Most overrated baseball stats????

[bravos4evr]

Originally Posted by the 'stache

I understand Trout is a phenomenal player. But when I compare players side by side, and I see such an enormous difference in something like oWAR, I don't get it.

Compare Mike Trout and Ryan Braun...just their offense, this season.

oWAR (offensive WAR)

Mike Trout 7.8
Ryan Braun 3.5

Ok, Braun is a right fielder. Trout's a center fielder. Obviously, Trout is worth more putting up the numbers he is as a center fielder, a premium position. But is he worth more than double Braun's season with the bat? 4.3 more wins?

Here are their numbers:

Trout .314 AVG, 541 PAs, 27 2B, 3 3B, 24 HR, 21 SB, 4 CS (84%), 99 BB, 109 K, slash line of .431/.551/.981. 244 TB, 170 OPS +
Braun .318 AVG, 449 PAs, 21 2B, 2 3B, 24 HR, 14 SB, 3 CS (82%), 38 BB, 74 K, slash line of .379/.557/.935. 226 TB, 145 OPS +

Their SLG is comparable; Braun is ahead by 6 points. The main difference is Trout walks more, so his OBP is 52 points higher. But he also strikes out more (25% vs 18%).

Trout should have a higher oWAR, absolutely. But show me where he's worth double what Ryan Braun is at the plate? That makes absolutely no sense to me. Braun came into the night 4th in the National League in batting, seventh in SLG, and 5th in OPS.

Trout has a career .960 OPS right now. At the same point in his career, Braun had a .943 OPS.

all numbers from Fangraphs- (btw, most of Braun's time has been in LF this year)

2016 Mike Trout has a slash line of .432/.548/ .980 a wOBA of .413 and a wRC+ of 167 (best in MLB) his base running is an elite 8.0 and his defense a -0.4 (but will still add value due to positional adjustment as he plays CF)


2016 Braun has a slash of .377/.551/.928, a wOBA of .388 and a wRC+ of 139, his base running is a pedestrian 0.8 and his defense -7.3 at a position that does not have value added.

OPS is valuable, but it's not as good of a gauge as wRC+ or wOBA as it values OBP and SLG equally (and OBP is nearly twice as valuable as slugging is).

Remember, players all go through the same formula, the only change is based on defense, just by playing CF Trout gets a boost, by playing it well enough not to lose his positional adjustment the boost is larger. Being an elite baserunner adds value too. When you combine this with 28 pts of wRC+ you end up with one player being worth 7.1 fWAR and the other 3.0 fWAR.


to clarify, much of the difference comes from defense. Of 12 qualified LF'ers Braun is 8th in defense (of the 20 with at least 500 inn at LF this seasons, he is 13th) Of the 29 CF players Trout is 18th in defense (which makes them both in that avgish range at their position) But the difference is CF get's a defensive weighting boost because it is much harder to play. Trout gains 1 win just from that even with his -0.4 DEF rating.

If you removed defense and baserunning, it would pretty much be Trout with around 5.5 WAR and Braun with around 3.8ish- 4 WAR (which now appears much more reasonable considering Trout's fairly large OBP edge)