We’ve got five position players at 1.2 rWAR or better

[Going Underground]

5 hours ago, Frobby said:

Right now, through 50 games 

Hays 1.6 rWAR

Mateo 1.5

Mullins 1.3

Mancini 1.3

Urias 1.2

That’s an impressive total.   There are only 37 position players in the entire AL at 1.2 rWAR or higher, an average of 2.47 per team.   So we’ve got double the league average.   Santander at 0.8 isn’t bad either.

What we are lacking is anyone having a superstar type season.  Our top player, Hays, is 16th in the league.  And once you get past Santander, we’re weak in the other three spots.   But hopefully we’ve got room for improvement at C and 1B, though 2B may be tough.   

I think Urias may have snuck up on some people, at 1.2 rWAR despite a .641 OPS.  But he’s played better than expected defensively, hit into very bad luck in April, and had a very solid May.  In 137 games as an Oriole he’s been worth 3.2 rWAR.  Fangraphs doesn’t like him as well (1.5 fWAR), but overall that’s pretty solid.  

It’s kind of amazing that three of these players are sub-.700 OPS and yet still rated well above average.  

Isn't Hays considered the best Oriole outfielder? He has a negative DWAR. Isn't DWAR the one stay they keep adjusting with to try to get it more accurate?

[DrungoHazewood]

7 minutes ago, Spy Fox said:

I noticed that same Vespi thing. I know WAR isn't really designed for small sample sizes like this, but can anyone explain how 2 scoreless innings leads to 0.9 rWAR?

He's at 0.1 fWAR which makes more sense to me. 

I'm not 100% sure here, but I think what's going on is that Vespi's two scorless innings came in extras starting with a man on second.  If I'm reading things right, Baseball Reference adjusts their run context and expected run values to account for this. They also include some leverage adjustments, and Vespi's leverage index is almost 4.00, which is about as high as leverage index gets.

So the 0.9 seems to come from a tiny sample of scoreless innings in a perfect storm of context and leverage. It's likely that for the rest of the year he won't accumulate 0.9 WAR.

[TommyPickles]

Urias has an .821 OPS over the past 14 days.

I've said it once, I'll say it again, I really think he could be starting at second base in our next playoff game.

Underrated player.

[Spy Fox]

7 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I'm not 100% sure here, but I think what's going on is that Vespi's two scorless innings came in extras starting with a man on second.  If I'm reading things right, Baseball Reference adjusts their run context and expected run values to account for this. They also include some leverage adjustments, and Vespi's leverage index is almost 4.00, which is about as high as leverage index gets.

So the 0.9 seems to come from a tiny sample of scoreless innings in a perfect storm of context and leverage. It's likely that for the rest of the year he won't accumulate 0.9 WAR.

Ah. So basically while WPA itself is not taken into account, some indicators correlating to WPA are indeed factors. 

[DrungoHazewood]

8 minutes ago, Going Underground said:

Isn't Hays considered the best Oriole outfielder? He has a negative DWAR. Isn't DWAR the one stay they keep adjusting with to try to get it more accurate?

Hays has mostly played LF/RF.  The position adjustment for LF/RF is -7.5 runs per full year.  The positional metrics, either DRS or OAA have him as average or a touch below average overall.  So (defense + position) results in him being slightly below average compared to an average MLB fielder across all positions. 

There are some adjustments in these metrics over time as the methodology improves, but that has little or no bearing on this.

[Just Regular]

The Mariners have some contrast - Julio now 5th team-wide at 1.1 rWAR, but drops off to 0.5 after him.

Crawford, France and Gilbert have been so outstanding it seems like their team should be doing better than it is.   They did just get back/promote Kyle Lewis and Taylor Trammell as different attempts at fixing weak spots.

Like the Tigers they are supposed to be a year or two ahead of us, and have done the Ray splurge backed up by the Winker-Suarez lineup lengthening acquisition that I hope Elias will have somewhere in his toolkit the next season or two.

[Aristotelian]

On 5/31/2022 at 10:54 AM, DrungoHazewood said:

I'm not 100% sure here, but I think what's going on is that Vespi's two scorless innings came in extras starting with a man on second.  If I'm reading things right, Baseball Reference adjusts their run context and expected run values to account for this. They also include some leverage adjustments, and Vespi's leverage index is almost 4.00, which is about as high as leverage index gets.

So the 0.9 seems to come from a tiny sample of scoreless innings in a perfect storm of context and leverage. It's likely that for the rest of the year he won't accumulate 0.9 WAR.

I'm guessing Vespi's WAR is gonna take a hit after today's game.