Some Good Baseball Reading from ESPN The Magazine

Just read two interesting baseball articles from the latest ESPN the Magazine (1/9/2012 issue; Cam Newton cover), neither of which are about the Dodgers outright, but involve Dodgers players (past and present), and even ownership if you squint your eyes. The first was a great piece by Peter Keating ("Hall of Justice") in which Keating introduces an upgraded measurement derived from WAR to measure All-Star candidacy (link insider only). Wins Above All-Star Level (WAAS) seems pretty good on face value: Even better, over the past five years sabermetric types have gravitated toward Wins Above Replacement. WAR is an uberstat that measures how many wins a player contributed to his team above a replacement-level player -- a benchwarmer or a Triple-A guy. Mike Aviles and Conor Jackson were replacement-level players last year, according to baseball-reference.com; WAR league leader Matt Kemp was 10.0 wins better than they were. WAR is useful for evaluating trades and debating MV...