[Cobra Mgr]

WAR cannot be the standard when there isn't a standard for WAR.

Bill James on WAR

The most critical assumption was the first one, that each statistic acquires its importance by its connection to wins and losses. When we were moving out of the primordial soup, that was the first and most critical step...............I am not saying that WAR is a bad statistic or a useless statistic, but it is not a perfect statistic, and in this particular case it is just dead wrong. It is dead wrong because the creators of that statistic have severed the connection between performance statistics and wins, thus undermining their analysis..................the connection between wins and other statistical accomplishments is the basis of statistical analysis. When you sever the connection between wins and statistics, you are no longer doing statistical analysis. What you are doing then the same thing that Maury Allen did in when he said that Johnny Bench was not an all-time great because he never hit .300. You are picking and choosing which stats you will pay attention to and which you will ignore, based not on their connection to wins and losses, but based on your own prejudices. When you do that, it is no longer valid statistical analysis...................What creates value for a baseball player is winning games. You cannot discard that principle, and have a valid analysis.