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Monday, September 12, 2011
Poz on WAR and pitcher wins
He pummels it like no one else can:
But some Brilliant Readers did get my intention, and one in particular made a well-reasoned argument that wins, flawed as they are, do tell us with a pretty decent sense of accuracy whether a pitcher is good or not, especially over a long career. OK, put that thought away for a minute.
The next email was from another Brilliant Reader [BR] who had myriad complaints about WAR. This too was well-reasoned, and it made the point that WAR is far from perfect, that the formula between Baseball Reference and Fangraphs is quite different, that it’s ridiculous to take out the human element from baseball analysis and simply determine who is the best player by the decimal points of WAR.
It was good to read those back-to-back, because in just two emails I felt like I had seen the arc. The first BR wants too little from stats. The second BR expects ways too much.
On a single-season basis, WAR is better than pitcher wins. On a career basis, WAR is better than pitcher wins. That’s apples to apples.
Career pitcher wins may be better than single season WAR. Career WAR is far far better than single season pitcher wins. Apples and oranges.
So, on an apples-to-apples comparison, WAR wins.
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