Tomase: Overreliance on WAR may have hurt J.D. Martinez in AL MVP vote that’s going to be won by Mookie Betts | WEEI

Take this year’s AL MVP race. Betts led the league in WAR, will win the award, and deserves it. Hard to argue with Trout or Ramirez, either, based on performance, though I’m certainly open to the idea of an MVP coming from a winning team, and not Trout’s sub-.500 Angels.

But there are other deserving candidates whose WAR won’t give them a sniff. Red Sox slugger J.D. Martinez is one of them. For five months, he flirted with the Triple Crown. Because he’s mostly a DH and no better than an average fielder when he does don a glove, he never had a chance, though his 5.9 fWAR is roughly in range of Ramirez.

Some advanced stats make a case for Martinez, such as his weighted runs created (170, 3rd), base-out runs added (73.36, 1st), win probability added (5.4, 3rd) and . . . there’s no need to lose ourselves any further in those weeds.

“There’s no need to lose ourselves any further in those weeds”? The **stats** he uses ignore defense and baserunning.

WAR isn’t perfect. While I agree people shouldn’t simply use WAR to rank players for award voting, Tomase’s case is extremely weak and unconvincing.

Wins Above Replacement—all
1. Betts • BOS 10.9
2. Trout • LAA 10.2
3. Chapman • OAK 8.2
4. Ramirez • CLE 7.9
  Lindor • CLE 7.9
6. Snell • TBR 7.5
7. Bregman • HOU 6.9
8. Sale • BOS 6.9
9. Martinez • BOS 6.4
10. Verlander • HOU 6.3

Sabrblog: What a Drag it is Getting Old

You can see that old player value has been in free fall in recent years. In 2017, age 35+ players accumulated 15.9 WAR in total, just 1.6% of the value in all of baseball. By percentage, this was the smallest total since 1877 when the major leagues were just getting started….

Setting aside the reasons for the exceptional aging that went on between 1998 and 2007, which has been debated to death, it is interesting to wonder why players are not aging as well today. The most common answer will be “steroids testing,” but could there be other causes?

Could the current game, which values velocity in pitchers and the ability to hit velocity in batters, be more of a “young man’s game”? Could pitching velocity be causing more injuries and therefore shorter careers? Could an historical crop of young stars – Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, Francisco Lindor, Carlos Correa and many more – be temporarily skewing the data?

All of this and more could be true.

in 2002, 35-and-older plyers accounted for 14.2% of MLB WAR

Ryan Yarbrough has broken how Fangraphs calculates WAR - DRaysBay

Another reason not to use fWAR for pitchers.

The FIP shown isn’t the FIP that is used to calculate their brand of WAR. One has to add infield fly balls and the home park’s FIP park factor to reach the right calculation. After factoring in the 21 infield flyballs that Yarbrough has induced improves his 102 FIP- to 99 ifFIP- (in other words, he has been 0.8% better than the average American League pitcher).

It all comes down to replacement level. The other pitchers discussed have been used a starter outside of LeBlanc getting five appearances out of the bullpen, but replacement level is different for starting pitchers and relievers. Overall this makes sense as MLB starters have put up a 4.21 FIP and 101 FIP- while relievers have put up a 4.05 FIP and 98 FIP-.

However in the calculation of fWAR the replacement level for starters is 0.12 WPGAR (Wins Per Game Above Replacement Level) while being worth .03 WPGAR for relievers.

SABR 48 Pittsburgh Review

Mark Armour shares his SABR experience, and also provides the details on a fascinating new game, WAR war.  I think this may be bigger than blackjack.

Meanwhile, Joe Dimino and I started playing “WAR War” with the stacks of 1989 cards laying around.

If you have never heard of WAR War, don’t feel too bad. I sort of made it up on the spot, but I think, like Monopoly or Scrabble, it has a chance to become a craze.