WAR stat HATES Kyle Schwarber!

[Belfast1933]

I was just musing with my baseball buds about Kyle Schwarber’s amazing night (4 dingers) and great season already (119 RBIs with 30+ games still to play)

But what I find to be fascinating is that his career WAR is still under 20!

I’ve drifted into the calculations that make up this Modern compilation statistic, but found myself a little dizzy, so I just assumed someone smarter than me figured this all out. Generally, when I look at all-time leaders, it seems to hold up at the high-level.

But how can Schwarbs, with over 360 career home runs, career slugging of about .475, etc have a total of less than 20??

Here is an even crazier outlier, flaw, whatever you want to call it with Schwarbs and WAR - Ok - this is bonkers…. Here are his traditional stats in 2023:

108 runs
48 HRs
104 RBI
Low BA (.197) but with 126 walks, his OBP was over .340
Slugged .474 and OPS of .817

Guess what his WAR was for the year?

0.7!!

Ok, sumpin just ain’t right with that stat… sure, he had zero defensive skills.

But the man RAKED that year! And he was even 19th in MVP voting! But under 1 in WAR??

Crazy - and obviously flawed… at least to some degree.

WAR hates Kyle Schwarber, obviously 🙄

[BobbyStrawberry]

He doesn't play defense, and when he does, he's not very good.

[jayshum]

He also is probably not helped much with his base running. In 2023, he had 0 stolen bases and was caught twice. The 215 strikeouts also probably doesn't help.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Strikeouts don't hurt you much (they're actually better than ground outs with men on base in force situations) but base-running besides steals is a factor too. So if he never takes an extra base or gets thrown out while baserunning a lot, that can help kill his WAR.

[packs]

It’ll be interesting to see how long he’s able to keep doing it. Adam Dunn disappeared at 33 but he didn’t benefit from the DH. Nelson Cruz was still hitting 30 homers at 40.

[todeen]

I just want the Reds to sign him to a contract, like he has hinted at multiple times.

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[Aquarian Sports Cards]

just noticed he was still mangling left field for 100+ games in 2023 (-2.8) also looking into his base running, his percentage of taking an extra base when someone gets a hit with him on base hovers around 30%. Freddie Freeman (I tried not to pick an obvious speed demon) is usually in the 40%+ neighborhood even cracking 50% a couple times. That makes a big difference to a team, and both those facts make a big difference in WAR

[Peter_Spaeth]

His BA is up this year along with his power numbers, and he even has 10 steals, so not surprisingly his WAR is pretty good, 4.4 to date. I wonder how he is doing in some of the even more advanced metrics that Fangraphs uses.

[jayshum]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

just noticed he was still mangling left field for 100+ games in 2023 (-2.8) also looking into his base running, his percentage of taking an extra base when someone gets a hit with him on base hovers around 30%. Freddie Freeman (I tried not to pick an obvious speed demon) is usually in the 40%+ neighborhood even cracking 50% a couple times. That makes a big difference to a team, and both those facts make a big difference in WAR

Right. Schwarber was playing the outfield a lot in 2023 because Harper was DHing when he came back from his elbow surgery before finishing up the season at 1B. From what I remember, Schwarber also had some knee issues in 2023 even though he played through them, but his baserunning was definitely not as good in 2023 as it had been in 2023 or is this year. While he's still not going to be confused with Rickey Henderson, he did steal 10 bases in 2022 and has that many again this year but had 0 in 2023. I'm not sure about the taking the extra base stat, but from watching most Phillies games, he doesn't seem to be a total liability on the bases that he was a few years ago.