So this morning I learned what Wins Above Replacement, or WAR is all about. I thought it was probably stupid based upon it's name, and after actually looking into what it calculates, I would say it's not as stupid as I thought it would be, but it's still a rather useless statistic. So basically it measures how much better a player is better than an average AAA-level or bench player? That's stupid. Number one, not all AAA players are average. Sometimes a guy comes up and rips it up because he's pumped about playing in the majors. It measures how valuable a player is to the team. Like as if to say "without him, we'd be stuck with this jabroni over here and we'd be screwed." Okay, fine, but if you watched a baseball game once in a while, you would see a guys value using your own two eyes, no? Why not just look at his ERA, or even his SIERA? Wins? K's? I get that WAR is a composite score of a dudes value, but it doesn't tell me much. So Cliff Lee and Clayton Kershaw have really good WARs? NO SHIT. Just look at any of their regular, standard numbers and you could gather that yourself. Or better yet, watch a Phillies or Dodgers game. That's how I figured it out. I don't need WAR and I will probably forever roll my eyes whenever I hear or read anyone mention it.
I'm stuck in this spot between embracing advanced stats and stepping back and realizing that advanced stats are clearly for people that don't watch baseball. I don't watch Rockies games, so I can learn how Michael Cuddyer is doing by reading about his WAY inflated BABIP this morning. Makes sense to me, because he's Michael Cuddyer, so I knew something was up. There's no way the Michael Cuddyer I remember could be putting up these kind of numbers without some luck. But I imagine if I watched a few Rockies games, I could tell you he's on a hot streak right now, and baseball has this wonderful thing called Regression to the Mean, where every player either gradually gets better or worse over the course of a career. Any jumps in productivity means their slumping or on a hot streak. Many, many players throughout the season and throughout the history of baseball go up and down throughout their careers. Things like BABIP help to show you when that's happening so you don't have to watch baseball, because who would ever want to do that?
I'm stuck in this spot between embracing advanced stats and stepping back and realizing that advanced stats are clearly for people that don't watch baseball. I don't watch Rockies games, so I can learn how Michael Cuddyer is doing by reading about his WAY inflated BABIP this morning. Makes sense to me, because he's Michael Cuddyer, so I knew something was up. There's no way the Michael Cuddyer I remember could be putting up these kind of numbers without some luck. But I imagine if I watched a few Rockies games, I could tell you he's on a hot streak right now, and baseball has this wonderful thing called Regression to the Mean, where every player either gradually gets better or worse over the course of a career. Any jumps in productivity means their slumping or on a hot streak. Many, many players throughout the season and throughout the history of baseball go up and down throughout their careers. Things like BABIP help to show you when that's happening so you don't have to watch baseball, because who would ever want to do that?
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