Is WAR the Best Way to Judge a Players Greatness?

                                 How a player is judged has changed a lot over the years. When I was young, the stats on the back of a baseball card were the stats most pundits and historians used to rate who were the best players ever. How things have changed. BA does not mean a whole lot anymore. You can hit .225, but if your OPS is north of .800, you are a productive hitter. Striking out is not as big a deal as it was for over a century. Guys who strike out 150 plus times can still have an OPS of better than .800. Max Muncy is an excellent example of this. 

                                The highest WAR in the game’s history belongs to Babe Ruth. Numbers 2 and 3 are pitchers, Walter Johnson and Cy Young. Then comes Barry Bonds. The highest BA in MLB history belongs to Ty Cobb. Cobb batted .366 over a 24-year career, with most of that career played in the dead ball era. He was past his prime when Ruth was entering his. It is much easier to rank players by the era they played in simply because of how much the game has changed. 

                               As the game spread from the simple settings of local ballparks to stadiums designed to hold thousands, and players began getting paid for their services, travel, the conditions of the field, the equipment and the way the game was played have changed drastically. At the turn of the century, teams traveled by train, staying in hotels with no air conditioning. All games were played during the day, no night games until the 30’s. The uniforms were heavy wool, and they would make a player sweat profusely in the hot summers in many cities. 

                              Pitchers were expected to finish what they started. Closers, set up men, were unheard of back then. Wins were the standard way of calculating a pitcher’s worth.  Unfortunately for the players of that era, the owners were notoriously tight fisted when it came to salaries. Walter Johnson never made more than 20,000 dollars in any season. Of course, 20 thousand went a lot further in those days than now. According to baseball reference, Cy Young made 4000 dollars at his peak. 

                              The analysts like Bryan Kenny and several others, use many different stats to state their case for the value of players. Now in the Stat Cast era, they can trace almost everything including distance and speed off of the bat. Sometimes, I think they are way off. Ohtani hit a ball into the second deck in Miami that they said traveled just 404 feet. Looked a lot further to me. Some players, like Judge, Ohtani, Witt Jr., you just know are very good. It is the fringe guys and others that are hardest to attach some sort of value to. 

                            Chris Taylor is a prime example. His best season was actually his first full season in LA. His slash line was very good at .288/21/72, with an .850 OPS, OPS+ was 123. He stole 17 bases and was caught just 4 times. The only real detriment was his strike outs, 142 to walks, 55, ratio. 3-1. That is not good. At least by the standards years ago. Now Ks are less important it seems except to the pitchers, and they do not carry the stigma they once did. 

                          In his first 5 full seasons as a Dodger, Taylor was MLB average or better with OPS+. His BA never dipped below .254. He averaged almost 16 homers a year, and 58 RBIs. But his real value to the team was his versatility in the field. And the fact that he was an excellent defender at all of them. In 2017, his first full year, he learned how to play the outfield on the fly. He played center and left, his arm wasn’t considered strong enough for right, second base, SS and third. He made just 2 errors in the outfield. His toughest position to play was second base. He made 5 errors there. But overall, it was a pretty amazing performance for a guy who never played the outfield before. 

                          He was rewarded after his 21 season with a 4-year 60-million-dollar deal. Since then, he has not been close to being the same player. Where he was close to a 2 WAR player each of the first 5 seasons, he has not been better than 1.5 WAR since, and the last 2 he is a combined -.4.  The big difference I see is that injuries he has suffered have really affected his game a lot. Fans have been calling for the Dodgers to unload him ever since the first year of that contract was over. Now he is simply the 26th man on this roster, relegated to mostly late inning defensive replacement for Conforto. He rarely starts.  This year, he has started just 5 games. 

                        Muncy on the other hand, was pretty consistent until he was injured in the final game of the 2021 season. Whereas prior to that injury he was a solid .250 hitter in a full season, he has not topped .232 since. The year after the injury, his OPS dipped to .713. He brought it back up over .800 for the next two seasons, but this year he has been unable to generate any kind of consistency with the bat. Max is well past the injury, so one would think he would be showing his old power, so far, not the case. 

                       Myself, I use the eye test. If you watch the game long enough, especially the players on your favorite teams, you can tell how valuable they are from day to day. I always felt Kike and Taylor were valuable more on defense than offense. Kike as a knack for post-season production, Taylor did that in 21 when he had a .476 average against the Braves with 3 homers in one game and 9 driven in overall. He also hit the walk-off game winning homer in the wild card game. Kike also owns 3 homers in a NLCS game, in his case, it came in the clincher in 2016. 

                      Some players, you just get the sense they are going to be good. I remember the first time I saw Piazza bat at Dodger Stadium against Nolan Ryan; he hit an opposite field double off of the wall. You hit a pitch oppo with that much power, you are on my radar. Felt the same the first time I saw Scioscia block the plate. Corey Seager impressed me a bunch when he was called up at the end of 2015. 

                       Let’s face it, there is really no way to predict who is going to excel and who is not. Ove the years I have seen guys who were supposed to be can’t miss prospects fall by the wayside. There are so many tools out there on the internet now to rate a players performance, WAR is just one.