Babe Ruth’s WAR
Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve loved baseball statistics. While most kids probably collected baseball cards for the pictures on the front, I collected them for the stats on the back. And I would memorize many of the statistics, for no other reason than to give myself some context when looking at the backs of other cards.
This was the era before the internet. Now, we have tools such as Baseball-Reference.com, which is both the most amazing thing ever, and also a little sad because it has all-but destroyed the value I used to glean from those baseball cards.
I bring this up because last night I found myself down a rabbit-hole. While catching up on this year’s baseball statistics, I wandered over to Baseball-Reference to look up some information about a stat that was never found on the backs of baseball cards when I was a kid: WAR.
WAR, or Wins Above Replacement, is a statistic that has grown in prominence over the last handful of years. In fact, it’s now so well-regarded that ESPN includes it on their main stats page. It’s a fairly complicated and in-depth stat that I don’t even fully have my head wrapped around at all times, but the short version is this:
A single number that presents the number of wins the player added to the team above what a replacement player would add.
One of the reasons why I’ve grown to love this stat that I never knew about when I was a kid is because it seems to pass the eye test. That is, the people who are leading baseball in WAR at any given time, do in fact seem to be the best ballplayers at that time.
Take this year, for example. The Washington Nationals’ Bryce Harper currently leads all major leaguers with a WAR of 4.9. But that should be obvious if you just look at his more traditional stats: he’s currently batting .343 and is on pace to hit 54 homers.
Less obvious is someone like Josh Donaldson, the third basemen for the Toronto Blue Jays. He’s currently hitting .315, which is very good. And he’s on pace to hit 43 home runs, also very good. But is he the best player in the American League?
To go back to the more traditional stats, he’s fifth in homeruns and just outside the top five in batting average. Slightly more robust stats, on-base percentage (OBP) and production (OPS — which is OBP plus Slugging percentage), are good-to-great at .369 and .944 respectively.
But according to WAR, at least so far, Donaldson has to be considered as one of the best players in the American League — if not the best. He’s the only player in the league who has led his team to an additional 4 wins above his replacement-level variety.
One element that WAR includes but other, more traditional stats do not, is a player’s defensive prowess. This undoubtedly helps Donaldson. And in recent years, it has help propel the rise of Mike Trout.
No player seems to be as built for WAR as Trout. In each of his first three full years, he has led baseball in the category (this year, he’s third in the AL so far, but very close to the aforementioned Donaldson). And it helped propel him to the American League MVP award last year, after finishing second each of the previous two seasons (once to Miguel Cabrera, who won the first Triple Crown — leading the league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in — in baseball in 45 years, but didn’t win the… WAR).
Anyway, back to the rabbit hole… As you might imagine, Baseball-Reference also happens to have retroactive WAR data. It’s not perfect (at least not before 1974) but again, in the eye test, it seems pretty good.
Some takeaways:
Babe Ruth, with a career WAR of 183.6, is indeed the best ballplayer of all time. And I do mean ballplayer in the fullest sense of the word — since roughly 20 points of his WAR comes from the time early in his career when he was still a pitcher. Incredible.
Cy Young is second on the WAR list at 168.4, and he’s obviously the top pitcher. This also makes perfect sense given the top pitching award handed out each year that bears his name.
While Walter Johnson is 3rd (makes sense), Barry Bonds is probably the first controversial figure at #4. His 162.4 WAR was gathered over 22 seasons, but probably half of those are at least under the suspicion of steroid use.
When you look at the single season WAR record breakdown, you can get a quick glimpse of something interesting: every player in the top 50 WAR seasons was under the age of 35 except for Bonds. In 2001 and 2002, when Bonds was age 36 and 37, he posted an 11.8 WAR in both years, good for number 46 on the top 50 single-season WAR list. The only other person close to the 35 year old age threshold? Roger Clemens. He posted a WAR of 12.2 in 1997 at age 34. Read into that what you will…
Aside from the above, players seem to peak in their WAR production when aged in their mid-to-late 20s. This both rings true and also once again calls into question all those massive contracts awarded to players in their 30s — which usually don’t pan out.
It also makes the contract extension the Angels gave to Mike Trout despite his relative inexperience, seem like pure genius. They’re likely paying for his prime, versus paying for a player past his prime, and the results should very directly be more wins for the team.
Trout is already in the top 500 for career WAR amongst position players. That’s absolutely insane when you consider that he’s just 23 years old and has only played five seasons. His 2012 WAR of 10.8 is tied with Rogers Hornsby for the 22nd best all time in a single season amongst position players. He was just 20 years old when he did that. And Trout is the highest ranking active player on that list.
While the home run record gets all the glitz and glam, could Trout one day challenge Babe Ruth’s WAR record? He, along with Bryce Harper, are the only two currently on the radar who may have a shot. But Trout will need to average a WAR of 10 for basically the next 15 years to have that shot. That’s how good Babe Ruth was.
WAR isn’t without its critics, of course. And one of the biggest critisisms is that it favors players from around the turn of the 20th century when the game was much different. Looking at the top single-season WAR numbers, this seems correct — sorry, Tim Keefe. But those are easy enough to filter out. And the career WAR numbers still look and feel right.
Another WAR chart I love: Yearly league leaders. Throw out MVP and Cy Young awards (except for the rare years a player wins both), these charts show who the best overall player was each year in each league.
But the best chart has to be the Progressive Leaders and Records for WAR. This shows who has held the records for best single season WAR as well as career WAR throughout the years. It gives a good sense about who the best active ballplayer was in any given era.
And, of course, it shows just how good Babe Ruth was.
