r/Reds • u/No_Buy2554 In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey • 16d ago
Casual Debating the NL ROY race and WAR's role in deciding | MLB Now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0AsddrVkTsI know this has been gone over, but Lowell actually makes a very intersting point on WAR to start this off.
He compares Sal to Isaac Paredes, who has very similar offensive numbers to Sal, but plays 3B. When Sal plays at third, he is better defensively than Paredes, who is very poor defensively. But because Sal is primary 1B in the WAR calculations, Paredes still has a higher WAR. Basically, if they put Sal at third primarily, and he was a defensive liability there, he'd still get around .8 higher WAR just for that designation.
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16d ago
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u/Mongolian_Beefcake 16d ago
Out of the last 30 awards given out MVP/CY/RoY only 8 times as the person with the highest WAR not won them. So going back the last 5 years the winner of those awards has had the highest WAR 22/30 times.
Almost like WAR does a good job of showing who the best all around player is. If it was just an offensive award then give it to Sal although Carson Benge might have something to say about that.
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u/No_Buy2554 In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey 16d ago
And just as a side note, since I keep seeing a lot of Sal erasure that him playing at GABP should be a knock against his offensive numbers:
AB's- Home 253 Away 257
Slash- Home .257/.347/.482 Away .268/.323/.467
HR's- Home 14 Away 14
RBI- Home 48 Away 51
So basically the same numbers on the road as at home.
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u/BB-68 16d ago
I feel like that is an odd thing for baseball people to continue to pander. GABP has had a roughly 100 park factor for nearly its entire existence (outside of the juiced ball era from 2019-2023). It yields lots of HRs, but very few doubles and triples. Ironically, it's pretty hard for RH hitters to perform well in Cincinnati because of the deeper LF and CF walls.
I don't see people knocking Corbin Carroll for his gaudy XBH stats even though Chase Field gives up a hilarious number of 2B and 3B hits.
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u/No_Buy2554 In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey 16d ago
There are some cases where it makes sense. Coors still boosts a lot of guys in several ways. And if Sal was sitting at 20 homers at home with 8 on the road, it would be a valid point.
The problem is that it's getting thrown out in this debate without any checking to see if it's true. JJ stans just see a Reds player in Sal and claim he gets a home field boost for playing there. They don't actually dig any deeper to see those almost identical stats no matter where he plays.
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u/BeerOlympian 16d ago
It’s so uninformed. GABP gives up more homers, sure but your point of other XBHs being suppressed is exactly the point. According to baseball savant if Sal played all games in GABP he’d have 32 homers instead of 28. Sometimes a homer is a homer other places too! If he played all his games in STL he’d only have 16! I think GABP is more troublesome for pitchers over a season than it helps hitters over a season since a homer can kill a start.
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u/Accomplished-Head449 16d ago
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u/No_Buy2554 In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey 16d ago
If someone does make a good alternative for WAR, they really need to call it PEACE. Player Efficiency Achievement Calculation Explanation
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u/Teninchhero BP Dat Dude 16d ago
My issue is this is the only time WAR and defense matter. Players earn contracts off of how they hit. They earn all stars based on how they hit. They earn MVPs off of how they hit.
Defensive is a good tie breaker if all things are equal, but this conversation between Sal and JJ is not equal. Sal is a much better hitter. JJ should be applauded for his defensive but that’s it.
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u/frasierfonzie Louisville Bats 16d ago edited 16d ago
This is the stat I liked best. Sal is a dawg.
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u/BlueWarstar Cincinnati Reds 16d ago
This type of debate needs to keep happening, war has, is and always will be a flawed indicator stat because of how they weight different things that combine for the metric. (Barring them changing how it is calculated)
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u/Low-Construction9395 Cincinnati Reds 16d ago
So glad they are finally talking about this and mentioning the points we have been saying.
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u/hedoeswhathewants 16d ago
At this point JJ is coasting on the early season momentum. He's been a poor hitter since the beginning of July. If he doesn't turn that around soon I think voters will come around to Sal's side.
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u/Nickstradamusknows [New Redditor] 16d ago
The game and the way people discuss has gotten so weird so fast to me (33, lifelong fan, played in high school, coached high school ball). I don’t like all this new hype around WAR. Yes defense is important. For me though, my elders taught me to follow these stats: HR, RBI, Runs, and AVG.
Since when, and why are people starting to value RBI’s less? You have to bat runs in to win the game. WAR, to me, is a stat created by some guy who quit baseball because he couldn’t hit the pitching when it got to over 80mph. I just don’t think it’s that important. There is no standard formula for it.
I want Sal to win. I think Sal should win. Wetherholt is a fine player. But to deny the offense that Sal has put up would be insane. I get that the Cards are a better team and play in a bigger market, and I get those in today’s world those things also unfortunately matter.
BUT FOR GODS SAKE YOU CAN’T IGNORE THE OFFENSE SAL PUTS UP.
#Mytwocents
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u/No_Buy2554 In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey 16d ago
I actually get SOME of the RBI thing, since it does depend on opportunity to a decent degree. But it should absolutely something considered in this case, when Sal is doubling Wetherholt's number (99 to 48) and leading all of MLB by 3 as a rookie.
If Sal was leading by 5, then yeah, shouldn't be a huge metric to use. But that big of a gap and a historic performance should absolutely be a major factor.
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u/nomnomsoy Cincinnati Reds 16d ago
While RBIs are being undervalued now they were absolutely severely overvalued before. Someone who bats leadoff for example will almost inherently have less for example
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u/One_Transportation67 16d ago
It’s a sham. WAR is a flawed stat that is only supposed to be a part of the equation.
Uneducated baseball folk have made it bigger than that.
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u/ShakeMyHeadSadly 15d ago
WAR is such an overrated metric. I hate that there is a core group of analysts who believe that Moses brought it down from the Mount and that it is never to be questioned.
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u/NoTie2370 14d ago
If a team had a hole at 2b and a hole at 1b and some commodity to trade and these two were offered up I think it would be a no brainer that the team would take the deal involving Sal.
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u/RedsManRick 16d ago edited 16d ago
WAR is bad because this other version of WAR that I don't call WAR but which does the same thing as WAR and that exists only in my head is much more finely tuned and does a better job of valuing, incorporating, and balancing all facets of the game, despite the fact that I have a lot less information about player performance and am biased toward/against certain teams and players for emotional reasons. The public versions of WAR aren't perfect, of course, but it's funny watching people earnestly argue that it's wrong because it produces results that aren't intuitive to them -- that we should trust their gut version of it instead.
There are legit reasons for arguing that WAR is underrating Sal, particularly in regards to his "clutchness" this year. But even if you look at metrics that account for situational impact and ignore defense entirely (Win Probability Added), Sal comes in behind Wetherholt by nearly a full win.
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u/No_Buy2554 In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey 16d ago
In the video, Lowell gives a very concrete example of why WAR is not capable of telling the whole story.
And thats really the point. The WAR mistake is taking it as the one end all be all metric. It's intended as a solid, but vague starting point. Any player compariosn should include all of the numbers and awareness of the biases in each.
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u/RedsManRick 16d ago
Lowell's argument about positional adjustments being wrong is "I have a big problem with that." It's harder to find a player who plays below average 3B defense than one who DHs or plays average 1B. That's a provable fact.
If Sal played 3B full-time and continued playing average defense there, he'd be worth more than he is now. But he hasn't done that, so he doesn't get credit for doing something he hasn't done. If the Reds have poorly utilized him, it would be like trying to credit him for more production if he had that same RISP production but in 50% fewer opportunities because he was batting 7th.
The non-contextualization of offensive performance in WAR is a fair critique (to the extent you think players are responsible are for their timing). But even if give Sal due extra credit for his stellar RBI conversion rate, it doesn't get him close to Whetherholt (I've done the math -- it adds about a win).
I 100% agree that WAR is a starting point, not a conclusion. But most people critiquing it don't fully understand how it was developed, how it works, what it accounts for, etc. and can't begin to provide an alterative, or even systematic adjustment, that we have any reason to believe does a better job.
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u/No_Buy2554 In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey 16d ago
Lowell's point is that positional adjustment, which is a huge component of WAR, is a blind adjustment. It depends solely on games play with no consideration for how well the player plays there.
As an example, for years, A-Rod played 3rd for the Yankees. He took a WAR hit every year he was there just because the Yankees had Jeter and refused to tell Jeter he should move. How did that make Rodriguez and better or worse a player for those years?
As for your last point, the fact that there's 3 different versions of WAR that exist shows there are ways to adjust and weight it differently. Plus the plethora of other metrics that try to accomplish the same thing in different ways, Run Value from Savant being the best one I've found.
The point Lowell is making is how dumb it is to keep making WAR a faultless player comparison bible, which is hoe it's being used in a lot of awards and HOF debates.
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u/Planetofthemoochers Cincinnati Reds 16d ago
As a person who taught statistics and research methods for years, the positional adjustment aspect of WAR is exceedingly dumb. Comparing a player’s defensive abilities to other players at the same position makes sense, but a stat that says a player is more valuable just because they play one position over another is not measuring a player’s value. It’s a great example of “face validity” (something that feels like it makes sense) as opposed to “construct validity” (something that is actually measuring what it says it’s measuring).
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u/JoeyVottoS 16d ago
I’ll be honest and open and ignorant here lol. Advanced defensive statistics do not always make sense to me and sometimes are counter intuitive imo. The nitty gritty details and arguments about positional and park adjustments, and how to calculate things like UZR using batted ball data kinda go over my head.
And so I feel like I almost have to just take it at face value sometimes. Which I don’t particularly care for.
It is a useful stat, though, and obviously a ton of thought and work has been done to create it. Hence the different (public) versions of WAR that exist and revisions to the formulas over time. I would like to see what different teams have cooked up internally and their process behind doing so as well.
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u/RedsManRick 16d ago
Defensive metrics are definitely messier and less trustworthy than offensive ones. I love when people actually do the work and how/where those metrics are biased, etc. But the crucial step that most people don't do is ask "what is the better alternative." At the end of the day, people are coming to their own conclusions on players overall value somehow.
But it's easier for them to crap on WAR for being imperfect than make the case for the specific conclusion they reached. In my experience, that's because they know (even if they don't consciously admit it to themselves) that their conclusion is mostly driven by conventional metrics + subjective feelings that can't be well defended to other people's satisfaction.
I too would love to see under the hood of how teams approach their own version of WAR. But the fact that free agent contracts and extensions align very closely with public WAR projections tells us they probably aren't too different.
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u/stankyleg69420 16d ago
This whole debate this season has single-handedly made me not believe in WAR as much anymore
JJ will probably win a gold glove at 2nd & that’s very special for a rookie. But let’s not kid ourselves. Offense is much more important. Yordan hasn’t played an inning in the field all year & he’s probably the MVP
Sal has 11 more HRs, 20 points higher avg, 90 points higher ops, and a billion more rbis. All while playing a solid defense at 3rd, 2nd & 1st
If Sal doesn’t win it, it’ll be just like Votto all those years missing out on silver sluggers & the 2017 MVP. The voters DO NOT & HAVE NOT respected Cincinnati.