich, in those two seasons, had nearly identical OPS figures. But Yastrzemski's 1968 was, essentially, 6% better than Grich's 1981, relative to league average, because the pitching he faced was better in 1968. That's why you cannot simply compare things like batting average, and home runs, from players of different eras and leagues.

If you look at Grich, season by season, the counting stats don't grab ya. But he's sneaky good.

And yes, Grich only had four Gold Gloves. But that shouldn't be construed as meaning he had a drop off defensively after his last win. Hank Aaron won three straight Gold Gloves from 1958 to 1960. Did his play in the field drop off precipitously? No. He had a 2.0 dWAR in 1961. His play with the glove was worth two wins. But Roberto Clemente was also a right fielder in the NL, and starting in 1961, he won 12 straight Gold Gloves. He's arguably the best to ever play the position, at least with the glove. So, Aaron still played good defense, but, to borrow from Highlander, "there can be only one" winner.

Bobby Grich was still pretty good defensively after the Gold Gloves. It's just that Frank White and Lou Whitaker were better, splitting the next 11 awards between them.

[nat]

It's not an account of value (although some people certainly use it as a proxy for that). What it measures is how many additional games an arbitrary team would expect to win if the player in question were to join that team. This is a very difficult thing to measure. You need to know, among other things, how many runs a single/double/triple/HR can be expected to produce on average, how a player's park affects his ability to hit singles/doubles/etc, how many runs prevented/saved it takes to win an additional ball game (on average), how a team's defense shapes a pitcher's ability to record outs, how many runs are prevented by each out recorded (on average), and on and on.

B-R and Fangraphs have different WARs because they disagree about the best ways to measure some of these things. This is common in an on-going scientific investigation. Measuring things can be hard. And this is especially hard because we can't move players around from team to team to see how their records change - the best we can do is see how the various things that players do (hit singles, catch pop flies, strike batters out, etc) have correlated (historically) with run production/prevention. It's not that the dispute between B-R and Fangraphs is "just a matter of opinion", they have different hypotheses about how best to measure a player's effect on a team's record.


The hall of fame did a good job with Trammell. Historically they have overlooked players like him, either completely (as in the case of Grich) or it has taken them a long time to recognize their greatness (as in the case of Ron Santo). If you want to be a deserving player who doesn't get recognized by the hall of fame, a good way to do it is to be good at everything and great at nothing. We'll see Chase Utley does in a few years.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by nat

It's not an account of value (although some people certainly use it as a proxy for that). What it measures is how many additional games an arbitrary team would expect to win if the player in question were to join that team. This is a very difficult thing to measure.

WAR is completely unrelated to wins. That is why Bill James doesn't like WAR. It is just a theoretical number that has very little value on its own. The example of Trout vs. Betts is the perfect example. Trout is one of the worst centerfielders in MLB, while Betts is one of the best rightfielders. However, since someone decided that a CF is more "valuable" than a RF, Trout has a higher WAR.

[clydepepper]

Originally Posted by rats60

WAR is completely unrelated to wins. That is why Bill James doesn't like WAR. It is just a theoretical number that has very little value on its own. The example of Trout vs. Betts is the perfect example. Trout is one of the worst centerfielders in MLB, while Betts is one of the best rightfielders. However, since someone decided that a CF is more "valuable" than a RF, Trout has a higher WAR.

WOW! Now, that's a statement!

[nat]

WAR would be completely unrelated to wins if its components didn't correlate with wins, but they do. You can take its components and run a regression analysis to see how closely they correlate (and the people who developed WAR did just this).

The positional adjustment is in there because some positions are harder to play than others. Trout may be a poor CF, but center fielders need to cover more ground than do right fielders. If he was a right fielder he'd catch a higher percentage of the balls that are his responsibility than he does now. (Likewise Betts would catch a lower percentage of balls if he played CF.)

Defensive stats are subject to enough noise, though, that you should really use a range of years of performance when evaluating a player, and you should certainly be doing that this early in the season. So far this season Trout has a 5-run advantage over Betts on defense (that includes the positional adjustment). That's not much, and it will probably be gone by the end of the year. Trout is a roughly average CF and Betts is a really good RF, by the end of the season Betts will almost certainly catch enough extra balls to he'll come out ahead in the defensive component of WAR. (In fact, WAR says that for his career Betts has save far more runs than Trout has, even though Trout has been in the league longer.)

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by rats60

WAR is completely unrelated to wins. That is why Bill James doesn't like WAR. It is just a theoretical number that has very little value on its own. The example of Trout vs. Betts is the perfect example. Trout is one of the worst centerfielders in MLB, while Betts is one of the best rightfielders. However, since someone decided that a CF is more "valuable" than a RF, Trout has a higher WAR.

Pretty much everyone believes that CF is more valuable than RF. ALso I'd have to investigate but I've never heard that he was a bad CF.

Also James might not like WAR but he loves Grich. It's a solid measuring stick of relative value. Yes BR and FG have differences in how they compile WAR, but relatively speaking they feel Grich belongs in the same company

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by rats60

WAR is completely unrelated to wins. That is why Bill James doesn't like WAR. It is just a theoretical number that has very little value on its own. The example of Trout vs. Betts is the perfect example. Trout is one of the worst centerfielders in MLB, while Betts is one of the best rightfielders. However, since someone decided that a CF is more "valuable" than a RF, Trout has a higher WAR.

Fangraphs has Trout's UZR/150 at 14.5 for 2018, and Betts' at 15.8. Maybe I am not a Sabermetrics expert yet, but those numbers don't suggest Trout is one of the worst anything when compared to Betts.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by nat

Grich had a bunch of little things going for him. None of them really dramatic, so they don't catch your attention, but add them all up and he ends up being really valuable. Some of them have already been mentioned. He was a good defensive player, especially when he was young. Another is that he drew a lot of walks. That will help make up for his low batting average. By comparison, he had about the same ability to reach base as Pete Rose. (Although obviously Rose played longer and so reached base more times.) He had good power for a second baseman; not "set HR records" kind of power, but a lot more than your ordinary skinny middle infielder of the 1970s. Indeed, he led the league in HRs once. Also, being compared against other second basemen helps. Sure, he's being compared to Rod Carew, but he's also being compared to Bucky Dent.

Players who are good at everything but not outstanding at any particular thing are easily overlooked. The hall of fame, for example, has had a terrible time recognizing them. They finally got one right with Alan Trammel, whose case sabermetic types have been championing for a long time. Actually, a comparison between Trammell and Grich may be instructive. Trammell was the better fielder and Grich was the better hitter, but in both cases they were the sum of a bunch of little parts. Contrast this with guys like Jim Rice or Tony Gwynn, who will catch your attention because there's one particular skill that they excel at.

And yes, there's also a margin of error around WAR. Grich had 71.1, Trammel had 70.7. That's a tie. Seeing thing in tiers instead of a ranking is a good idea.

Since WAR is just a number that Grich and Trammel weren't flashy players doesn't matter to it, all it knows is that a bunch of relatively little numbers (which reflect their fielding, their ability to reach base, their power, and so on) can add up to one big number.

Bucky was a shortstop, try Willie Randolph (another player whose WAR might surprise some)