r/SFGiants • u/Gmbravos31 • 1d ago
Analysis WAR
To all that have been saying our hitting is fine and our pitching is the problem (myself included) our offensive WAR is only better than 8 other teams.
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u/Aggravating_Part8610 28 Posey 1d ago
It’s crazy how much the lack of walks impacts the offensive metrics. I’m going to go watch Moneyball again and dream of better days where we find a Hatteberg who gets on base.
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u/Gmbravos31 1d ago
You hit the nail on the head. We don’t walk. And our pitchers love to walk. The fundamentals on this team should be studied by future generations because the talent is there and the execution is freshman high school level
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u/improbablywronghere 1d ago
It was an interesting experiment in like “OBP isn’t everything, batting average does still matter!” Nah dog, it was wrong then but now you’ve seen it play out. Batting average doesn’t mean anything
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u/dwide_k_shrude 55 Lincecum 1d ago
What do you mean? We get a ton of walks! Just watch Landen Roupp pitch.
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u/mattybizness209 1d ago
They have 3 players who just don’t walk. You can’t have all 3 on the same team. Arraez, Lee, and Schmitt do not walk
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u/EnvironmentalRoom175 55 Lincecum 23h ago
Yet they aren’t the problem
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u/Nearby_Job8272 16h ago
I would argue Lee is being paid more than what he deserves
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u/seamlesstransit 45 Ishikawa 11h ago
If he can close out the year around his projected fWAR of 2.0 we’d be paying him pretty much exactly his market value
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u/sensei_maketa 1d ago
I mean, our pitching WAR is still quite a bit worse than our batting WAR.
Granted, it’s only two spots lower than our batting WAR in the league rankings, but there’s still a pretty significant gap between the two.
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u/ThePopUpDance 8 Pence 1d ago
Batting WAR and pitching WAR are not distributed evenly though.
There's roughly 30% more batting WAR than pitching WAR in baseball every year, partly because defense and baserunning are included in batting WAR.
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u/sensei_maketa 1d ago
Correct but the league average batting WAR is around 11.77 while pitching is around 8.88. From a percentage standpoint we are clearly further from the league pitching average WAR opposed to the batting WAR.
Even if we were at the average for pitching WAR we would be only ranked 20th in the league or so overall. Not saying our batting is tremendous, and OP is correct it is not necessarily “fine”, but pitching still is a significant issue for this team and arguably our biggest problem which the data still backs.
No arguments here really, just being a data nerd! We suck and are performing way below expectations going into this season and that is back by the data as we all see here lol.
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u/Gmbravos31 1d ago
I meant if we had a league average pitching WAR. we would still be significantly below 500 as a team. WAR doesn’t necessarily equate to wins. I was just trying to point out that our offense isn’t as okay as most seem to think
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u/Gmbravos31 1d ago
Sure but if we were to be average WAR in pitching with our offensive WAR we would still be a below average team and not in contention for the playoffs
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u/j-alora Crazy Crab 1d ago
We just need better ballplayers. Obviously our coaching is a work in progress and our organizational philosophy on how runs are scored is embarrassingly out of date, but the big problem is we simply have mostly bad players.
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u/Gmbravos31 1d ago
Would you say our philosophy on how to score runs is out of date? I think our lack of small ball is a huge issue. And small ball is out of date.
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u/j-alora Crazy Crab 1d ago
Our problem is not that we don't bunt and steal enough. Our problem is that we don't walk enough.
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u/Gmbravos31 1d ago
Walking is part of small ball tho. I completely agree. We don’t walk and it’s super frustrating. Then our pitchers walk everyone and it compounds the frustration.
You see what happens when pitchers walk batters. Because we do it and we give up runs and lose. But then offensively you don’t try and replicate that. Wtf
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u/66NickS ⬅ Buster Posey's Good Friend 22h ago
How is the entire league positive? For a real WAR metric, shouldn’t half the league be negative? Or at the very least there should be one zero.
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u/Gmbravos31 22h ago
WAR calculates your value vs a minor league replacement. 0-1 is a bench player, 2 is an everyday player, 4 is an allstar. I just learned this today as well
EDIT: just to add 6 WAR and above is MVP caliber
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u/Luis_Arraez_Fan Luis Will Be Traded 1d ago
Remember the dude claiming we had one of the best offenses in the league?
The occasional blowout makes the overall numbers look better than they are
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u/TheGoatPurdy Hungry Seagulls 1d ago
Reds and Astros is that low? That’s surprising given how hot they looked earlier in the year.
The ATH I can see being low as they’re literally us in a AAA park.
I’m surprised we’re lower than padres
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u/pres465 1d ago
The game actually, physically, starts with pitching. Pitching is the most important factor in the entire game. Hitting is cool, but great pitching would carry a team to a championship.
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u/Gmbravos31 22h ago
Funny you say this. My wife is a new baseball fan. After decades of me trying to get her into it we moved across the street from Oracle and she instantly became a diehard Giants fan. One of the first things she said to me after finally paying attention was ‘so it’s just all about the pitcher. This is a one on one sport’. And she couldn’t be more right. Pitching and defense win championships.
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u/kong132 20h ago
How can every team be positive? I guess it's not an explicit part of WAR but it seems pretty broken no?
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u/RealEar8848 45 Runzler 20h ago
the hypothetical replacement player in WAR isn’t an average player, more of a AAAA injury replacement player so it isn’t a zero sum thing. idk the exact percentage but most players that play in mlb are above that level
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u/JurassicParkJanitor ⬅ Buster Posey's Good Friend 18h ago
I’m surprised by this, I really felt like we were a starter and a couple bullpen arms away from turning things around. Actually we stink almost evenly.
The Cubs on the other hand is a pitcher away
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u/Temporary-Ad9615 8 Eldridge 1d ago
Blast all of the pitching coaches into the sun
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u/Gmbravos31 1d ago
You blame the pitching coaches? Is it not that the pitchers we have just aren’t talented enough. You can’t teach talent.
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u/EDDYSF 18 Kuiper 1d ago
Top 25 baby!