by Nick Piecoro - Sept. 18, 2012 09:40 PM
azcentral sports
The stat of the moment that best defines the player of the moment is clear in its love for the Angels' Mike Trout, expressing in no uncertain terms that Trout has been baseball's best player this season. And that it's not even close.
The stat is called Wins Above Replacement -- or WAR, for short -- and with awards talk already upon us, now might be a good time to talk about a stat you might be hearing a lot about if you follow baseball in the Internet age.
So here's what WAR does for position players: It puts a value on everything a player can do in a game, whether it's hitting a home run, stealing a base, making a far-ranging catch or going first to third on a single. You name it, WAR quantifies it.
It takes those values and adjusts them for the player's home park and his position. It also compares them to a generic player, someone who might be found waiting in Triple-A, and combines them into one number that represents how many wins he's worth above that "replacement player."
There are two sites, Fan Graphs and Baseball-Reference, that generate their own versions of the stat, and they agree: Trout is really good.
According to fWAR (internet baseball jargon for Fan Graph's WAR), Trout is worth 9.3 wins above replacement. Baseball-Reference (or bWAR) is even higher on him, pegging his value at 10.2. The closest AL player is the Yankees' Robinson Cano, who is 3.0 and 3.5 wins behind, depending on the site.
Trout has been the game's best offensive player, contributing 51.5 runs, per Fan Graphs. He's been the second-best baserunner (6.1 runs). And he's been the eighth-best defender (saving 13 runs). All of this matches up with more traditional measures. Trout is a .329 hitter with 27 homers, 45 steals and a highlight reel filled with tremendous defensive plays.
Fan Graphs writer Dave Cameron says WAR shouldn't be looked at as an end-all, be-all number, but rather a "really useful grouping mechanism." What WAR tells us about the National League this year is that Andrew McCutchen, Buster Posey and Ryan Braun are all having similar seasons, he said.
"And if you're going to pick an MVP, it should be someone out of that group," he said.
And there are skeptical people out there, and it seems much of their doubt is focused on WAR's defensive component. Fan Graphs uses Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), a stat that requires human scorers to evaluate each defensive play individually. Cameron believes people question UZR because it can sometimes fly in the face of common beliefs.
"One of the things that we've been told is that speed and defense don't slump," he said. "I think in our minds we just believe that defense should be a constant, that good defensive players are good every day. I think the data shows that it's not true."
Sometimes WAR will spit out a number that might cause you to either want to completely disregard it or make you rethink everything, depending on your level of open-mindedness.
Take the Diamondbacks' Jason Kubel, who has an fWAR of 1.9 and a bWAR of 0.7. He ranks in the same group as Mariners second baseman Dustin Ackley, who owns a .232 average, and the Pirates' Clint Barmes, a shortstop hitting .225.
How can Kubel, a player with 29 home runs, a .514 slugging and a league-leading 13 outfield assists, be rated so harshly? Part of it, certainly, is his position and what the average left fielder tends to produce. Another part, Cameron says, is Chase Field.
"I think he's really getting dinged hard by the fact that everyone hits well at Chase Field," he said.
WAR might not be perfect, but it also might bring us closer to accurately evaluating players' performance. One thing's certain: It's the trendy stat of the moment, and you'll probably be hearing it cited more and more as the MVP debates heat up.
Reach The Heat Index at nick.piecoro@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8680.
19 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.azcentral.com/sports/articles/2012/09/18/20120918baseball-stat-geeks-latching-war-value-players.html
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