Saturday, July 26, 2014
Fangraphs WAR for pitchers
?I've repeated on multiple occasions that I am happy that Baseball Reference takes one extreme view of evaluating pitching performance and Fangraphs takes the other extreme view. For those walking into the middle of this conversation, I'll talk about this in the next paragraph. Everyone else can go to paragraph 3.
Baseball Reference starts with runs allowed (runs not earned runs thankfully) and applies a team-level adjustment of fielding (whether the pitcher actually received that fielding support or not) and park. The sequencing of events is absorbed completely by the pitcher, even though the pitcher is part of the defense and not the entirety of the defense. Fangraphs starts with the things that are virtually all in the pitcher's responsibility (walks, K, HBP, HR) and stops there. So, it absolves the pitcher completely of sequencing (i.e., performance with men on base) and balls in play (i.e., BABIP).
And I've been happy to simply take the midpoint of those two extreme viewpoints. Let everyone else have the fight. And Fangraphs, much to its credit, also gives you the option of picking and choosing what you want. For example, we see the Strasburg's various versions of WAR you can get from Fangraphs breaks down as: 3.0 WAR in its official calculation; 1.0 WAR if based on using runs allowed (Baseball Reference has him at 0.8 WAR in a similar but more elaborate calculation); 2.8 WAR if you give him credit for his men on base performance but not BIP; 1.2 WAR if you give him credit for BIP but not sequencing.
As I said, I split the difference of the 1 rWAR and the 3fWAR and give him 2 WAR and move on.
But there, staring me in the face, is the league leaders in WAR for starting pitchers in the NL. Kershaw at 3.7 (*), Wainwright at 3.3, Cueto at 2.8. All three will likely finish in the top 3 in Cy Young voting, so good for Fangraphs. But in there is Strasburg, who likely won't even get a single vote from any of the thirty voters. And I think it might give Fangraphs a black eye. Maybe.
(*) Note to David: your leaderboards don't show Kershaw, because you impose a "qualified IP". So, the actual leader is not shown! I don't see any reason for having a check on IP for the leaderboards on a counting stat.
So, as much as I like to not think about it, and just split the difference from the two extreme viewpoints, I'm wondering if maybe the community is better served by not having such an extreme viewpoint from Fangraphs.
You might think: well, what about Baseball Reference's extreme viewpoint? That is true, it is extreme, when considering single season. But at the career level, it actually doesn't come out so extreme. That's a topic for another thread.
What say you? Are you happy with the two extreme viewpoints, or should Fangraphs official position change?
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