Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Why You Should Worry About Stats

Ron Neyer ESPN Chat:

Bob (Seattle) And BP has Jeter at 2.8 WAR. So BR has Jeter at 1.2 and FanG at 1.9. If three different fielding stats result in a WAR difference of 1.6 over 1/3 of a season, it seems that there has to be a fundamental flaw in how the defensive stats are being calculated. Maybe one of them is right - there's certainly a big enough spread to ensure that one is more right than the other.

Rob Neyer (12:46 PM) Well, the other big "problem" -- bigger, probably -- is that R stands for Replacement and everyone seems to have a different definition of "replacement". Might as well stick with comparing Jeter to other shortstops, and acknowledge that he's having a real good year in a bad year (so far) for shortstops. I think it's also fair to compare his WAR this season to his WAR in previous seasons, and acknowledge that he's not been up to his usual standard.

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