This article assumes a lot of prior knowledge about the discussion of Wins Above Replacement, you can catch up here

• How Baseball-Reference.com calculates WAR and how others do:
  WAR-Wins Above Replacement Explanation
  WAR-wRAA explanation
  WAR-Position Players
  WAR-Pitchers
  WAR-Runs to Wins (this is especially relevant)
  Competing WARs Comparison Chart
• My Answer to “I Don’t Like How Complicated WAR Is and How It Is Constantly Changing.” “WAR is Like GDP for Baseball”
• Bill James: Judge and Altuve, and then
  Bill James: MVP Followup
  Joe Posnanski: More on WAR, following up on Judge and Altuve.
• Dave Cameron's reply to James: Putting WAR in Context: A Response to Bill James
• Jonathan Judge at Baseball Prospectus wrote an excellent piece on variability in WAR: Prospectus Feature: Bill James vs. The Noise
• Bill James and I discuss on twitter what I think is the crux of the matter
• Rany Jazayerli on how WAR should handle luck

First off, none of us are here without Bill James. We are all at our very best merely Chaucer or Joyce to his Shakespeare. All sabermetrics predating him flowed into his work and all sabermetrics after him carries echoes of his work.

To the discussion at hand.
Read the rest of this entry

There's a few days that every baseball fan has saved in her Google Calendar. Opening Day, the All-Star Game, and Game 1 of the World Series all loom large, but another highlight of every year is the Trade Deadline.

This year's Trade Deadline looks like it could be a little slower and less star-packed than last year's, when stars like David Price, Cole Hamels, and Troy Tulowitzki were on the move. However, four of the six division leaders have a team within 4 games of them, and both Wild Card races are still wide opening, meaning a lot of teams are incentivized to make a deal. Read the rest of this entry

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Happy Holidays from Sports Reference

Here's to a great 2013 and a blessed 2014.

With Wins Above Replacement (WAR) gaining more prominence since last season, it's a good time to remind everyone about our WAR 2.2 guide:

• Baseball-Reference.com WAR Explained - This explains the basics of WAR, the philosophy behind the stat, and some of the changes we made to the formula the past few years.
• Weighted Runs Above Average (wRAA) Explained - This describes how wRAA, the core hitting stat of WAR, is computed.
• Position Player WAR Calculations and Details - This explains how we turn wRAA, Baserunning & Double-Play Runs, Fielding Runs, Positional Adjustment Runs, and Replacement level Runs into WAR for position-players.
• Pitcher WAR Calculations and Details - This explains how we take a pitcher's runs allowed & innings pitched, and turn it into WAR.
• Converting Runs to Wins - This further describes the process by which Runs Above Replacement (for both pitchers and position players) are converted into Wins Above Replacement.
• WAR Comparison Chart - This chart shows the differences between the WAR found here at Baseball-Reference and those from a variety of other sources, including FanGraphs & Baseball Prospectus.
• WAR Data Downloads - If you want to download the raw WAR data yourself and play around with it, you can also get the Batting and Pitching data from our site.

Many of the questions we typically get about WAR can be answered by reading the guide linked above.

Some of the common critiques of the Wins Above Replacement framework include: 1) Why do FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.com have such different numbers, 2) How can we trust it when the numbers change, and 3) How can we trust it when I can't calculate it?

For the first question, our announcement today of a consistent replacement level between FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.com has done a considerable amount to bring our two methodologies into alignment at least on the question of how big of a basket of WAR to hand out to players each year. Previously, FanGraphs allotted nearly 300 additional WAR due to a much lower replacement level. Our meeting in the middle has erased this difference to zero.

For the next two questions, I would point to a very widely quoted and very widely used statistic from economics, Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Here is the Wikipedia article on Gross Domestic Product. I'm going to argue that WAR is essentially GDP for baseball.

Read the rest of this entry

With all of the controversy over the role of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) in the A.L. MVP debate, now might be a good time to remind everyone about our WAR 2.1 guide:

• Baseball-Reference.com WAR Explained - This explains the basics of WAR, the philosophy behind the stat, and some of the changes we made to the formula this past spring.
• Weighted Runs Above Average (wRAA) Explained - This describes how wRAA, the core hitting stat of WAR, is computed.
• Position Player WAR Calculations and Details - This explains how we turn wRAA, Baserunning & Double-Play Runs, Fielding Runs, Positional Adjustment Runs, and Replacement level Runs into WAR for position-players.
• Pitcher WAR Calculations and Details - This explains how we take a pitcher's runs allowed & innings pitched, and turn it into WAR.
• Converting Runs to Wins - This further describes the process by which Runs Above Replacement (for both pitchers and position players) are converted into Wins Above Replacement.
• WAR Comparison Chart - This chart shows the differences between the WAR found here at Baseball-Reference and those from a variety of other sources, including FanGraphs & Baseball Prospectus.
• WAR Data Downloads - If you want to download the raw WAR data yourself and play around with it, you can also get the Batting and Pitching data from our site.

Many of the questions we typically get about WAR can be answered by reading the guide linked above.