What are your thoughts on the WAR stat?

The degree of precision is not enough to say that someone with a 6.9 WAR is clearly better than someone with 6.7 WAR, but it has some uses, particularly in evaluating the relative values of a poor fielding excellent hitter and a good hitting excellent fielder.

I wouldn't use it too much, though. I have a good background in advanced baseball statistics but I don't think WAR is quite there yet. I would also never use Fangraph's WAR - their pitcher's WAR uses FIP, and FIP assumes that all pitchers control balls in play the same way, and so the only things to look at are "defense-independent statistics," like strikeouts, walks, home runs, and HBP. Baseball Reference's WAR is better.

I don't see how people can think it's so incredibly useless.

But it's mostly because it seems that people are saying that, because Miguel Cabrera won Triple Crown, he's AUTOMATICALLY 'the' best player.

Which doesn't make sense to me. And here's why:

In 1947, Ted Williams won AL Triple Crown by hitting .343, with 32 homers and 114 RBI.

But if batting average, home runs and RBI are the most important stats, then wouldn't that mean that his 1949 season was way MORE valuable? He hit .343 again, but had '43' home runs, and an insane '159' RBI.

But he "didn't" win Triple Crown. So...

But then, I never understood the idea that a player who was on a playoff team was better than one 'not' on a playoff team and should win MVP. If you look at who's won MVP, it should be incredibly obvious that they never 'intended' playoff appearances to matter. They gave MVP to a guy on a 4th-place team the second year they awarded the thing!

And I guess you really can't say, a stat that says something contrary to what I think is useless. That's what science and math are all ABOUT. Galileo didn't toss out his telescope because it showed the Earth revolved around the Sun, contrary to what everyone thought.

More about the Triple Crown: Let's say Player X won Triple Crown, while Player Y tied in BA, and had one fewer Home Run and one fewer RBI. But he had 50 more stolen bases, and was a much better defender. I don't care about "WAR," there is no way you could convince me that Player X was a better player that season.

I don't like the assumption that all "replacement level players" are equal.

Some clubs have much better farm systems and scouting departments and always, or at least usually, sign a better quality of prospect.

Example Angels this year. Replaced Bobby Abreu with Mike Trout. WOW! Some replacement player.

WAR is difficult to figure to boot and those who compile WAR have sometimes completely different ways of evaluating the players.

Edit six or seven hours later. Good point, by dawgdays, but I say that the concept of an "average player" and the so-called "replacement level player" are mythological creations and have no real existence outside of a statistical assumption which is unprovable except in the arcane statisticians world.

I still regard WAR for now, as being an incomplete stat, and subject to improvement.

Any stat that says Mike trout had the 20 Th greatest individual season of all time can't be all that. 10.7 for Trout but Miquel triple crown season a team winning same number of games and reaching the WS is only worth 6.9 nearly 4 wins short of trout. Experts please ring in how Cano was better.

I am unable to accept this award (MVP) i didn't steal bases.

Obviously this stat is geared away from conventional Avg HR and RBi and looks for keys to success 50 steals and a great arm. i guess it all relative Miggy batted 3 rd guess first is it LMAO.

BTW Trout 10.7 tied him with Mays 1964 campaign and ted Williams 1946. If your giving Trout that much clout he better break the sound barrier in 2013.

I find WAR to be a useful composite statistic for comparing the value of players who have different strengths.

FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference use slightly different underlying stats, combined in slightly different ways. This is because each sees different stats as indicating the "value" of a player.

I hope you realize that we do this kind of thing with traditional stats, right? OBP is a composite state that combines hits with walks and HBP. OPS is also a composite stat, combining AVG and SLG in an attempt to compare the value of a hitter who gets lots of hits against one who gets fewer hits, but for extra bases.

But what I find particularly useful about WAR is that because the underlying stats that comprise WAR focus on the player's individual contributions for hitting, fielding, batting, rather than stats (such as ERA and RBI) that depend a lot on contributions from other players. (That being said, I'm not thrilled with FanGraphs using FIP in computing WAR, because when I look at FIP, I find it to be kind of lacking. I have to look at what B-R uses.)

Is WAR a perfect indicator? Of course not - it's a statistic. Could it be improved? Certainly. Then, a player can have a good streak, bad streak, good year, bad year. But for the purposes of roster construction, and deciding what to spend on a player, it's a decent enough tool, and I think it much better than the traditional stats.

[And if you think WAR is b.s., then I challenge you to actually do the reading about WAR and the other stats so you understand the rationale behind them, BEFORE you decide that they aren't worth anything because you're not familiar with them, or you don't know how to calculate them.]

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jxhzut6156 - WAR does NOT assume that all replacement players are alike. That's a HUGE misunderstanding of the concept. "Replacement level" is the average of the "typical" replacement players, not a specific one. Think of the player who is called up, but isn't good enough to stick in MLB. That's what "replacement level" is. Mike Trout was a replacement, but he was not a "replacement level" player.

I find WAR to be a completely useless statistic. It is comprised of how many additional wins a team will have with, for example Mike Trout, rather than having a AAA player replace him. So Mike Trouts WAR was 10.7 this year, so the Angels won 10.7 more games by having him in the lineup rather than a AAA replacement........useless. OBP RBI AVG Three most useful baseball statistics for a hitter in order.

CABBY FOR MVP!!!!!!!!

Completely thee most stupidest stat ever thought of.

Stupidest stat ever.

My thoughts are is that its stupid.