Wednesday, February 9, 2011

WAR - What is it good for?

Last season in baseball......2 pitchers of equal 'worth' - I give you fangraphs 69th and 70th (of 92) most valuable (by WAR)  qualified starting pitchers of 2010:

James Shields - 2.2 Fangraphs WAR but a disastrous fantasy starter - 5.18 ERA, 1.46 WHIP (#99 in our league)

Trevor Cahill - 2.2 Fangraphs WAR and a stud fantasy starter - 2.97 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, i.e quite excellent (#18 in our league).

Surely some mistake? How can this be?


Cahill's K:BB ratio was 1.87, Shields 3.67 - could this help us answer our conundrum?

To be continued..................

And open for comments

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4 comments:

  1. Swinging Diggler11 February, 2011 05:36

    maybe WAR isn't particularly useful when you have a player who hasn't played yet (or has a few innings w/one year experience) ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ben11 February, 2011 08:15

    Although WAR is designed as a descriptive stat, putting a value on a players performance for the year in question - and for batters this is the case - pitcher WAR is less descriptive and more predictive. This is because pitcher WAR is adjusted for luck, while batter WAR is not. I am not sure there is a good reason for this.

    Thus identical WARs for 2010 point to Shields and Cahill putting up similar results to each other in 2011 - which is where your comment comes in.

    ReplyDelete
  3. jukam12 February, 2011 00:22

    is every post going to be followed by a video? just curious...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ben12 February, 2011 06:06

    I hope so - i have a few more WAR-related videos in mind. Not sure what to do when we get around to discussing K:BB ratios, though.

    ReplyDelete

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