Hello all and welcome back to my baseball analytics blog! In today’s post, I will be discussing the importance of War as a statistic to measure any player at any position in baseball today.
War is defined as wins above replacement and is the single most important metric in the game of baseball. With just one statistic, a player can be categorized as average, below average, or above average. In the end, statistics give insight into determining which player is better. Therefore, a statistic that can give you all you need with one number, is incredibly valuable.
War is a singular number that rates a player's effectiveness in the modern game. If a player has a War anywhere from 0-1, he is considered average. On the other hand, if a player has a War of over 1 or below 0, he is considered above average or below average respectively. The chart below gives a very accurate description of a War in each of the possible number ranges.
Simply understanding the different ranges of Wars can be very useful, but being able to calculate War is even more helpful. War is calculated using a variety of different statistics that cover a player’s ability to help a team win. After all, War simply means how many extra wins a player is going to help the team earn. By adding batting runs, base-running runs, fielding runs, positional adjustment, league adjustment, and replacement runs and dividing by runs per win, the War of any given player is calculated. The image from FanGraphs below gives a quite simple formula to calculate War.
If you have been paying enough attention to close detail, you might be asking yourself how do you calculate War for a pitcher, or for a player that does not hit? Fielding Independent Percentage (FIP) is the major statistic used to calculate the War for a pitcher or a position player that does not hit. In the last blog entry, I gave an in depth explanation on how FIP is calculated.
I hope you enjoyed learning more about the most important statistic in the game and I will see you back for another entry soon!
I have also attached a couple articles below that cover and explain War in some different ways that might be helpful.
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