Tiger337

There is no doubt that innings pitched for starters has become an important stat.

I don't think either one is clear cut. Whitaker is a unicorn. He had more very good seasons than almost any infielder in history, but never had a great season. If someone thinks that great seasons are the qualification for HoF, then they wouldn't vote for Whitaker. That is fine as long as they are consistent. I put a lot of weight on career value and constency. Kent just doesn't have enough overall career value for me to say that he's clear cut. He is not the worst Hall of Famer, but I think he gets overrated because of his Bonds-aided RBI totals. I don't think Whitaker is shunned just because of his personality. I think that voters just won't look beyond hits, homers, all-star games and world series titles.

Kershaw was the more dominant pitcher most years. Verlander had more career value which is what WAR measures. If you are more interested in peak value or dominance, then WAA (Wins Above Average) is one way to measure that. Kershaw finishes ahead of him in that. Pitchers are even harder to rank than hitters though because their role has changed so much throughout history.

WAR per 162 game average is not particulatly interesting and it kind of goes against the point of WAR which is a cumulative stat. Cabrera will be first ballot because of how great of a hitter he was at his peak. I really wish his last 7 years were not trash, because he looked like he was going to be in the Hank Aaron or Frank Robinson class.

Bonds batted third and Kent batted fourth in the years when Kent was getting a lot of RBI. I just looked it up on b-ref to make sure I was remembering correctly. I also remember they gave Kent credit for protecting Bonds which was silly. Kent did what he did...he was very good, but was overrated because writers love RBI. He's not the worst Hall of Famer ever, but there are a couple of second basemen who should have been in before him. One of them is Whitaker. I am not sure what point you are trying to make with Trammell batting behind Whitaker.

As you probably remember, Cash also had a rep as a good first baseman. It's hard to measure firstbase defense, but the stats back up his reputation, at least in the 60s before he aged.

I care if he wasn't as great of a fielder or base runner. Those are parts of the game and they count in determining a player's overall value. People say that they don't care about fielding and base running and then they complain when the see fielders making bad plays or baserunning mistakes. I used WAR in this case because Kent and Whitaker were similar types of players playing the same position and about the same number of games and WAR does a good job of showing that Whitaker was a better overall player. And Kent was not much better as a hitter (123 OPs+ vs 118 OPS+). Kent's value got pumped up because of his RBI totals. It's not too hard accumulating a lot of RBI when you bat behind Barry Bonds!

Olson got 4.5 runs of support per game. He also allowed just 2.4 ER per game in his losses. So, he seems to have been unlucky compared to Mize.

Them guys aint sharing nothing with you.

I'm a fan too. He might even be better than you.

Flaherty averaged 0.67 runs in in the games Tigers won Olson 1.17 I wouldn't have guessed it was quite that low across the board though, so it was an interesting observation on your part. The Tigers scored 4.5 runs in all of Skubal's starts and 6.0 in Mize's starts. Skubal never gave up more than 4 runs in any of the losses, so he likely would have won more games with more run support. ER allowed per game in Mize's losses 3.2. 2.0 in Skubal's losses.

Mize got trememdous run support in his games last year which contributed to his deceptive W/L. He was OK though. If he pitches the same this year, I'll be reasonably happy.

Kent was a worse choice than Jones. Jones was questionnable and I wouldn't put him in, but he is perhaps the best defensive outfielder ever - better defensive numbers than Mays. So, at least he's got that. Kent played the same position as Whitaker and was 20 wins behind him in WAR.

Park effects are not annual. They are averaged over 3-5 years. As for the innings. are you talking annual or career? Given how difficult it is for pitchers to pitch deep into games now, I believe innings have become more valuable now and should be rewarded more than ever for single seasons. For historic WAR, the value of the cumulative effect of WAR is questionable. It depends on whether you favor peak value or career value. If you like peak value more, then you can use WAA (Wins above average). In this case, a pitcher can not accumulate value unless he is better than average. I do agree WAR should not be gospel and that it is overused

That's because you're an offensive snob.

Both Iwakuma and Sale had better ERA+ and K/BB than Scherzer. Scherzer was surely penalized for playing in a pitcher friendly park.

It's OK. You are new, so I didn't recognize the sarcasm.

I don't get why the recent signings change whether or not they should trade Skubal. He was very unlikely to sign with them prior to free agency regardless and not very likely to sign with them when he's a free agent. I still hope they keep him for this year. The only exception would be if they got some kind of ridiculous offer which I don't think is going to happen.

Pitchers and catchers report on February 11. 24 days.

I don't believe so. They have been pretty open about most of it and they seem to honestly answer questions when asked about it.

I am not entirely sure what's under the hood myself, because they update it without publicly documenting it all the time. I think it is has gotten so messy that few people would really understand it anyway. That mioght be why they don't publicize it much. It is very hard to find official documentation on positional adjustments but I know it's based on an analysis of players who played multiple positions (I think in the same year or adjacent years). I don't know the details. Tango did it and it was peer reviewed, so the method is most likely sound. I can see problems with such an analysis, but there is probably no good way to do it if you are trying compare players historically.

True, but the difference in the amount of money you and your co-worker gets would probably have a bigger impact on the lives of average people than the difference in the amounts that Cobb and Skubal get.

It's not different from other jobs in that respect. It's just that there is a lot more money involved and the results are public.

I do understand that WAR has not been communicated well and I think it may be more complex than it needs to be if it's going to be presented to a wide audience. Perhaps, they could have one WAR for people doing research and one simpler WAR for average fans. Joe Posnanski has been suggesting something like that for years. It might piss off some sabers to see other fans using an inferior stat, but I could live with that. It would be like using OPS rather than wOBA. I don't think it's difficult to understand why a shortstop contributes more to his team than a first baseman just by being a shortstop though. And I know you understand that. Maybe, it could just be presented better.

I'm not sure how you want to fix that. Do you want to get rid of positional adjustments and ignore position in evalualting a player or do you think that the positional adjustment for first basemen in particular is too harsh? I can't really justify the former, but the latter is possible.