Does WAR accurately consider the value of a two-way player like Shohei Ohtani? Is the statistic suited for the continuing degradation of solid positional roles?
We ask WAR to be many things, but it would be wise to think of why it is actually useful.
Reimagining the defensive spectrum, and what that means for the concept of replacement level.
Maybe there’s something about Mookie Betts that WAR is missing.
The nineteenth-century ballplayer: mustachioed, musky, Irish or perhaps aggressively not Irish, brawny, inclined to swearing and drinking, did I mention mustachioed?; an image, conjured rather easily due to the proliferation of photographs of late-nineteenth-century male baseball players; the kind who fizzle and pop into the half-lucid late-night dreams that are Ken Burns’ Baseball reruns at…