WAR!

HUH!

GOOD GOD!

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

ANALYZING BASEBALL

Sorry. I’m contractually obligated as a modern baseball writer to make that joke at least once. The season is almost over. If I didn’t squeeze it in somewhere, they wouldn’t let me write about baseball ever again.

Look, I don’t make the rules. Take it up with someone else.

Now that I’ve drawn you in with an overused and not actually funny lede, let’s talk about WAR, an acronym (or initialism for some weirdos, as I’ve discovered from listening to podcasts and broadcasts) that stands for Wins Above Replacement.

The theory behind WAR is quite simple. It seeks to quantify how much better (or worse) a player is relative to a “replacement player”, which you can just think of as a AAAA player. You know the type. One of those guys who’s always around, always available, probably too good to be in AAA, but not a guy you want on your Major League roster.

The equation behind WAR is less simple, and, as a result, we see discrepancies. Many places try their hand at WAR, but two are commonly used: Fangraphs (fWAR) and Baseball-Reference (rWAR).

Smarter people than I can explain the difference between the two, but honestly, right now, I don’t care much. The purpose of this article isn’t to choose a side in the WAR, because that’s easy: You just choose the side that best fits your narrative. Duh.

The purpose is to see which players the metrics differ the most on, and which they’re most in conclusion on.

So here we go. Here are the San Francisco Giants that fWAR and rWAR are most torn on. Since the Giants have used a franchise-record number of players (by a long shot) this year, I didn’t want to include everyone. So I’m sticking with players currently on the 40-man roster (including those on the 60-day IL), with at least 50 plate appearances or 10 innings pitched.

Before you get mad at me for being a typical human and using arbitrary numbers because they’re round and pretty, I opted for 50 and 10 because it allowed me to include Mauricio Dubón and Johnny Cueto. Those guys are cool.

Also: I’m only using pitching WAR for pitchers. I’ve ignored their batting WAR. Sorry, MadBum.

Biggest WAR Discrepancies Player fWAR rWAR Difference Player fWAR rWAR Difference Buster Posey 1.7 0.8 0.9 Jeff Samardzija 1.3 2.2 0.9 Shaun Anderson 0.6 -0.3 0.9 Will Smith 0.9 1.7 0.8 Logan Webb 0.3 -0.5 0.8 Reyes Moronta 0.7 1.3 0.6 Pablo Sandoval 0.9 1.4 0.5 Madison Bumgarner 3.2 2.7 0.5 Tony Watson -0.3 0.2 0.5 Dereck Rodriguez -0.3 -0.8 0.5 Mauricio Dubon 0.4 0.8 0.4 Steven Duggar -0.5 -0.1 0.4 Sam Coonrod 0.0 0.4 0.4 Stephen Vogt 0.9 1.2 0.3 Alex Dickerson 0.9 1.2 0.3 Brandon Crawford 0.5 0.8 0.3 Johnny Cueto 0.3 0.6 0.3

Now, this is a slightly flawed science. Jeff Samardzija may be tied for the largest gap, but that gap makes up a much smaller percentage of his value than, say, Dubón, whose smaller WAR gap represents a larger chunk of his value.

And, of course, you can see that both Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference value Samardzija decently, whereas one sees Logan Webb as an actively bad player, and one, well, doesn’t.

What else can we learn? We can learn that Buster Posey is - duh - very good at framing pitches, something that fWAR accounts for, but rWAR doesn’t. So save those robo umps for when Posey retires.

We can also learn that the Giants aren’t very good, in case you had any questions. Baseball-Reference provides context for WAR, stating that someone worth 0-2 WAR is a bench player, someone worth 2+ WAR is a starter, someone worth 5+ WAR is an All-Star, and someone worth 8+ WAR is an MVP candidate.

Of course, many of the Giants shown above haven’t played full seasons, but . . . yikes, guys. Maybe clean that up a little next year, yeah?

So, with that all said, which players do Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference most see eye to eye on?

Here you go:

Smallest WAR Discrepancies Player fWAR rWAR Difference Player fWAR rWAR Difference Tyler Beede 0.1 0.1 0.0 Andrew Suarez -0.5 -0.5 0.0 Kevin Pillar 1.6 1.5 0.1 Austin Slater 1.1 1.2 0.1 Brandon Belt 0.4 0.5 0.1 Jandel Gustave 0.4 0.5 0.1 Conner Menez -0.2 -0.1 0.1 Evan Longoria 2.1 2.3 0.2 Mike Yastrzemski 1.8 2 0.2 Donovan Solano 1.3 1.5 0.2 Tyler Rogers 0.3 0.5 0.2

Ahh, consistency!

Advanced metrics are great, and they’re as powerful with context as they are dangerous without it.

So either ignore everything in this article, take it with some carefully chosen grains of salt, or use it wisely.