Fun with WAR

Captain Obvious takes a look at WAR

I believe in some of the advanced numbers more than others and with apologies to spin rate and exit velocity, WAR is the grandaddy of them all.

I’ll cite it frequently here, though I realize it isn’t perfect and never will be, at least in my lifetime.

But it is a way to compare and contrast players and teams and “mess around with numbers”, which is something I like to do.

While I haven’t done a “deep” analysis and what I’m about to share isn’t “mathematically sound” and generally should be obvious to any slightly more than casual baseball observer, it is nice to see it in print, at least for me.

Some facts about team WAR for the 2022 season:

• The top 10 teams in WAR (batting and pitching combined) made the playoffs and all 12 teams that made the playoffs were in the top 14 in combined WAR.

• The top 7 teams in batting WAR made the playoffs, as did 11 of the top 12, with the outlier being the Rays (15).

• The top 5 teams in pitching WAR made the playoffs, as did 8 of the top 9.

• Lowest pitching WAR for a playoff team was the Cardinals (18th).

• Lowest batting WAR in the playoffs was the Rays (15th), as mentioned above.

• The two teams in the top 12 in combined WAR that didn’t make the playoffs were the Brewers and White Sox, who were 11th and 12th, respectively, with playoff participants Mariners coming in 13th and Rays 14th.

• To the shock of no one, the Nationals were the worst combined WAR, with the Tigers being the worst offense and Nationals worst pitching.

• 4 teams won 100 games or more and they were all in the top 5, with the other top 5 WAR winning 99 games.

Green = Division Winner (Mets and Braves tied) Yellow = Wild Card

Some averages for MLB:

• 33.7 per team, 19.2 Batting 14.5 pitching

• Wins per WAR 2.41 for all MLB. Better teams are generally below 2.0.

• Average WAR per game, per team .208.

It’s no surprise the better teams have higher WAR, but it does show numerically where a team falls short - if the Brewers had just a little bit better pitching and man, the Tigers were horrid on offense.

Most people already knew those two things, but this helps quantify it.

I’m not sure what to make of the data, but I have a couple ideas headed into the season.

One would be a WAR+ metric (maybe there’s already such a thing), which would put the Astros with a WAR+ of 148 for batting and a ridiculous 203 for pitching. Meaning their batting WAR is 48% higher than the league average and their pitching WAR is 103% higher.

I’ll work on it.

Thanks for reading.