Article: Mauer's Not Going Anywhere

[jokin]

The positional adjustments are:

+1.0 wins C

+0.5 SS/CF

+0.0 2B/3B

-0.5 LF/RF/PH

-1.0 1B

-1.5 DH

 

From baseball-reference.com:

To compute a player's Positional adjustment Runs, we add together for each non-pitching position: Position multiplier (from above) ×

innings played at position

/ 1,350 Innings. For players who are only pitchers this is Pitcher Positional Adjustment (from below) × (PA/4) / 150.

 

It looks to me like the positional adjustments are proportional to the amount of time played at each position.

 

Baseball Reference has his WAR at 2.6, not 3.8.

 

FanGraphs does a similar apportionment:

The position adjustments are then scaled to match the games played at each position for a particular player. This way, players that spend time at multiple positions get a hybrid adjustment based on their playing time at the respective spots.

 

Except that Fangraphs ranks Mauer #13 in American League WAR rankings, while Baseball Reference rates him as #34 overall. Mauer's slash numbers are very, very pedestrian-to-mediocre as a non-catcher (DH/1B/PH): 268/356/364, which lends one to think that FG overweights his C positional adjustment in their valuation model.

[CDog]

 

What?

 

Just an apparently opaque attempt to say, "Nice job."

[Guest USAFChief]

 

I think it's even worse than that. Unless I'm mistaken and it's changed, UZR doesn't even attempt to assign a defensive value to catchers. It's too hard. So fWAR just gives all catchers the same number generic UZR number to use in it's WAR calculations.

 

 

Wouldn't it be surprising if the person who (has claimed he) knows the most about WAR on this site has that wrong? Maybe, maybe not.

 

I stand corrected.

 

Fangraphs does not use UZR to calculate a catcher's fWAR. It can't, since there still is no UZR data compiled for catchers.

 

However, they have changed their methodology. In place of the UZR they use for every other defensive position, they substitute "Stolen Base Runs Runs Saved" (a DRS methodology that attempts to give credit/blame to catchers and pitchers for stolen base attempts) and "Runs saved from Pass Pitches" (an attempt to use an algorithm to determine which catchers are best at blocking balls in the dirt).

 

So...yes. fWAR does not include UZR data for catchers. It has, however, been modified since I last looked into it to include some estimates of 2 aspects of catcher defense.

 

You can decide for yourself if two estimators, of two parts of catcher defense, is a valid way to determine who's the most valuable players in MLB.

[SeanS7921]

Few serious saber folks pay much attention to WAR any more. It's on it's way to joining Win Shares in history's junkpile of attempts at an "uberstat."- USAFChief

Well maybe saber nerds hate it now because its mainstream. Its an accepted stat, ESPN just added it to its stats, that's huge. Its everywhere and effective.

[PopRiveter]

Um... "glerb."