Adjusted Mets Position Player WAR

by James Kannengieser on Nov 20, 2009 12:00 PM EST

This is a post I prepared shortly after the season ended but never put up for whatever reason. The recent Hardball Times article by Jeremy Greenhouse "Criminals of WAR", which correctly posits that we shouldn't be slaves to Fangraphs WAR, provided a reminder that this information was sitting in my hard drive. Using Fangraphs WAR as a baseline, I incorporated baserunning and other non-UZR defensive metrics to calculate adjusted WAR for 2009 Mets position players. Here are the components:

Batting: Identical to Fangraphs, park-adjusted wRAA.
Fielding: For non-catchers I averaged UZR and John Dewan's Plus/Minus metric. For catchers I used devil_fingers's numbers from Driveline Mechanics.
Replacement: Identical to Fangraphs, the adjustment for replacement based on playing time.
Positional: Identical to Fangraphs, the adjustment based on position.
Baserunning: Baseball Prospectus's baserunning stat, EqBRR, less runs from stolen bases (EqSBR) since stolen bases and caught stealings are already accounted for in the batting component.

Rather than posting the whole thing here, I uploaded the data to a Google Doc. Here are the top 5 players whose adjusted WAR (AWAR) increased the most as compared to Fangraphs WAR (FGWAR).

Rank	Player	AWAR	FGWAR	Diff
1	Daniel Murphy	1.2	0.6	0.6
2	Angel Pagan	3.4	2.8	0.6
3	Jeff Francoeur	0.9	0.4	0.5
4	Anderson Hernandez	0.1	-0.3	0.4
5	Ryan Church	0.8	0.4	0.4

Comments:

David Wright was dreadful in the field this year but terrific on the basepaths.
Angel Pagan, Daniel Murphy and Fernando Tatis's values increased mainly due to high defensive ratings from Plus/Minus: +16, +10 and +9, respectively. I stopped to think about having Tatis on the team next year but it's probably for the best that he isn't.
UZR and Plus/Minus have historically agreed on Jeff Francoeur's defense but this year they strongly differed. In the end, it seems like he and Ryan Church provided similar value to the Mets in 2009, with Francoeur having more playing time.
Jeremy Reed, Carlos Delgado and Josh Thole lost the most value between revised WAR and Fangraphs WAR, but it wasn't much.
My fellow nerds and I will now retire to the nerdery with our calculators.

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Comments

So,

does this mean the Mets ’09 YE audit is over?

the number one issue facing the Mets is finding that one guy who’s going to say "get on my shoulders and ride me to the championship."

by Sokojoe on Nov 20, 2009 12:22 PM EST reply actions

"He's definitely mixing it into his repertoire. That's French for 'repertoire' " - Keith Hernandez

by Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright on Nov 20, 2009 12:41 PM EST reply actions

Just curious

Where does fangraphs incorporate their equivalent of EqSBR? Is it under “Batting” so that Batting is Park Adjusted wRAA + SBR? Because wRAA is just wOBA converted for playing time.

"All energy flows according to the whims of the great magnet

What a fool I was to defy him"

-HST

by Mark Himmelstein on Nov 20, 2009 1:08 PM EST reply actions