[uruguru]

Originally Posted by kidd_05_u2

You can criticize the assumptions all you want. We have several years of data showing that the assumptions are more than reasonable for what the stat is trying to capture. And we have a lot of data showing that WAR is a very good statistic overall for what it is trying to do.

ok.

The error bars for WAR are very high. BBref will tell you up front that differences of up to 2 WAR between players are not decisive. The average player is about 2 WAR. Think about that.

And they report WAR values in tenths of a WAR.

Random chance says that 4% of all MLB'ers (1 in 25) will have their WAR overestimated (or underestimated) relative to their actual value for every single season of their career..... with those error bars.

Look, there's no mathematical rigor to the calculation. The highest-leverage value, the replacement pct of .294, is crazily assumed to be a fixed number even though this concept screams out seasonal variability, yet the factors for ballparks, literally the most static thing in the sport, are calculated in a way that they fluctuate every season.

There is not a single person in this forum who, without a couple of hours and access to google, could even tell you what data is needed to calculate WAR let alone be able to calculate it from data or even be able to validate a value coming from OOTP, bbref or w/e. It's all trust and no verify at this point.

I was a sabermetric geek who stopped following baseball in 2005 (steroid scandal) and didn't come back until around 2017 and suddenly everyone is using this cool stat. So naturally, I wanted to understand it. It's pretty fuzzy as for as baseball metrics go.

edit: btw here is how they divided up wins between pitchers and non-pitchers. It's comical and statistically indefensible. Even if you thought this was a valid approach, this ratio would change every season but somehow the first time they did it they got it just right.

From BBRef:

The wins, and therefore the runs, are further divided between pitchers and position players. We assign 41% to the pitchers and 59% to the position players. This corresponds to the salaries of free agent pitchers vs. hitters over the last four seasons.

I repeat: You need to know the salaries of free agent signings as part of the process to calculating WAR. It is a great concept for a metric, but it's a garbage stat.