Thursday, September 01, 2022
Why is WAR not proportionate to IP
Having dropped the earlier bombshell this morning that pitchers of today are able to roughly keep up with pitchers of yesteryear, the question should really be: why would you think WAR would be proportionate to IP?
Suppose in 2021 we had pitcher usage like that of the 1970s, with complete games galore, smaller staffs and so on. Then in 2022, everyone came to the realization that they want to bring in over 100 pitchers into the league. What happens to the value of the existing pitchers?
Well, all of the pitchers that are brought up, essentially quadruple-A pitchers, would all have zero value, no WAR. It's the very definition of the "R" in WAR: wins above replacement-level. Given that WAR is a fixed amount, that means all the existing pitchers would have the same amount of WAR that they had the previous year.
You see, it doesn't matter, necessarily how many innings you throw. What matters is how well you can pitch compared to the quadruple-A pitcher. And if you can improve your performance on a per pitch basis and throw fewer pitches, the two combined call allow you to maintain the same level of value.
All that's happened is that the superstars of today have shed their "replacement level" innings, which allows them to improve their rate stats (while dropping their innings). And so their quality X quantity is maintained.
This is how Kershaw, Verlander, and Scherzer can have value similar to the best pitchers of the 1970s, even though though IP totals of the 2010s would land them in 15th to 30th place in the 1970s.
And so WAR is not proportionate to IP, nor should that have been the expectation, necessarily.
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