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Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Is WAR useful for Awards voting?
The ONLY thing I know for sure that the right way to handle the use of statistics in awards voting is to be consistent.
A fellow researcher told me how he had a debate with someone about Rick Reuschel’s very high career WAR, which is on the HOF cusp. That guy was incredulous that Reuschel could be so high. So, what did he do? He rolled up his sleeves and went about trying to prove it wrong. And how did he do that? He applied consistent standards to all players. And what did he find? That anyway he sliced it, Reuschel was pretty darn good.
And this is what needs to happen. You don’t start with the fact that Felix Hernandez is barely over .500 and then conclude that he’s not a Cy pitcher. You take everything and anything you personally want to consider. You then take each of those items and weight them in however fashion you want. And then you apply those standards to all pitchers.
If after that process you end up with Felix as #8 in the Cy race, then so be it. If he ends up at #1, then so be it.
Should you weight WAR at 100%? Sure, if you want. Should you weight it at 0%? Yeah, you can do that too. You can include RBI and where your team finishes, and by how much ahead or behind the playoff spot it finishes. You can do ANYTHING.
Just don’t change your method every year so that you can fit your own narrative. “oooohhh… look at Dawson! look what he did! I’m going to overweight HR and RBI and underweight the playoff issue this year.” .... “oooohhhh… look what Caminiti did! I’m going to overweight the playoff issue this year as well as overweight the 3B v LF issue, and underweight walks because that’s the only way to get him ahead of Bonds… heck, just to make sure, I’m going to upgrade his fielding from above average to stellar, and call Bonds slow as a fielder this year”.
Then you have other crazy things like: “I can’t vote Dawson #1, but I CAN vote him #2!” Basically, that person will overweight the playoff issue, but only for ONE player. They won’t vote for a pitcher, but they would trade any player on their team to get Felix, or Josh Johnson, or Roy Halladay or Cliff Lee. So, they agree that Felix et al are valuable, and then at the same time assert that they can’t be as valuable as an everyday player. Surely, they don’t mean that Willie Ballgame playing 150 games is more valuable than Jered Weaver, do they? No, of course not. Therefore, they are underweighting, but not completely eliminating, the impact that a starting pitcher has relative to a starting position player.
Be consistent, have a process and own your process. It’s the pure irrational exuberance that is bothersome.