The Ringer: How Lance Lynn Became the Best Pitcher in the AL

Like all great bits, my effusive adoration for Lynn was grounded partially in the truth—two truths, to be exact. The first is that Lynn specifically was underrated. From 2010 to 2018, 24 starting pitchers had at least three seasons with enough innings to qualify for the ERA title and an ERA+ of 120 or better. Ten of them have won at least one Cy Young Award, and another eight have finished third or better. But of those 24 starting pitchers, only Lynn and Hiroki Kuroda have never earned a single Cy Young vote.

Giants’ Farhan Zaidi expresses thoughts on WAR, Buster Posey’s value

Ever since the Giants hired Farhan Zaidi as their president of baseball operations this past offseason, there have been battles between talking heads arguing on the basis of traditional baseball stats and advanced metrics.

Zaidi, who earned his bachelor of science degree at MIT and his PhD at Cal Berkeley, is widely seen as a baseball mind that leans on analytics. So-called baseball fans who don’t want the game to evolve argue that he’s using too many numbers to try and change the game. At the same time, Zaidi has help lead highly successful teams with the A’s and Dodgers.

So, what are his thought on WAR (Wins Above Replacement)?

“Yeah, I think it’s a good measure on how a guy has produced in the past,” Zaidi said Wednesday on KNBR. “I think it’s a nice, valuable back of the envelope calculation for how much value a specific player brought you.”

Problem is, said value for Posey more or less requires him to stay as a catcher- at this point, his value above replacement level is chiefly connected with his defensive play and position.

Reframing WAR at Fangraphs

Update: An earlier bug that impacted updated pitcher WAR has now been resolved. The pitcher tables below have been updated to reflect that. Thanks to everyone who pointed out the issue!

I’m very pleased to announce that FanGraphs has finally added catcher framing data to the site, with full thanks to Jared Cross, who you may know as the co-creator of the Steamer projections. We’ve also incorporated catcher framing into WAR.

Including catcher framing in WAR has been a topic of internal debate at FanGraphs for the past half-decade. The problem has never been with the inclusion of framing numbers on the catcher side of things. That’s a fairly simple addition. The problem has always been what to do with the pitchers. For instance, the 2011 Brewers were some 40 runs above average in catcher framing. When you add those 40 runs to catchers, do you subtract 40 runs from pitchers? As it turns out, you do, but those runs are not attributed equally to each pitcher