The Crazy PCA Stats and Tidbits Thread

[cl smooth]

1 hour ago, sneakypower said:

assuming that this is a good faith pursuit, the main reason for this is basically that MLB likely juiced baseballs in 1987, and course-corrected the next year; hitting 50 HR while impressive is made less valuable in a diluted run-scoring environment where about every good player topped 20 HR

if you google rabbit ball you'll find many good writeups about it

yep! 1987 was the "homer happy season!"

[Rob]

There is plenty of room to talk about WAR critically. We can talk about whether we should be measuring pitching outcomes versus their predictive components (rWAR v. fWAR). We can argue whether the positional adjustment is properly calibrated. Or what defensive statistics are best to be included within. Hell, I don't agree with it, but one could mount an impassioned argument that the hitting component of WAR should be replaced almost entirely by WPA.

Nobody in this thread is saying that WAR is perfect. Or that a gap of 0.1 between a couple players means one is clearly better than the other. 

But WAR is currently -- without a doubt -- the absolute best way to measure players against one another. Particularly when comparing one era to another.

I loved the Hawk. I grew up watching him. But the truth of the matter is he's a borderline Hall-of-Famer who didn't deserve the MVP he won with the Cubs. His best years were all in Montreal, where the turf destroyed his knees. He was never the same player after that. And since he was allergic to taking a walk, he needed the speed to be a true MVP caliber player.

There's no shame in that. There's not a baseball-loving kid alive who wouldn't love to have Dawson's career.

But not wanting to acknowledge that doesn't make WAR prima facie invalid. It's still valid. PCA's best season is better than anything Dawson ever did. By a country mile.

[sneakypower]

i will say that it's somewhat apparent that WAR is treated pretty much as gospel within baseball front offices anymore, and the best publicly-available projection systems can and do very closely predict free agent contracts now simply by forecasting WAR, and that most trades* will match up more or less evenly by the same tools

*except where palpable desperation enters the picture

[chopsx9]

1 hour ago, Rob said:

There is plenty of room to talk about WAR critically. 

Nobody in this thread is saying that WAR is perfect. Or that a gap of 0.1 between a couple players means one is clearly better than the other. 

But WAR is currently -- without a doubt -- the absolute best way to measure players against one another. Particularly when comparing one era to another.

 And since he was allergic to taking a walk, he needed the speed to be a true MVP caliber player.

There's no shame in that. There's not a baseball-loving kid alive who wouldn't love to have Dawson's career.

But not wanting to acknowledge that doesn't make WAR prima facie invalid. It's still valid. PCA's best season is better than anything Dawson ever did. By a country mile.

I'm going to nit pick on a couple of things. 

One isn't that PCA's current season is better than any of Dawson's.  I don't think you even need to look at WAR to get justification of that - other than maybe to get a reference point for defense. 

 If you extrapolate Dawson's strike shortened 1981 season to a near full season, he exceeds 10 WAR. Who knows if that would have actually been the result - but he was on the right track.  He has a couple other seasons where he gets close to 7  So I'm taking exception with the "a country mile" designation.  Again is 2026's season by PCA better than any of Dawson's?  Absolutely.

Was Dawson allergic to taking a walk?  Allergic seems pretty strong.  Dunston was allergic to taking a walk.  Buckner was allergic to taking a walk.  Could Dawson have taken a few more?  Sure.  His lifetime OBP is .323.  I looked up league OBP from 1976 to 1996 and came up with .325.  So over the lifetime of his career Dawson got on base slightly less than the MLB average.  2%  So in terms of not making outs Dawson was ever so slightly below league average.  I'll take that in conjunction with the rest of his numbers.

For WAR it's not only that a gap of .1 doesn't mean anything; much larger differences are not reliable.  Fangraphs completely dismisses a difference of .3 and has to go to a much larger difference before they're willing to make any sort of proclamation  - "However, a 6.4 WAR player and a 4.1 WAR player are different enough that you can have a high level of confidence that the first player has been more valuable to their team over the given season."  Not definitely, not absolutely - but a high level of confidence.  This is from Fangraphs, the org that actually calculates the number.  Baseball prospectus, I believe, says there is likely a 20% margin of error in their calculations.  There is nothing wrong with WAR, for what it is; but it is not absolute in its nature - the organizations that calculate it are very up front about this.

Is Dawson a inner circle HOFer?  Absolutely not.  Deed he need a 20 year career to get in?  Probably.  Is he a HOFer?  I think so.

[chopsx9]

2 hours ago, sneakypower said:

i will say that it's somewhat apparent that WAR is treated pretty much as gospel within baseball front offices anymore, and the best publicly-available projection systems can and do very closely predict free agent contracts now simply by forecasting WAR, and that most trades* will match up more or less evenly by the same tools

*except where palpable desperation enters the picture

I don't think this is correct at all.  I think most front offices have in house propriety metrics that they utilize.  Also I think if you used WAR to project Hoerner's contract it far exceeds his actual contract.

[bukie]

Once more, this is the PCA thread, the nitpick metrics thread is over there.

[UMFan83]

Wait holy horsefeathers, I haven't checked this thread in a week.  We are STILL talking about Dawson vs PCA?  This is a very 2005-2016 style pedantic NSBB discussion, bravo.

[We Got The Whole 9]

Pete both hit his 40th and stole his 40th off of Phillips. Thats pretty awesome.

[17 Seconds]

he needs one more big game to pass hornsby's 11 fWAR

[squally1313]

31st best offensive season of all time at the moment. a big series (at least 0.5 fWAR, maybe 0.6) would get him past Judge's best seasons and into top 20 all time, which would mean only bested by Babe, Bonds, Gehrig, Hornsby, Wagner, Williams, Mantle, Cobb, Foxx. Or, said another way, would be the best non-Bonds season in 70 years. Top 50 is guaranteed, would have to really faceplant to fall out of the top 40. 

[Bull]

On 9/24/2026 at 11:13 AM, Javy Is Still A Cub said:

I don't see how someone talking about WAR critically is a "troll" - I do see how it makes me an infidel to the fundamentalists. However, I'm going to assume the impossible will happen: this will be the last word on the issue, which allows me to go back to lurking and this thread to get back to PCA. I think we can all agree on that (unless your'e one of those "march or die" posters). 

I have things to do after all, and that includes getting better at actually playing baseball: In my 30+ men's baseball league I'm batting .484/.583/.677 for the entire year, but there's room for improvement. That doesn't include Sunday's 2/2, 2 sacrifice flies (both rbis), RBI double.

That performance at the plate wasn't anywhere as important to the win and to the team as the 4-inning, 1 ER save I pitched... but for people who believe PCA's great 2026 season is worth more than Bruce Sutter's entire, MVP-as-a-pitcher winning tenure as a Cub, lol, I can't spend the time explaining why that's wrong any more than I can try to suss out why Dawson's 1987 .287/.328/.568 league leading 49 Hr and 137 RBIs is only worth 3.5 fWAR, but his 1988 .309/.344/.504 24 HR 79 Rbis is worth 4.2 fWAR, when they both played 153+ games and had the same (according to fWAR, LOL) near-neutral defense. The answer is: the WAR emperor has no clothes, but back to PCA!!!!! 

Thank you for your attention to this matter, and go Cubs! 

you said that you are talking about WAR critically. You aren’t. Critical thinking and critique requires analysis, synthesis, evaluation and sometimes creative alternative. You aren’t even demonstrating knowledge and understanding. There’s a difference between being critical and engaging critically.
 

You could have cited some research above that suggests WAR underestimates high-leverage relief to make your point about Sutter. But you didn’t.

 

 

[bukie]

 

[squally1313]

https://defector.com/pete-crow-armstrong-has-answered-every-question

Some insane symmetry on the top comment on this article

[sneakypower]

10.5 WAR last 136 GP

[Javy Is Still A Cub]

"You could have cited some research above that suggests WAR underestimates high-leverage relief to make your point about Sutter. But you didn’t."

Yeah... I don't want to get into it. Went to the cages today - got on the mound to work on control of my FB and change (slider and curve are good). (This is making me late now!) I dunno, someone else can play Ishmael/Infidel on that one. 

Like I said, my team would all say - to a man - that my 4 ip, 1ER game-ending save was way, way more valuable than going 2/2, 2b, 3rbi day last Sunday. That should give people something to reflect on, I'd think? Or we're all idiots? Fine.

It's a game centered around the pitcher - he gets more outs than any fielder, duh! (people don't think like this often enough) - and yet PCA's 2026 is worth more than the Sutter's whole CAREER.... Yeah... naw. 

Don't get me started on Cal Raleigh losing the MVP last year despite being the only catcher to hit 60 homers ever. Do you you know how hard catching is on the body? It's the toughest guy on the team. My catcher got knocked out by a foul tip last year and he's too tough for his own good - fuggetaboutit. Anyway, the catcher fields - what - 150 chances a game?! And Judge in RF making 4 outs a game and not booting a few singles and a double is anywhere on par with what Raleigh is doing defensively? Play with a bad catcher - then you'll see how it's so incredibly vital. And the guy hits 60 homers - when the closest in 125 years ever had was 45 IIRC -  while Judge is smelling dandelions in RF 93% of the game? Evil WAR struck again.... 

Very interesting stuff about the 1987 rabbit ball year - had no idea. Good stuff on this board!

It comes to something like this: the idea of the "replacement player". This concept is inhuman - the replacement player is not a human, after all, but a concept.

Well, the game isn't played by concepts. Telling me PCA is twice as good this year at CF as the second guy (Pages I assume) - no player believes that. PCA 10-15% better, which is a lot at that level - ok. Twice as good this year?!! He'd have to be basically playing LF and CF all by himself, which he's not. But PCA has double the score of some inhuman replacement player somewhere who is abstract nothingness, so people say "twice as good as Pages!" No way. Pages is fantastic. PCA is fantastic-plus, sure - maybe even 20%, fine - but double? This year is triple Handy Dandy Andy Dawson 1987? Better than all of Sutter? Remember the "Sandberg game" - he called it the "Bruce Sutter" game, cuz it was insane to hit 2 HR off Sutter; he hits two off anyone else, nobody would remember it.

I want to close by saying one thing to this replacement player: You are not ANYWHERE as good as an average MLB player! What pretension! In fact, you are nothing! And you definitely got no Ws! 

 

Edited 5 hours ago by Javy Is Still A Cub
Don't know why you need to know this? You trust the WAR science - trust the Javy magic.

[Derwood]

[Tangled Up in Plaid]

Jesus horsefeathers christ is there a way to mute a thread 

[17 Seconds]

what the horsefeathers is wrong with this guy

[Bobson Dugnutt]

3 hours ago, Javy Is Still A Cub said:

"You could have cited some research above that suggests WAR underestimates high-leverage relief to make your point about Sutter. But you didn’t."

Yeah... I don't want to get into it. Went to the cages today - got on the mound to work on control of my FB and change (slider and curve are good). (This is making me late now!) I dunno, someone else can play Ishmael/Infidel on that one. 

Like I said, my team would all say - to a man - that my 4 ip, 1ER game-ending save was way, way more valuable than going 2/2, 2b, 3rbi day last Sunday. That should give people something to reflect on, I'd think? Or we're all idiots? Fine.

It's a game centered around the pitcher - he gets more outs than any fielder, duh! (people don't think like this often enough) - and yet PCA's 2026 is worth more than the Sutter's whole CAREER.... Yeah... naw. 

Don't get me started on Cal Raleigh losing the MVP last year despite being the only catcher to hit 60 homers ever. Do you you know how hard catching is on the body? It's the toughest guy on the team. My catcher got knocked out by a foul tip last year and he's too tough for his own good - fuggetaboutit. Anyway, the catcher fields - what - 150 chances a game?! And Judge in RF making 4 outs a game and not booting a few singles and a double is anywhere on par with what Raleigh is doing defensively? Play with a bad catcher - then you'll see how it's so incredibly vital. And the guy hits 60 homers - when the closest in 125 years ever had was 45 IIRC -  while Judge is smelling dandelions in RF 93% of the game? Evil WAR struck again.... 

Very interesting stuff about the 1987 rabbit ball year - had no idea. Good stuff on this board!

It comes to something like this: the idea of the "replacement player". This concept is inhuman - the replacement player is not a human, after all, but a concept.

Well, the game isn't played by concepts. Telling me PCA is twice as good this year at CF as the second guy (Pages I assume) - no player believes that. PCA 10-15% better, which is a lot at that level - ok. Twice as good this year?!! He'd have to be basically playing LF and CF all by himself, which he's not. But PCA has double the score of some inhuman replacement player somewhere who is abstract nothingness, so people say "twice as good as Pages!" No way. Pages is fantastic. PCA is fantastic-plus, sure - maybe even 20%, fine - but double? This year is triple Handy Dandy Andy Dawson 1987? Better than all of Sutter? Remember the "Sandberg game" - he called it the "Bruce Sutter" game, cuz it was insane to hit 2 HR off Sutter; he hits two off anyone else, nobody would remember it.

I want to close by saying one thing to this replacement player: You are not ANYWHERE as good as an average MLB player! What pretension! In fact, you are nothing! And you definitely got no Ws!