Can you name the rookie pitchers who have had a 5-WAR season? by deej

Team-Year	Pitcher	WAR
NYY-1910		10.6
DET-1976		9.3
PHI-1908		9.0
CLE-1911		8.8
BSN-1905		8.8
NYG-1901		8.7
CHW-1913		8.5
PHI-1934		8.2
PHA-1918		8.2
PHI-1911		8.1
CHC-1905		8.0
BRO-1914		7.4
TOR-1986		7.1
PIT-1935		7.0
CHW-1980		6.7
DET-1901		6.7
SFG-1975		6.6
NYM-1968		6.2
CIN-1967		6.1
STL-1953		6.0
ARI-2003		5.9
NYY-1968		5.8
NYM-1972		5.8
NYM-1967		5.8
CIN-1941		5.8
STL-1932		5.8
CHW-1963		5.7
PHA-1936		5.7

Team-Year	Pitcher	WAR
MIN-1980		5.6
CLE-1929		5.6
PHA-1920		5.6
SLB-1934		5.5
DET-1977		5.4
BOS-1962		5.4
CLE-1955		5.4
STL-1941		5.4
CHC-1910		5.4
PHA-1909		5.4
NYY-1927		5.3
KCR-1990		5.2
NYM-1984		5.2
BRO-1949		5.2
BSN-1937		5.2
BOS-1912		5.2
NYY-1911		5.2
SEA-1999		5.1
CLE-1975		5.1
DET-1942		5.1
BRO-1939		5.1
DET-1922		5.1
CHC-1903		5.1
ATL-1983		5.0
BOS-1934		5.0
PIT-1921		5.0
PHA-1901		5.0

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There are 9 comments for this game.
(Warning: comments may contain spoilers)

MLB - Top Rookie Seasons by WAR (Pitchers) Quiz

by deej

Created Feb 12, 2013 in Sports
Game Plays 391

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	luke78:	Feb 13th, 2013 at 05:01 GMT		3 points
	i really want to like WAR as a stat, but i really have so much trouble doing so. nothing against the quiz, but take a look at kevin appiers season and compare it to dwight goodens. WAR says they were equal and i just dont buy it. gooden pitched 33 more innings, with a better era, a WAY better whip, and unreal k per inning ratio, and even had more wins and a better win %. the only stat appier bests gooden in, is a very minor difference in era+. so era+ weighs in THAT heavily? it would seem so by comparing this two seasons. but now, take a look at tom seavers season. gooden bests seaver in era+ by a much bigger margin, and yet WAR says that seaver had a far better season. how is that so? where is the consistency there? surely seaver had to best gooden in other stats then, right? wrong. gooden crushes seaver in whip and in k's too.

	deej:	Feb 13th, 2013 at 06:10 GMT		3 points
	It's all relative to the season, the league, the ballpark, and the defense you had playing behind you. First of all, it is way easier to get strikeouts and have a lower ERA in the NL than the AL. Gooden may have had the better ERA, and more strikeouts, but that doesn't tell the whole story - in 1984 the average NL ERA was 3.59 (Gooden had 2.60, 0.99 lower), but in the 1990 AL it was 3.91 (Appier had 2.76, 1.15 lower). Also, Gooden played in front of a MUCH better defense - that year the Mets' defense was rated 31 total runs better than the Royals in 1990 (which is a lot). Anyway, to answer your question, yes - ERA+ IS the most important factor in determining WAR - it says how likely you are to allow runs, given the environment in which you are pitching. Most of those other stats are just decoaration and haven't really been proven to correlate much with runs allowed. I recommend you read up on WAR's construction. A good primer is here http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained_pitch.shtml . It's been my experience that 99% of people who complain on the internet about WAR haven't bothered to even read up on how it is constructed. If you read up on it and want to take issue with its construction then feel free, that's just good discourse, but if you don't even bother to know what you're talking about then your argument is pretty weak.

	luke78:	Feb 13th, 2013 at 14:53 GMT		1 point
	appier's era+ was 139, to gooden's 137. which i would call a relatively minor difference. now take a look at seaver's season. seaver had a 122 era +. i would call 137 compared to a 122 a pretty SIGNIFICANT difference. so if era+ was so crucial in making appier's season as good as gooden's, why then is seaver's season significantly better than both of theirs, according to war? same goes with john montefusco. he has an era+ of 133, yet a FAR better WAR and than either gooden or appier. i have tried to read up on war, and i find the explanations cryptic at best. im sure that i would complain about its computation, if i didnt feel like i was looking at a calculus problem. i realize that the POINT of such statistics lays in their complexity, however, there has to be an easier way to atleast explain it. furthermore, i SHOULD be able to atleast glean some sort of sense out of the final result by looking at the more traditional stats. we may now know that the more traditional stats dont tell as comprehensive a story as we once thought, but that doesnt mean they are meaningless. WHIP will always be very important in my opinion. higher whip, higher era, generally. this makes sense. gooden led the majors in whip that season. seaver wasnt even in the top 10 in the NL. montefusco was 9th in the NL.

	deej:	Feb 13th, 2013 at 16:52 GMT		1 point
	well what WAR does it try to figure out as much as possible how much is the individual pitcher's responsibility, and tease out the league factors, the defense behind him, etc. The problem is that a lot of traditional stats are highly flawed. For example, WHIP - walks are more or less 100% up to the pitcher, but hits are VERY luck-driven. Once a ball is put in play, you are more or less at the mercy of random chance (he can hit it right on the nose but right at someone, he can hit a weak dribbler but beat it out for an infield single) and your defense (maybe Ozzie Smith makes the tough play, maybe a lousy shortstop doesn't). WHIP is less useful in terms of evaluating how good (not lucky!) an individual pitcher is, than looking separately at BB% (walks issued per plate appearance-against), K% (K per PA), and BABIP (batting average on balls put in play - this is a measure of how lucky a pitcher is because once a ball is put in play, it is basically random chance). WAR takes these stats, figures out how each measures up to league, ballpark and defense, figures out how much each walks, strikeout, home run surrendered, and ball put in play allowed either prevents or allows a run to score, then figures out how many runs it takes to equal a win in the context, and that's your WAR. So if you are set on using traditional stats, I'd say ERA+, K% and BB% are probably good ones to hang on to.

	luke78:	Feb 13th, 2013 at 18:24 GMT		1 point
	i agree that walks are solely on the pitchers, and SOMETIMES hits can be the result of bad defenses. but if you care to look at gooden vs montefusco, gooden walked less, along with giving up less hits. im not trying to have a all out debate, and im actually not against more complex statistics. but, many times they simply do not add up. fangraphs and baseball reference have different formula's that often dont line up at all. each site im sure could justify their formula's til they are blue in the face, but that doesnt mean they are valid. for example, fangraphs has orel hershisers war in 1988 as a 4.0. thats the 26th best pitcher that season. baseballreference has his war at 6.9 for that season. 4th best in the majors. i tend to lean toward baseballrefernce on this one, but doesnt the fact that there is SO much discrepancy between the two, kind of point toward the idea that either way war is a far from perfect calculation and statistic, yet some people seem to use it as gospel.

	deej:	Feb 13th, 2013 at 20:56 GMT		1 point
	It's very true that they are different. The fact that they are different though is expected since they are on two different scales - you will find a large difference between WAR for most players (though usually Fangraphs is higher). I think that is thinking about WAR the wrong way, though. WAR isn't an absolute with a right answer, it's more of a framework, and there's more than one way to approach the problem - kind of like how we have multiple ways of measuring scholastic aptitude, the SAT and the ACT. They have different names, they're on different scales, but they're both trying to tap into the same construct.

	luke78:	Feb 13th, 2013 at 21:08 GMT		1 point
	i imagine it kinda sounds like i have something against your quiz. i dont. you didnt calculate the answers, you simply constructed the quiz. some people are SO anti-WAR that they will also bash the messenger. i hope it doesnt sound that way coming from me. i typically will take these WAR quizzes for what they are. i dont HAVE to agree with it in order to take the quiz, and i can typically just plug in the names and they will atleast make SOMEWHAT sense, but every once in a while an answer shows up that i really just cant see, or an answer is missing that i cant believe. there was a few guys missing on this one that i was gonna let slide, but when i typed in gooden, that was the clincher for me to see him so far down the list.

	deej:	Feb 14th, 2013 at 01:23 GMT		1 point
	I don't think you are mad at me, don't worry :) This is all good discussion to have. Honestly though, I think that WAR does a much better job at picking Rookie of the Year than the BBWAA. Really, this quiz shouldn't anger you as much as taking an actual ROY quiz.

	luke78:	Feb 14th, 2013 at 01:45 GMT		1 point
	well, i think we know that a lot of the awards are awarded rather arbitrarily.....thank god the cy young has atleast started to migrate away from such a high emphasis on won/lost records....