MLB Declares “WAR” Regarding Bonuses

Here is the long and short of it as far as the baseball lockout is concerned:

The MLB owners wanted to get a federal mediator involved in an attempt to settle the dispute they have with the players.

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The players rejected that, insisting that the owners come back to the table and negotiate.

That means this will drag out for a while, delaying spring training and ultimately the start of the season.

Bonus Money Pool for Younger Players

One of the areas in which the two sides are far apart involves bonus money that would be paid to young players who are not yet eligible for arbitration. The players are looking for a total pool of $100 million, down from a previous demand of $105 million. The owners are proposing $10 million.

So you see, that’s a problem.

There is, however, one part of this that both sides seem to agree on. That is the criteria by which the players in question would receive those bonuses, and the degree to which they are rewarded.

It revolves around a metric called WAR, standing for “Wins Above Replacement.” And it is something that is very familiar to anyone who follows or advocates for analytics in baseball, which includes a lot of people who play in fantasy leagues, and we might add, who make it a hobby to evaluate players for their Hall of Fame-worthiness.

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Here is a definition of WAR as it appears at the MLB website:

“WAR measures a player’s value in all facets of the game by deciphering how many more wins he’s worth than a replacement-level player at his same position (e.g., a Minor League replacement or a readily available fill-in free agent).

For example, if a shortstop and a first baseman offer the same overall production (on offense, defense and the basepaths), the shortstop will have a better WAR because his position sees a lower level of production from replacement-level players.”

We’re not sure if there is indeed a “war” to be the go-to source for this statistic, because these numbers guys seem to be a bit nervous about it.

There are currently three sites that calculate some version of WAR. They are FanGraphs, which appears to be the preference of the owners, and Baseball-Reference, which the players want. There is also Baseball Prospectus, which may be left out in the cold.

There’s a difference between all of them, because they use different criteria. But the bottom line is that whichever version would eventually be used, it will be somewhat standard and not arbitrary, and from a third-party source, and that’s not a bad thing.

So these analytics people should be happy, right? Well, not exactly.

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Sean Forman of Baseball-Reference listed some of his trepidation about using his own site’s numbers in a Tweet:

“There are a couple of reasons. 1) occasionally mistakes are uncovered and we re-calculate WAR numbers, 2) new rules like the extra inning baserunner or no NL DH force us to reformulate things, or 3) a data provider like BIS recalculates historical DRS with better values, or 4) the park factors change due to more info for Y+1, or 5) we decide to change how positional adjustments are calculated to handle modern usage, or 6) something unexpected happens, like no SP ever goes 5 IP again & we adjust factors.”

He added that he would expect the other sites would feel the same way, and also wondered if any site that MLB uses would be paid for it.

I understand where Forman is coming from, and I assume the others, if they are similarly apprehensive.

At the same time, it’s interesting that there would be some hesitation on the part of Forman, or anybody associated with the calculation of the WAR statistic, to have it count.

Let’s face it – although they realize that there may be some difficulties with the exactitude of what they are calculating, they have put the metric forward, which means they must feel there is some credibility to it.

Last season, Shohei Ohtani of the Angels was the leader in WAR, by a wide margin. The rest of the top ten was Zach Wheeler, Marcus Semian, Carlos Correa, Juan Soto, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Walker Buehler, Jose Ramirez, Robbie Ray, Fernando Tatis Jr. In 2018 and 2020, the WAR “champion” was Mookie Betts. In 2019 it was Alex Bregman.

WAR is the subject of discussion – heated, we might add – in cyberspace, where observers make comparisons or evaluations of players. To some people, WAR is “bible,” and don’t think for one minute that these guys don’t enjoy that kind of influence over the discourse.

But you know, there is something of a difference between presenting statistics that are all about “fantasy” and having them applied “for real.” If Major League Baseball is going to be making determinations about bonus money based on the criteria of WAR, that brings with it a whole different level of scrutiny. And you’d have to wonder whether Forman and / or his colleagues would want to go through something like that, especially if the validity of WAR has, in reality, been greatly over-hyped.

Even so, there has to be an “impartial” criteria, and this is as good a standard as any… at least so it seems.

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