Friday, March 29, 2013
WAR 1945
As we recently learned, Fangraphs and BR.com have agreed to a baseline level of 1000 wins (per 4860 team games, or 0.206 wins per team game).
However, what to do with 1945? That year, talent level was far below what it would be in 1946, and was below the pre-WWII years.? Fangraphs maintains the .206 wins per game level for 1945, treating MLB as its own universe. BR.com however does not, giving out some 25% or 30% fewer wins. How would you like to see it?
And if you start making exceptions there, how about back in 1914-15, with the rival Federal League?
And if you make an exception for that, how about the Negro League? It's not going to surprise you that of players born since 1931 (Mays/Mantle), about three out of every eight superstar players are non-whites. And, I imagine we'd find something similar to that, that 3/8th of all WAR of players born since 1931 are for non-white players.
Should we therefore limit the number of wins per game in the pre-Jackie era to 5/8ths of .206? Or, again, do we treat MLB as its own universe?
And what about the pre-modern era? How do you handle the various leagues of various designations and levels, that would have star players in their mid to late 20s playing in those leagues?
Finally, how to split the wins between the NL and AL in the modern era? While the AL has unquestionably more talent (per team) over the last 10 years, that's not the case throughout history. It's pretty easy to figure out the AL/NL differences because we have an unbiased sample: they play each other 10% of the time. For the prior years, we need to rely on "league-switchers", guys who moved between leagues, and see how their numbers changed. Of course, those are going to be biased because maybe there's a reason that players switch between leagues (older players move to AL because of DH maybe?).
Anyway, now that we're on the path to trying to standardize the amount of wins available in each league, how far can we take this?
Or, do we want to simply be very lazy, and not think about it at all, because we're too afraid of making a decision, and then having to revisit that decision periodically?
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 150 pages 1 2 3 > Last ›Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date
FORUM TOPICS
Jul 12 15:22 MarcelsApr 16 14:31 Pitch Count Estimators
Mar 12 16:30 Appendix to THE BOOK - THE GORY DETAILS
Jan 29 09:41 NFL Overtime Idea
Jan 22 14:48 Weighting Years for NFL Player Projections
Jan 21 09:18 positional runs in pythagenpat
Oct 20 15:57 DRS: FG vs. BB-Ref
Apr 12 09:43 What if baseball was like survivor? You are eliminated ...
Nov 24 09:57 Win Attribution to offense, pitching, and fielding at the game level (prototype method)
Jul 13 10:20 How to watch great past games without spoilers