Remember 1969: I Need Your Help! (I need all the help I can get)

 

I’ll go with this right up front:   We need another player rating measurement, and I need all your help to get one perfected.    

I really dislike the Wins Above Replacement rating system.    A few examples below will begin to tell why, although there are virtually unlimited cases where WAR is just plain head-scratching.   

One thing that seems rather strange to me is lumping all players – pitchers and position players – into a single rating system, but we’ll worry about that later.   The initial focus is on position players. 

I understand WAR tries to take into account more than just hitting statistics, and I think we might be able to get to that, but my initial attempt is generally to build a hitting measurement tool.    I have not spent much time learning the calculation(s), and what little I did look at it, it looks almost impossible to do as a general baseball fan with the stats available to me.   

There are actually two Wins Above Replacement systems generally regarded as relevant today – the Baseball-Reference WAR, or bWAR, and Fangraphs WAR or fWAR.    I typically quote the bWAR numbers for players, because I just got more used to the Baseball-Reference pages.     The two numbers generally track with each number, but there are some differences.   I will not argue with anyone who thinks fWAR is better than bWAR or vice versa.   I like neither of them.

Some background examples before I get into building a better mousetrap. 

Two players:

Player A:

	Yrs	Games	PA	H	2B	3B	HR	R	RBI	SB	BB	SO
PlayerA	17	2196	8664	1933	383	36	434	1204	1289	152	891	1748
PlayerB	19	2372	9692	2452	498	39	353	1296	1391	195	661	1741

Player A had a lifetime batting average of .263;   Player B had a lifetime batting average of .277

Player A had a lifetime OPS of .839;  Player B had a lifetime OPS of .793. 

A little bit of math:  Player B had 519 more hits in his career;  115 more doubles, but 81 less homers; he also had 92 more runs scored and 102 more RBI (with less homers). 

In the January 2022 Hall of Fame voting Player A received 41.1% of the vote.   Player B received 5.3%. 

Oh yeah,  Player A had 10 career gold gloves, Player B had 9.  

Player A has 62.7 career bWAR;   Player B has 50.7.

Player A has 67.0 career fWAR;  Player B has 43.0 - a massive difference.

I cannot figure out how Andrew Jones, player A gets so much more love and attention than Torii Hunter, player B.  

 

Next, we’ll do a chart for five players who all had the initials “BB”.

Player BB1 is Barry Bonds, the gold standard of modern day WAR.     The other 4 will be revealed after the data is shown.

	Yrs	Games	PA	H	2B	3B	HR	R	RBI	SB	BB	SO
BB1	22	2986	12606	2935	601	77	762	2227	1996	514	2558	1539
BB2	14	1849	8090	1886	302	66	332	1258	1024	461	914	1757
BB3	22	2517	10037	2715	498	49	174	1077	1208	183	450	453
BB4	17	2213	9545	2375	277	131	54	1359	578	558	1129	907
BB5	16	2113	8257	2010	408	61	287	1084	1173	45	912	1204

 

Now if we eliminate Barry Bonds as ‘other world’ who leads in almost all regular statistical categories, the remaining four are somewhat even in the length of career and other measurements.   Obviously BB4 is a ‘top of the order’ speed guy rather than a power hitter, and BB3 accumulated quite a few more hits and doubles without either the home runs or the walks.  

 BB3 would seemingly be the top of the lot, huh?

 The WAR numbers for the above players: 

	bWAR	fWAR
Player BB1:  Barry Bonds	162.8	164.4
Player BB2:  Bobby Bonds:	57.8	57.2
Player BB3:  Bill Buckner	15.1	18.8
Player BB4:  Brett Butler	49.7	42.2
Player BB5:  Bobby Bonilla	30.2	32.7

Bobby Bonds and Buckner both began their careers in the late 60’s.  Bonds was done in 1981 while Buckner played until 1990.    Both Butler and Bonilla played primarily in the 80s and 90s.

I cannot figure out how Bobby Bonilla has 2x WAR of Buckner, while Butler has 3X and Bobby Bonds almost 4X.    Buckner leads all of them in games, plate appearances, hits doubles, RBI, and K-rate (by far).    Of the four, only one has a higher career batting average that Buckner, and that is Butler’s .290 to Buckner’s .289.  

So, what do we do?     We create a better system!    And with everybody’s help we can replace WAR with PEACE (yeah, I need some help here, too . . (Player Evaluation And C____   E_______)

I started this off with something that seems to make sense to me, but could probably use some tweaks and polishing.    Hear me out for now on this and then offer up any constructive criticism and improvements.     This system does not try to define a ‘replacement level player’, although there will probably be a value that is arrived at that can be considered just that.    For the purposes of these examples, all are well above replacement players.    

The system will create a score which will range in the hundreds (thousands for this group) to a high of 15045.4 for Barry Bonds.    Nobody can get a negative score - if you make it to the majors, you don't deserve to leave with less than zero!

While Bonds' score is not an absolute limit, it will be difficult to surpass it, although if Mike Trout can stay healthy and highly productive for another 12 or so years, he may have a shot. 

My system:

CATEGORY	Multiplier
Number of Years with at least one plate appearance	Times 100
Games Played	Divided by 10
Plate Appearances	Divided by 20
Hits	Times 1
Doubles	Times 2
Triples	Times 3
Home Runs	Times 4
Runs Scored	Times 1
RBI	Times 1 - # Home Runs
Stolen Bases	Times 1
Caught Stealing	Times -1
Bases on Balls	Times 1
Strikeouts	Times 0.5
Grounded into Double Play	Times -1
Hit by Pitch	Times 1
Sacrifice Hits	Times 1
Sacrifice Flies	Times 1
League MVP	?
Gold Gloves	?

These are rather arbitrary multipliers which I cannot argue very hard for, but I do want to start out by giving credit for playing time.   This will act as the base for the end result.    At any rate, the calc is the same for everyone.

I originally added a multipier of 100 for each MVP and 50 for each Gold Glove won, but have taken that out now so this is a pure hitting score.   (Put your thoughts on this in the comments if you have them.)

So, how do the players above compare in the new system?

		Barry Bonds	Barry Bonds	Bobby Bonds	Bobby Bonds	Bill Buckner	Bill Buckner	Brett Butler	Brett Butler	Bobby Bonilla	Bobby Bonilla
		Stats	Score	Stats	Score	Stats	Score	Stats	Score	Stats	Score
Yrs	*100	22	2200	14	1400	22	2200	17	1700	16	1600
Games	/10	2986	298.6	1849	184.9	2517	251.7	2213	221.3	2113	211.3
PA	/20	12606	630.3	8090	404.5	10037	501.85	9545	477.25	8257	412.85
Hits	*1	2935	1495	1886	1186	2715	1994	2375	1913	2010	1254
2B	*2	601	1202	302	604	498	996	277	554	408	816
3B	*3	77	231	66	198	49	147	131	393	61	183
HR	*4	762	3048	332	1328	174	696	54	216	287	1148
Runs	*1	2227	2227	1258	1258	1077	1077	1359	1359	1084	1084
RBI	*1– HR	1996	1234	1024	692	1208	1034	578	524	1173	886
SB	*1	514	514	461	461	183	183	558	558	45	45
CS	*-1	141	141	169	169	73	73	257	257	57	57
BB	*1	2558	2558	914	914	450	450	1129	1129	912	912
K	*-0.5	1539	-769.5	1757	-878.5	453	-226.5	907	-453.5	1204	-602
GIDP	*-1	165	-165	107	-107	247	-247	62	-62	169	-169
HBP	*1	106	106	53	53	42	42	38	38	28	28
S	*1	4	4	16	16	47	47	147	147	5	5
SF	*1	91	91	64	64	97	97	51	51	97	97
MVP	?	7	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
GG	?	8	0	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
TOTAL SCORE			15045.4		7946.9		9316.1		9022.1		7968.15
bWAR			162.7		57.8		15.1		49.7		30.2
fWAR			164.4		57.2		18.8		42.2		32.7

 

As a hitter, Buckner’s career WAR falls well short.   I also do not understand the quite inflated WAR of Bobby Bonds.  

Can we do better?

And lastly, for my other personal soapbox to help Mr. Hunter get some more respect, my system comparison to A. Jones: 

		Andrew Jones	Andruw Jones	Torii Hunter	Torii Hunter
		Stats	Score	Stats	Score
Yrs	*100	17	1700	19	1900
Games	/10	2196	219.6	2372	237.2
PA	/20	8664	433.2	9692	484.6
Hits	*1	1933	1080	2452	1562
2B	*2	383	766	498	996
3B	*3	36	108	39	117
HR	*4	434	1736	353	1412
Runs	*1	1204	1204	1296	1296
RBI	*1– HR	1289	855	1391	1038
SB	*1	152	152	195	195
CS	*-1	59	59	99	99
BB	*1	891	891	661	661
K	*-0.5	1748	-874	1741	-870.5
GIDP	*-1	192	-192	262	-262
HBP	*1	97	97	97	97
S	*1	6	6	6	6
SF	*1	71	71	71	71
MVP	?	0	0	0	0
GG	?	10	0	9	0
TOTAL SCORE			8311.8		9039.3
bWAR			62.7		50.7
fWAR			67.0		43.0

 

This is a very small subset of the possible examples - my next look will be to compare Lou Whitaker (75.1 bWAR) to Jeff Kent (55.5 bWAR).  

A couple final notes: First, I do understand that this does not take into account where they play on the field and the fact that outfielders and first basemen should have better power numbers than shortstops.    Once the numbers are calculated, other groupings can be done.   Perhaps there is a “Shortstop Standard” and an “Outfield Standard”.    I have not developed that thinking yet. 

Lastly, I am ignoring (for now) two other factors.   One is what kinds of teams did the player play on (Andruw Jones generally played on better teams than Torii Hunter did), and what ballpark did the player play in?   (The Colorado Rockies vs. Citi Field factors).    Perhaps that can be added in at some point, but for now, neither is a factor in my scoring. 

Please comment with your thoughts.     Also, please keep personal thoughts about each player (and PEDs) out of this discussion.