Jason Ross

That gif should be taken with a thick, slathering of sarcasm. Also there's a chewy, sarcastic, nougaty center, too.

No. What it shows is how much more difficult it is to hit baseballs today. Pitchers throw faster than ever, the ball moves more than ever and hitters face more pitchers than ever. Hitters didn't get worse. Pitching got exponentially better.

Familiarity does not equal understanding. In the nicest possible way, you have displayed time and time again today that you lack an understanding of what it's doing. If you don't understand why fWAR is telling you PCA's 2026 is so much better than Dawson's '87 than you simply can't understand, foundational, what WAR was created to do: to neutralize for position, league and era. And you don't understand how they're getting there. For example, you act like fWAR is supposed to care about a singular pitch type, or factor in how he "revolutionized" something. If you, at all, understood fWAR you'd realize how weird it is to even bring that up. So, please, if you're going to whine about something, do your best to first understand that something. We are also rapidly approaching the "I think this is just a troll" job with how little you seemingly want to better understand, as well, though I'll give you the benefit of the doubt still.

I wasn't calling your world view simple, I was simplifying your long answer into a short one. You're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy here. "WAR can't be right. For WAR to be right, someone needs to explain to me why he's 3x more valuable without using WAR". My brother, WAR is the proof. You just don't/won't accept something that goes again your point-of-view. I broke down how Pete is incredibly valuable and why he's worth more already. You can go back and look at that. Beyond that, WAR is proprietary: the formula is not public. And websites have different calculations and inputs (we do know some inputs. Ex. fWAR uses wRC+ and bWAR uses OPS+). If you want to point out flaws within WAR, I think it's very easy to do. I can tell you why fWAR is superior to bWAR (the inputs). I can tell you that the difference between 3.4 fWAR and 3.6 fWAR is virtual and not worth debating. These are real flaws. They also don't take away the efficacy of WAR (no one has claimed it to be 100% perfect). But your complaint is so foundational that it can't be squared away and that those flaws are immaterial. I'd really recommend you do some reading on what WAR is. Until you understand fundamentally what it is, nothing will matter.

Your worldview is simple "There is no way Pete Crow-Armstrong could being having a season that is statistically three times more valuable than Andre Dawson" and you're having. hard time squaring how that could be possible. But notice; you've provided nothing outside of your world view, your opinion as to why it's flawed. If you have an argument about the actual statistic (like the inputs, or whatever), then maybe you'll find an audience for that argument. But just flailing against the statistic with nothing but anecdote and conjecture won't get you far. Let me try to explain to what fWAR is trying to say, and what you're simply missing. 1. In 1987, league offense was much better across the board. League average OPS was .747 and in 2026 league average is .719. What Pete is doing is much more impressive when we consider the scoring environment. Dawson was 24% better than average and PCA is 59% better than average. It's not even close. Put another way: Dawson was the 41st best offensive player in 1987 in MLB. Pete is the second. (Pete would have been the fourth best player offensive in '87) 2. Andre Dawson was a RF, and Pete Crow-Armstrong was a CF. CF is just a vastly more valuable position; it requires skills and tools that RF does not. fWAR gives proper boost for positions. RF is one of the most readily found positions and CF one of the hardest. 3. Dawson was an okay runner. Pete Crow-Armstrong is an elite one. 4. PCA is a generational fielder. The type of defensive player we see pop up at his position maybe every 20 years. Dawson in 1987 was, with the tools we have merely "okay" defensively. When you factor in the positional aspect, it skews it greatly. And once again, it's not even close. fWAR is trying to tell you "Dude, you're missing the point". Pete Crow-Armstrong is another layer of the atmosphere in terms of what he's doing when you take into the big picture. Instead of fighting back against fWAR, maybe try to understand why PCA is that much better. It'll give you a greater appreciation for the history you're currently witnessing and help put into perspective what you thought you once knew.

Honestly, this just reads as "I don't really understand WAR because it goes against my world view". We can find some flaws within WAR, we can find different ways to calculate it (bWAR and fWAR for example). Nothing is perfect, there is no silver bullet. But I think it's probably best to start from an understanding of fWAR and what it does before we start throwing anecdotal "what aboutisms" around.

Are you sure about that? The Cubs have the 7th highest percentage of runs scored on home runs, this is true. But they've also scored 458 runs on the season via the not-home run. The Cubs have the third highest wRC+ in leverage situations, and the 6th best batting average. They have the 10th best wRC+ with runners in scoring position, and the most home runs with runners in scoring position. They would almost assuredly score less runs via the home run if they just stopped hitting so many damn home runs with runners in scoring position...but that's not a bad thing. Part of the issue here is a self fulfilling prophecy. The Cubs have a high percentage of runs scored on home runs, but that's also because they lead the league in home runs. The Brewers score a lot of runs without home runs because they are second to last in home runs. If you want to see a team who struggles to score without home runs, look at the Yankees. The Yankees have scored 697 runs on the season and have hit the second most home runs on the year (just two behind the Cubs). They have scored 363 runs via not-home run. The Cubs have scored almost 100 runs more than the Yankees via not home runs even though they have only hit two more dingers. That's a team with an issue. I know, there have been some ugly graphics earlier in the year about the Cubs left on base numbers (because the Cubs get on base so often) and some data where they may struggle at times to get runner in from third with less than two outs, but we're becoming single issue voters if that's going to be where we plant out flag (here's the thing; there's so much data that you can almost always find a single data point to support any side if you look for it). The Cubs are a dynamic offense and hit a lot of home runs, but they just score a lot on their own. It's a feature. It's not a bug.

I hear ya. I just think if that's the reason you prefer one over the other, ultimately, you prefer neither. For the record, I also prefer neither. The Cubs are a better team than both, pitching be damned.

His last 22 IP: 8.59 ERA. He'd fit right into the Cubs pen.

Oh man, former Cubs' farmhand Jared Young. Damn. Hope he's okay.

I think worrying about the ballpark the Cubs play in is losing the forest for the trees, here. Opposing players are much more impactful than park factors. Citizen Bank is 3rd for home runs and Petco is 11th for HR's over the last 3 years, To put this in another way of looking at it: Hitters hit the ball 2.9 feet further than average at Citizen's Bank (this year). At Petco it's 6.9 feet below average. I'm not going to really worry much about 10 feet. Last year? It was 1 foot above average at Citizen's Bank and under four feet less than average at Petco (most year's it's around these levels). So five feet last year. This isn't worth a bother.

"The Cubs have an above average offense" My guy, they've scored 30 runs more than any other team in baseball. You don't have to get carried away. They have the best offense in baseball. It's not particularly close.

I'm bummed that the games are this weekend and not next. I've got some stuff this weekend going on and don't think I'll be able to get up to one of the Cincy games. Next week I'm on fall break.