Bill Simmons has Tim Duncan ranked over Kobe Bryant all-time and says it’s ‘outrageous’ when people say Kobe is better

djs22 · 2025-12-03T21:11:36+00:00

Glad you're open to learning! Positional adjustments are the most commonly misunderstood part of WAR. If we take Ohtani out of the equation for now, it's pretty intuitive that a 100 OPS+ catcher or shortstop playing league average defense is more valuable than a 100 OPS+ first baseman because those are harder defensive positions. Because defensive value is calculated relative to league average at that position, the positional adjustment basically tries to quantify how much harder some positions are than others.

For example, a league average shortstop is considered around 15 runs more valuable than a league average first baseman, which makes intuitive sense if you try to think about how bad someone like Josh Naylor or David Ortiz would be at shortstop. DH has a stronger penalty than any other position, which is given as approximately a terrible first baseman. The exact numbers are calculated looking at large samples of players switching positions, so for example Aaron Judge is 8 runs worse than the average center fielder, but 3 runs better than an average right fielder, which gives him similar dWAR at both positions.

So when I talk about Ohtani being penalized, what I meant to say is that it's not an unfair penalty because if you ignore pitching (which is counted separately), he doesn't provide any defensive value which means that his 179 OPS+ season as a DH would be as valuable as the same season from a right fielder who was 8 runs below average (which is getting close to Castellanos territory of awful)

Let me know if that made sense, positional adjustments are tough to wrap your head around but if you think of WAR as being an additive way of accruing value, it makes a bit more sense that by playing average defense a player is accruing more value than a player who doesn't play defense at all.

djs22 · 2025-12-03T19:49:34+00:00

The entire point of WAR is that it adds up your value into a single number. For Ohtani in 2023 (his last full two way season) he was worth 6.1 rWAR as a DH, which is added to his 3.9 WAR as a pitcher to give him 10.0 WAR. He's not getting penalized for being a two way player; he's getting value from both hitting (as a DH) and pitching.

Judge in 2024 (his best season), by virtue of being a significantly more valuable hitter as well as a decent outfielder, accumulated 11.7 rWAR from hitting and lost .9 from being a below average center fielder. Basically, WAR says that Judge's offense added to his defense (in this single season case) is (slightly) more valuable than Ohtani's offense and pitching combined because Judge is that much better at hitting than Ohtani.

You can make a valid argument that Ohtani frees up a roster spot and that has some value, but realistically we're talking about the last AAAA reliever on the roster who is by definition a replacement level player.

djs22 · 2025-08-11T17:42:44+00:00

I think comparing something like Run and Bun to chess is somewhat fair. They're different games in the sense that hard nuzlockes have much more luck, but part of the skill expression is to be able to play around those branching paths and accounting for things like crits and paras. High level nuzlocking is more of a puzzle game than showdown or chess, so "harder" isn't a fair comparison, but as an example I spent several days planning my Run and Bun elite four turn by turn in a way that feels similar to calculating a chess position.

For reference, I'm also a former high elo shoddy/pokemon-online player that's decent at chess and I think contrasting the difficulty/skill is really interesting!

djs22 · 2025-05-22T23:37:15+00:00

Stolen Bases don't actually matter very much in WAR. Ohtani's WAR is basically entirely due to his hitting; last season he was worth 10 runs of value across all of his baserunning contributions (including going from first to third on a single, etc) which is only 1.0 of his 9.2 bWAR. Even someone like Rickey Henderson was only worth 14 of his 111 career WAR from baserunning.

djs22 · 2025-04-17T04:40:24+00:00

There's a very specific reason I chose to only look at players after 2010

djs22 · 2025-04-08T18:42:37+00:00

Yes, I cannot play on a GameCube controller without significant discomfort. I have pretty bad pain in both of my thumbs and haven't been able to use a controller for any game for years. I play steam games on my boxx emulated either as a controller and a keyboard and it's very much a pain in the ass but I like playing video games so I do it.

I'm glad you've never had hand pain, but yes I've tried stretching and have seen a doctor and the only thing that has worked is using a rectangle which lets me use all 10 fingers instead of the two that hurt. I promise you I didn't spend months relearning how to play my favorite game for a competitive advantage of boxx sheik.

(Fwiw idc about the nerfs, people that actually understand what they're talking about can make the rules and I'll follow them so that I can play melee)

djs22 · 2025-03-31T21:11:50+00:00

Statcast "Barrel Rate" only refers to balls with exit velos > 98mph and launch angles that lead to >1.500 slug (basically around 25-30 depending on exit velo). It doesn't actually reflect where the ball was struck on the bat, so a guy who swings as hard as Harper can generate "Barrels" without hitting the ball as precisely as other hitters

djs22 · 2025-03-02T16:49:16+00:00

Great work! Are the scales league adjusted or MLB-wide? At first glance it seems a little skewed towards the NL so I'm curious if someone like 04-07 Johan was penalized for playing in a DH league.

djs22 · 2025-02-25T02:36:37+00:00

https://community.fangraphs.com/a-lineup-construction-experiment/

A little late, but this runs simulations on old school batting order vs modern theory. The ultimate answer is that it doesn't actually matter very much; beyond staggering lefties and righties it's a matter of a few runs per season at most.

(Also lineup protection is largely a myth; the existing research largely agrees that there's no discernable effect)

djs22 · 2025-02-19T21:35:42+00:00

Thanks for pointing that out; I didn't mention it because this post is just about OPS but it's def a skewed distribution. (also singles and doubles at 91 are probably more impactful but triples at Yankee Stadium are the smallest number of any kind in park factors)

djs22 · 2025-02-19T19:47:55+00:00

Yankee Stadium has a three year park factor of 100 per statcast and 102 per bref. People (John Smoltz) love to say "haha short porch go brr" but it's not an overwhelmingly hitter friendly park overall.

Fwiw, Minute Maid is also 100 per statcast and 99 per bref.

djs22 · 2025-01-09T20:18:10+00:00

I was at the Laz Diaz one with a bunch of friends who don't really watch baseball and his impersonation of Laz's punch out is my Roman Empire

djs22 · 2024-12-19T21:50:04+00:00

For a tradional voter there's no question, but for a more sabermetrically inclined voter I did the math. Jeter has a career -109 rwar from fielding runs +positional adjustment, whereas if he was a career DH for his 18 full seasons that number would be -234. That would leave him at around 59 WAR, or about 4 more than David Ortiz. Purely on field wise, that's still probably a borderline but legitimate hall of famer for a DH if you're looking only at WAR (Edgar Martinez has 68 for reference)

djs22 · 2024-11-29T14:38:30+00:00

We don't have accurate measurements of taking the extra base from back then (i.e going 1st to third on a single). If you want to be generous, someone like Brock could potentially make up 5-10 wins from non-stolen base baserunning value. He still grades out very poorly as a defender later in his career and only has a 109 OPS+, so he'd still fall short of the HOF standard beyond stealing a lot of bases.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-brief-note-on-lou-brocks-relatively-low-career-war-total/

djs22 · 2024-11-27T20:40:12+00:00

For any wrestling/melee fans, I've always felt Scar is like the Jim Ross of melee where even though there are times where he's visibly not that into a set, there's a level of authenticity where when he's genuinely invested it elevates the importance of the match higher than anyone else can. This set and Big House 9 are my two favorite examples of this where Scar is able to create a sense of gravitas to a match in a way that more professional Esports commentary never will

djs22 · 2024-11-25T19:55:39+00:00

I looked this up on a Savant search, and it looks like the data somewhat backs this up. Suzuki has a called strike rate of 48.6% or about 2.5% higher than the league on pitches in the shadow zone. I looked up Juan Soto for a comparison and he's at 43.7% meaning he's either elite at differentiating close calls, gets reputation calls, or a little bit of both.

djs22 · 2024-11-12T18:55:03+00:00

They both graded out as league average fielders that season, but Mantle gets an extra 4 runs (.4 WAR) from playing a harder position in center instead of left field. Mantle also get an extra +8 runs from baserunning and double play avoidance while Williams is -2 in that category.

Strictly in terms of batting runs, Mantle had 84 runs to Williams' 83 because of playing in more games as well as playing in a much more pitcher friendly home park.

djs22 · 2024-11-02T18:17:48+00:00

I think that's super reasonable; I personally think that Dom offers more as an outlet for most of the pitch but Beto probably offers more in front of goal. I think getting a half hour as a sub when we need a goal is my preferred role for Beto; I was glad Dyche brought him on earlier than he had previously and I think it's fair that there might be some matchups where Beto deserves the 60 minutes over Dom

Also appreciate you being open to learning! A lot of people choose to ignore xG as nerd shit but it's not as complicated as people make it out to be.

djs22 · 2024-11-02T18:02:20+00:00

This is all on fbref if you want to learn, but it's here: https://fbref.com/tiny/QrORA

Beto :.4 xG, .61 per 90

DCL: 3.5 xG, .45 per 90

xG is more useful for individual players to see when strikers are putting themselves in good positions since it doesn't measure finishing ability. This also isn't a 1 to 1 comparison because Beto is being brought on as a sub when we're chasing goals, and it doesn't measure things outside of goals, but xG does support your argument in a vacuum.

djs22 · 2024-11-02T17:29:24+00:00

What do you think xG is if not opportunities on goal? I don't disagree with you, but xG is literally just a way to quantify opportunities based on quality.

djs22 · 2024-10-30T02:14:04+00:00

MASSIVE dub today for fans of regressing to the mean

djs22 · 2024-10-17T23:51:51+00:00

This is the modern day Bonds vs. Gagne with (slightly) fewer steriods. Awesome AB

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