Surprisingly low WAR

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

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.

[z28jd]

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.

[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

Originally Posted by z28jd

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.

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.

[Carter08]

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.

[frankbmd]

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.

[Kutcher55]

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.

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by Kutcher55

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, 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.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Carter08

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.

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.

[jayshum]

Originally Posted by Carter08

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.

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.

[jayshum]

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

[akleinb611]

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.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by jayshum

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

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.

[Bigdaddy]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

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

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