Now Writing for Beyond the Box Score
Hey, where have I been?
Oddly, I mentioned it on my personal blog, but I didn’t mention it here—I’m now writing for Beyond the Box Score!
For quite a while now, Beyond the Box Score has been my favorite baseball blog. They’ve always had a good mix of future projection and historical analysis. I like to focus on historical analysis, so that’s mostly what I’ll be doing. As expected, I’ll be writing quite a bit about Wins Above Replacement (WAR), Wins Above Excellence (WAE), and Wins Above MVP Level (WAM).
Wait, what’s that last one?
Yeah, it seems I’ve kind of come up with a new stat. Well, it’s really just a new take on some existing stats. Sean Smith has built the incredible historical WAR database. Then he tallied just WAR above 3.0 and called it Wins Above Excellence. I’ve tallied just WAR above 6.0 and called it Wins Above MVP Level (WAM) in an attempt to measure only when players performed at a level that will generally put you in contention for an MVP award.
I’m now a half-dozen posts into my Beyond the Box Score career, so let’s take a peek at what I’ve done so far:
- Inevitable in 2010: Alex Rodriguez and 100 WAR: I started with a post about how Alex Rodriguez will pass Cap Anson to move into the career WAR top 20 next season. He’ll also be the 20th player to reach 100 career WAR.
- Active Multi-Gold Glovers: Do they deserve their reputation?: I really like this one. I took a look at the players in the Hall of Fame with the lowest career OPS, making the assumption they were inducted for their defense more than anything else. I then looked at the Total Zone metrics to see if they supported the induction. Some were yes, some were no.
- Wins Above MVP Level: In this one, I gathered all the WAR for every MVP season in history to define a baseline for the introduction of Wins Above MVP Level (WAM).
- More on Wins Above MVP Level (and the Upcoming Hall Ballot): In this one, I took a look at the returning and upcoming Hall of Fame candidates, based on Wins Above MVP Level.
- Best Single Season WAR (without winning the MVP): This was a response to a commenter who wanted to see the most valuable seasons to not be given an MVP award.
- Career Leaders in Wins Above MVP Level (WAM), Position Players: After much number crunching, here are the career leaders in Wins Above MVP Level (for position players). I compared rankings to rankings on the career WAR list.
- Willie Davis, underrated ballplayer (1940-2010): My first saber-obituary, for the late Willie Davis. He was a tremendous ballplayer and one who advanced metrics shed a new light on. My favorite part of this post is the breakdown of what goes into a player’s career WAR. I need to expand this into a primer, I think.
I love writing for Beyond the Box Score. What’s the best about it? Definitely the commenters. Those seven posts have generated over 100 comments combined. I love writing this stuff, but having the discussion that follows has made it even more enjoyable. You can see all my Beyond the Box Score work on my profile blog, but I highly recommend subscribing to the main feed.