Is WAR (baseball) utter nonsense?

[Guy Berger]

On 1/9/2017 at 0:28 PM, Scott Dolan said:

And then there's that...

There isn't a team in MLB that doesn't have a dedicated sabermetrician in their front office. 

My only question remains: if Moneyball is all it's cracked up to be, why haven't the A's won a World Series since it became popular? 

#1 - I think that question/threshold isn't quite the correct one.  If you're a GM with a $X budget for players, you'll be able to squeeze extra wins/success out of that budget using stats-based analysis.  But if you have a small budget, even the most efficient & statistically-informed decision-making might not be sufficient to win a World Series.  It might not even be sufficient to generate a winning season.

#2 - As statistically-informed decision-making has become more prevalent in MLB, the A's edge on this front has probably faded.  (In fact, even if other teams had never adopted this decision-making, the A's success would still be disrupted by rich teams poaching the A's best players.)

Sabermetrics is like savvy financial investing.  It's about getting a higher return on your portfolio by buying undervalued assets at a discount.  In investment this is fine because buying a crappy asset that's priced as super-crappy could net you a nice profit.  In baseball acquiring a good player who's priced as a mediocre player will not necessarily win you the big prize.

Edited January 10, 2017 by Guy Berger

[Guy Berger]

On 1/9/2017 at 5:11 AM, Milestones said:

I have never seen a baseball stat so completely silly and so completely fabricated as WAR.  I am sick of seeing it come up in baseball articles--for example, an article today arguing that 5 great players don't belong in Cooperstown--principally because of WAR.  I will never be convinced that there is any logic to how WAR is calculated or that it has a shred of validity.   

Comments?

Has there been out-of-sample testing of predictions conditional on this specific statistic?  Seems like that would be an easy way to resolve this debate.

follow-up: So it seems like WAR has predictive value, though you'd also need to benchmark it against alternative statistics.

Edited January 10, 2017 by Guy Berger

[Scott Dolan]

Isn't that the problem to begin with? 

[Guy Berger]

On 1/10/2017 at 0:40 PM, Scott Dolan said:

Isn't that the problem to begin with? 

Scott, what do you mean?

[Scott Dolan]

The fact that it's so friggin convoluted, and has to be cross-referenced with other stats for it to mean anything. 

I don't know if this is what Milestones is getting at, but while it MAY be a useful statistic for front offices, it's essentially useless for the average fan. Perhaps even the above average fan. Yet, that's the first stat many fans love to trot out as though it's some kind of trump card in a baseball discussion. 

[Milestones]

I will certainly say that WAR is useless to me.

 

[Guy Berger]

5 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

The fact that it's so friggin convoluted, and has to be cross-referenced with other stats for it to mean anything. 

I don't know if this is what Milestones is getting at, but while it MAY be a useful statistic for front offices, it's essentially useless for the average fan. Perhaps even the above average fan. Yet, that's the first stat many fans love to trot out as though it's some kind of trump card in a baseball discussion. 

Faux-mathematical/faux-statistical debates are a big part of sports fandom and, as a result, there's demand for basic/comprehensible metrics, even if they're inaccurate or misleading, just so ordinary fans have something to cite in "debates".  But that doesn't mean that the nerdier fans who want to "fundamentally understand" sports should stick to those same inaccurate, misleading metrics.

[Larry Kart]

If front offices are using WAR and related stats, they probably are useful. Given his track record, I'm pretty sure that the Cubs' Theo Epstein, for one, is no dummy. If WAR stuff is useless for the average or even above-average fan, too bad for them, though I imagine that many fans who hold such views haven't tried to even dip their toes into those waters. In any case when the Cubs didn't try to resign Dexter Fowler (with whom many I know Cubs fans were madly in love)  and instead signed that fairly obscure (to most of us) outfielder whose last name is Jay -- don't even recall his first name), wouldn't you be curious if you were a Cubs fan about what Epstein's thinking was, assuming, as I'm sure was the case,  that it wasn't just about money but also was WAR-related?

[Scott Dolan]

2 hours ago, Guy Berger said:

Faux-mathematical/faux-statistical debates are a big part of sports fandom and, as a result, there's demand for basic/comprehensible metrics, even if they're inaccurate or misleading, just so ordinary fans have something to cite in "debates".  But that doesn't mean that the nerdier fans who want to "fundamentally understand" sports should stick to those same inaccurate, misleading metrics.

That's why I prefer averages instead of theoretical computations. 

1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

If front offices are using WAR and related stats, they probably are useful. Given his track record, I'm pretty sure that the Cubs' Theo Epstein, for one, is no dummy. If WAR stuff is useless for the average or even above-average fan, too bad for them, though I imagine that many fans who hold such views haven't tried to even dip their toes into those waters. In any case when the Cubs didn't try to resign Dexter Fowler (with whom many I know Cubs fans were madly in love)  and instead signed that fairly obscure (to most of us) outfielder whose last name is Jay -- don't even recall his first name), wouldn't you be curious if you were a Cubs fan about what Epstein's thinking was, assuming, as I'm sure was the case,  that it wasn't just about money but also was WAR-related?

So how, exactly, is WAR calculated? And no links, just lay it out as you understand it, please. 

Edited January 12, 2017 by Scott Dolan

[Larry Kart]

6 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

That's why I prefer averages instead of theoretical computations. 

So how, exactly, is WAR calculated? And no links, just lay it out as you understand it, please. 

Sorry, Scott, I myself am one of those who as yet has not dipped his toe into those WAR waters. All I know, as I said in my post, is that some very successful baseball execs, like Theo Epstein, make use of WAR stuff in making decisions. At this point, if I'm a fan of a team that such an exec heads, that's good enough for me. In other words, as a fan I don't need a new stat or a complicated weighted compilation of stats to enhance my appreciation of the game. All I need is that our new, say, third baseman,  traded for on the basis of WAR stats, turns out to have a real good season. 

[Scott Dolan]

8 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Sorry, Scott, I myself am one of those who as yet has not dipped his toe into those WAR waters. All I know, as I said in my post, is that some very successful baseball execs, like Theo Epstein, make use of WAR stuff in making decisions. At this point, if I'm a fan of a team that such an exec heads, that's good enough for me. In other words, as a fan I don't need a new stat or a complicated weighted compilation of stats to enhance my appreciation of the game. All I need is that our new, say, third baseman,  traded for on the basis of WAR stats, turns out to have a real good season. 

Right, but would you actually use that argument in a conversation with other fans? I sure as hell wouldn't, because I'd have no way to explain what the hell I was talking about. 

Also, just because they traded for him on the basis of his WAR and he ended up having a good season, what does that ultimately prove? Do we need a refresher on the correlation/causation dichotomy? 

[Larry Kart]

7 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

Right, but would you actually use that argument in a conversation with other fans? I sure as hell wouldn't, because I'd have no way to explain what the hell I was talking about. 

Also, just because they traded for him on the basis of his WAR and he ended up having a good season, what does that ultimately prove? Do we need a refresher on the correlation/causation dichotomy? 

Scott: If you were a Chicagoan and had been paying attention over the last five years to Theo Epstein's WAR-based revamping of the Cubs into a world championship team (and with many hardcore Cubs fans opposing many of the moves he made along the way -- I know; I was there), I don't think one would be clamoring for "a refresher on the correlation/causation dichotomy." Further, while one is at liberty to plunge into the waters of WAR as deeply as one might wish, I don't, as I said before, really care if WAR-based talk would fly in a conversation with fellow fans, though I certainly would use the argument I made above (though with no desire to actually argue) in such a conversation, just as I've used it with you. 

What I care about is being a fan of a team that consistently makes decisions that make it a better team, one that (one hopes) not only wins a World Series but also will go on to contend for a long time. I should add, perhaps, that as a fan of the Chicago White Sox since 1951, I saw them win it all in 2005 and then virtually destroy the team from then until this off-season (fingers crossed) by making a series of plug-the-holes/buy someone's on-the-downswing "star" in-the-hope-of-winning-this-coming-year moves until both the major league roster and the farm system were virtually depleted.

Would the same moves have been made under a WAR-oriented regime? Maybe. But with the example of Epstein and the Cubs in front of my eyes, I don't think so. Now you might say that the only difference there is that Epstein knew that the Cubs needed to be almost completely rebuilt, while Sox management was operating under delusions about the strengths of the major league roster and the health of their farm system, and that Epstein also had an owner who bought into his reading of things. Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, by contrast, a season or two ago, was told well along into the season by his WAR-oriented asst. GM Rich Hahn that the odds  of the current Sox team making the playoffs  was 11 per cent and that therefore this would be a good time to unload some vets while they still had trade value; Reinsdorf, backed by longtime GM Ken Williams, said, "We're going  for it," and IIRC further aging vets were even acquired in exchange for prospects -- all to no avail.

Returning to the contrast between that mode and Epstein and the Cubs, I understand that I'm conflating two or more different things -- Epstein getting the green light to rebuild and my assumption that all or most of the  revamping-the-roster choices that Epstein went on to make were both good or better-than-good and were to some significant degree based on "advanced metrics" factors. As to the last, I can't say for sure; I'm not privy to what Epstein and his staff say amongst themselves, though one has heard that their thinking is as sophisticated (or if you prefer "sophisticated") in terms of metrics as that of any regime in baseball. As to the success of their revamping-the-roster moves, I can't think of a single move they've made that hasn't paid off (other than the acquisition of Jason Heyward, and the rest of Heyward's story perhaps remains to be written), while some (e.g. the acquisition of Jake Arietta for chump change, the choice of Jon Lester as their key free-agent pitching acquisition among all the others of his vintage who were available last off-season, the belief in the evolution of Kyle Hendricks) have paid off spectacularly. Yes, plain-old scouting (and in the case of Hendricks, good coaching) no doubt has played a role here, but if "advanced" metrics has as well, why is anyone complaining just because the average fan is left scratching his head? Another post to come about Epstein's "advanced metrics"-based moves and the fan pushback against them at the time, after I do a bit of research.

[JSngry]

I'm not sure that a music board is the best place to place a non-ironic call to arms that the mechanics of decision-making be made a pre-requisite to a consumer's appreciation of the results...

[Larry Kart]

Yup -- this is the Epstein move I was thinking of:

http://www.espn.com/chicago/mlb/story/_/id/11177585/chicago-cubs-trade-jeff-samardzija-jason-hammel-oakland-athletics

I can tell you that the majority of Cubs fans at the time were up in arms about this trade, believing that Samardzija, then age 29 and coming off a seemingly good season, was the arm on which to hang the team's future. Again, I can't swear that advanced metrics played a key role in Epstein's decision, though Samardzija's likely future as a .500 pitcher at best now seems carved in stone. But even if Jeff S. had been the real deal, Addison Russell! As good a young SS a there is in baseball, and a kid who is almost certainly going to continue to grow as a hitter? One would fall on one's knees to acquire a young player like that, and Epstein got him for players that he almost certainly felt (I would assume for "advanced metrics" reasons) weren't going to play significant roles on a championship team no matter what. Again, though, at the time, most Cubs fans were appalled by this deal.

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

I'm not sure that a music board is the best place to place a non-ironic call to arms that the mechanics of decision-making be made a pre-requisite to a consumer's appreciation of the results...

Sorry -- 

I was just responding to Scott's question.

 

[Larry Kart]

A move as good or better:

http://www.espn.com/chicago/mlb/story/_/id/7432801/chicago-cubs-acquire-1b-anthony-rizzo-san-diego-padres-andrew-cashner

[Guy Berger]

20 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

If front offices are using WAR and related stats, they probably are useful. Given his track record, I'm pretty sure that the Cubs' Theo Epstein, for one, is no dummy. If WAR stuff is useless for the average or even above-average fan, too bad for them, though I imagine that many fans who hold such views haven't tried to even dip their toes into those waters. In any case when the Cubs didn't try to resign Dexter Fowler (with whom many I know Cubs fans were madly in love)  and instead signed that fairly obscure (to most of us) outfielder whose last name is Jay -- don't even recall his first name), wouldn't you be curious if you were a Cubs fan about what Epstein's thinking was, assuming, as I'm sure was the case,  that it wasn't just about money but also was WAR-related?

Interesting to think of this as part of the overall global/social/political backlash against "elites" and "experts".  (Which, at least in the US, goes back over 200 years, as the Federalist party discovered to its dismay.)

[JSngry]

6 hours ago, Guy Berger said:

Interesting to think of this as part of the overall global/social/political backlash against "elites" and "experts".  (Which, at least in the US, goes back over 200 years, as the Federalist party discovered to its dismay.)

Maybe also an interesting insight into the collective tolerance for imperfection in the pursuit of newer/deeper insight at any given point in time. Is WAR going to be an evolving thing as what it seeks to measure is bettter understood/defined? Or is it just all a bunch of made-up hooey from the ground up?

It seems that it's currently useful enough that its evolution is, hopefully, all but guaranteed, but  you never know...

[Jazzmoose]

On 1/9/2017 at 9:49 AM, Hardbopjazz said:

WAR, what is it good for?

Absolutely nothing.

Say it again

 

I couldn't resist. 

[Tim McG]

I know I'll probably catch hell for this, but except for W/L, BA and ERA, statistics just ruin the game for me. 

Whether it's WAR or OPB or career SO/BB, it is only numbers crunching to me.

IMHO,  and for my continued enjoyment of a game I have loved since I was 7, the play on the field is all that matters to me. And, to be perfectly frank, that is all that matters at the end of the game. Just my two cents....

[Larry Kart]

5 hours ago, Tim McG said:

I know I'll probably catch hell for this, but except for W/L, BA and ERA, statistics just ruin the game for me. 

Whether it's WAR or OPB or career SO/BB, it is only numbers crunching to me.

IMHO,  and for my continued enjoyment of a game I have loved since I was 7, the play on the field is all that matters to me. And, to be perfectly frank, that is all that matters at the end of the game. Just my two cents....

If the play on the field is all that matters to you, I assume it also matters to you whether the team you favor plays well, wins a lot more than it loses. Well, all this WAR stuff, right or wrong, is merely an attempt on the part of those who fill the rosters to assemble a team that has a better chance of winning, one that makes more good plays on the field than would have been made otherwise.

[Scott Dolan]

Again, Larry. It's a meaningless stats to most fans. And most fans who use it don't understand it. Even a little. 

[Big Beat Steve]

I am beginning to understand why baseball has NEVER made any sort of impact over here (except as a more softball-like local leisure sports for part-time sportsmen and -women every now and then). Stats with a million columns to evaluate somebody's sporting capacities? Oh come on  .....

(Although there has been a tendency here in soccer in recent years to publish heavily stats-oriented over the top stuff too in recent years, but hardly anybody except numbers nerds pay much attention to it ... ) And soccer IS one field of team sports where extensive statistics have been established for as long as the sport exists ... but nowhere near those finicky detail stats that crop up here and there now

I can hardly wait for discographies to be expanded by including stats on the number of choruses, avg./max./min. chorus length, singer obbligato backing frequency etc. etc. scoreboards  ...

 

 

Edited February 1, 2017 by Big Beat Steve

[soulpope]

1 hour ago, Big Beat Steve said:

I am beginning to understand why baseball has NEVER made any sort of impact over here (except as a more softball-like local leisure sports for part-time sportsmen and -women every now and then). Stats with a million columns to evaluate somebody's sporting capacities? Oh come on  .....

(Although there has been a tendency here in soccer in recent years to publish heavily stats-oriented over the top stuff too in recent years, but hardly anybody except numbers nerds pay much attention to it ... ) And soccer IS one field of team sports where extensive statistics have been established for as long as the sport exists ... but nowhere near those finicky detail stats that crop up here and there now

I can hardly wait for discographies to be expanded by including stats on the number of choruses, avg./max./min. chorus length, singer obbligato backing frequency etc. etc. scoreboards  ...

 

 

Funny enough (based on your location) Southern Germany has been a (based on european measures) baseball hotspot with the Club from Regensburg being multiple german champion and a Baseball Youth Academy was founded there a decade ago .... still it`s a minority sport but more likely not due to baseball rules but to the the lack of proper baseball fields available ....

[Big Beat Steve]

1 hour ago, soulpope said:

Funny enough (based on your location) Southern Germany has been a (based on european measures) baseball hotspot with the Club from Regensburg being multiple german champion and a Baseball Youth Academy was founded there a decade ago .... still it`s a minority sport but more likely not due to baseball rules but to the the lack of proper baseball fields available ....

I know. I knew a couple of people from a minor league team in the 90s and they told this and that about "the scene". But to call it a "minority" sport is putting it mildly. It's even a minority sport within minority sports. BTW, Regensburg is fairly far away from where I live (by our standards - by Australian standards it would indeed be next door ).

And I suppose you realized I was just poking fun when I referred to the "stats" (it's all very weird to us Yurpeens - stating with those I came across when checking out a few sites on baseball history here and there - with stats that probably are a FAR cry of what I THINK is WAR). If you want to get the lowdown on how confusing, odd rules can end up in the hands of satire or comedy-minded folk, check out "Das Schürbelspiel" by Schobert & Black if you can (sorry, couldn't find a Youtube clip)...

 

Edited February 1, 2017 by Big Beat Steve

[soulpope]

2 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

I know. I knew a couple of people from a minor league team in the 90s and they told this and that about "the scene". But to call it a "minority" sport is putting it mildly. It's even a minority sport within minority sports. BTW, Regensburg is fairly far away from where I live (by our standards - by Australian standards it would indeed be next door ).

 

Of course didn`t know what "southern Germany" means in your context  .... do believe you being too harsh on european baseball as "minority within minority sports" - especially in Germany the sport exoerienced an solid growth and finally a german player - Max Kepler with the Minnesota Twins - made it to the MLB (no Austrians there until now, but at least Jakob Pöltl - via the Toroto Raptors - made it in 2016 to the NBA ) .... these role models are an important factor to motivate kids for "minority sports" .... ....

Edited February 1, 2017 by soulpope