Good explanation, but that last bit about WAR giving a GENERAL idea of a player's overall value should be emphasized. I see way too many baseball fans now throwing around WAR like its a precise stat, which it is NOT (ie. Player A with 5.4 WAR is NOT necessarily better than Player B with 5.9 WAR). And kudos for mentioning the relief pitcher dilemma too.
Great videos, great explanations and certainly helpful even as a person involved with an organization. Another few helpful ones to cover would be wRC and wRC+ and any of the other weighted statistics that determine a player’s value!
Just discovered your channel. I'm going to have to "retro- watch" all of your sabermetrics explained videos because the topic is so damn tough to understand yet baseball has migrated towards analytical decision making. I'm a baseball purist but I also am adaptable so it's time to learn. I'm looking to your channel for a complete and comprehensive curriculum.
Really glad you stumbled across our page! The up and coming concepts taking over the way baseball is played can be complicated, but hopefully this channel can help you understand it all just a little bit better. Enjoy!
Hey! Thanks for the video! I am playing Fantasy Baseball for the second year now and lets just say I used to play before FIBs and WARs even were around (OLD SCHOOL?). So I am used to evaluating players by watching them, but who has time for that?! This is the first video of yours I am watching and the first one that I havent needed a degree to understand lol. I'll check out your channel for Fantasy Baseball equations in a bit to better/quickly evaluate the value of players to pick up. Thanks for the flip book version thus far!
Excellent point Kyle - my definition displayed in this video is about Fangraph's WAR. I realize that I should've clarified it better throughout the video. The goal of the video is provide a base understanding of what this stat entails. Thanks for the comment!
The problem I have with WAR is that (beside from the fact that the ordinary fan cannot calculate it) no one is able to explain why one player's WAR differs from another's. It seems to me if you are going to use this stat for comparison purposes you should be able to explain the differences.
Thanks for the comment, Bob! For me, WAR is typically used to help categorize what kind of season a player is having in the MLB. Behind the scenes, this stat isn't used much to consider more in-depth game planning options of who to start and why. The goal of this video was to dive into what this stat is, and how it is typically used. Hopefully we hit the mark there!
how do they decide who a “replacement level player” is and are all players at a given position being compared to the same “replacement level player” or is it an average of stats from several “position level players”
I will forever be among those that are haters of the WAR is used. Multiple guys should be in the hall right now but are held back because of WAR. It’s not a common opinion but to me WAR is the MLB stat devil, such as QBR in football, PER in basketball .
The people who are held back from the Hall because of WAR are the people who excelled at things that are now thought to have been overvalued, or who excelled at things for which we have not found an adequate measurement. (Great defensive catchers fall into the latter category.)
You are correct - I should’ve mentioned in the video that each site calculates WAR differently. My definition came from FanGraphs, which compare players to a “replacement level” player. Meanwhile, Baseball Reference compares to an average player. That’s why you may see some discrepancies as you compare across two different platforms! Thanks for the comment, Abner!
Good video: subscribed! Now let me get to the point: can we devise a way of comparing the different "wins" estimates? I recognize three schools of player evaluation: the Jacobean school (Bill James); the Palmer school (Pete Palmer and his adherents that developed W.A.R.); the Walker school (Eric Walker, whose work was the basis of "Moneyball"). I came up with this acronym: C.R.O.W. - for Consensus Ratings Options Wins. But I don't have a conversion system developed. James calculates Win Shares which are 1/3 of a win. So all you have to do is divide his figures by 3. As you mentioned, a replacement player would account for 0-1 wins: I was a little more generous allowing for 2 wins. It would depend on the position and playing time. Still, I thought it reasonable to add 1 to 2 wins to the W.A.R. figures to get an estimate of wins without that nebulous "above replacement" disclaimer. Eric Walker has a system for generating wins for position players and pitchers, but he didn't feel fielding was significant enough to build into his calculations. It would be easy to exclude his work, but while James and Palmer were writing articles, Walker was advising the Giants and Athletics based on his work. So, I think we should work him in somehow - even if we use James' "short-form" method for giving defensive credit. This is my third attempt to make a decent comment. I thought your video was good in giving a simple explanation of W.A.R. with a good chart for performance level comparisons. I may tend toward Jacobean methodology, but I know W.A.R. is established, and I'm glad there's another approach to arriving at that "one number" that indicates a player's value. I'm also glad that you stressed that these values are estimates and not to be accepted as the end-all for evaluating players. Good job!
Spencer - have been loving to see your thorough comments across a few of my recent videos! Very glad you’ve been enjoying the content. It’s a really cool idea to find a way to bring all of the different ways the “one number” value system has been used over the years into an all encompassing single value. Would love to hear more about the process you’ve been through to do that as well as the benefits you foresee for creating such a stat! Keep up the good work, and I’m loving the in-depth comments! Hope you continue to enjoy the channel.
@@SimpleSabermetrics - Thanks for the responses. I've found your channel at a low point for me, so it has been a high point of this period. I appreciate the content you provide and the effort to make it accessible to those willing to consider it. Oh: I don't want to bastardize the various means of analysis by just adding the figures together and finding an average - although that was my initial thought. You made a comment on defensive metrics and how differently they are calculated and that gave me pause. Still, since the "holy grail" was to get to estimated wins, it would be nice to have a figure that ends "wins" as opposed to "Win Shares" or "Wins Above Replacement." I don't know if this old-timer can bring them all together in a meaningful way, but I certainly thank you for the encouragement.
Why isn’t there a variable in the pitcher calculation that accounts for the differences in starters/relievers that would allow for similar comparison of WAR?
This is a BIG question! The rise of analytics in baseball started back in the 80’s with the publishing of Bill James baseball abstract. Him, and many other people not affiliated with the MLB began to put work into better player evaluation statistics - such as WAR! Perhaps I should do a history of baseball video… thanks for the comment!
Is the replacement player's run production averaged throughout the league? Or is it team and position specific? For example, Elvis Andrus plays SS for the A's and is not very good to start the year, would it look at how many runs he produces compared to Nick Allen, our minor league SS? Or would it look at all minor league SS at that time?
Great question! It is position specific, but it is not team specific. Basically it calculates what an average replacement level player production is for the entire league and everyone is rated above or below that level based on their performance. (Yes it can be negative too). Thanks for the question!
Is it true that different "weights" are assigned to each event, such as this amount for a home run, this amount for a caught stealing, this amount for an outfield assist, ETC. Does this seem arbitrary, and could be used in a way to "favor" one type of event over? And is it true that there are at least three ways that WAR is calculated?
After watching your well thought out explanation, I still don't get the value of WAR. For instance if your replacement turns out to be really good and doesn't cost the team a win, wouldn't that keep the original players stat down? But if the original player was just average, but his replacement had a really bad day, wouldn't that increase the original players WAR stat?
Hey Glenn - I think the thing you're hooked up on is that the "replacement player" isn't just the back up for the player you're analyzing. It's a league estimation of what a backup could produce - meaning that number doesn't fluctuate on a day to day basis as a normal player's performance would. Does this help answer your question? Feel free to follow up if you need further clarification! Thanks for the comment.
It's not precise, it's not always measured the same way, and there is nothing simple about it, including this explanation aside from the chart you showed showing the range of numbers for positional players.
I love all your content, but I would think a person interested enough to watch a youtube channel about sabermetrics probably has a pretty good idea of what WAR is.
Thanks for the comment, Ryan! I know most people who are into my content understand what WAR is - but maybe not all about how it’s calculated and how it can be applied.Hopefully you can take away at least one new thing from this video.
Ha! Been doing this a while now, I’m sure I’d have more free time if I hung it up - but we’re only just getting started. Hope you’re enjoying the videos regardless!
OLD SCHOOL FAN HERE LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. IF A PLAYER HELP A TEAM WIN 7 GAMES IN 162 GAME SEASON HE IS A SUPER STAR WITH A 35 MILLION A YEAR CONTRACT. SO IS A PLAYER HIT 320 .AVE 35 HOMER 150 RBI WITH A 2 WAR IS A NO ONE
Hey man, sorry you feel that way! There are a ton of new stats out there, and the goal of the video was to share all of the background information I could about WAR. I’ve done several other videos on different statistics, such as FIP, wOBA and xRC - so feel free to check those out as well!
I just cut off the MLB, NFL and NBA channels out of my cable package. I was a strong baseball fan who even paid for playoff tickets before. Now, I am not going to spend a nickel on MLB. I am more angry with the Commissioner than the players. The Commissioner could put an end to this fast. But MLB on Twitter is criticizing the fans who are criticizing the kneeling. Official MLB is defending the kneeling. I can't tolerate MLB attacking the fans that support standing for the flag and anthem.
Good explanation, but that last bit about WAR giving a GENERAL idea of a player's overall value should be emphasized. I see way too many baseball fans now throwing around WAR like its a precise stat, which it is NOT (ie. Player A with 5.4 WAR is NOT necessarily better than Player B with 5.9 WAR). And kudos for mentioning the relief pitcher dilemma too.
Thank you for the kind words! It's a phenomenal stat when used correctly. Appreciate the comment.
Thank you so much for this, finally have an idea of what WAR is all about!
Glad I could help! Thanks for watching, Graham.
Awesome..now I finally understand WAR and b/c the music in your video, you forced me out of my house and off to a Mexican restaurant for dinner.
Great videos, great explanations and certainly helpful even as a person involved with an organization. Another few helpful ones to cover would be wRC and wRC+ and any of the other weighted statistics that determine a player’s value!
Appreciate the nice comment, Dan! Those metrics are definitely on my list of things to cover moving forward. Thanks!
Recently started getting into baseball over the past year. Never understood the WAR stat, this helped a bunch!
Just discovered your channel. I'm going to have to "retro- watch" all of your sabermetrics explained videos because the topic is so damn tough to understand yet baseball has migrated towards analytical decision making. I'm a baseball purist but I also am adaptable so it's time to learn. I'm looking to your channel for a complete and comprehensive curriculum.
Really glad you stumbled across our page! The up and coming concepts taking over the way baseball is played can be complicated, but hopefully this channel can help you understand it all just a little bit better. Enjoy!
love the content! it is so helpful! Can you do a video about FIP or wBOA
Absolutely Graham - glad you’ve found my videos helpful. Thank you so much for the comments, expect videos on those subjects sometime down the road!
So it’s basically +/- like in basketball
This is a very similar statistic, yes! Thanks for the comment 👍🏻
Great vid. A video about FIP or OAA would be interesting
Thanks, Lale! I appreciate the comment - that’s definitely something I’m considering for the future.
Hey! Thanks for the video! I am playing Fantasy Baseball for the second year now and lets just say I used to play before FIBs and WARs even were around (OLD SCHOOL?). So I am used to evaluating players by watching them, but who has time for that?! This is the first video of yours I am watching and the first one that I havent needed a degree to understand lol. I'll check out your channel for Fantasy Baseball equations in a bit to better/quickly evaluate the value of players to pick up. Thanks for the flip book version thus far!
Interesting on the explanation of WAR since it is calculated differently baesd on what website you ask.
Excellent point Kyle - my definition displayed in this video is about Fangraph's WAR. I realize that I should've clarified it better throughout the video. The goal of the video is provide a base understanding of what this stat entails. Thanks for the comment!
Simple Sabermetrics well maybe there should be a video suggesting the best formula to use
@@KyleRice Excellent point! Look for an updated video coming to the channel soon.
Would have been great to breakdown the formula’s components further. I have no idea what fielding runs are for example. How is that figure derived
I was waiting for a, "what is it good for?" joke.
Definitely missed a good opportunity there... thanks for the comments!
Absolutely nothin
The problem I have with WAR is that (beside from the fact that the ordinary fan cannot calculate it) no one is able to explain why one player's WAR differs from another's. It seems to me if you are going to use this stat for comparison purposes you should be able to explain the differences.
Thanks for the comment, Bob! For me, WAR is typically used to help categorize what kind of season a player is having in the MLB. Behind the scenes, this stat isn't used much to consider more in-depth game planning options of who to start and why.
The goal of this video was to dive into what this stat is, and how it is typically used. Hopefully we hit the mark there!
how do they decide who a “replacement level player” is and are all players at a given position being compared to the same “replacement level player” or is it an average of stats from several “position level players”
great video man best explanation.
Thanks for the comment, Sphinx!
I will forever be among those that are haters of the WAR is used. Multiple guys should be in the hall right now but are held back because of WAR. It’s not a common opinion but to me WAR is the MLB stat devil, such as QBR in football, PER in basketball .
@Lighthouse in the Storm eh
The people who are held back from the Hall because of WAR are the people who excelled at things that are now thought to have been overvalued, or who excelled at things for which we have not found an adequate measurement. (Great defensive catchers fall into the latter category.)
Helpful i will keep looking for more learning how it works thank you
Glad the video helped! Thanks for the comment, Paul!
I read for baseball reference that the replacement player is not a bench player, is a player that is playing every game of the season.
You are correct - I should’ve mentioned in the video that each site calculates WAR differently. My definition came from FanGraphs, which compare players to a “replacement level” player. Meanwhile, Baseball Reference compares to an average player. That’s why you may see some discrepancies as you compare across two different platforms! Thanks for the comment, Abner!
Good video: subscribed!
Now let me get to the point: can we devise a way of comparing the different "wins" estimates?
I recognize three schools of player evaluation: the Jacobean school (Bill James); the Palmer school (Pete Palmer and his adherents that developed W.A.R.); the Walker school (Eric Walker, whose work was the basis of "Moneyball").
I came up with this acronym: C.R.O.W. - for Consensus Ratings Options Wins. But I don't have a conversion system developed.
James calculates Win Shares which are 1/3 of a win. So all you have to do is divide his figures by 3.
As you mentioned, a replacement player would account for 0-1 wins: I was a little more generous allowing for 2 wins. It would depend on the position and playing time. Still, I thought it reasonable to add 1 to 2 wins to the W.A.R. figures to get an estimate of wins without that nebulous "above replacement" disclaimer.
Eric Walker has a system for generating wins for position players and pitchers, but he didn't feel fielding was significant enough to build into his calculations. It would be easy to exclude his work, but while James and Palmer were writing articles, Walker was advising the Giants and Athletics based on his work. So, I think we should work him in somehow - even if we use James' "short-form" method for giving defensive credit.
This is my third attempt to make a decent comment. I thought your video was good in giving a simple explanation of W.A.R. with a good chart for performance level comparisons.
I may tend toward Jacobean methodology, but I know W.A.R. is established, and I'm glad there's another approach to arriving at that "one number" that indicates a player's value. I'm also glad that you stressed that these values are estimates and not to be accepted as the end-all for evaluating players. Good job!
Spencer - have been loving to see your thorough comments across a few of my recent videos! Very glad you’ve been enjoying the content.
It’s a really cool idea to find a way to bring all of the different ways the “one number” value system has been used over the years into an all encompassing single value. Would love to hear more about the process you’ve been through to do that as well as the benefits you foresee for creating such a stat!
Keep up the good work, and I’m loving the in-depth comments! Hope you continue to enjoy the channel.
@@SimpleSabermetrics - Thanks for the responses. I've found your channel at a low point for me, so it has been a high point of this period. I appreciate the content you provide and the effort to make it accessible to those willing to consider it.
Oh: I don't want to bastardize the various means of analysis by just adding the figures together and finding an average - although that was my initial thought. You made a comment on defensive metrics and how differently they are calculated and that gave me pause.
Still, since the "holy grail" was to get to estimated wins, it would be nice to have a figure that ends "wins" as opposed to "Win Shares" or "Wins Above Replacement."
I don't know if this old-timer can bring them all together in a meaningful way, but I certainly thank you for the encouragement.
Why isn’t there a variable in the pitcher calculation that accounts for the differences in starters/relievers that would allow for similar comparison of WAR?
Great video. I wonder who MLB hired to come up with these stats calculations.
This is a BIG question!
The rise of analytics in baseball started back in the 80’s with the publishing of Bill James baseball abstract. Him, and many other people not affiliated with the MLB began to put work into better player evaluation statistics - such as WAR!
Perhaps I should do a history of baseball video… thanks for the comment!
I like your style.
Really appreciate the comment, Jeff! Hope you enjoy the rest of the videos 👊🏻
Thoughts on how to calculate war for a two way player?
What is it good for
Stumbling across this video in my recommended videos is the best thing that could've happened to me today. Thank you
Thanks for the comment, Brett! Glad you’ve found the channel - tons more great content just like this video here too. Enjoy!
Is the replacement player's run production averaged throughout the league? Or is it team and position specific? For example, Elvis Andrus plays SS for the A's and is not very good to start the year, would it look at how many runs he produces compared to Nick Allen, our minor league SS? Or would it look at all minor league SS at that time?
Great question! It is position specific, but it is not team specific. Basically it calculates what an average replacement level player production is for the entire league and everyone is rated above or below that level based on their performance. (Yes it can be negative too).
Thanks for the question!
Great vid
Thanks for the comment! Glad you enjoyed.
Is it true that different "weights" are assigned to each event, such as this amount for a home run, this amount for a caught stealing, this amount for an outfield assist, ETC. Does this seem arbitrary, and could be used in a way to "favor" one type of event over? And is it true that there are at least three ways that WAR is calculated?
I always wondered which version of WAR is the best, most accurate stat to rate players. fWAR or bWAR?
Please a video a it dwar. Defensive war
Nice video 👍
Thanks, Niko!
After watching your well thought out explanation, I still don't get the value of WAR.
For instance if your replacement turns out to be really good and doesn't cost the team a win, wouldn't that keep the original players stat down? But if the original player was just average, but his replacement had a really bad day, wouldn't that increase the original players WAR stat?
Hey Glenn - I think the thing you're hooked up on is that the "replacement player" isn't just the back up for the player you're analyzing. It's a league estimation of what a backup could produce - meaning that number doesn't fluctuate on a day to day basis as a normal player's performance would.
Does this help answer your question? Feel free to follow up if you need further clarification! Thanks for the comment.
How is replacement determined.
It's not precise, it's not always measured the same way, and there is nothing simple about it, including this explanation aside from the chart you showed showing the range of numbers for positional players.
Did you steal this song from Narcos?
Haha it comes from an audio database in the animation software I use, I do know which song you’re referencing though!
How could the average replacement level player have a WAR of anything other than 0? Shouldn’t a WAR of 1 be impossible by definition?
How is that a fair stats?
What are you referring to here? Would love to explain the value of this statistic to you if you have a specific question!
I love all your content, but I would think a person interested enough to watch a youtube channel about sabermetrics probably has a pretty good idea of what WAR is.
Thanks for the comment, Ryan! I know most people who are into my content understand what WAR is - but maybe not all about how it’s calculated and how it can be applied.Hopefully you can take away at least one new thing from this video.
I like WAR I also like Call of Duty haha. Now do you want to go over how to calculate late the constants and FIP? Haha
Ha! That’d be a fun video for sure. Thanks for the comment, Bo!
And that is why I don't go to games anymore.
This metric stuff is getting out of hand. Like "animal farm", everybody is equal but some are more equal than others.
You give a formula and don’t explain how to get any of the variables
And Judge has 10 😂
WOW to much time on Your hands...
Ha! Been doing this a while now, I’m sure I’d have more free time if I hung it up - but we’re only just getting started. Hope you’re enjoying the videos regardless!
OLD SCHOOL FAN HERE
LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT.
IF A PLAYER HELP A TEAM WIN
7 GAMES IN 162 GAME SEASON
HE IS A SUPER STAR WITH A 35 MILLION A YEAR CONTRACT.
SO IS A PLAYER HIT
320 .AVE 35 HOMER 150 RBI
WITH A 2 WAR IS A NO ONE
Average, #hits, # runs, #RBIs, #HRs...sorry Bill James and all you computer hacker, the rest is just mental masterbation.
Your explanation is actually unclear, you get too technical without explaining why the stat matters
good vid but war is a waste of time.
Hey man, sorry you feel that way! There are a ton of new stats out there, and the goal of the video was to share all of the background information I could about WAR. I’ve done several other videos on different statistics, such as FIP, wOBA and xRC - so feel free to check those out as well!
You have excellent content on your channel.
Thank you!
How the fuck do u find the league adjustment for a given year
what do you mean batting runs? rbi runs ? sac all total??
I just cut off the MLB, NFL and NBA channels out of my cable package. I was a
strong baseball fan who even paid for playoff tickets before. Now, I
am not going to spend a nickel on MLB. I am more angry with the
Commissioner than the players. The Commissioner could put an end to
this fast. But MLB on Twitter is criticizing the fans who are criticizing the
kneeling. Official MLB is defending the kneeling. I can't tolerate MLB attacking the fans that support standing for the flag and anthem.