This started as some musings about Curt Schilling. Bill posted a poll yesterday that had Curt Schilling matched up with another player, and that sent me down a little rabbit hole of investigating, which led me to this article.
It’s not about Curt Schilling. Not at all.
It is about…or at least tangential…to Bill’s recent article about grain elevators and comparison derivatives and the problems inherent to the WAR statistic, but I don’t want to get into until the end. I try to avoid thinking about the same subjects Bill is pondering for the same reasons I tend to avoid swimming laps when Michael Phelps is in the pool: I don’t want to intimidate anyone.
Let’s start with my last article, which was about Vladimir Guerrero and Bobby Abreu.
Guerrero and Abreu had careers that overlapped. They were both born in Spanish-speaking countries. They reached the majors at the same time, established themselves at the same time, and had careers of parallel lengths. They played the same position.
In that article, I went to great pains to show that by just about every metric imaginable, they were comparably valuable players.
If you look at either version of WAR, or Win Shares, if you glance at peak years or five- or seven-year stretches of peak performance, they rate as very, very, even. Same value.
Same value…but different production.
Vladimir Guerrero was a burly power hitter who hit a lot of homeruns. Abreu wasn’t nearly as dominant a power hitter, but he closes the gap because he walked a lot more than Guerrero. There were other differences between the two men, but that was the biggest: Guerrero hit homers. Abreu drew walks.
Requisite tables:
Name
|
H
|
2B
|
3B
|
HR
|
Vladimir Guerrero
|
2590
|
477
|
46
|
449
|
Bobby Abreu
|
2470
|
574
|
59
|
288
|
And:
Name
|
Walks
|
IBB
|
Vladimir Guerrero
|
737
|
250
|
Bobby Abreu
|
1476
|
115
|
Most outfielders have the majority of their value in what they do as hitters. You can make the Hall-of-Fame as an elite defensive shortstop, but it’s a tougher task to pull off as an outfielder. You gotta hit.
And both men did hit, though neither was a perfect offensive player. Guerrero was a terrific power hitter, but he didn’t get on-base at an elite clip. Abreu excelled at getting on base, but in a power-heavy era, he didn’t hit too many dingers. The two tables above show each player’s limits.
Win Shares and the two versions of WAR are in general agreement about both players’ career value:
Name
|
FanGraphs WAR
|
B-R WAR
|
Career Win Shares
|
Vladimir Guerrero
|
54.5
|
59.5
|
324
|
Bobby Abreu
|
59.8
|
60.2
|
356
|
Abreu is a little ahead by FanGraph’s WAR and Win Shares. Adjusting for games played, Vladimir is slightly more valuable by Baseball-Reference’s version of WAR. It’s all very, very close.
There is a third right fielder…same era as Guerrero and Abreu, who I did not include in the previous article. I didn’t think about him, didn’t pay him any mind.
Let’s include him now. Starting with nature of their hits:
Name
|
H
|
1B
|
2B
|
3B
|
HR
|
Vladimir Guerrero
|
2590
|
1618
|
477
|
46
|
449
|
Bobby Abreu
|
2470
|
1549
|
574
|
59
|
288
|
Gary Sheffield
|
2689
|
1686
|
467
|
27
|
509
|
Gary Sheffield, purely on the bases of what happened on balls-in-play, was more closely aligned to Vlad than Abreu. He was a sluggardly slugger. He was a stone-cold clouter.
What about walks?
Name
|
Walks
|
IBB
|
Vladimir Guerrero
|
737
|
250
|
Bobby Abreu
|
1476
|
115
|
Gary Sheffield
|
1475
|
130
|
Here, Sheffield is even with Bobby Abreu. Like Abreu, Sheffield was a terrific at getting on-base. Both Abreu and Sheffield collected more than 1300 unintentional walks. Vlad collected less than 500 unintentional walks. That is a gap of some eight hundred walks.
So Gary Sheffield, as a hitter, combines Vladimir Guerrero’s power hitting with Abreu’s ability to get on-base via the walk. He is the best of both players.
If I wanted to bore you to tears, I could go into the defensive evaluations of all three players, and their contributions on the base paths, but there isn’t a helluva lot of daylight between them. Abreu and Guerrero were right fielders with limited defensive reputations: Guerrero had an arm, and each won a Gold Glove, but both rate as poor defensive players. Sheffield was mostly a right fielder, but he was athletic enough to come up as a shortstop briefly, and he played third base for a few years. Sheffield stole 253 bases and was caught 103 times: he wasn’t as good a baserunner as Bobby Abreu, but he was probably a bit better than Guerrero.
The gap between them really comes down to offense. Vlad Guerrero was a terrific power hitter who didn’t walk much, and Bobby Abreu was a terrific on-base player who could occasionally pop one out. Gary Sheffield was terrific in both areas: he had Vlad’s power and Abreu’s on-base average.
And…here is the kicker…WAR just does not credit that.
WAR…both versions…considers all three men to be of parallel value:
Name
|
Games
|
B-R WAR
|
FanGraphs WAR
|
Vladimir Guerrero
|
2147
|
59.5
|
54.5
|
Bobby Abreu
|
2425
|
60.2
|
59.8
|
Gary Sheffield
|
2576
|
60.5
|
62.1
|
We can how close the metric rates all three players by looking at their respective WAR per 162 games:
Name
|
Games
|
B-R WAR/162
|
FanG WAR/162
|
Vladimir Guerrero
|
2147
|
4.5
|
4.1
|
Bobby Abreu
|
2425
|
4.0
|
4.0
|
Gary Sheffield
|
2576
|
3.8
|
3.9
|
It’s worse than comparable: both versions of WAR believe that Gary Sheffield - a better on-base player than Guerrero and a better slugger than Abreu - is actually a slightly lesser player than the other two outfielders.
I realize that I am leaving out a great deal of secondary information about these players. I have not mentioned their personalities, or their relative fame, or the arc of their careers, or whether their teams won or lost games. I don’t care about any of that. I am talking only about the math.
WAR is all about the math. It is credited for being objective, for eliminating all of the external noise to distill what a player did, and giving that a comprehensive number. It is meant to be objective. It is credited…by many people…as being the best objective measure of a player.
But it misses here. If you took Vlad Guerrero and added 50 walks a year, you’d have Gary Sheffield. If you took Bobby Abreu and gave him 12 more homeruns a year, you’d have Gary Sheffield.
WAR doesn’t give any credit to that.
The system that DOES credit that difference is Win Shares. Win Shares shows a clear gap between Sheffield and the other two players.
Name
|
Career Win Shares
|
Vladimir Guerrero
|
324
|
Bobby Abreu
|
356
|
Gary Sheffield
|
430
|
Per 162 games, Sheffield is ahead of Abreu and Guerrero:
Name
|
Games
|
B-R WAR/162
|
Vladimir Guerrero
|
2147
|
24.4
|
Bobby Abreu
|
2425
|
23.8
|
Gary Sheffield
|
2576
|
27.0
|
Sheffield isn’t wildly ahead of the other two players: he does not blow them away. He’s a little ahead, which is what you’d expect if you thought about the three players for more than ten minutes.
And Win Shares rates Sheffield as having had bigger seasons. Again…not much bigger. But bigger.
Best ten seasons by Win Shares:
Sheffield: 34, 34, 32, 31, 31, 30, 30, 30, 26, 24.
Abreu: 33, 29, 28, 27, 26, 26, 26, 25, 23, 23.
Guerrero: 29, 29, 29, 28, 28, 27, 27, 24, 23, 22.
Sheffield had eight seasons of 30+ Win Shares. Abreu had one. Guerrero had zero.
This, to me, shows the errors in the formula. Somehow, there are little dings against Sheffield that hamper how the systems measure him. These are small percentage miscalculations, and I’d hazard that a part of the challenge is that Sheffield moved positions a great deal, while Abreu and Guerrero did not. It is possible that WAR, in trying to figure out what a run from a third baseman means in comparison to a run from a corner outfielder, ends up missing Sheffield’s big seasons. Small miscalculations…small thumbs on the scale…but the result is a big problem.
Gary Sheffield was a better player than Guerrero and Abreu. This fact is obscured by a WAR metric that has so taken over how we evaluate players that trying to argue the case is nearly pointless. But I’ll make the effort all the same.
David Fleming is a writer living in southwestern Virginia. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.