New York Times: All-Star WPA

by
July 9, 2006

In today’s New York Times, Alan Schwarz takes a look at the All-Star selections by Win Probability Added.

“Most back-and-forths about All-Star selections focus on the player’s longtime all-starness (whatever that means) or, toward the statistical end of the spectrum, his runs batted in, his earned run average, even his on-base percentage plus slugging percentage. But if your image of an All-Star is his season-long contribution to victories, then the more blue-collar W.P.A. — Win Probability Added — could make your next All-Star symposium less, well, cheesy.”

As always, you can find the Win Probability sections here:

Win Probability: Individual Game Graphs & Stats
Win Probability: Team Stats





 

David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.

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Dave Studemanmember
17 years ago

That’s great, David. Congrats. Alan sure did a lousy job of explaining WPA, however. And this statement, “Good players on excellent teams tend to have higher W.P.A.’s because they usually participate in more victories.” is off-base and just plain wrong. Good players on excellent teams rack up more WPA points because they’re good players. In fact, arguably, good players on excellent teams accrue less WPA than they would otherwise, because their teams are so often ahead that their contributions have less impact.

It’s great to see WPA getting used, but education is going to be difficult. Not to blow my own horn (at least, not too much!), but here’s the article I wrote describing WPA that I think is more helpful:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-one-about-win-probability/

As well as this one…

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/developments-in-the-baseball-blogosphere/

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