From Tom Tango
Just a general point regarding WAR v Win Shares, which we can bypass altogether if we just focus on Win Probability Added (WPA), which has the advantage of guaranteeing everything adds up, not only at the game level, but at the individual play level.
And if you look at Pedro's WPA, he comes in at +51 wins above average for his career.
His W/L record is 219-100, or +119, or +59.5 wins above average.
His runs allowed rate is 66% of league average, and Pythag (using 1.82 exponent) says that's close to a .680 record, or +58 wins above average.
So, trying to come to terms with how good Pedro is is pretty straightforward, as we have good agreement using multiple methods. He's +50 to +60 wins above average. This is good enough for my illustration below.
So, if we were to create an "Individualized Won Loss Record" for Pedro, it should be pretty straightforward: let's give out for each pitcher a "game slice" of .42 games for each 9 innings. Pedro's 2827 IP is 314 9-inning games and so he'd get 132 game slices. The average is obviously 66-66.
Since Pedro is about +50 to +60 wins above average, using any method you choose (and using +50 in this illustration), then his Individualized Won-Loss record will come in at 116-16 or so. If you chose .37 games for each 9 innings, then it's 108-8 record. It doesn't matter (too much) what you use, whether .37 or .42 or whatnot.
It will matter (a bit) when you compare to the ".300 level" pitcher, or whatever baseline you choose. A 116-16 record is 76 WAR and 108-8 is 73 WAR.
The key point is that I can make everything add up at the season, game, or play level. And I can do so by using the centering point of .500. And I really, really, really think the entire problem of WAR v Win Shares is we are not talking about it using two dimensions. Because if either of them is appreciably different from this 108-8 or 116-16 record, then we'd have something more tangible to talk about that would actually move the argument forward.
Can you Bill provide the Win Shares / Loss Shares of Pedro's career?
Bill: No editorial responses here, because I don’t want this to become a debate exactly, but I can’t produce Pedro’s Win Shares/Loss Shares right now because I haven’t used that spreadsheet in a couple of years and don’t remember what it was called, where it is or how to use it. I’ll look into it, but the next three weeks are the busiest time of the year for me, because this is when we write the annual Bill James Handbook. But I’ll try to remember to get to that.