How much faith do you put in the WAR stat?

[splitterpfj]

When you evaluate a player's career, do you swear by WAR, do you take it into account, or do you have little faith in it?

[TooLiveBrew]

Take it into account

[logan82]

Almost completely ignore it for pitchers. Look at wOBA then WAR for position players. While looking at WAR consider PA(since WAR is a counting stat) and look at just the defensive portion of WAR compared to other years to gauge how confident I would be that their defense is properly reflected in their WAR. I think it does a pretty good job of measuring a player's contribution in previous years but needs a lot of tweaking if you are trying to guess at WAR for consequent years.

[3and2Fastball]

I take it into account but occasionally take it with a grain of salt.

 

An example: those of us who think Cal Ripken Jr is overrated (in the context of All-Time greats) will not be as enamored of WAR. Just because there were not a lot of SS's in Ripken's time who hit for power (thus raising his WAR scores) does that mean that Ripken Jr was better than say, Barry Larkin? I don't think so.

[TooLiveBrew]

Just because there were not a lot of SS's in Ripken's time who hit for power (thus raising his WAR scores) does that mean that Ripken Jr was better than say, Barry Larkin? I don't think so.

 

That's an interesting question, because the answer could just as easily be "yes". Context is incredibly important in terms of defining player value (WAR or otherwise).

[Baldkin]

I use WAR, but I also really like WAA (wins above average -- basically WAR-2.0*number_of_seasons_played)

 

It helps to determine if a guy was truly great, as opposed to someone who played for years and years.

[TheCrew07]

I think WAR is a useful comparison tool but not the definitive answer to anything. I like it much better than many of the derived statistics, especially on the pitching side.

 

I don't there are very many useful all encompassing metrics when it comes to pitching at this point in time because there isn't a good way to incorporate the nuances of successful pitching into a true "this is how well this pitcher actually pitched" metric. You can't really remove defense from the equation if you can't adequately qualify it on a yearly basis, and no one has done so to this point. Zone systems are better than nothing, but linear systems would work better though require more input/exactness to make work. For pitchers I'm more into comparing the actual result against certain rate stats to form an opinion.

 

Generally speaking I like baseball-ref's version of WAR for pitching and fangraphs more for position players, but it's all about personal preference. I'm not sure there's a right or wrong answer as to which is better.

 

I do like using WAR for discussing theories and concepts though, such as trading as established/productive MLB player and yet becoming better team. Many people tend to get caught up 1 for 1 player comparisons when it's not that simple so WAR calculations can be very useful when trying to hash out more thought provoking concepts.

[jerichoholicninja]

I prefer looking at championships won and how often the player played on a winning team.

[rluzinski]

If you are talking about a starting pitcher with a long career, I wouldn't weigh fielding independent stats very much. I wouldn't use a version of WAR that uses FIP as a result. Really, ERA becomes pretty darn good (adjusted for park) over a long career, unless the pitcher had a consistently good for bad defense behind him.

 

For evaluating a hitter's career, I would be happy to use WAR.