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Friday, February 27, 2009
The New WARP
Finally! Clay has been bombarded by me on this blog regarding his low use of replacement level. Based on his article in BP09, he’s acknowledged that he’s basically the last man standing in terms of belief in his low replacement level.
Once he took the first step (making replacement level from around -3.5 or -4 wins, to -2 wins), I knew what his second step would lead to. And, I felt his frustration, and he was totally right, that he didn’t want to force the issue that the difference between average and replacement level was the same for every position, every year. He even cited my oft-made remark that in the 1950s, the CF outhit the corner OF, and so, it would be foolish to make the average CF be equal to the average corner OF, given the fact that the average CF both outhit, and (must have) outfielded them.
I felt it. You could really feel his frustration on the matter in hs words.
He finally gave in. He accepted that the average non-pitcher is 22.11 runs per full season better than replacement-level. (This is virtually identical to what I use). He accepted that the average starting pitcher should be compared to a baseline that is 1.25 runs above the league average, which is again virtually identical to what I use. I don’t think Clay has the correct replacement-level for relievers (based on his text, he is definitely wrong about it, but all he needs is to read a couple of pages from The Book to realize his error).
So, kudos to Clay for embracing what the rest of use are accepting. Now, he joins the issue of how to balance the baseline levels across positions. This is something he thinks about alot, as you can see by how he wrote his chapter. However, I don’t think he’s got it yet. Here are the technicals of why I think he needs more tweaking done:
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