Does WAR overate Babe Ruth?

[Hendrix]

I know I could some flack for using the word 'overated' with Ruth. The guy may have been a HOF level pitcher, and that isn't even factoring in that he was probably the best slugger of all time.

But, I was watching a documentary on Ruth the other day, and some of the comments seemed a little over the top. For example one of the people in the documentary said that he was hitting 500+ ft homeruns while he was still in school before even playing in the minors . I mean, maybe it's plausable, as he was a great hitter, but he was still a teenager. Bryce Harper did barely do it once with a 502 ft shot, but it was with an aluminum bat. I don't know maybe it's plausible, but seems kind of unlikely for him to be regularly doing this as a teenager with a wood bat. I'm also kind of having a hard time seeing a high school team in 1912 bothering to accurately measure Hr's.

Fangraphs has Ruth as the all time leader in WAR. In the calculation they have him at -23.4 for base running, and +79 for fielding. So +55.6 combined in those 2 departments that are significantly impacted by athletic ability. For reference sake, Roberto Alomar's fielding and baserunning totaled +27.8 in those 2 departments over his career. You can't take anything away from his stick, but I have a hard time seeing an overweight guy like Ruth being this good in these 2 departments. There isn't a ton of video of him at the time, but some of the videos they showed in the documentary during 1925 when he was 30 I got the impression that he was out of shape even then let alone when he was late 30's.

As a 39 year old obese man in 1935 they have him as a +6 for fielding, and a -1.4 for baserunning (+4.6 total). I'm trying to picture what a 39 year old overweight athlete like Prince Fielder would look like tracking down balls in the outfield, and on the base paths and I'm picturing a pretty slow dude, let alone someone that would grade out as a 'positive' here. I mean, in 1932 he had only 18 combined doubles+triples, as well as going 2 for 4 in SB's Considering he was playing in a field with a 490 ft CF fence, and had a monster bat, you would think someone that grades out good enough to get a 'positive' combined base-running and fielding total would be enough of an athlete to hustle over to 2nd or 3rd a bit more, no?

I mean, if you stuck some of the 'new school' over weight players like Prince, Cecil, Vaughn out in the outfield for 20 years till they were 40 years old, they'd probably be posting -200 scores for baserunning + fielding would they not? And, if you were to subtract 250 RAR off Babe, all of a sudden he's down in 5th all time for WAR.

Anyways, I was wondering about other peoples thoughts on the subject. No doubt he's one of the best ever to play the game. But does the myth, and WAR surpass reality here?

[Skin Blues]

WAR doesn't really work with old time players. You can't measure their defense and base running.

And just looking at his hitting, yes, he really was that much better than everybody else, or rather, that much better at helping his team win. Nobody was really trying to hit homeruns except him. He changed the way the game was played. So it's not so much that he was an amazing baseball player, which he definitely was, but that everybody else was so terrible/inefficient. Whereas in this day and age, every single minutiae of the game is scrutinized and analyzed that you can't get such a big advantage like that over everybody else.

[MikeM]

Wins *above replacement*.

[Hendrix]

WAR doesn't really work with old time players. You can't measure their defense and base running.

No doubt you can't get super accurate. But, the batting, positional, and replacement calculations I imagine should be fine. So, then isn't just a matter of getting some decent 'estimates' for the baserunning, and fielding sections to plug in to the formula and get a decent 'ballpark' idea of what his WAR should be? I'm having a hard time seeing how +55 would be anywhere in the ballpark of a decent career estimate for baserunning + fielding.

[Hendrix]

Wins *above replacement*.

The 'replacement' part of the equation is something else entirely.

For fielding and baserunning they have him posted as a +4.6 as a 39 year old, overweight, out of shape man. So, above average compared to other major leaguers at those things. I don't see how someone with those characteristics could be anything other then one of the worst players in baseball at those specific skills, let alone above average. I mean he wasn't a superhero.

[Skin Blues]

WAR doesn't really work with old time players. You can't measure their defense and base running.

No doubt you can't get super accurate. But, the batting, positional, and replacement calculations I imagine should be fine. So, then isn't just a matter of getting some decent 'estimates' for the baserunning, and fielding sections to plug in to the formula and get a decent 'ballpark' idea of what his WAR should be? I'm having a hard time seeing how +55 would be anywhere in the ballpark of a decent career estimate for baserunning + fielding.

Do they really have play by play data back that far? Maybe they do, I don't know. Can't imagine it'd be very reliable from team to team, stadium to stadium. The base running component of WAR is not to do with stolen bases, it's to do with advancing on hits. First to third on a single, tagging up and advancing on fly balls, etc. Can't see how there would be any real reliable league-wide data for those years. As for fielding, you can have positional value but you can't really tell how bad a guy sucks. We currently have detailed batted ball data for every single play and we still can't get anywhere near accurate defensive ratings without like 500 games played, and there are major discrepancies between DRS and UZR. I would put very little stock into the defense or baserunning components of WAR from games played almost 100 years ago.

[Hendrix]

Do they really have play by play data back that far? Maybe they do, I don't know. Can't imagine it'd be very reliable from team to team, stadium to stadium. The base running component of WAR is not to do with stolen bases, it's to do with advancing on hits. First to third on a single, tagging up and advancing on fly balls, etc. Can't see how there would be any real reliable league-wide data for those years. As for fielding, you can have positional value but you can't really tell how bad a guy sucks. We currently have detailed batted ball data for every single play and we still can't get anywhere near accurate defensive ratings without like 500 games played, and there are major discrepancies between DRS and UZR. I would put very little stock into the defense or baserunning components of WAR from games played almost 100 years ago.

Yeah, for sure you can't put a lot of stock into those components.

I imagine they utilized the data they do have (which isn't really a great indicator) to come up with some sort of 'baserunning', and 'fielding' rating. Stuff like fielding % maybe, and the accuracy of these components of WAR are probably similar to that of catching defense currently is with WAR (not good).

It just seems like Ruth's ratings in these catagories have got to be way off. And, if you replace the defense, and baserunning #'s that they gave him with something a little more feasable, he would rank way behind Bonds in all time WAR, and not as the highest of all time.

[joseph235]

Do they really have play by play data back that far? Maybe they do, I don't know. Can't imagine it'd be very reliable from team to team, stadium to stadium. The base running component of WAR is not to do with stolen bases, it's to do with advancing on hits. First to third on a single, tagging up and advancing on fly balls, etc. Can't see how there would be any real reliable league-wide data for those years. As for fielding, you can have positional value but you can't really tell how bad a guy sucks. We currently have detailed batted ball data for every single play and we still can't get anywhere near accurate defensive ratings without like 500 games played, and there are major discrepancies between DRS and UZR. I would put very little stock into the defense or baserunning components of WAR from games played almost 100 years ago.

Yeah, for sure you can't put a lot of stock into those components.

I imagine they utilized the data they do have (which isn't really a great indicator) to come up with some sort of 'baserunning', and 'fielding' rating. Stuff like fielding % maybe, and the accuracy of these components of WAR are probably similar to that of catching defense currently is with WAR (not good).

It just seems like Ruth's ratings in these catagories have got to be way off. And, if you replace the defense, and baserunning #'s that they gave him with something a little more feasable, he would rank way behind Bonds in all time WAR, and not as the highest of all time.

Makes sense, considering Barry Bonds was the greatest baseball player ever.

[J-Roc]

Not sure about WAR, but I never believed the talk of 500ft and 600ft homeruns from any of those guys. I think a big part of the distance of a ball is the speed of the fastball hit. And I don't think those pitchers were throwing very fast.

[distracted]

Not sure about WAR, but I never believed the talk of 500ft and 600ft homeruns from any of those guys. I think a big part of the distance of a ball is the speed of the fastball hit. And I don't think those pitchers were throwing very fast.

I'm not so sure about that. Look at the jacks during the HR derby when they're receiving BP pitches.

[J.Kim]

I'm not sure about the 500 ft home runs but look at the players during that era. For the most part they were slap-hitter heavy (okay, slight exaggeration but no one had the power profile that Babe Ruth did)

Because of that, if you compare power stats like ISO, SLG and (to an extent) wOBA, you'll see that he vastly exceeds just about any other top player in that era.

Given that, the replacement bar is set lower and because of the competition, Babe Ruth's value during that era is perceive to be higher. He could literally win games single-handedly.

As for fielding, beats me. Might be more so that since there's no advance stats like UZR, the FLD ratings would have to be based on counting stats like Errors and Putouts...
Which, due to the fact that he was probably slow-footed, what normally would've counted for errors for other players, simply got recorded as hits by the pitcher when Babe would field...

[Mak]

Code: Select all

YEAR  Ruth HR
1918    11 beat 5 teams   
1919    29 beat 10 teams   
1920    54  beat 15 teams   
1921    59  beat 8 teams
1922    35  beat 2 teams
1923    41  beat 3 teams
1924    46  beat 8 teams
1925    25  beat 0 teams
1926    47  beat 9 teams
1927    60  beat 12 teams
1928    54  beat 7 teams
1929    46  beat 4 teams
1930    49  beat 1 team
1931    46  beat 6 teams
1932    41  beat 1 team

Its crazy to think that he had more home runs in some seasons than 10+ teams combined. That's insane. You have to compare him to people he was playing against.

[Randle McMurphy]

I don't know that it overrates him, but it's certainly hard to gauge its accuracy with certain elements such as baserunning and defense. Without even looking at such stats, it's clear that Babe Ruth was on an different plane compared to his peers in just about every way. It was almost like he was playing a completely different sport than everybody else the way he dominated baseball.

But MLB's talent base has grown significantly since the 1920s (what, with letting black players actually play) and the game is undoubtedly played at a much higher level than it was a century ago. It makes it pretty difficult to compare players between such different eras. I'm of the opinion myself that Bonds was the greatest player to ever play the game due to the superior level of competition in his era, but it's certainly fair to say Ruth was the best too.

Nate Silver actually wrote a statistical analysis article about this in 2005 (in Baseball Between the Numbers) and came to the conclusion that Ruth's career was superior to Bonds at that time based on his stats adjusted by era (although I believe he included Ruth's pitching value as well). He's probably smarter than all of us combined, so perhaps he was right.

It's at the beginning of this book if anyone is interested: http://books.google.com/books?id=VsmnfV ... CDEQ6AEwAA

[Hendrix]

Re: Him dominating his era.

Does WAR not already account for the different levels in replacement in the stat?

He was undoubtably the best player in his era, but I think it gets exaggerated a bit how much he dominated it. I mean, there were 19 players while he was playing that averaged .900+ ops over the same span, and 5 that averaged over 1.000 ops. These weren't chumps.

What I'm having trouble with is this. Barry bonds in his early years had tons of speed, great defense, was amazing physically, and 'took care' of his body great. Even he was below average defensively and on the basepath by the time he was 40. Can you imagine what an overweight guy, that probably was nowhere near as good on the basepaths/fielding/physically to begin with, and treated his body awful would be defending,and running the bases like in his later years?

[rtcaino]

Good post.

I am curious how accurate their historical defensive valuations are purported to be. Until persuaded otherwise, I would certainly take a defensive +6 WAR boost for a "39 year old obese man in 1935" with a grain of salt.

[J.Kim]

Re: Him dominating his era.

Does WAR not already account for the different levels in replacement in the stat?

He was undoubtably the best player in his era, but I think it gets exaggerated a bit how much he dominated it. I mean, there were 19 players while he was playing that averaged .900+ ops over the same span, and 5 that averaged over 1.000 ops. These weren't chumps.

What I'm having trouble with is this. Barry bonds in his early years had tons of speed, great defense, was amazing physically, and 'took care' of his body great. Even he was below average defensively and on the basepath by the time he was 40. Can you imagine what an overweight guy, that probably was nowhere near as good on the basepaths/fielding/physically to begin with, and treated his body awful would be defending,and running the bases like in his later years?

WAR is an amalgamation of a multitude of stats which take into account multiple park- and era- adjusted stats. That's why when you compare across eras, WAR would actually account for a multitude of era- adjusted factors. That makes it so that if you're that much more advanced than your contemporaries, chances are your WAR will reflect that.

There were 19 players that averaged .900+ OPS and 5 that averaged 1.000 OPS but Babe Ruth was usually a full tenth better than most players. If you take a look at a summary from 1910-1920, Babe posted a OPS of 1.101 while his next closest contemporary (Ty Cobb) posted a .988 OPS. That's a HUGE gap. Even with ISO, in that same time period Babe posted an ISO of .322... The next closest contemporary? Gavvy Cravath at .198. Not even close.

As for baserunning and fielding... I believe Babe Ruth was a below replacement base runner for most of his career. I don't think he had a positive BSR save for one year.

For fielding, the issue is probably likely with the fact that they had to use counting stats for older era players rather than advance stats like UZR or other fielding stats.

[J.Kim]

Re: Him dominating his era.

Does WAR not already account for the different levels in replacement in the stat?

He was undoubtably the best player in his era, but I think it gets exaggerated a bit how much he dominated it. I mean, there were 19 players while he was playing that averaged .900+ ops over the same span, and 5 that averaged over 1.000 ops. These weren't chumps.

What I'm having trouble with is this. Barry bonds in his early years had tons of speed, great defense, was amazing physically, and 'took care' of his body great. Even he was below average defensively and on the basepath by the time he was 40. Can you imagine what an overweight guy, that probably was nowhere near as good on the basepaths/fielding/physically to begin with, and treated his body awful would be defending,and running the bases like in his later years?

WAR is an amalgamation of a multitude of stats which take into account multiple park- and era- adjusted stats. That's why when you compare across eras, WAR would actually account for a multitude of era- adjusted factors. That makes it so that if you're that much more advanced than your contemporaries, chances are your WAR will reflect that.

There were 19 players that averaged .900+ OPS and 5 that averaged 1.000 OPS but Babe Ruth was usually a full tenth better than most players. If you take a look at a summary from 1910-1920, Babe posted a OPS of 1.101 while his next closest contemporary (Ty Cobb) posted a .988 OPS. That's a HUGE gap. Even with ISO, in that same time period Babe posted an ISO of .322... The next closest contemporary? Gavvy Cravath at .198. Not even close.

As for baserunning and fielding... I believe Babe Ruth was a below replacement base runner for most of his career. I don't think he had a positive BSR save for one year.

For fielding, the issue is probably likely with the fact that they had to use counting stats for older era players rather than advance stats like UZR or other fielding stats.

[rtcaino]

For fielding, the issue is probably likely with the fact that they had to use counting stats for older era players rather than advance stats like UZR or other fielding stats.

Well exactly.

Given that, is Ruth's defensive WAR boost reliable?

[J.Kim]

For fielding, the issue is probably likely with the fact that they had to use counting stats for older era players rather than advance stats like UZR or other fielding stats.

Well exactly.

Given that, is Ruth's defensive WAR boost reliable?

No... but neither is any other player from before the advanced metric era probably... (and even nowadays its not 100% reliable)

However, his fielding value make up so little of his overall value that even if you regarded him as barely (or even below) replacement level, he'd probably still grade out as one of the highest WAR of all time.

[Hendrix]

There were 19 players that averaged .900+ OPS and 5 that averaged 1.000 OPS but Babe Ruth was usually a full tenth better than most players. If you take a look at a summary from 1910-1920, Babe posted a OPS of 1.101 while his next closest contemporary (Ty Cobb) posted a .988 OPS. That's a HUGE gap. Even with ISO, in that same time period Babe posted an ISO of .322... The next closest contemporary? Gavvy Cravath at .198. Not even close.

There's no doubt he was the best hitter of his time. But, what I'm saying is a 0.100 gap in OPS combined with poor baserunning and fielding doesn't seem like pure and utter domination or anything. The best, sure. But, surely being poor in those other areas must have closed the gap a bit on that 0.100 ops advantage a bit, where he wasn't in a complete different league.

As for baserunning and fielding... I believe Babe Ruth was a below replacement base runner for most of his career. I don't think he had a positive BSR save for one year.

The give him a score of barely below average for base running though. -22 bsr over his career, or about -1 per year. It may be a negative, but surely that is still overating him. In his later years I'm picturing a guy that was more in the -5 to -10 range at best if using modern ways of evaluating baserunning.

However, his fielding value make up so little of his overall value that even if you regarded him as barely (or even below) replacement level, he'd probably still grade out as one of the highest WAR of all time.

I think if you adjusted the base running, and fielding it would knock him out of the top spot pretty easily.

Lets just for arguments sake say his fielding, if using modern uzr tracking, was -100 instead of +79, and lets say his baserunning, if using a mordern way of calculating it, was actually -100 instead of -22 (I'm assuming he's posting some -5 to -10 seasons in his later years, and wasn't all that great even earlier on). That is a 267 point difference in RAR, which would put him around 143 WAR, and bump him down to 4th.