D Backs WARP1 Report

by shoewizard on Jun 11, 2008 12:36 PM EDT

Per baseball prospectus glossary:

WARP-1

Wins Above Replacement Player, level 1. The number of wins this player contributed, above what a replacement level hitter, fielder, and pitcher would have done, with adjustments only for within the season. It should be noted that a team which is at replacement level in all three of batting, pitching, and fielding will be an extraordinarily bad team, on the order of 20-25 wins in a 162-game season.

WARP is also listed on a player's PECOTA card.

Basically WARP takes pitching, hitting, defense and baserunning into account. The "Wins above replacement" are a counting stat, not a rate state, so of course playing time matters. BUT...if you get a lot of playing time and you suck too much, it's obviously going to work against you.

If I were to rank who I thought have been the most valuable players on this team year to date, without looking up WARP, I really think I would have come up with the same exact order of the top 5.

Webb 4.4

Hudson 3.1

Haren 2.8

Snyder 2.5

Jackson 2.2

Owings 2.0

Young 1.9

Johnson 1.3

Drew 1.2

Reynolds 1.2

Ojeda 1.0

Upton 1.0

Scherzer 0.7

Burke 0.5

Davis 0.4

Byrnes 0.3

Salazar 0.2

Montero 0.1

Gonzalez 0.1

Tracy 0.1

Hammock -0.1

Romero -0.2

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Comments

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Back on May 1, shoe also posted the WARP for our starters and rotation at that point. Here’s that list, so you can see who has changed. I’ve added in brackets the change over the past six weeks:

C-Snyder 0.9 [+1.6]
1b-Jackson 1.8 [+0.4]
2b- Hudson 1.7 [+1.4]
3b-Reynolds 0.9 [+0.3]
SS- Drew 0.9 [+0.3]
Lf- Byrnes 0.9 [0.6]
Cf Young 1.3 [+0.6]
RF-Upton 1.4 [-0.4]

Pitching Staff

Webb 2.1 [+2.3]
Owings 1.4 [+0.6]
Lyon 1.3
Haren 0.9 [+1.9]
Quall 0.8

Be keen to see where Lyon sits in this ranking: I’d certainly have him among the top five players; after the first couple of outings, he’s been near-perfect.

by Jim McLennan on Jun 11, 2008 1:05 PM EDT reply actions

DOH!!!

I knew I was missing some guys….I missed all the relievers that haven’t hit…

Lyon 2.8
Qualls 1.4
Cruz 1.1
Pena 0.9
Slaten 0.7
Medders 0.3

by shoewizard on Jun 11, 2008 1:51 PM EDT up reply actions

Hmmm...

Those numbers all seem about right, all though I’m rather surprised Burke is worth even a half a win above replacement. It’s also a bit surprising Byrnes gained any value May first, considering how bad his overall game sucked so badly over that time span.

Anyway, thanks for posting that Shoe! Good stuff.

by C. Wesley Baier on Jun 11, 2008 1:26 PM EDT reply actions

Byrnes lost value

He went from 0.9 to 0.3

Jim forgot to put the negative, it should have read -0.6

by shoewizard on Jun 11, 2008 1:52 PM EDT up reply actions

Thanks for the clarification

Makes a lot more sense. And Diamondhacks, my comment about Burke was a bit toungue cheek, if i didn’t make that clear enough

by C. Wesley Baier on Jun 11, 2008 5:07 PM EDT up reply actions

I’m rather surprised Burke is worth even a half a win above replacement

Good for you. He isn’t.

This definition of “replacement level” bears no resemblance to replacement level in the real world. Even if one accepts BP’s fantasy assumptions, the numbers shoe provided still dont come close to adding up.

Forty percent through the season, the Diamondbacks have won 35, and we would expect BP’s Replacements to have won 8 to 10 games by now, leaving an aggregate WARP of 25-27. Yet the individual values here add up to 33.9, almost identical to the number of actual wins.

What kind of replacement team would go 1-62?

by Diamondhacks on Jun 11, 2008 4:53 PM EDT up reply actions

What kind of replacement team would go 1-62?

The 1962 Mets? The Cleveland Spiders?

Max Scherzer is all out of bubblegum.

by DbacksSkins on Jun 11, 2008 5:12 PM EDT up reply actions

Ha

The Spideys and Payson’s Patsies were absolute juggernauts compared to shoe’s mythical losers.

Juggernauts, I tell ya.

It’s not that I dont think this stuff has no value, btw. The relative player values look intuitively reasonable. But the numerical representations are very rough around the edges, IMO.

by Diamondhacks on Jun 11, 2008 6:57 PM EDT up reply actions

I agree

While I like EQA and VORP individually, by combining them into WARP I think they introduce too many assumptions in to the mix – things like “replacement level defense” or even a “replacement level hitting pitcher”.

by dahlian on Jun 11, 2008 7:12 PM EDT up reply actions

Maybe we can get an entire team of “Harvey the Rabbits?”

Heck, we could pay them all league minimum and have an awful lot of value there, no? :-)

by foulpole on Jun 13, 2008 1:10 AM EDT up reply actions

I think we did

See 2004, when our median salary was $500K.

by Jim McLennan on Jun 13, 2008 10:48 AM EDT up reply actions

This definition of "replacement level" bears no resemblance to replacement level in the real world. Even if one accepts BP’s fantasy assumptions, the numbers shoe provided still dont come close to adding up.

Oh, c’mon now Diamondhacks, don’t you know that this is real science. ;-)

by foulpole on Jun 13, 2008 1:14 AM EDT up reply actions