MLB News & Notes (other than Cubs or Sox)

[rok]

MLB (especially the NL) has been horrible offensively since 2007 or so, but I'll admit I prefer pitching to hitting so it doesn't bother me. That said, all these NH's and PG's are getting ridiculous.

[chshdsck]

I'm not going to lie, I didn't mind seeing the Brewers blow two saves in consecuative games while getting swept by the Royals.



It brought a little smile to my face.

[Brock]

[quote name='WiCubsFan' timestamp='1339776023' post='190501']

I'm not going to lie, I didn't mind seeing the Brewers blow two saves in consecuative games while getting swept by the Royals.



It brought a little smile to my face.

[/quote]



Yep. Karma, Brewers fans.

[chshdsck]

This is what my baseball season has come to as a fan. Hoping other teams fail miserably.

[Butcher]

Good to see "that's a clown question, bro" has gone viral...

[kbwsb]

As of today, Darwin Barney has had the 8th best season in all of major-league baseball. It's obvious that it is because of his fielding prowess, but still.

Discuss.





WAR Position Players 1. [url="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/v/vottojo01.shtml"]Votto[/url] (CIN) 4.0 2. [url="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/lawribr01.shtml"]Lawrie[/url] (TOR) 3.7 3. [url="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/wrighda03.shtml"]Wright[/url] (NYM) 3.6 4. [url="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hamiljo03.shtml"]Hamilton[/url] (TEX) 3.4 [url="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/braunry02.shtml"]Braun[/url] (MIL) 3.4 6. [url="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bournmi01.shtml"]Bourn[/url] (ATL) 3.3 7. [url="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/cabreme01.shtml"]Cabrera[/url] (SFG) 3.2 8. [url="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/barneda01.shtml"]Barney[/url] (CHC) 3.1 9. [url="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/ruizca01.shtml"]Ruiz[/url] (PHI) 3.0 10. [url="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/troutmi01.shtml"]Trout[/url] (LAA) 2.8 [url="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/jacksau01.shtml"]Jackson[/url] (DET)

[1060Ivy]

Barney has put together a fine season to date but he's no where near the other players on the list. Yeah that's what WAR says but would you build a team around him? He's a good position player with great defense capacity but he's first man off the bench for a playoff caliper team. Unfortunately Cubs have too many guys of that capacity on the roster

[VanSlawAndCottoCheese]

WAR is a ridiculously reductive statistic.

[kbwsb]

[quote name='VanSlawAndCottoCheese' timestamp='1339969676' post='190571']

WAR is a ridiculously reductive statistic.

[/quote]

How so? Could it simply be that baseball fans (including me) have historically underestimated the importance of defense?

[VanSlawAndCottoCheese]

I find the attempt to sum up the highly contextualized, highly idiosyncratic nature of the result of a pitched ball into one statistic ludicrous. WAR is attractive because it boils down the extremely complex system of valuing different strengths and weakness of individual players and weighing the results of highly contextualized plays into one number. That should seem ludicrous on its face.



Sure, defense is important. But I'm equally suspicious of offensive metrics of WAR as I am the defensive ones.

[Andy]

Clemens found not guilty of perjury. Not sure how though.

[chshdsck]

[quote name='Andy' timestamp='1340052767' post='190616']

Clemens found not guilty of perjury. Not sure how though.

[/quote]



That's bullshit

[kbwsb]

[quote name='VanSlawAndCottoCheese' timestamp='1339992861' post='190582']

I find the attempt to sum up the highly contextualized, highly idiosyncratic nature of the result of a pitched ball into one statistic ludicrous. WAR is attractive because it boils down the extremely complex system of valuing different strengths and weakness of individual players and weighing the results of highly contextualized plays into one number. That should seem ludicrous on its face.



Sure, defense is important. But I'm equally suspicious of offensive metrics of WAR as I am the defensive ones.

[/quote]

Fair enough, but baseball fans have been trying to boil down the complexities of the game into numbers since the days of Abe Lincoln. WAR is certainly an improvement over "He's a .300 hitter, so he must be an All-Star. Hey, I don't care if he plays in Coors Field and that he's a slow-footed, terrible defensive left-fielder with no power, and a .301 on-base percentage. He's a freakin' .300 hitter. Let's sign him."



WAR actually takes the time to consider context, park effects, baserunning skill, fielding skill, league effects, power and patience and a number of small things that go into the all-around ranking of a certain player. Is it perfect? Heck no, but they do keep tweaking the numbers, in a constant effort to more honestly show the true value of MLB players. A serious look at the WAR numbers for, say, the greats of the game, tends to confirm that WAR is pretty much close to what most reasonable fans already suspected.



I'm a fan, but I'm no disciple...it's an "in flux" type of thing. It works pretty well, but only in a general way. My biggest gripe is that the 2 major compliers, baseball-refernce and FanGraphs, have 2 different systems. They're usually pretty close, but there are sometimes big discrepancies, and an obvious one is...da da...with Mr. Darwin Barney, the fellow whose numbers started this discussion. FanGraphs has him as having a solid season, but nowhere near "the 8th best in MLB" good.

(They have him in the top-50 in the NL, which, I admit, passes the smell-test a whole lot better than 8th in MLB).

[VanSlawAndCottoCheese]

[quote name='KBwsb' timestamp='1340053640' post='190620']

[quote name='VanSlawAndCottoCheese' timestamp='1339992861' post='190582']

I find the attempt to sum up the highly contextualized, highly idiosyncratic nature of the result of a pitched ball into one statistic ludicrous. WAR is attractive because it boils down the extremely complex system of valuing different strengths and weakness of individual players and weighing the results of highly contextualized plays into one number. That should seem ludicrous on its face.



Sure, defense is important. But I'm equally suspicious of offensive metrics of WAR as I am the defensive ones.

[/quote]

Fair enough, but baseball fans have been trying to boil down the complexities of the game into numbers since the days of Abe Lincoln. WAR is certainly an improvement over "He's a .300 hitter, so he must be an All-Star. Hey, I don't care if he plays in Coors Field and that he's a slow-footed, terrible defensive left-fielder with no power, and a .301 on-base percentage. He's a freakin' .300 hitter. Let's sign him."



WAR actually takes the time to consider context, park effects, baserunning skill, fielding skill, league effects, power and patience and a number of small things that go into the all-around ranking of a certain player. Is it perfect? Heck no, but they do keep tweaking the numbers, in a constant effort to more honestly show the true value of MLB players. A serious look at the WAR numbers for, say, the greats of the game, tends to confirm that WAR is pretty much close to what most reasonable fans already suspected.



I'm a fan, but I'm no disciple...it's an "in flux" type of thing. It works pretty well, but only in a general way. My biggest gripe is that the 2 major compliers, baseball-refernce and FanGraphs, have 2 different systems. They're usually pretty close, but there are sometimes big discrepancies, and an obvious one is...da da...with Mr. Darwin Barney, the fellow whose numbers started this discussion. FanGraphs has him as having a solid season, but nowhere near "the 8th best in MLB" good.

(They have him in the top-50 in the NL, which, I admit, passes the smell-test a whole lot better than 8th in MLB).

[/quote]

I agree precisely that the contingencies that you mention of your hypothetical player have been recognized--and rightly so--as the reason for paying better attention to manifold statistics. This move toward more numbers, quantifying more elements of the game has been extremely positive. The move to reduce all of those numbers to one stat, however, is dangerous, no matter the tweaking. Baseball is too complex of a game: the situations from pitch to pitch vary; the players who hit, run, and catch are complex; the coaches and their decisions are situational. When a ball is pitched, there are at least 10 skill sets at play (more if there are men on base) that are working in conjunction with and against one another. Those intersections of activity can only get muddied as we reduce multiple numbers into one.



I guess I just find WAR great fodder for the bar stool but meaningless for the dugout bench. And I don't mean to pile on you, KB; I've been thinking about WAR for a while, and you just happened to mention it. So sorry about that.

[kbwsb]

You're not piling on at all. I welcome the discussion, especially since, as you say, you've actually pondered WAR extensively. Most anti-WAR folk haven't, and simply react to it the same way old newspaper writers reacted to people talking about Moneyball ten years ago.



But your reticence to embrace the statistic has led me to question my own positive thoughts about it. After thinking about it some, I've come to this conclusion: I have always been more of a "baseball history" aficionado than the average fan (or the average SOI-er), and I think WAR works better as a long-term stat than it does as an in-season stat. Randomness plays far too large a role during a single season for an all-inclusive stat to be a "be-all/end-all" stat.



So perhaps you're correct: for in-season analysis, either WAR needs a decade or two of tweaking until it becomes anything other than a blunt sledgehammer of information, or, indeed, the entire idea of reducing 15 different stats into a single, convenient number is plain ludicrous.



As far as baseball history goes, however, I do believe that the stat works wonderfully. The following link seems to contain info, that to me, is spot-on. Oh sure, there are a few surprises on the list, but then every intelligent new stat tends to shed some new light on certain ballplayer's careers. DiMaggio's number seems low, but then one recalls that he spent three years at the peak of his prime in the Army during WW II, and WAR only measures exactly what a player did on the field, period. (Joltin' Joe also lost mucho WAR points by retiring at age 36, a very rare, young age for a superstar). Koufax's low number reflects his own way-early retirement at age 30. In fact, of the top 100, the only player whose WAR number stands out as truly startling is that of Rick Reuschel. If a stat passes the smell-test 99 times out of 100, that's not a bad stat.



[url="http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/WAR_career.shtml"]http://www.baseball-...AR_career.shtml[/url]