07ag said:
how does war work? walker has basically the same offensive stats as last year, when he had 2.6 war
It's a proprietary algorithm meant to capture a player's value above replacement level players.
Fangraphs and Baseball Reference are the primary measures people use for WAR, although ESPN has tried to get its version in there too.
Here's Baseball Reference's description:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained.shtmlQuote:
. . . The idea behind the WAR framework is that we want to know how much better a player is than a player that would typically be available to replace that player. We start by comparing the player to average in a variety of venues, then compare our theoretical replacement player to the average player and add the two results together.
There is no one way to determine WAR. There are hundreds of steps to make this calculation, and dozens of places where reasonable people can disagree on the best way to implement a particular part of the framework. We have taken the utmost care and study at each step in the process, and believe all of our choices are well reasoned and defensible. . . .
So WAR is looking at everything (glove, baserunning, range, etc.), not just his bat.
His stats aren't as good as last season though, when he had a .803 OPS and 120 OPS+ compared to this season's .701 OPS and 93 OPS+.
So he's dropped from a pretty good bat to a below average one.
Last season his percentages were 4.7% HR (homerun), 24.1% SO (strikeout), and 10% BB (walk).
This season those numbers were all much worse: 3.8% HR, 28% SO, and 6.3% BB.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/walkech02.shtmlHe's had a sharp drop off with his glove too.
Last season he had a .1 dWAR (defensive WAR) and 4 DRS (defensive runs saved).
This season he has a -1.4 dWAR and -5 DRS.
He's been worse in almost every way compared to his 6 year run as as starter in Arizona. We just have to hope that it's a blip due to injury, pressing, etc., and not an Abreu like downturn since we're on the hook for 2 more years.