I think WAR for pitchers is flawed. The reason for me is that it relies heavily on FIP. While FIP definitely has its uses, it's more of a predictive stat. And, while there may be a strong correlation between the amount of HR, BB, and K a pitcher had last year, it's not telling me what I want to know.
Take these 2 pitchers:
A 200 IP, 75 K 65 BB 20 HR 60 ER 50 R
B 200 IP, 125 K, 45 BB 10 HR 90 ER 100 R
Now, I would say pitcher A was the better pitcher last year. I understand that might not be a popular view, but the way the really smart guys are looking at things like BABIP is changing. Take this excerpt from Tango's blog just today:
Quote:
NOTHING is random. Nothing, nothing, nothing. There’s no such thing as 100% luck. None. Anyone who says that, feel free to remove his sabermetric card from his wallet.
The #1 job of a saberist is to tell you, the reader, HOW MUCH the observed metric is associated to the player’s skill. A pitcher’s BABIP has ALOT of noise. It’s not 100% noise. But, it’s alot. A hitter’s BABIP has alot of noise. Not ALOT, but alot.
I posted somewhere how much noise. For a hitter, it’s something like after 500 balls in play, half of it is luck. For a pitcher, it’s something like after 2000 or 3000 balls in play (I forget exactly), half of it is luck.
On the other hand, after less than 200 plate appearances, half of a hitter’s walk rate is luck. And after less than 100 balls in play, a pitcher’s tendency to give up groundballs is half-luck. So, you can see that we can tell VERY QUICKLY how much a pitcher is a groundball pitcher. It takes us a very very long time to figure out how good the pitcher is at preventing hits on balls in play.
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So... I don't know. But I've never bought the argument that a pitcher has no control outside of the TTO. I've never bought that he has 7-10% control over it. It's unquantifiable right now. With the hit f/x stuff coming out, hopefully the smart guys can figure out a lot more stuff about defense and maybe about how much credit they should receive. There's just so much that goes into whether a BIP lands safely or not.
Also, the WAR formula for position players needs UZR which I expect would be difficult to replicate in the game.