WAR! What is it good for?

Absoloutely nothing? I love statistics. I have a little bit of a Russell Crowe 'A Beautiful Mind' thing going on in my life (but without the anti-semitism) and have been pouring myself into baseball's new math.

I find the WAR statistic to be the best measure of a player's season, but where it really falls short is a measure of a player's career. For instance, if you were to look at career war you'd find Phil Niekro as the 9th greatest pitcher in the history of baseball. Niekro was a good player, but he was a stat compiler and his career WAR benefits from that.

So the question becomes how do you measure one player against another statistically when the length of career is a constant variable? For a while I liked to use 162 game average stats, but where that started to come up short was penalizing players who stayed on too long and hurt their statistics and benefits players who had short careers and didn't stay in the game past their prime.

What I'm trying now is taking a player's five best WAR seasons and averaging them to create a player's 'peak rating.' Or, as I like to call it, the Sandy Koufax rating.

Here's what I've come up with. Koufax is regarded as one of the best pitchers in baseball history, based on a relatively short period of dominance, followed by an abrupt retirement. Therefore, his career WAR and other monitors are relatively low. Let's see how he measures up in the new system.

Koufax' best seasons (in terms of WAR) were 1961, and 1963 through 1966. During this time he totaled a WAR of 43.2 and an average of 8.64. Let's see how he measures up.

10.56 Walter Johnson
9.16 Pete Alexander
9.12 Bob Gibson
8.82 Christy Mathewson
8.80 Roger Clemens
8.78 Lefty Grove
8.66 Ed Walsh
8.64 Sandy Koufax
8.58 Cy Young*
8.40 Gaylord Perry
8.30 Tom Seaver
8.28 Juan Marichal
8.20 Bob Feller
8.18 Randy Johnson
8.14 Pedro Martinez
8.06 Steve Carlton
7.72 Greg Maddux
7.72 Phil Niekro
7.48 Warren Spahn
7.44 Hal Newhouser
7.36 Rube Waddell
7.26 Carl Hubbell
6.88 Jim Palmer
6.86 Mordecai Brown
6.84 Nolan Ryan
6.72 Don Drysdale
6.60 Eddie Cicotte
6.26 Eddie Plank
6.24 Dizzy Dean
5.90 Early Wynn
5.80 Dwight Gooden
5.66 Tom Glavine
5.54 Don Sutton
5.24 Herb Pennock
5.20 Ted Lyons
5.12 Whitey Ford
4.82 Smoky Joe Wood
4.62 Waite Hoyt

* 19th century pitching statistics effectively make WAR an ineffective comparative tool when measured against 20th century pitchers. For that reason only Cy Young's five best 20th century seasons were used to in this measurement. Cy Young's complete career number is 10.76, Kid Nichols is 10.04, and Old Hoss Radbourns is an astonishing 10.98 (wildly skewed by his 1884 WAR of 19.8)

Well, what do you think? Does this math truely determine an accurate ranking? Is Walter Johnson the greatest pitcher of all time? Was Whitey Ford over-rated who benefited tremendously from one of the greatest offensive teams in baseball history? When sober and sane, was the Great Alexander #2 all time? And does this cast a dark eye on stat compilers like Don Sutton?

I would go with their top ten seasons for a more accurate assessment since it takes ten great seasons to get into the HOF.

jbonie wrote:I would go with their top ten seasons for a more accurate assessment since it takes ten great seasons to get into the HOF.

I thought about that, but I was looking for a solution to the "Sandy Koufax" problem. Koufax had 3 excellent seasons (WAR 8+), an additional 2 good seaons (WAR 5+), and an additional 2 fair seasons (WAR 2+). The remainder of Koufax' career were made of 5 poor seasons (WAR below 2).

He's regarded as one of the all-timers by most, but only has 5 seasons that were good or better (WAR 5+).

Well, I think instead of viewing it as a problem persay, maybe it is bringing to light the fact that although Koufax was a great pitcher, his mediocre first few years and early retirement meant that he had less of an impact over the course of his career than his legend suggests. Hence, the difference between performance and legend. The same goes with Jeter. Great player, yes, but if he played in Minnesota he wouldn't have nearly the outsized legend he has today.

The other thing people forget about Koufax is that he benefited greatly from Dodger Stadium. He was a nobody until that park opened. Dwight Gooden and Koufax are almost mirror images of each other. Gooden looked like a god early in his career and then disappeared. If his career had gone like Koufax's, suck in the beginning and go out with a bang, we'd all be hearing about how great Gooden was. Which he was. He gets penalized because he flamed out and stuck around rather than leaving on top.

Johnson is a no-brainer for choice as best pitcher of all-time. The most shutouts in a career. The most 1-0 wins and loses. The guy pitched for some of the teams and got no run support and still put up amazing numbers. Matty benefited form spending most of his career with a great team. Just about ever analysis shows Alexander as #2 and I wouldn't argue with that either. Maybe Lefty Grove #2 because he put of amazing numbers in an era when tons of runs were being scored and the ball started flying out of the park. You could also make an argument for Maddux at #2. Another pitcher who put up amazing numbers in an era when hitters ruled.

there's a fine line between the peak years guys (and how dominant you were in them) vs. the consistent players who accumulate counting stats. personally i think koufax peak years were too short and if he was in today's era he prolly wouldn't get in. a better example would be pedro who had 7-8 MONSTER years against the toughest hitting era where he was virtually unhittable. a piece of me is dead forever knowing the dodgers traded him away for delino deshields. imagine the stats he would put up in dodgers stadium!

(...bleh who am i kidding i bleed dodgers blue koufax is a hof'er)

I went ahead and plugged Dwight Gooden and Pedro Martinez into my speadsheet, and while Pedro came out fairly high on the list, Gooden appeared toward the bottom.

I personally have never been a fan of compiled statistics, because of the variable length of careers. Craig Biggio hung in there and collected 3,000 hits, but no one would suggest him as the greatest hitter of his era, would they?

Biggio was a leadoff hitter for much of his career. His job was to get on base, steal a few of them and score runs. He did just that while being one of the best 2B in the NL.

Everyone gets so wrapped up in HRs and power numbers that they forget that there is much more to hitting than just putting the ball over the fence.

Personally, I think that the HR is one of the most boring and anticlimatic events in sports. I say push the fences way back like the deadball era and lets see these guys leg out some more triples and inside the park HR. Now those truly exciting hits to watch.

sabrjay wrote:
Everyone gets so wrapped up in HRs and power numbers that they forget that there is much more to hitting than just putting the ball over the fence.

perfectly illustrated by the fact that jim rice is in while an all-around better player and more valuable to his team tim raines is on the outside...and rice didn't even have enough stats. an illusion and a grassroot movement by the old voters as a final FU to the newer stat geeks.