Quote:
Originally Posted by rats60
Bert Blyleven has a WAR of 95.3, Johnny Bench has a WAR of 75.0. If you really think Blyleven was worth 20 more wins, then we are going to have to agree to disagree. I see some value in it comparing pitchers to pitchers and catchers to catchers, but it is completely worthless to compare a pitcher to a catcher in my opinion .
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Now the pitcher argument is a different one. The creators of WAR admit that it may undervalue ground ball specialists a bit (and overvalue K's) Not to mention that catcher is still the hardest position to measure defensively. But it is improving with the new pitch framing data.
BUT, if you look at Blyleven and Bench in particular, Bench played in 2132 games over 16 years (or 133 a year avg) and his 12 years of top production were 69.7 WAR (fWAR) whereas Blyleven has 685 starts over 22 years for his fWAR. So he had 6 more years to earn wins over bench (and ,unlike catchers, he mostly made all of his starts where Bench missed 30 games a year on avg due to being a catcher)
One thing to remember is that WAR is a cumulative statistic.If you put up 8 7 WAR seasons for 56 then play 6 more years and only earn 12 total, your career WAR of 68 will end up less than a guy who played 20 years and averaged 3.5 WAR per season. The former player was the better player at their peaks, but they ended up having similar value over their careers.