Baseball : The Art Of War By Nate Rawlings

The Art of W.A.R.
   In this ever modernizing era of baseball, we have found ourselves inundated with a plethora of advanced metrics. These metrics, unlike the common “counting stats” that can easily be followed, are increasingly obscure and difficult for the average fan to follow. However, one centralizing statistic that has emerged to the forefront is Wins Above Replacement, WAR for short. WAR, in theory, is a statisticians dream. A singular, reliable unit of measurement that gives us common ground to compare the value offered by every different kind of player. However, multiple, self-appointed “authorities” on the stat have shoved their way to the front, and each offers a different statistic, but with the same name. As a statistically-inclined baseball fan, I was both intrigued by the concept of WAR as it has emerged over this past decade, as well as abhorred by how much the stat itself seemed to lack direction. It already is a disservice to the game to have multiple “authorities” pushing their own interpretation of “WAR” out there to the consumers. Adding insult to injury is the fact that the average fan doesn't have the slightest clue of where to begin with learning to comprehend how a box score line for a player translates into the accruement of that given player’s WAR. Player A goes 1-4 with a homer and Player B goes 4-4 with 4 singles. Player A is a designated hitter with no defensive value, but player B made an error in an underwhelming performance on defense. Who had the better game? Who accrued the most WAR? Fans are trying to embrace the ever-modernizing statistics of today’s game, but there’s been somewhat of a disconnect for them when it comes to WAR, since they are just told to blindly accept some algorithm that spits out a value of 5 for Player A and 4 for Player B, so Player A must be worth 1 more win than Player B, even though there’s no explanation of how that value came to be arrived at. This is where I’d like to introduce my personal “one size fits all” stat for measuring the production of players, Net Bases.
I began working on trying to develop my own universal metric for evaluating baseball players back in 2009 when I was a freshman in college. I was working as a statistical consultant with my school’s baseball team, and I initially was curious at trying to determine WAR values for the many players on our team. I consulted the internet, and immediately was met with a bunch of noise about what the definition was, but no quantitative interpretations of how those numbers were arrived at. As soon as I realized there were multiple different “authorities” who peddled their interpretation of the stat, I closed my browser window and decided to create one myself. I did not wish to pry any further and risk tainting my personal bias when approaching this problem. I wanted my solution to be uniquely my own, untainted by what I would find if I dug deeper. However, I quickly found myself grappling with the most basic, fundamental concept there was with respect to this subject. What the hell is a win, exactly, and how do I quantify it?
Realizing that this was a problem to be saved for later (seven years later, as it would turn out) I opted to break it down into a more simple concept instead. While I could not fully quantify what a win was, I definitely knew how a win was achieved. Runs. As long as Team X has a greater number of runs than Team Y at the end of the game, Team X will win. Ok, so I was going with runs, that was easy enough. How do I determine how many runs its worth when a center fielder does his job catching a routine fly ball? Or when a leadoff hitter singles, steals, but gets stranded? Or two different players go 0/4 in a game, but one struck out all 4 times, while the other managed to put the ball in play and forced the defense to do it’s job to keep him off the bases. I was quickly falling down the same rabbit hole, until the obvious became apparent to me. Bases. It takes 4 bases to score a run, and it is a lot easier for both myself, as well as the typical fan who isn't a total stat nerd, to follow along with bases over runs. That leadoff hitter who singled and stole second accrued 2 total bases. Thats worth half a run, even though he didn't score. While saying thats worth half a run leaves some fans scratching their heads, virtually everyone who can achieve being conscious with a pulse can understand that two bases were achieved, since the leadoff hitter made it to second. While Net Bases as a whole is nowhere near as simplistic as that explanation is, it boils down every play of influence a given player has on the game into how that player’s performance influenced his team’s ability to generate total bases, and prevent their opponent from doing the same. While the world may not agree with it, this approach, in my opinion, seemed far more practical. Wins can vary, teams can win games they do not deserve to win, and lose games where they gave forth a far more winning effort. Wins are fickle. Runs are Runs, and there are 4 bases in every run.

Nate Rawlings