I understand that 2 WAR is supposed to be an average starter - position player, at least. If you fielded a full team of exactly average players, is the assumption that you would have 81 wins, or at least an expected W-L of 81-81?

 

If so, then how many WAR would you have to "add" to get to 90 wins, for example? Would it suffice to have a team full of exactly average players, but 3 5-WAR players? As in, would the 3 X 3 = 9 extra WAR get you from 81 to 90?

 

Or, is 90-72 18 games over average/.500/81-81, so you would need to add 18 war?

 

If the former is true, then I like the re-signings of a guy like Infante even more. In theory, with average players elsewhere, plus a 5 WAR Hanley, a 5 WAR Stanton, and a 5 WAR JJ, that should be enough to get to 90 wins and into the playoffs. I'm not saying we're average at all the other positions; just engaging in a bit of wishful thinking.

WAR is strait wins. If a team is full of 0 WAR players (aka replacement level/AAA players), they're assumed to win 48 games. Each 1 WAR a player gains is +1 wins (So, to finish with 90 wins, we'd need a total of 42 WAR). And yes, a team full of average WAR players would win 81 games. Getting full average production everyone though is hard (if not impossible, pretty sure every team ever has had negative WAR players on their roster; Putting a roster together isn't just about superstars, but limiting those players)

 

This also doesn't really answer your question but: it also isn't so much that 2 war = average starter. The "replacement" statistic in WAR (Which is based off playing time) is what you compare to for average; It's just that a full season will roughly end in enough PAs for replacement to equal 20ish. You compare total runs (RAR) to replacement to see average.

 

So to give an example:

Hanley Ramirez put up a 12 RAR this season and had a replacement of 12.8 based off his playing time; So, he was roughly an average player, even though his was was just 1.2.

 

Last year, he had a replacement of 20.6 and RAR of 44.1, so he was 23.5 runs better than average. Year before, he had replacement of 21.7 and RAR of 73.9, so he was 52 runs better than average.

 

Pitchers don't have a "replacement" that goes into their WAR for fangraphs so I honestly don't know how you'd judge average based off that (And the replacement for pitchers on BR is different than hitters...for hitters, the "replacement" is runs above replacement, whereas for pitchers it's runs a replacement would put up. It takes some back-calculating to figure out how above/below average a pitcher is for WAR on b-r and I'm too lazy to get into it right now [especially since I'd probably explain it poorly])

 

Based off fangraphs, we should have actually finished with almost 84 wins (20.8 offense, 15.9 pitcher), B-R was a lot closer at 77 wins (14.4 both offense and defense); I'm actually interested atm so I might put a spreadsheet together later with roughly what to expect.

Out of curiosity, where did you pick up all of this stuff?

Most of the websites explain everything in pretty good detail if you have the motivation to find it.

 

One caveat Fangraphs tries to hit home pretty hard is that they don't expect WAR to be precise even given a full season's playing time. Which is why many of their writers hesitate to simply say "Ellsbury leads in WAR by .6, ergo, MVP."

 

The stats still have pretty significant inherent margins of error, especially when dealing with small playing time samples, so the team wide WAR totals probably shouldn't be expected to match up perfectly when you've got guys putting up like -.6 or whatever Buente did in his one start.

I've done quite a bit of reading myself. His knowledge of the subject is by far the most comprehensive on this site, so I'm interested in knowing if he'd recommend a particular source.

http://www.fangraphs.com/library/index.php/misc/war/

 

If you scroll down to the bottom of the article, where it has "links for further reading", you'll see "Background of WAR" followed by 8 parts for hitters and 7 parts for pitchers - those parts go into details about how to calculate WAR and the background of why what is what for the specific stats that go into it. That used to be what was linked under the glossary at fangraphs for WAR, now it's the page I just linked to (Which I just read for the first time, and is not descriptive at all)

 

Link also answered question I couldn't answer before: average WAR for SP is 2.0, RP is 0.3; However, it doesn't give IP.

WAR is good for absolutely nothing

RAW is WAR

Nerds.

Global Thermal Nuclear WAR

Global Thermonuclear WAR, shall you say?

Global Thermonuclear WAR, shall you say?

 

DON'T HIJACK MY THREAD, WEENIE.

BUT LAST TIME I 'COPIED' YOU AND YOU ALSO GOT UPSET.

 

I understand that 2 WAR is supposed to be an average starter - position player, at least. If you fielded a full team of exactly average players, is the assumption that you would have 81 wins, or at least an expected W-L of 81-81?

 

If so, then how many WAR would you have to "add" to get to 90 wins, for example? Would it suffice to have a team full of exactly average players, but 3 5-WAR players? As in, would the 3 X 3 = 9 extra WAR get you from 81 to 90?

 

Or, is 90-72 18 games over average/.500/81-81, so you would need to add 18 war?

 

If the former is true, then I like the re-signings of a guy like Infante even more. In theory, with average players elsewhere, plus a 5 WAR Hanley, a 5 WAR Stanton, and a 5 WAR JJ, that should be enough to get to 90 wins and into the playoffs. I'm not saying we're average at all the other positions; just engaging in a bit of wishful thinking.

f***ing Cameron Maybin was 4.7 WAR this year... That's Mike Stanton-like..

 

I think keeping everyone average, and then having 3 5 WAR players is more difficult than what your post makes it seem (not saying you think it's easy, but it sounds simple the way you said it.) We didn't have a single 5 WAR player last year. Pujols was 5 WAR this year (although he was 7.5 in 2010 and 9.0 in 2009)

Global Thermonuclear WAR, shall you say?

 

DON'T HIJACK MY THREAD, WEENIE.

Why'd you pick on me? 2 other people started it(or maybe just Schneilders), and the original topic looked to be dead anyway. :o You have My humble apologies.

Sir, he quoted me and commented at me. Your name isn't even available in any of his posts.

 

He's just angry because I'm cool like that. He'll cool down one day, too.

Global Thermonuclear WAR, shall you say?

 

DON'T HIJACK MY THREAD, WEENIE.

Why'd you pick on me? 2 other people started it(or maybe just Schneilders), and the original topic looked to be dead anyway. :o You have My humble apologies.

I wasn't upset in any event, but Dr. B is correct - I quoted him deliberately to joke around. Any offense oughtn't be taken.