Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Shortstop seasons: highest WAR 1903-2023.

https://stathead.com/tiny/XjMb3

For single seasons, since 1903, Playing in the AL or NL, Played at SS (75%), in the regular season, requiring Adjusted OPS+ >= 0 and Wins Above Replacement (WAR) >= 8 and Defensive WAR (dWAR) >= -6 and Offensive WAR (oWAR) >= 0, sorted by descending Wins Above Replacement (WAR).

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34 seasons found.

Multiple seasons:

Wagner: 7; played 1897-1917; this data covers seasons 1903-2023.

Rodriguez: 6

Ripken, Vaughan, Boudreau, Banks: 3

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Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is a player-value metric, an attempt to translate a player's total contribution on the field into a single number, while allowing for comparison across positions, leagues, eras, etc.

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Baseball-Reference.com WAR Explained

The idea behind the WAR framework is that we want to know how much better a player is than a player that would typically be available to replace that player...

We present the WAR values with decimal places because this relates the WAR value back to the runs contributed (as one win is about ten runs), but you should not take any full-season difference between two players of less than one to two wins to be definitive (especially when the defensive metrics are included)...

So why don't we compute Wins Above Average rather than Wins above Replacement? When computing the value of a major league player, average is a poor baseline for comparison. Average players are relatively rare and can be expensive to acquire. Average players don't make the league minimum. Plus, not all average performances are equal. A team would pay much more for 200 league average innings than for 50. When a star player is injured, they are rarely replaced by an average player -- usually their replacement is much worse.

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