S5Dewey

You choose.

I hope it's not the Sox. I like our outfield just fine, thanks.

Ok. You start.

Apparently they're useful to some of us. Bellhorn: Just little nuggets like that make it useful for me. Are they useful to you?

Usually when someone says "something is (or is not) as useful as 'most people' think it is" that statement is based on speculation as to what 'most people' think. Since I see many comparisons here saying that Player A has a WAR of X.x and Player B has a WAR I think it is too, but only outside that 17% parameter. I see it as 'most people' believing it's useful within that 17% when even Fangraphs says it's not.

Me too. It's beginning to look almost unanimous.

17% is 17% and that's a big number no matter how you slice it. We're talking about an acceptable(?) margin of error of almost 1/5. In what statistical world is that acceptable? Therefore WAR is NOT as useful as most people think it is.

...or postings!

I thought there might be a certain amount of poetic license in that title. Unfortunately some people have apparently thought the title mirrors my view of WAR because I have the temerity to point out the potential problems with it. In today's jargon that would be called "Fake news". I applaud the effort put into WAR and I certainly believe it's better than nothing at what it attempts to do. How much better than nothing is where some of us disagree.

I distinctly remember Cora saying Lin is "the best defensive player in our system".

Then what about Lin at 2B?

I'll go back to what I said on the previous page: "Look, I didn't title this thread and that title doesn't reflect my beliefs. I think WAR is useful. It's just not as useful as most people think it is."

Yes, the lower the WAR the closer the spread, but when we're talking about players with a WAR of

I think about coaching some as it pertains to Devers, too. Butterfield was credited with helping Bogaerts at both SS & 3rd as well as helping Hanley at 1B. IMO letting Butterfield walk may have been the biggest mistake of the off season.

Yes, my examples talked about players who are having great seasons but the same principle is true for players who are having mediocre or even bad seasons I'm not at all sure where the WAR line is between good, mediocre, and bad players are but I think it's safe to say say that there are more mediocre players than good or "bad" ones. WAR doesn't define which of those mediocre players are better or worse than others in that group because due to that 17% thing they're all statistically the same. Yet we've become so dependent on WAR that we tend to think of a player with a WAR of 3.5 to be a better player than someone with a WAR of 2.5 when, even according to Fangraphs, there's no evidence to support that. Look, I didn't title this thread and that title doesn't reflect my beliefs. I think WAR is useful. It's just not as useful as most people think it is.

Given the number of data points we have (all the players in MLB for how many years?) it's hard to say that any stat with that many data points and a 17% margin of error is a "good stat". I'll give you this though, it's the best bad stat currently in use.

We already know that, for example, Jose Ramirez, Mike Trout, and Mookie Betts are some of the best players in MLB this year. What WAR doesn't tell us is which of them is the better player because they all fall within that 17% margin of error.

And BTW, it wasn't a "rant". It was a concise explanation of the fact that WAR has built in flaws that give it a 17% margin of error.

I'm sorry. I thought anyone with a modicum of intelligence would infer that from my first post. I was apparently wrong.

I did. You just didn't get it. While there may be no "better" statistic to evaluate a player, WAR doesn't work either - at least beyond telling us what we already can see. It works fine to tell us what we already know (duh!) but it's not accurate enough to be used in comparing several players who are within 17% of ability.

WAR tells us what we already know so we tend to believe it. It tells us that JDM is a better player than, say, Christian Vazquez and that Mookie is better than Brock Holt. However, we as consumers tend (want?) to believe that any value expressed as an integer is concise and WAR doesn't work that way. Fangraphs in it explanation of how WAR works says that "Given the imperfections of some of the available data and the assumptions made to calculate other components, WAR works best as an approximation. A 6 WAR player might be worth between 5.0 and 7.0 WAR..." and then goes on to say that player in that group is probably an All-Star, etc. That's a 17% margin for error and it means that a player with a WAR of 3.0 may actually be worth somewhere between 2.5 & 3.5. Yet when we see a player with a WAR of 3.5 we assume that he's 1/4 again as good as that 2.5 player when actually they may be the same player once the variables are accounted for. What we do know from WAR is that Mookie is better than a player with a WAR of 3.0 - but we already knew that from watching them. Yes, WAR is valuable in confirming what we already know but when we're comparing two players whose WAR are within a couple of points WAR is essentially meaningless.

The issue as it pertains to Devers is what Moon said back in the spring - that as a 21 year old Devers is going to have a learning curve, and very possibly the middle of a pennant race isn't the best time for him to be learning. Right now I have 0 confidence in Devers. He shows every indication that he's going to become a special player but on the whole he's hurting this 2018 team. Very possibly the only reason he's playing is because there's nobody else to play 3rd base on a regular basis. However, this team has built a 10 game lead in spite of Devers play so apparently we can afford to have him learn now. I'm just hoping it doesn't bite us in the playoffs because, as the saying goes, "If a team has a weakness the ball will find it."

This entire lineup hits so well that it's got to wear opposing pitchers down after a while. There are only a couple of players whom a pitcher can "rest" against and even they will bite them on the ass if given a good pitch to hit. That's got to be tiring.

Holt is a pretty good interview

Slash & JayBay couldn't have had a better game to watch! Their mojo came through.