The sabermetrics revolution will be televised.
Over the past three or four years, an influx of new baseball statistics has emerged on the MLB scene as a radical alternative to the traditional statistics dating back to baseball’s origin.
The people in charge of the shift, named “the sabermetricians,” eschew statistics that rely on team-dependent factors (wins, RBI) and focus heavily on factors within the batter or pitcher’s control (strikeouts, walks, home runs).
A statistic called WAR (wins above replacement), another product of the sabermetrics revolution, attempts to capture the entire value of a player in one statistic. For batters, park-dependent hitting, fielding, positional value, and baserunning all count as factors.
Makes sense, right?
Well, not to the dinosaurs of major newspapers.
Old-school baseball writers like Murray Chass of the New York Times have criticized the sabermetrics movement, calling the proponents of the new statistics “stat freaks” who “forget that human beings, not numbers, play the game.”
The debate between new-school and old-school has simmered beneath the surface for the past few years, only gaining attention from the diehards who spend inappropriate amounts of time reading baseball journalism.
But with an epic debate for the AL MVP hinging on the credibility of WAR as a statistic, sabermetrics have officially entered the mainstream.
Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers represents the traditional choice for the award. Cabrera won the Triple Crown award, given to a hitter who leads his league in batting average, home runs, and RBI. Cabrera currently sports a .331 average with 44 home runs and 139 RBI. His adjusted OPS+, which utilizes on-base percentage and slugging and adjusts for park effects, is 167.
In the “stat freak” corner is uber-rookie Mike Trout. Trout leads the major leagues with 10.3 WAR, a good three wins above Cabrera. His adjusted OPS+ is 169, a bit better than Cabrera. Trout has generated an entire win’s worth of value over Cabrera in baserunning and plays Gold-Glove defense in one of the more difficult defensive positions to play. Cabrera’s defense at third base resembles a hippo trying to balance on one leg.
Essentially, Trout measures out to be an essentially equivalent hitter to Cabrera and adds his league-leading stolen base total and far superior defense to the mix.
Objectively, Trout is clearly the choice for the MVP. But the antagonism against the “nerds in their parents’ basements” seems to be manifesting itself in MVP voting arguments.
Bill Madden of the New York Daily News recently wrote a column arguing Cabrera should be the MVP because “this growing infatuation with WAR is, in my opinion, turning baseball into an inhuman board game.”
No argument of Cabrera’s superior value, except for a claim to the superiority of his batting average and RBI totals.
Just a claim that WAR is a “nebulous, ludicrous… new-age statistic.” Madden didn’t even take the time to understand the formula behind WAR; he simply dismissed it by saying “don’t ask how the conclusion (of WAR’s formula) is reached.”
Madden fails to see the irony in his argument. He stakes his claim on Cabrera’s superior statistics but is too narrow-minded to realize that the metrics he’s using to make his argument (batting average, RBI) are outdated and useless in this day and age.
The portrayal of the rationally based statistically minded baseball writers of the modern era as antagonistic emotionless robots by the older columnists of major newspapers will likely continue until the older sportswriters die out.
But the sabermetricians will have the last laugh, as Chass and Madden make themselves look like close-minded grandpas fulfilling the classic old-man stereotype: a dogmatic, irrational resistance to change of any kind.
Contact Michael Rosen at [email protected]
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WAR was originally created with GMs and coaches in mind – giving them a tool to get the most value for their money at each position. Do you realize that part of the calculation for WAR gives a bonus or penalty to a player based on the position he plays? So, hypothetically, you could have two players on the same team – a catcher and a first baseman – playing the same schedule in the same home park, and for the sake of argument we’ll say they somehow finished the season with identical statistics across the board (offense, defense, baserunning, etc.). At the end of the year, the catcher would have a higher WAR simply because of the position he plays, because it is easier to replace a first baseman with a quality player vs. a catcher. So did the catcher have a better season? No. But the catcher is more valuable to the general manager than the first baseman. And to fans who don’t fully understand WAR, it would appear that the catcher DID have a better season. So while it does go a long way towards putting a number on a players value, it doesn’t tell the whole story. And while we understand that stats such as RBIs and batting average also don’t tell the whole story, they did happen in the real world. During a game, you hit the ball resulting in a run, so you get an RBI. I just don’t buy the idea that if Miguel Cabrera missed the entire season, the Tigers would have only won 6 fewer games. I suppose I would have less of an issue with WAR if it was called something else, because there is no way to put some statistics together and definitively say what kind of an impact the loss of a player would have on a team’s record.
I hate WAR. I love PEACE!!!!
The only statistic that matters for pitchers are wins. No matter how many batters a pitcher strikes out or walks, how many hits he allows, or runs he gives up, as long as he consistently keeps his team in it and gives them a chance of victory, he’s a Cy Young candidate for me.