The Guide to WAR (Wins Above Replacement)

As in society at large, performance metrics and data analysis have strangled MLB over the last 20 years. If you’ve seen Moneyball, you know what I’m talking about. As Brad Pitt sagely stated, “Adapt or die.” For old-time baseball purists, the proliferation of myriad new-age stats can be overwhelming and confusing. I mean, who can really explain rOBA?

The Guide to WAR (Wins Above Replacement)

With that said, these numbers are essential and do tell a story … if you know how to read them. One of the most consequential newer stats is WAR (Wins Above Replacement). You probably hear this term dropped repeatedly on the MLB Network and are a bit befuddled. We can address this right here and now. You may not be getting a job as a data analyst for an MLB team after reading this, but you should be able to understand WAR a lot more clearly. Let’s call this an idiot’s guide to WAR (Wins Above Replacement).

What is WAR?

Although Edwin Starr said it’s good for absolutely nothing, WAR does have its place in MLB. It’s a great stat for evaluating a player’s value in terms of how they impact their team’s chances of winning. More specifically, it compares that player to a minor league replacement player. It factors in offense, defense, base running, and pitching. As far as how WAR is actually calculated, that is a discussion for you and your sabermetrician. The goal here is to get you comfortable analyzing WAR.

After a given season, each player is assigned a WAR based on their production that year. That number roughly represents the number of wins they added to their team above a replacement player. You can even receive a negative WAR if your season was particularly unimpressive. There is an overall WAR leaderboard, a WAR for position players, a separate WAR for pitchers, and there are also offensive WAR numbers and defensive WAR numbers. There are even more variations of Wins Above Replacement that will remain unmentioned to avoid confusion. Yes, it is a lot to process.

How to Easily Interpret WAR?

Generally speaking, if you have a WAR of 5 for a season, that is about All-Star level production. A WAR of 8 or above usually puts you in the MVP and Cy Young conversation. Conversely, if you consistently have a WAR of 1 or below, you probably won’t last in the Bigs that long. Let’s look at WAR numbers for multiple players to help this make sense.

Babe Ruth is the all-time leader in WAR with 182.6. His number is that high because he added years of solid pitching WAR to his prodigious plate presence. The Bambino led the American League in WAR 11 times, with an insane Sega-Genesis-RBI-Baseball total of 14.1 in 1923 (the all-time single-season mark for a position player). This gives a unique player like Shohei Ohtani more opportunities to increase his WAR because he hits, runs the bases, and pitches.

Pitchers, especially in the late 1800s, consistently generated very high WAR marks. The dead-ball era and the mysterious topical solutions applied to baseballs probably helped boost those numbers. In fact, the majority of the top single-season WAR stats are from pitchers. The highest single-season WAR from a pitcher in modern times is Dwight Gooden’s 12.2 in 1985.

Let’s break down a modern-day player for comparison’s sake. Bryce Harper so far has a career WAR of 54; that is a 4.9 average per season. His career high was 9.7 during his 2015 MVP season. If you use 5 WAR as the standard for an All-Star player, you see that Harper is essentially that in his career.

Let’s Wrap Up Class

What have we hopefully learned? WAR is a comprehensive metric that evaluates a player’s contribution to their team’s wins. Usually, this number is between 1 and 10. In some cases, a player can grade out above or below that.

When you look at someone’s stat page or hear an analyst mention Wins Above Replacement, keep the number 5 in your head as the baseline for a perfect season. Then you adjust your observations based on that. Keep it simple, and you’ll be able to decipher WAR.

This has been an idiot’s guide to WAR (Wins Above Replacement) and approved by an idiot like me.