As shown in this previous post WAR ranked LAN and PIT #2 and #3 in the league for batting even though both scored quite a few runs less than league average. This is quite an anomaly. This post will examine WAR player batting evaluations when WAR over rates a team.
This time we took the top 100 ranked players from the WAR and WAA systems and sort players based upon the biggest ranking differences. Although we can’t directly compare the numbers for the two systems we can certainly compare their ranking. We want to see the most egregious differences in the below tables.
Los Angeles Dodgers
Zack Greinke is highlight below because WAR rated him +1.3 for his batting as a pitcher. His 0.328 batting average is quite impressive but he only had 72 plate appearances. He didn’t generate enough data to indicate that 0.328 batting average isn’t anything more than a statistical anomaly. WAR rates pitcher Zack Greinke higher for his batting than Matt Holliday and Matt Adams mentioned in the previous post. Greinke is ranked #88 amongst all batters in MLB.
Like in the last post, the first table in the below sets lists the ranking differences between WAR and WAA sorted by the highest rank difference. The next table lists their WAR, WAA, and other pertinent stats.
Update: The ranking for Zack Geinke is in error and probably much lower due to a bug in the script.
Update 2/3/2014: Rankings below have been updated. They didn’t change much but Greinke went from 88th to 184th. This is still quite a high ranking for a pitcher that only had 74 plate appearances so the original commentary still stands.
Diff | WAR | WAA | Name_tm |
---|---|---|---|
1368 | 1462 | Nick_Punto_LAN_BAT | |
1327 | 1425 | Andre_Ethier_LAN_BAT | |
1265 | 1341 | Mark_Ellis_LAN_BAT | |
1178 | 1266 | Zack_Greinke_LAN_BAT | |
122 | 161 | Juan_Uribe_LAN_BAT |
Note: The heading for these tables are overloaded which means columns represent different types depending upon PITCHer or BATter.
Update: WAR numbers in below player tables were all corrected on 1/30/2014
WAR | WAA | BA/IP | OBP/ERA | PA/G | RBI/W | R/L | Name_Tm | BAT/PITCH |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2.2 | -1.8 | 0.255 | 0.328 | 335 | 21 | 34 | Nick_Punto_LAN | BAT |
2.7 | -1.4 | 0.272 | 0.360 | 553 | 52 | 54 | Andre_Ethier_LAN | BAT |
3.0 | -1.0 | 0.270 | 0.323 | 480 | 48 | 46 | Mark_Ellis_LAN | BAT |
1.3 | -0.7 | 0.328 | 0.409 | 72 | 4 | 5 | Zack_Greinke_LAN | BAT |
4.1 | 0.6 | 0.278 | 0.331 | 426 | 50 | 47 | Juan_Uribe_LAN | BAT |
Pittsburgh Pirates
Note how WAR ranked Starling Marte #25 24 out of all MLB batters yet he produced only 35 RBIs.
Update 2/3/2014: Rankings below have been updated to reflect WAR. In this case the rankings didn’t change that much which is expected since baseball-reference WAA is highly correlated with their WAR number.
Diff | WAR | WAA | Name_tm |
---|---|---|---|
1137 | 1162 | Starling_Marte_PIT_BAT | |
1090 | 1143 | Neil_Walker_PIT_BAT | |
1065 | 1105 | Russell_Martin_PIT_BAT |
WAR | WAA | BA/IP | OBP/ERA | PA/G | RBI/W | R/L | Name_Tm | BAT/PITCH |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
5.4 | -0.4 | 0.280 | 0.343 | 566 | 35 | 83 | Starling_Marte_PIT | BAT |
3.9 | -0.4 | 0.251 | 0.339 | 551 | 53 | 62 | Neil_Walker_PIT | BAT |
4.3 | -0.3 | 0.226 | 0.327 | 506 | 55 | 51 | Russell_Martin_PIT | BAT |
Under the WAR rating system LAN and PIT won based on their hitting and not their pitching. They were #2 and #3 in MLB for hitting posted here. LAN and PIT ranked #11 and #18 in MLB for pitching. The next post will explore how WAR ranked pitching at a player level that led to this evaluation of LAN and PIT.