Originally Posted by
RedsManRick
If you only believe the metric is accurate/useful when it confirms your existing beliefs, you're right, it has no value.
I think the biggest inherent issue with WAR from a perception standpoint is that of replacement value. In our minds, Bruce and Cozart have the same baseline of zero -- of not being in the lineup at all. But according to WAR, Cozart gets a head start because finding a SS worthy of being in the lineup is more difficult than finding a RF. I think that's a big reason why WAR doesn't feel right to a lot of people. We just don't intuitively feel replacement level.
On top of that, I think we have a hard time keeping in our minds all of the actual performance over an extended period of time; we end up giving more weight to recent and particularly memorable events and rely on archetypes. Thirdly, I would argue we simply don't have much of an intuition for the relative value of defense and baserunning when compared to offense and have a really hard time accepting the significant impact they can have when you compare one guy is who is a stud in those areas to a guy who is below average.
That's not to say WAR is perfect, certainly. Especially defense should have some health error bars around it. But when you consider just how huge of an advantage Trout has (Trout's WAR edge over Cabrera is the same as Cabrera's edge over Alfonso Soriano), the difference this year is beyond the margin of error.
Ultimately though, the value of WAR is the framework it provides. Feel free to create your own version of WAR, assigning whatever values to offense, defense, baserunning and replacement level you want. If you want to add in another variable for leadership or something, fine. But it creates a framework that can be consistently applied to all players so that personal bias is taken out of the equation. And for anybody who has a problem with the numbers WAR produces, I would encourage them to make their own adjustment. Remove defense entirely if you want. Cut it in half. But to just dismiss it because it's conclusions don't feel right simply means if you are wrong, you'll never know it.