Why do people value WAR/Arbitrary formulas.

[Lucky Jim]

The determination of a 'hit' has absolutely nothing to do with the statistic. And choosing to calculate using at-bats instead of plate appearances isn't discretionary or subjective. The choice not to count walks and reaching on errors as at-bats was.

Are you sure these are separate?

I'll go farther. Choosing to "average" batting based upon ABs and not upon some other metric (say, "outs") is also subjective and discretionary.

[DrungoHazewood]

That said, is batting average a stat?

A highly subjective one, dependent on the subjective rulings of an official scorer.

[Mizerooskie]

Are you sure these are separate?

Separate from what? Walks have counted as at-bats at least twice, two my knowledge. At one point, they were counted as hits, and at another, they were counted as outs for statistical purposes, IINM.

The calculation of batting average didn't change. It was still H/AB.

[Mizerooskie]

A highly subjective one, dependent on the subjective rulings of an official scorer.

The subjective rulings of an official scorer have nothing to do with the subjectivity of the stat.

[CA-ORIOLE]

My point was that the determination of a "hit" is, itself, subjective and discretionary at times. And, in a different fashion, choosing to calculate BA by using at-bats instead of plate appearances is both subjective and discretionary. There's no objective reason for making that determination.

I do understand your point, though. But it's been gotten at above in this thread, perhaps best by Drungo. The point is that the statistical purity you identify in "batting average" is self-limiting.

The whole subjective/objective thing is really dumb. As I said before, so what? It's their opening for saying I can just as easily value "small ball" or "wins" as critical stats, which has been done on here. It's ridiculous. Subjective does not mean arbitrary. The bottom line is that while FIP and UZR certainy have their weakenessses, they are well researched and documented. On aggregate, and when properly applied they do a decent job. WAR does a decent job of evaluating player value. There are only two WAR models out there. Yeah, it's not perfect.

[Lucky Jim]

The whole subjective/objective thing is really dumb. As I said before, so what? It's their opening for saying I can just as easily value "small ball" or "wins" as critical stats, which has been done on here. It's ridiculous. Subjective does not mean arbitrary. The bottom line is that while FIP and UZR certainy have their weakenessses, they are well researched and documented. On aggregate, and when properly applied they do a decent job. WAR does a decent job of evaluating player value. There are only two WAR models out there. Yeah, it's not perfect.

I agree, obviously. But well-stated.

[DrungoHazewood]

Thus, when someone reports a single WAR number for a given player, they fail to take into account the variability around this solution.

Or they're making the assumption that everyone knows, or should know, that every metric has an implied level of uncertainty.

[DrungoHazewood]

The subjective rulings of an official scorer have nothing to do with the subjectivity of the stat.

Sure it does. Batting average is defined as the percentage of times a player get a hit per official time at bat. Both the number of hits and the number of official at bats is subjectively determined by an official scorer.

[DrungoHazewood]

Separate from what? Walks have counted as at-bats at least twice, two my knowledge. At one point, they were counted as hits, and at another, they were counted as outs for statistical purposes, IINM.

The calculation of batting average didn't change. It was still H/AB.

And all along the way you have hard-hit balls six feet to the right of the shortstop that glance off his glove and roll into short left, and the Cleveland official scorer rules that a hit, while the Baltimore official scorer rules it an error.

[Mizerooskie]

Sure it does. Batting average is defined as the percentage of times a player get a hit per official time at bat. Both the number of hits and the number of official at bats is subjectively determined by an official scorer.

No it doesn't.

The subjectivity of the official scorer has only to do with the subjectivity of the official scorer. The stat is not subjective. The way it's calculated never changes. There's no scaling, no weights, no attempt to determine an abstract 'value'.

[Mizerooskie]

And all along the way you have hard-hit balls six feet to the right of the shortstop that glance off his glove and roll into short left, and the Cleveland official scorer rules that a hit, while the Baltimore official scorer rules it an error.

And again, this has nothing to do with the subjectivity of the stat, only the subjectivity of scorer.

[Pickles]

Wow, in my lifetime we've gone from believing that RBI and pitcher wins were all you needed, and that park effects didn't mean anything,

Are you a 125 years old?

Don't exaggerate. It's been understood by many, many people over the years that pitcher's Ws, and BA and RBIs weren't perfect. Branch Rickey preached OB% and SLG% over 70 years ago.

The statistical community has done a lot to advance the knowledge of the game, and to disseminate it to a the general public, but let's not act as if there was no one interested in studying the game in-depth before Bill James came along.

to having a very good framework for an all-encompassing metric that gauges players by how many wins they contribute, all put together by a huge grass-roots community that's completely overturned the hidebound baseball traditionalists that mocked and derided this progress at every turn... yet you insist "people don't like to think". There's more thinking going on about how baseball works and what contributes to wins in the last couple decades than there was in the past 125 years combined. WAR is just the logical outcome of thousands of people working to quantify what they observe on a baseball field (i.e. thinking).

It's funny to me that you think baseball knowledge was largely hamstrung for almost a century by traditionalism, and only in the last generation has moved forward broadly, and even then, in the face of criticism, and a general apathy by the millions and millions of people involved in the sport, as some kind of proof of the intellectual merits of man. Hell, I think it supports my claim a lot more.

Now, in regards to the conversation we're having here, people are willing to concede that WAR "isn't perfect" but "it's the best we have." IMO, that simply isn't a strong defense for the validity of something.

How flawed is WAR? See, that's the thing no one really wants to get at. Is it not possible that it's flawed beyond much use? I certainly think that possibility exists. As I said earlier, what's the best way to use a flawed, subjective (and perhaps I should removed the word subjective because it seems to be offending certain people who don't seem to understand what it means) stat? And the answer seems to me, you have to understand it's limitiations. Ok, so what are the extents, not in terms of technical weaknesses which we all pretty much agree on, of those limitations, but in terms of degree of accuracy? Nobody has made a legitimate attempt to answer that question, but would rather accuse you of trolling.

[Frobby]

This conversation has gotten pretty esoteric at times. Speaking for myself, I find the offensive component of WAR to be pretty reliable. The decision on how much to weight a single, double, triple, HR, walk, etc. is being based on objective information about the value of each component, and in general, if you were to show me a list of the top 25 guys in oWAR for any particular year I doubt I would have any issue with it. The defensive component has two problems: (1) lack of transparency, (2) just a lot of instances where the results don't seem to agree with the "eye test." Those two problems are interrelated, and the fact that there are still large differences between the results of the top defensive stats like UZR, +/- and Rtot just prevents me from getting nearly as comfortable with the defensive component than the offensive component. But, I still use rWAR and fWAR because there is nothing better available.

[Pickles]

Perhaps. Let's set aside whether what he was doing fits the definition of a troll. As BD pointed out, at best, Pickles was indulging in pretty "egregious" sophistry (making his self-designation as "Socratic" all the better) and he was either (i) being intellectually disingenuous, or (ii) failed to understand his own argument at the beginning of the thread. His final position (i.e., "people misuse the statistic") is a far cry from his repeated assumption of the OP's conclusion (i.e., that WAR is speculative and arbitrary). Treating inconsistent lines of argument as if they are consistent is a Treaian maneuver. The issue was largely settled by post 24 of the thread:

Pages and pages later, he's now arguing, not that the OP was valid, but that:

Well, which is it? Are all stats subjective? Are all stats therefore "unusable"? What are the "degrees" of subjectivity? And why would you argue that something is "subjective" and "arbitrary" if you are later going to concede that everything is "subjective" and "arbitrary." To me, disingenuously arguing something that you don't believe is trolling. Having defended myself, I'll concede that I was too harsh, and those kinds of posts short-circuit conversations. There was some value to be had in here, if only in terms of entertainment.

First repeatedly criticizing me and claiming I'm a troll becuase you don't understand the meaning of the word "subjective" isn't my fault chief. Get a dictionary; maybe it will help.

Now let's leave aside the semantics.

My main point has been consistent and graspable all along:

1) War clearly has accuracy issues. If you're fine with those issues, or see them as minor, then that's you're right. I'm not.

2) Because we lack full understanding of it's accuracy, it is often used far too broadly by far too many people.

[Pickles]

The whole subjective/objective thing is really dumb. As I said before, so what? It's their opening for saying I can just as easily value "small ball" or "wins" as critical stats, which has been done on here. It's ridiculous. Subjective does not mean arbitrary. The bottom line is that while FIP and UZR certainy have their weakenessses, they are well researched and documented. On aggregate, and when properly applied they do a decent job. WAR does a decent job of evaluating player value. There are only two WAR models out there. Yeah, it's not perfect.

First of all, it's my understanding there are 3 WAR models. It doesn't really matter one way or another. Just saying.

What do you mean by "decent?" I mean, what do you think the range of error could possibly be, and are you comfortable saying it falls within "acceptable" range?

I'm not. And a lot of other people aren't either.