What is the park factor used for bWar? 1 or 3 year? GABP has the most inconsistent factors in all of baseball, which has never sat right with me. They were a 111 this year but a 101 last year. In 2021, bb-ref had to redo GABP’s factor (119!) because it was so wonky.
I love this post for the "Mom's who love their son's interest in baseball though they have absolutely no interest in baseball themselves" content. Mom's = The Best
I think it is hard to argue that the Reds’ defence played well behind Hunter Greene and poorly behind everyone else.
Greene’s excellent average on batted balls in play was more likely a function of his pitching style than Jekyll and Hyde defence.
Greene induced a lot of soft contact. His barrels per plate appearance (3.1%) was lower than those of Sale (3.4%) and Wheeler (5.3%). He was the same as Skenes even though Greene pitched to 20% more batted ball events.
Greene looks to have benefited from lots of soft fly balls. His launch angle was much higher than those of other top pitchers.
My point isn’t that Greene was the best pitcher but simply that bWAR may have something going for it.
I think the question, though, is if WAR is reflecting a skill, or if it's just capturing something that happened by chance. Is Greene GOOD at inducing soft contact, or did he merely benefit from having a lot of soft contact randomly distributed while he was pitching? If the former, bWAR might be measuring something "real," for which he should rightly get credit; if the latter, he wasn't ACTUALLY better than the other aforementioned pitchers... he was just more fortunate. And then fWAR might be getting at something bWAR is missing. I would lean more toward the latter, but I guess we'll see.
But that raises a question: How much of a players rating should be based on repeatable skills? It may be the case that a pitcher’s ability to induce soft contact is unproven. But we know that, for whatever reason, batters did make soft contact more frequently against Greene in 2024. Shouldn’t he get credit for this?
And if soft contact was randomly distributed, why did it show up disproportionately in Greene’s results compared to other Reds pitchers? (Assuming this accounts for the BABIP difference between he and his teammates.)
I guess what I’m suggesting is that there is an element of results that is chalked up to chance or luck. If we were to replay 2024, Greene’s results going forward would be different. But if our purpose in measuring 2024 is in looking at what actually happened - not at whether it can be repeated - then Greene’s soft contact should be a factor, no?
Greene’s achievement was statistically indistinguishable from Sales’s or Skenes’s.
But he was 1.67 standard deviations below Wheeler (who was just a bit better than average). This means there was only a 4 percent chance that Greene’s out performance of Wheeler was due to good fortune.
i actually don't see the Brewers repeating as division winners again this year... definitely Sale or Skenes were tops by far stat-wise in NL last year; Elly's amazing abilities have succeeded in making me watch Reds highlights just to see what he does! got a bad feeling about the Bucs, don't think they have enough firepower to really help their 2 hard-throwing young arms, and i would sure love to see the Cubbies make some noise this year (for some reason always somewhat drawn to them- unless of course they're playing my Giants- there's just something so elemental & magical about Wrigley Field)...
Mocking RBIs and Posey is distasteful on a professional level and continues the analytic bandwagon approach of under valuing RBIs. Stop the nonsense that driving in runs is not significant. Watch games see the difference between a batter getting a RBI and a walk. Stop disguising the importance of the RBI as a stat by referencing success in “leverage situations”.
30 MLB teams behave as if they disagree with you. The burden is on you to *prove* the importance and value of RBIs. And proving something means demonstrating with empirical data, not just saying “watch games.”
A starting point is the team with the most runs wins. The burden of proof is on those who discount the importance of driving in runs. The combination of misapplied legalism “burden of proof” and a hint of the scientific method “more than watch games” does not create a starting point that RBIs need to be proved as valuable. Also, observation is a valid form of evidence gathering. Quantitative methods removed from observations can mislead.
I want to defend Hunter Greene leading in bWAR but am very nervous about it. Joe lays out a buffet of statistics that does indeed make it appear he might have not been the best of the bunch, but then ends by saying the Reds defense was sup-par but "it sure looks like they were actually GREAT behind Greene—I base this on the simple fact that Greene gave up the lowest average on balls in play in all of baseball." Well maybe Hunter was extremely lucky or maybe, just his pitching made him the best in BABIP.
Now for the nervous part. I don't like to talk about myself as an athlete very much but one thing really bothered me. You see, my body was made of spare parts. From the waist down I should be about 6'5". From the waist up I should be about 5'10". I measure 6' 1 1/2". My wing span is 6' 7 1/2". In short, nothing seems to fit. In HS I was number 1 in tennis, although before the first season people said if I played well I might make the J.V. squad. What happened? We played matches and no one could beat me. Coach said I looked like a wounded flamingo but tennis doesn't give points for beauty. Always felt I got short shrift in other sports (FB, BB, Basketball) because I didn't look the part. Hunter Greene may not look the part either but he got the job done. Way to go Hunter.
You forgot to mention William Contreras in the Brewers write up who is probably either the team’s best or second-best player and the best catcher in the game.
For whatever reasons the Pirates and the Reds just will not spend money. The owners seem to be satisfied with the mediocre teams they have and hope that lightning will strike and push their teams into the playoffs. Their loyal fanbases deserve so much better!
Joe: "have you SEEN Bobby Grich's bWAR? It shows just how underappreciated and HOF-like he truly was!"
Also Joe: "(there's) no possible way" that bWAR could be right about Hunter Greene's value.
Hmm. Okay, Joe, so we're supposed to believe bWAR when it paints players you like in a favorable light but NOT believe bWAR when they paint players you like less in a positive light? Yikes.
The way that WAR is calculated for pitchers is different than for position players (and also further different for catchers). Joe has been very consistent that B-R’s version of the calculation for pitchers is problematic.
He also usually uses “combo WAR” (an average of B-R and Fangraphs methodologies) when citing WAR to defend an argument.
I'm with 77550. I see a lot of people using WAR and dismissing WAR whenever it suits their argument:
"My guy is better than this guy in the HOF. Look how much higher his WAR is!"
"Well, I'll admit my guy's WAR is a lot lower than this HOFer, but in my guy's case you obviously throw out WAR when it comes to {intangible} {intangible} and also {teammate quote about guy}"
Joe has often pointed out the quirkiness of bWAR as it applies to pitchers. He’s not alone in his questioning of their methodology for pitchers, which is separate and apart from the methodology for non pitchers.
When you wrote about Greene before, some people pointed out why bWAR had him first. Perhaps the points they made weren't overwhelmingly compelling, but they explained the math, at least.
I’m 70 and grew up in Baltimore so Boog was a big( 😀) part of my childhood. But my favorite Boog story was that episode of Cheers where Dianne implored Sam to finish his story about pitching to “the Boog person”.
"Elly and Bobby Witt Jr. were the only 30-10-25 players in baseball (30 doubles, 10 triples, 25 homers)"
This is true, but the 25 hrs threshold neatly cuts out Jarren Duran, whose 48 doubles and 14 triples bested both of them. Folks are sleeping on how great a season he had, and how much fun his next few seasons stand to be.
I think Jarren Duran lost some fans when he made some comments towards a fan last year. Personally, I could care less, but some BBWAA types will probably really, really hold it against him.
Yes, I think that's true, and he has to wear that. Derogatory slurs are not okay in any context, and I was really disappointed when that happened. The fact that Witt and Elly don't seem to have any kind of baggage probably makes them more fun to root for overall.
But people are complicated. Duran's story of resilience after his disastrous 2021-22 seasons is by the same token also more impressive than anything I've heard about the other two.
I, like many must have, chuckled with the "92 Poseys" comment. I've heard Bobby Evans is back with the Giants as an advisor to Posey. Evans famously replaced Sabean as the GM and proceeded to deal a bunch of contracts to free agents including a really bad one to Mark Melancon in 2015 or so, I remember thinking about the old fantasy baseball adage of "don't pay for saves", well, he did and it was a terrible contract and a huge waste of money. However, it was a hardball move which fits nicely with the new hardball GM.
Now, journalists around baseball like Joe P. and Sheehan keep complaining about the Giants making Farhad the scapegoat for not winning or bringing the big free agents and I think this is fair. HOWEVER, it doesn't look like he was Bloomed where they fired him after building a great farm system. The Giants have NO farm system to speak off and this was supposed to be Farhad's strength, why isn't this brought up when discussing his performance?
overall, despite Farhad's occasional brilliance, overall he whiffed on almost every big target and did nothing for the farm system... let Buster have his chance, i think there may be some great changes afoot soon!
I really don't blame him for not being able to sign free agents, that's a terrible hitting ballpark and the city is a mess that probably turned players away, not under his control. I do think that the farm system was his for good or bad and he left leaving pretty much nothing there
My daughter and I think you were too kind to the Pirates. Talk about taking the money and running! There is a grassroots movement here in the ‘Burgh to try and get local pols to force Bob Nutting to sell the team. Nothing else will work, because he has no incentive or desire to spend the money necessary to build a winning team.
Since anyone who remembers watching the last World Series championship (or playoff series win other than one wild card game) is old enough to join AARP, even someone as cheap as Nutting might want to do something to build goodwill. Unfortunately unless the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future paid him a visit recently, that doesn’t seem likely. Can’t wait until he starts angling for a new/upgraded ballpark, as if nobody remembers when Three Rivers was supposedly holding them back from having the resources to build a championship team.
What is the park factor used for bWar? 1 or 3 year? GABP has the most inconsistent factors in all of baseball, which has never sat right with me. They were a 111 this year but a 101 last year. In 2021, bb-ref had to redo GABP’s factor (119!) because it was so wonky.
https://www.sports-reference.com/blog/2021/08/august-2021-park-factor-update/
I love this post for the "Mom's who love their son's interest in baseball though they have absolutely no interest in baseball themselves" content. Mom's = The Best
"I’ll ask the good folks at Baseball-Reference again to please consider fixing this."
Or even better, to start printing Win Shares alongside, just for comparison...
I think it is hard to argue that the Reds’ defence played well behind Hunter Greene and poorly behind everyone else.
Greene’s excellent average on batted balls in play was more likely a function of his pitching style than Jekyll and Hyde defence.
Greene induced a lot of soft contact. His barrels per plate appearance (3.1%) was lower than those of Sale (3.4%) and Wheeler (5.3%). He was the same as Skenes even though Greene pitched to 20% more batted ball events.
Greene looks to have benefited from lots of soft fly balls. His launch angle was much higher than those of other top pitchers.
My point isn’t that Greene was the best pitcher but simply that bWAR may have something going for it.
I think the question, though, is if WAR is reflecting a skill, or if it's just capturing something that happened by chance. Is Greene GOOD at inducing soft contact, or did he merely benefit from having a lot of soft contact randomly distributed while he was pitching? If the former, bWAR might be measuring something "real," for which he should rightly get credit; if the latter, he wasn't ACTUALLY better than the other aforementioned pitchers... he was just more fortunate. And then fWAR might be getting at something bWAR is missing. I would lean more toward the latter, but I guess we'll see.
But that raises a question: How much of a players rating should be based on repeatable skills? It may be the case that a pitcher’s ability to induce soft contact is unproven. But we know that, for whatever reason, batters did make soft contact more frequently against Greene in 2024. Shouldn’t he get credit for this?
And if soft contact was randomly distributed, why did it show up disproportionately in Greene’s results compared to other Reds pitchers? (Assuming this accounts for the BABIP difference between he and his teammates.)
I guess what I’m suggesting is that there is an element of results that is chalked up to chance or luck. If we were to replay 2024, Greene’s results going forward would be different. But if our purpose in measuring 2024 is in looking at what actually happened - not at whether it can be repeated - then Greene’s soft contact should be a factor, no?
I agree with your way of thinking about it.
Greene’s achievement was statistically indistinguishable from Sales’s or Skenes’s.
But he was 1.67 standard deviations below Wheeler (who was just a bit better than average). This means there was only a 4 percent chance that Greene’s out performance of Wheeler was due to good fortune.
I have it at 3.8%, but whatever.
i actually don't see the Brewers repeating as division winners again this year... definitely Sale or Skenes were tops by far stat-wise in NL last year; Elly's amazing abilities have succeeded in making me watch Reds highlights just to see what he does! got a bad feeling about the Bucs, don't think they have enough firepower to really help their 2 hard-throwing young arms, and i would sure love to see the Cubbies make some noise this year (for some reason always somewhat drawn to them- unless of course they're playing my Giants- there's just something so elemental & magical about Wrigley Field)...
Mocking RBIs and Posey is distasteful on a professional level and continues the analytic bandwagon approach of under valuing RBIs. Stop the nonsense that driving in runs is not significant. Watch games see the difference between a batter getting a RBI and a walk. Stop disguising the importance of the RBI as a stat by referencing success in “leverage situations”.
30 MLB teams behave as if they disagree with you. The burden is on you to *prove* the importance and value of RBIs. And proving something means demonstrating with empirical data, not just saying “watch games.”
A starting point is the team with the most runs wins. The burden of proof is on those who discount the importance of driving in runs. The combination of misapplied legalism “burden of proof” and a hint of the scientific method “more than watch games” does not create a starting point that RBIs need to be proved as valuable. Also, observation is a valid form of evidence gathering. Quantitative methods removed from observations can mislead.
We get it Rich, you’re smarter than all the MLB teams. You know better, and they just keep fumbling along because no one has discovered your genius.
29 MLB teams now that Buster is in charge. :-)
I want to defend Hunter Greene leading in bWAR but am very nervous about it. Joe lays out a buffet of statistics that does indeed make it appear he might have not been the best of the bunch, but then ends by saying the Reds defense was sup-par but "it sure looks like they were actually GREAT behind Greene—I base this on the simple fact that Greene gave up the lowest average on balls in play in all of baseball." Well maybe Hunter was extremely lucky or maybe, just his pitching made him the best in BABIP.
Now for the nervous part. I don't like to talk about myself as an athlete very much but one thing really bothered me. You see, my body was made of spare parts. From the waist down I should be about 6'5". From the waist up I should be about 5'10". I measure 6' 1 1/2". My wing span is 6' 7 1/2". In short, nothing seems to fit. In HS I was number 1 in tennis, although before the first season people said if I played well I might make the J.V. squad. What happened? We played matches and no one could beat me. Coach said I looked like a wounded flamingo but tennis doesn't give points for beauty. Always felt I got short shrift in other sports (FB, BB, Basketball) because I didn't look the part. Hunter Greene may not look the part either but he got the job done. Way to go Hunter.
You forgot to mention William Contreras in the Brewers write up who is probably either the team’s best or second-best player and the best catcher in the game.
For whatever reasons the Pirates and the Reds just will not spend money. The owners seem to be satisfied with the mediocre teams they have and hope that lightning will strike and push their teams into the playoffs. Their loyal fanbases deserve so much better!
Joe: "have you SEEN Bobby Grich's bWAR? It shows just how underappreciated and HOF-like he truly was!"
Also Joe: "(there's) no possible way" that bWAR could be right about Hunter Greene's value.
Hmm. Okay, Joe, so we're supposed to believe bWAR when it paints players you like in a favorable light but NOT believe bWAR when they paint players you like less in a positive light? Yikes.
The way that WAR is calculated for pitchers is different than for position players (and also further different for catchers). Joe has been very consistent that B-R’s version of the calculation for pitchers is problematic.
He also usually uses “combo WAR” (an average of B-R and Fangraphs methodologies) when citing WAR to defend an argument.
Bobby Grich has a 69.5 fWAR, which is still HoF caliber, whereas Greene’s bWAR and fWAR actually have a large, statistically significant difference.
I'm with 77550. I see a lot of people using WAR and dismissing WAR whenever it suits their argument:
"My guy is better than this guy in the HOF. Look how much higher his WAR is!"
"Well, I'll admit my guy's WAR is a lot lower than this HOFer, but in my guy's case you obviously throw out WAR when it comes to {intangible} {intangible} and also {teammate quote about guy}"
Joe has often pointed out the quirkiness of bWAR as it applies to pitchers. He’s not alone in his questioning of their methodology for pitchers, which is separate and apart from the methodology for non pitchers.
When you wrote about Greene before, some people pointed out why bWAR had him first. Perhaps the points they made weren't overwhelmingly compelling, but they explained the math, at least.
I’m 70 and grew up in Baltimore so Boog was a big( 😀) part of my childhood. But my favorite Boog story was that episode of Cheers where Dianne implored Sam to finish his story about pitching to “the Boog person”.
Boog Powell met Dizzy Dean who reportedly said to him “son, that’s the worst nickname I’ve ever heard." Powell added "And this is a guy named Dizzy.”
Other quotes
“Boog needs his beer like a diabetic needs insulin.” - Earl Weaver
“If Boog Powell held out his right arm he’d be a railroad crossing.”— Joe Garagiola
WAR has always seemed to me to be entirely too subjective since there's different ways to calculate it. It's choose your own adventure!
(Pssst. It's Zimmermann, with two N's, when you're talking about Jordan. The Nats got his best years for sure.)
"Elly and Bobby Witt Jr. were the only 30-10-25 players in baseball (30 doubles, 10 triples, 25 homers)"
This is true, but the 25 hrs threshold neatly cuts out Jarren Duran, whose 48 doubles and 14 triples bested both of them. Folks are sleeping on how great a season he had, and how much fun his next few seasons stand to be.
I think Jarren Duran lost some fans when he made some comments towards a fan last year. Personally, I could care less, but some BBWAA types will probably really, really hold it against him.
Yes, I think that's true, and he has to wear that. Derogatory slurs are not okay in any context, and I was really disappointed when that happened. The fact that Witt and Elly don't seem to have any kind of baggage probably makes them more fun to root for overall.
But people are complicated. Duran's story of resilience after his disastrous 2021-22 seasons is by the same token also more impressive than anything I've heard about the other two.
I am loathing the day he gets traded for a bag of baseballs. He has put in the work to become a tremendous player.
I, like many must have, chuckled with the "92 Poseys" comment. I've heard Bobby Evans is back with the Giants as an advisor to Posey. Evans famously replaced Sabean as the GM and proceeded to deal a bunch of contracts to free agents including a really bad one to Mark Melancon in 2015 or so, I remember thinking about the old fantasy baseball adage of "don't pay for saves", well, he did and it was a terrible contract and a huge waste of money. However, it was a hardball move which fits nicely with the new hardball GM.
Now, journalists around baseball like Joe P. and Sheehan keep complaining about the Giants making Farhad the scapegoat for not winning or bringing the big free agents and I think this is fair. HOWEVER, it doesn't look like he was Bloomed where they fired him after building a great farm system. The Giants have NO farm system to speak off and this was supposed to be Farhad's strength, why isn't this brought up when discussing his performance?
overall, despite Farhad's occasional brilliance, overall he whiffed on almost every big target and did nothing for the farm system... let Buster have his chance, i think there may be some great changes afoot soon!
I really don't blame him for not being able to sign free agents, that's a terrible hitting ballpark and the city is a mess that probably turned players away, not under his control. I do think that the farm system was his for good or bad and he left leaving pretty much nothing there
What is a Posey?
Joe wrote the other day about Buster Posey’s fondness for RBIs, so he has renamed the Run Batted In the “Posey.” 😁
My daughter and I think you were too kind to the Pirates. Talk about taking the money and running! There is a grassroots movement here in the ‘Burgh to try and get local pols to force Bob Nutting to sell the team. Nothing else will work, because he has no incentive or desire to spend the money necessary to build a winning team.
Since anyone who remembers watching the last World Series championship (or playoff series win other than one wild card game) is old enough to join AARP, even someone as cheap as Nutting might want to do something to build goodwill. Unfortunately unless the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future paid him a visit recently, that doesn’t seem likely. Can’t wait until he starts angling for a new/upgraded ballpark, as if nobody remembers when Three Rivers was supposedly holding them back from having the resources to build a championship team.