Most overrated baseball stats????

[howard38]

The sacrifice fly. Why should a fly ball that scores a run not count as an official AB when a run scoring ground ball does? Saves/blown saves are overrated as well because of how the deck is stacked against middle relievers.

[Topps206]

You could have 30-40 saves and an ERA of 4.00 or 5.00. That says a lot.

[EvilKing00]

I voted wins, but for those who think WAR is a stat id say war is most overrated


http://metsmerizedonline.com/2014/01...hen-drew.html/

[dgo71]

Originally Posted by Topps206

You could have 30-40 saves and an ERA of 4.00 or 5.00. That says a lot.

I'd love to see a stat for relievers that tracks inherited runners allowed to score.

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by dgo71

I'd love to see a stat for relievers that tracks inherited runners allowed to score.

I think, and don't quote me now, that Baseball prospectus tracks this. Fangraphs may too but I have never looked.

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by howard38

The sacrifice fly. Why should a fly ball that scores a run not count as an official AB when a run scoring ground ball does? Saves/blown saves are overrated as well because of how the deck is stacked against middle relievers.

this is a good point. sac bunt isn't an at bat, sac fly isn't, yet a ground ball that does the same thing is. IMO, it is bad for the hitter to give up an out for a base except when it is very late in the game. I think they should all count towards plate appearances and AB's myself. (In a similar fashion the idea that "you can't assume the double play" is also flawed, it's not like the games are played with blindfolds on, official scorers have lots of tools available to tell whether or not the double play could be assumed. )

[rats60]

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

this is a good point. sac bunt isn't an at bat, sac fly isn't, yet a ground ball that does the same thing is. IMO, it is bad for the hitter to give up an out for a base except when it is very late in the game. I think they should all count towards plate appearances and AB's myself. (In a similar fashion the idea that "you can't assume the double play" is also flawed, it's not like the games are played with blindfolds on, official scorers have lots of tools available to tell whether or not the double play could be assumed. )

One a sacred bunt, the hitter is deliberately giving himself up to advance the runner. On a sacred fly, the batter is trying for a hit, but is not penalized for making an out if the runner scores. In my opinion, the hitter shouldn't be penalized for the sacred bunt, but should for the hit.

I agree that war is the most overrated stat. It is random, fwar and bwar are calculated differently and the formula for bwar was completely changed a couple years ago. For comparing players at different positions, it is completely worthless.

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by rats60

One a sacred bunt, the hitter is deliberately giving himself up to advance the runner. On a sacred fly, the batter is trying for a hit, but is not penalized for making an out if the runner scores. In my opinion, the hitter shouldn't be penalized for the sacred bunt, but should for the hit.

I agree that war is the most overrated stat. It is random, fwar and bwar are calculated differently and the formula for bwar was completely changed a couple years ago. For comparing players at different positions, it is completely worthless.

no it isn't, it's the single best thing we have to compare across position and generation. It isn't perfect, but if perfection is your requirement for a good stat 99% of all baseball stats are worthless.

It's a formula, even if you aren't a fan of the defensive part of it (and I can see the argument for that) every single player is run through the same formula so the ratios are at least close. (and that's the purpose of WAR, it's there to give a quick thumbnail number to compare. It's not like there is a major difference between a 5WAR season and a 4.8 WAR season, they are pretty much even)

Now some people may USE WAR in a wrong manner, but the number itself does exactly what it's designed to do. It's still far better than something like batting avg which tells us pretty much nothing.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

no it isn't, it's the single best thing we have to compare across position and generation. It isn't perfect, but if perfection is your requirement for a good stat 99% of all baseball stats are worthless.

It's a formula, even if you aren't a fan of the defensive part of it (and I can see the argument for that) every single player is run through the same formula so the ratios are at least close. (and that's the purpose of WAR, it's there to give a quick thumbnail number to compare. It's not like there is a major difference between a 5WAR season and a 4.8 WAR season, they are pretty much even)

Now some people may USE WAR in a wrong manner, but the number itself does exactly what it's designed to do. It's still far better than something like batting avg which tells us pretty much nothing.

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 .

[bravos4evr]

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 .

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.

[bravos4evr]

wow, after a few days it's a dead heat between Wins and Saves! I thought Batting Avg might win the day, but I guess it's a little too ingrained in our minds .

[egri]

I voted for saves, because all the closer has to do is pitch one inning with his team ahead, the bases empty, and the other team's big guns all pulled for pinch hitters. Back in the day, when closers had to come in with the bases loaded and get out of that jam, then pitch the next couple innings as well, then maybe, but not today.

[nat]

WAR is the best we've got for what it does. It provides a (mostly) context-neutral way of comparing how many extra wins you should expect a player to have produced were he added to a random team. The values it assigns to events (singles, stolen bases, etc.) are based on the linear weight values of those events: basically, how many runs these events have historically generated, on average. (I don't know how far back the current weights go; Tango used, IIRC, five years when calculating wOBA in his book.)

You can quibble with parts of it. My biggest gripe is that it weights pitcher performance by the leverage index of the situation - basically it gives more weight to performance in close and late games than to things that pitchers do in the first inning. Consequently, IMHO, it overrates relief pitchers. And you can (and lots of people do) complain about how it handles defensive statistics (especially since it uses different measures of defense for early players than for more recent ones). But these are quibbles, not objections to the WAR framework.

fWAR and bWAR are different stats which measure (slightly) different things. To object to WAR as such because there are two versions is like objecting to batting average because on-base percentage measures a lot of the same things, i.e., it's a criticism that doesn't make a lot of sense. (Although batting average is objectionable on other grounds.)

As with any statistic, the important thing is to not misuse it. That Barry Larkin was worth 6.1 WAR in 1991 (which is very good, all-star quality play) doesn't mean that the Orioles should have traded for him, since the Orioles already had a pretty good SS themselves. So that would be a way of misusing it.

The problematic stats, like saves and pitcher wins, are problematic because either there are very few situations in which they're useful, or because they're so consistently misused. There's a time and a place for citing wins. For example, if you've managed to win 300 games, you're going to be a pretty good pitcher. Not because wins are a good way of measuring pitcher quality (they're not), but because bad pitchers don't stick around long enough to win 300 games. So if you didn't know anything else about Early Wynn, pointing out that he won 300 games is a good way of pointing out that he was a really good pitcher. But they're not useful for much beyond that. (Because a pitcher's team mates make such a big difference to whether or not he's going to win any particular game.)

[the 'stache]

I picked wins, even over saves. If a pitcher comes in to close a game out, they can only earn a save if the other team is within a couple of runs, or get into a position to tie while the reliever is still on the mound. A pitcher coming in with a six run lead in the ninth won't get a save unless they completely implode, yet still close the game out.

A win is dependent on too many things. A starter can throw 8 innings of ball, surrender a lone run, and get a no decision if they get no run support (as The Big Bang Theory might refer to it, "The Clayton Kershaw conundrum"). Yet another starter throwing seven innings could give up six runs, and still get the win if his team scored ten runs in support. Even though the first pitcher clearly outperforms the second, the second would get the win. That's just ridiculous, in my opinion.

[TheNightmanCometh]

Normally, I'd vote for pitcher wins, but since it's, to me, common sense, that it is vastly overrated, I voted for RBIs, and I'm quite surprised I'm the only one who has said so, to this point.

RBI are entirely dependent on who hits in front of you, so it's a meaningless stat to use to compare hitters. There are other stats that tell better which slugger is better than RBI.