I don't really know whether he's right or wrong, but I feel he's one of the few here who actually makes baseball talk interesting. That's quite the accomplishment.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Well, he's one of the few who gives a flying fuck about such an awful, tedious sport, so that gives him some points.

Can't wait to ask him his opinion on the International Chess Championships.

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_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

I know a guy who thinks a lot like JORR does on this topic. And one thing that seems to stick out about their issues with WAR, is the fact that you don't have to watch games to have an opinion on a player. Back in the old days (get off my lawn), you had to really watch a lot of baseball to be perceived as as educated in the game. Today, that's not the case. I watch just the Cubs. I literally barely tune in to any other games. But with WAR, I still can have an idea of the value other players are giving their team. IMO, that bothers the old timers. Hell, even Nas is talking about needing to watch games to know how good/bad Aramis is, which is just beyond ludicrous to suggest that someone like Nas, who has a family, has enough time to study the career of a guy like Aramis. More likely than not, a few major instances of good or bad play are sticking out in his memory, and shaping the majority of his opinion. But that's neither here nor there, or even really worth arguing about.


But back to the main point. I don't think WAR is perfect. It clearly isn't, no one claims it is. But 99.99% of the time, it's more a more useful tool to me than trusting what JORR saw 50 years ago. I could take JORRs word on things, but that gives me no context. If I know catfish had a WAR of "X," I have a general idea of what kind of player he is. And for the "you have to watch the games" guys... you could tune in to every single Cubs game. Every inning, every play, and still not take in as many variables as WAR does when calculating how good of a hitter player Y is. Could you have an opinion that differs from what WAR is suggesting? Sure... but if it's THAT far off what WAR is saying... how can I put any sort of value in your opinion? There is a system that is generally received positively in all baseball circles. And then there is trusting JORR form the message board. To me, the burden of proof is on you in that scenario, and more than likely you are going to use "fire, passion, fire in the belly, guts, guile, grime, it, heart" etc to explain why your opinion is severely different than what his WAR is. And then where is our conversation? Hell.

Another thing about the old timers, is they would use the back of baseball cards. You'd get the major categories, and again it would leave a lot up for debate. It's guy had more hits, less HRs, etc. There wasnt a nice neat bow on it like WAR can give a player. That seems to bother the old guys.

We? Where'd you play your college mathletics?

Thank god football has advanced stats too now to tell me how bad Brandon Marshall is.

We, the people

Those two quotes are kind of the problem. People are thinking ignorance can be overcome by the current popular formula. We are trusting the formula is correct but how do we really know? Clearly, they aren't good enough to be predictive of anything.

Some smart guys decided that home runs and strikeouts are more important than a ball hit in play, and they figured out that it's more important to be a good hitting shortstop vs a great hitting first baseman. Are they right? Maybe. The numbers mostly seem to make sense, but given they were basically derived by looking at data from past seasons and finding formulas that made sense, they should at least be somewhat correct looking.

I know I've said it before, but I still have no reason to believe WAR is accurate. It may be, but it's not my job to know it isn't. It is the people who claim it is accurate to show it is accurate. Some of the stuff seems fairly proven such as the lowered importance of runs and rbi, and even the idea of stealing bases seems to have been shown to be a bad idea, but the idea that the White Sox could replace everyone on the roster besides 4 players and have 4.5 more wins just isn't something I can accept as some sort of truth.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

The main problem is not watching any/enough games of people you're discussing. Why bother having an opinion on something if all you're going to do is cite his WAR or any other number. I know, sports arguments, lol.

That's the thing. I don't believe WAR actually does put a nice bow on everything.

At some point you have to actually do something. Everything else is just theoretical. If you're not scoring a run or driving one in, what the fuck are you doing? Take SABR whipping boy, Joe Carter for example. He may have had a lot of opportunities, but he actually drove all those runs in. We don't have to wonder what he might have done had circumstances been different. Dwight Eisenhower may have been a better president than Lincoln under different circumstances. He just needed a war or other crisis to prove himself. But we can't judge him on anything other than what actually occurred. Circumstances often define the man. I'm sorry that Tuffy Rhodes didn't get to a World Series so he could have hit his three home runs there instead of off Gooden on Opening Day. It happened how it happened.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I guess I don't know what the alternative is. Should I just trust you and your opinions?

Why do you need to have an opinion beyond what you see? Are you a GM?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

And this is the part I don't get. WAR is taking into consideration what was done. What actually occurred.

I understand that. I'm talking about the mantra that "RBI are meaningless". As if there are a lot of horseshit players out there that have 1500 career RBI.

What are we trying to achieve here? It's really all just fodder for discussion. That's fine. I just don't accept the idea that you can throw a single number out there and that's the discussion ender. Especially when it's a number that uses different parameters every other season based on new information. PECOTA was better two years ago.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Missed the turn signal on the RBI chat.


I don't think it's absolutely the be all end all. I just think in most situations that I have been in, WAR is more valuable than other aspects of the discussion.

Sorry about that, but inherent in a discussion like this is the contempt from one side for anyone who still has any interest in the stats that are "on the back of a baseball card".

There's a lot more noise within WAR than there is in a pure stat like RBI. An RBI is something that actually occurred. WAR depends on a human being's opinion of what's important and how each element should be weighted. In fact, there are several competing versions of WAR.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

FWIW, I understand this concept, understand the difference and understand that the weight given to it may not be "correct." That doesn't mean the tool itself isn't useful. And I love the idea of there being many different versions of WAR. It's in the marketplace of ideas. It's not perfect. It's not a law, it should always be refined. I'm totally cool with that.

I get your RBI point. It's a fact, not a perception. He hit the RBI, can't debate that. We can debate the value of the RBI as compared to the other things a baseball player does. Both can exist in the same world, IMO.

I almost think the RBI discussion is entirely separate.

Yeah, I'm not railing against WAR. And maybe it is a different discussion, but I think we've changed the way we view performance and it still might not be correct. For example, I have a hard time squaring the separate concepts that overall average on balls in play is always .300 plus/minus a slight variation and the idea that a strikeout is the equivalent of any other out (from an offensive perspective). In fact, isn't every non-strikeout out just a neutral batted ball that results in a hit a third of the time?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I don't think so, because if you pop it up to the infield every time, it's not landing untouched .300 of the time.

Obviously, some guys have the tendency to pop up more than others. But if we throw all the hitters into a pool, it appears that a third of their batted balls fall for hits. The difference between pitchers' BAA over enough time is only their strikeouts (and perhaps an ability to prevent homers, but that gets a little murkier). I hear bernstein talk about spray charts and using analysis to position fielders, but I think that's new enough that we don't really know if the possibility of consistently holding hitters below that .300 on balls in play exists. In any case, if the strikeout is a positive for the pitcher, I think it has to be a negative for the hitter.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Ahhh, I see what you're saying. The only glaring difference to me is a strikeout negates the possibility of a double play. But I guess that's true for the pitcher throwing the SO, too.

Bucky you may be right. I'm not old but maybe I'm a little old fashioned when it comes to baseball. The fact that someone that may not have watched one inning of baseball all year can go find a number and argue with me about a player he couldn't pick out of a lineup pisses me off. There is no analyzing of any stats. It's just a formula that spits out a number. I pointed out things like Zobrist being more valuable than Pujols (when he was the best player in baseball) that also makes it hard for me to really buy into it. IMO it is hard to have a good debate and in some ways that takes the fun out of talking baseball for me.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

I actually believe advanced statistics ignite more debate. I think WAR upsets people because you have goofs like Bernstein and Fangraph Followers who blindly swear their allegiance to the statistic. Allows them to not invest any time in watching the sport while also sounding authoritative when talking. I enjoy the Zobrist/Pujols example. It's interesting to debate whether advanced statisticians are correct in identifying what's considered valuable.

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I agree. It's something else to add to the discussion. It's just that too many people spout off without having a real grasp of what the numbers actually mean or any willingness to question anything produced by Nate Silver or Baseball Prospectus, etc.

And then there's the fashionable practice of saying authoritatively that RBI and W/L record are meaningless. Who are the shitty players who have 1500 career RBI? Who are the great starting pitchers with sub-.500 records? There aren't any.

I guess I just look at it as, what are we trying to achieve? I think we all know a good player without WAR. The snobbery is what I don't like. It's as if some people want to show how stupid someone else was for thinking that Aparicio should bat lead-off when Ferris Fain was on the team.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I wholeheartedly disagree.

Yes, you can get an idea of value, I guess. Whatever that's worth. But to truly know the game, the players, etc. you do have to watch.

Advanced stats are not designed so you can not watch games. They go along with watching.

What?

Of course they are predictive. Just because they miss on teams records sometimes doenst mean they arent predictive of anything. Prediction is the whole basis of the idea.


I think you're probably oversimplfying it


I dont think the Wins above correlates with wins that way. I look at it as more of a measuring stick unto itself.

You're right in that it isn't meant to correlate with the actual wins of the team. But I do find it ironic that so many people get angry with the idea that a pitcher is awarded a "win" for each game and whine that "WINS ARE A TEAM STAT!!!!!!". In the same way that the "wins" in WAR aren't the wins that a team has in its record, a pitchers wins are just a different statistic based upon an arbitrary set of rules, e.g. 5 IP minimum to qualify as a starter, etc.

I think part of it is that every baseball fan understands the parameters of a pitcher's win or loss. There are far fewer fans who actually understand WAR and many people relish the fact as it makes them feel smarter.

But back to Rick's point, there seems to be a belief that if a guy has a negative WAR he can simply be replaced with Jake Drake and the team will improve. That just isn't the case. There isn't a farm loaded with "Replacement Level Players" ready to step in for Starlin Castro.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

This is the misconception that bugs me the most. I can't imagine there are many people on here who are truly watching a dozen baseball games a night... studying each at bat. Even someone with the MLB package... how many at bats per player can they really watch?

Let's take last year, RPB. How many at-bats of Trout and Cabrera do you think you saw last year? Do you think you truly had a large enough sample size, based on your personal viewing, to have a strong enough opinion who the MVP was? My guess is no. You, like me, probably saw some highlights, a few at bats when they played against the Chicago teams, and some on Sunday night baseball. Did you really gain that much more than the guy who is relying on WAR?