Sabermetric Special- Wins Above Replacement (WAR)

Now I am a pacifist, but one type of WAR that I do like is Wins Above Replacement. It was developed to determine the value of a player’s total contribution to their team, claiming to show the number of additional wins a team would have if that player was in compared to a replacement level player. That can be a minor league player, a 2^nd string player, or even the league average at that position. The data between a baseball player is approximately normal, and here’s a good representation of it: (Thank you Baseball Reference!)

WAR is very complicated, but very important (just like regular war I guess). There is no official formula for it. However, I’m going to give you Baseball Reference’s equation, because it is the most complex, but also the most accurate (Note: I will repeatedly use Baseball Reference when referencing statistics on players, teams, etc. Fangraphs is fine, but I have always been a Baseball Reference guy).

Here is the equation:

Now you may be asking, what the hell does this mean???? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. Let’s break this into two components: Runs Above Average (RAA) and the average player’s runs above replacement (RAA is the first part of the equation).

Now RAA’s equation is:

Now what does this even mean? AB is number of at bats, BB is walks (base on balls), HBP is hit by pitch, SF is sacrifice fly, and SH is sacrifice hits. But what is OBA? Well, OBA stands for Weighted On-Base Average, and is calculated by:

Where a1-a8 are weighted coefficients, 1B is a single, 2B is a double, 3B, is a triple, HR is a home run, SB is stolen base, CS is caught stealing, and IBB is and intentional walk.

And bam. You’re done.

So why is this important? Why did anyone bother to derive such a long and tedious equation to find this out about baseball? Well, the correlation between career WAR and how a person is ranked on the all-time list is very, very strong. Here are the top ten NON-STEROID ACCUSED players with the highest wins above replacement in their careers (note: the reason why I do not include steroid users is because if I compare them to how they are ranked on an all-time list, they would be outliers because they used steroids. The two people that would be on the list would be Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens):

1.      Babe Ruth- 183.8

2.      Cy Young- 168.4

3.      Walter Johnson- 165.6

4.      Willie Mays- 156.1

5.      Ty Cobb- 151.2

6.      Hank Aaron- 142.4

7.      Tris Speaker- 133.9

8.      Honus Wagner- 130.6

9.      Stan Musial- 128.1

10.  Rogers Hornsby- 127.0.

These ten players are considered some of the greatest who have ever played. It’s also tough to tell with guys like Ty Cobb, who played both in the live ball and dead ball era (have no clue what I’m talkin’ about? Google it!).

A reason why Wins Above Replacement has been a hot topic in the past few years is because it has come down to the wire on who should win MVP. We got the best example of it last year between Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera, and Los Angeles’ Mike Trout.

Miguel Cabrera, as you may know, won the Triple Crown last year. That is an incredible accomplishment. He’s the first person to do it since Yaz did it on the Red Sox in 1968. However, Mike Trout creeps along in and posts an astounding 10.9 WAR. That’s absolutely incredible. A WAR of 2.0 is considered a “solid starter.” Trout was the leader in WAR and in offensive WAR (The highest Defensive WAR was Cubs 2^nd Baseman Darwin Barney, who would win the gold glove). However, despite all this talk about Wins Above Replacement, Miggy won the MVP title by a landslide. Don’t take that as an embarrassing downfall of WAR and sabermetrics though. In the next few years, I wouldn’t be surprised if every single person that works with baseball is using sabermetrics.

 

I read a great article about these two, but something that caught my eye wasn’t about them. In 2002, Miguel Tejada won the MVP for the Oakland Athletics (remember hearing and knowing that in Moneyball? I didn’t think so.) However, WAR shows that I’d rather the 2002 David Eckstein over Tejada. Eckstein had a 4.4 WAR, while Tejada had a 4.7. And now you’re thinking, “You’re an idiot, Evan. You just told me that a higher WAR means a better overall player.” Well not necessarily, and this could have been a reason to the Cabrera vs Trout case. In 2002, Tejada hit 34 home runs and drove in 131 RBI’s, yet Eckstein drove in 63 RBI’s and could barely throw the ball to first from shortstop. Here are the reasons why Eckstein was better:

·         Eckstein got hit by 27 pitches that season, so he had a better OBP than Tejada (getting on base means everything. Why were Bonds and Giambi so damn valuable?)

·         Eckstein hit into a third as many double plays.

·         Eckstein was a much better defensive player, and turned much more double plays.

So if you said that picking Eckstein would be a terrible decision, well then you’ve got another thing coming. 

Wins Above Replacement is evolving baseball before our eyes. Right now, the highest WAR is Clayton Kershaw with 3.7. It'll be fun to see who will be the victor at the end. WAR is becoming the most important statistic, and it’s the best measurement of a player’s true value.

-Evan Boyd

P.S. If you want to look in more on sabermetrics, look up Bill James. He is the father of sabermetrics.

“There are three types of baseball players: Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happens” – Tommy Lasorda