THE GRAY EAGLE SOARS? NOT ACCORDING TO WAR

A primer on the stat that seems to have achieved primacy

Tris Speaker? Eh, he was ok with the glove. Nothing to write home about.

At least according to WAR.

Actually… we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We’ll come back to the Gray Eagle in a bit. Let’s spend a minute or five on this WAR thing.

By now, even casual baseball fans have heard of a statistic called Wins Above Replacement, or “WAR.” It’s become a widespread measure of player performance — and a polarizing one, at that.

Despite its growing ubiquity, WAR — how it’s calculated, what it actually measures — remains a mystery for many.

Here then is a short primer adapted from “Baseball’s Most Baffling MVP Ballots.” Hopefully, you’ll find this useful at your next dinner party (though it probably makes more sense to find a better party):

Developed by Sean Smith, Wins Above Replacement (WAR) estimates how many wins a player was worth to his team as compared to a ‘replacement-level’ player.

If you’re not familiar with WAR, the basic premise is this: Every action or reaction on the field is geared toward scoring more runs than your opponent. Every pitch, every catch, every hit, every walk, every everything is in service to accumulating or preventing runs.

Obviously, if a team creates more runs than it allows, it wins. So WAR calculates how many runs a player created (or cost) his team with his hitting and base running, and how many runs a player saved (or cost) his team with his defense. WAR then compares those contributions to the theoretical contributions of a “replacement-level” player. Think of a replacement-level player as a generic player called up from the minors. Playing under the same conditions, a major leaguer should contribute more runs — and hence, more wins — to his team than a replacement from the minor leagues.

Hopefully, you’ll find this useful at your next dinner party (though it probably makes more sense to find a better party)

And there you have it: WAR estimates the number of wins contributed by a player above what could be expected of a replacement player. According to MLB.com, the official website of Major League Baseball, “a player with a WAR of zero is essentially a replaceable piece, while a player with a WAR of about eight should almost always be an MVP candidate.”

A player with a WAR of 10 is, well, Willie Mays.

There is more than one formula to calculate WAR, though Baseball-Reference.com’s numbers seem to be the industry standard at this point (think of them as the VHS to FanGraph.com’s Betamax). Bref.com’s WAR for position players has six components (with each category made up of many sub-components):

• Batting Runs
• Baserunning Runs
• Runs added or lost due to Grounding into Double Plays in DP situations
• Fielding Runs
• Positional Adjustment Runs
• Replacement level Runs (based on playing time)

Pitchers have their own version of WAR, but the premise is essentially the same: By calculating the number of runs a pitcher allows as compared with the expected number of runs allowed by a theoretical replacement, WAR calculates how many wins a major league pitcher contributes as compared with a minor-league call-up (don’t concern yourself with pitcher won-loss records here; we’re referring to team wins).You can read much more about WAR and it’s calculations here.

Leading the league in WAR doesn’t necessarily mean one should be handed the MVP award; crossing a certain career WAR threshold doesn’t mean one should be inducted into the Hall of Fame. WAR is just one supporting pillar in the broader argument. Like any holistic stat, it allows room for interpretation (and WAR certainly has its share of detractors). Some fans prefer Wins Above Average (WAA), Runs [saved] Above Replacement (RAR), weighted on-base average (wOBA — my personal favorite), or Win Shares. That’s fine. Those are fine measurements. But none have encroached upon the baseball mainstream (or into broadcast booths) like WAR.

As noted, WAR has its share of detractors — many of whom find the very premise deeply flawed (count me among the soft skeptics). How do you define this mythical “replacement player?” How do you determine that 10 “runs created/saved” is equal to one win? How do you account for differences in playing conditions or level of competition? How do you measure defense?

Ah, defense. Yeah. We should probably talk about defense.

Defensive numbers prior to the 2015 launch of StatCast tracking technology are suspect, at best. And the further back in time we reach, the more suspect the numbers become. Even basic stats like putouts and assists can’t be fully trusted.

It’s hard to overstate just how respected Speaker’s defense was in his time. He basically invented a style of play that’s beyond the ambition of all but the most elite center fielders.

This brings us back to the great Tris Speaker (134.1 WAR, sixth all-time).

“I know no player in the game today who can touch Speaker as an outfielder.” — White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, March 1914

“There is not a better fielder in the game than Speaker.” — Baseball Magazine, Sept. 1913

“There can be no doubt that in Speaker [the Red Sox] possessed the greatest fielding outfielder in the game, a man whose sensational excursions into short centerfield spoiled many a batting rally and robbed the opposition of many a safe hit.” — Baseball Magazine, July 1916

“Nobody else was even in the same league with him.” — Smokey Joe Wood, The Glory of Their Times

“Tris Speaker — probably the greatest ball-hawk in history… His judgement was unerring; his instinct, uncanny. Not the least of his equipment was a magnificent left arm.” — Big Time Baseball, 1950

Known as the “Gray Eagle” for his prematurely gray hair and peerless range in centerfield, Speaker was universally acknowledged as the greatest defensive center fielder in the game’s history prior to Willie Mays.

It’s hard to overstate just how respected Speaker’s defense was in his time. Cherry-picking quotes seems a disservice; he basically invented a style of play that’s beyond the ambition of all but the most elite center fielders (stationed so brazenly shallow, writers joked he played center field and second base at the same time). Nearly 100 years after his career ended, Speaker still holds career marks for assists and double plays by an outfielder, and ranks second to Mays in total putouts. Had the gold glove existed in his time, Speaker claims a dozen — yet WAR says Speaker was decent with the glove (2.5 dWAR), but nothing to write home about.

On the face of it, this seems absurd. Speaker was great. Here lies another flaw with WAR: Defensive statistics from Speaker’s day are essentially useless — which renders WAR’s defensive ratings for the period essentially useless. We don’t doubt Speaker’s greatness — contemporaneous accounts from players, coaches, journalists and fans make it clear Speaker was the best of his era. But we simply don’t have reliable data to support the universal consensus.

So WAR’s detractors have a point: There’s work to be done.

But until the next “best stat” comes along (and it will), WAR seems to be the most earnest attempt at measuring the entirety of player’s contributions. Is it the end of the argument when assessing a player’s MVP/Cy Young/HOF qualifications?

No. I’d say it’s more like an educated start to the argument — at the very least, it’s an interesting way to kick things off at that lame dinner party.