Forman: A discussion of WAR
From SABR member Sean Forman at Sports-Reference.com on November 21, 2017:
First off, none of us are here without Bill James. We are all at our very best merely Chaucer or Joyce to his Shakespeare. All sabermetrics predating him flowed into his work and all sabermetrics after him carries echoes of his work.
To the discussion at hand.
At its nub, I see this debate/argument/kerfuffle falling along the lines of an argument pitting Results vs Process. This debate goes back at least as long as statheads have gathered online to discuss MVP votes and what the award means. In five minutes of digging, I found this 1997 discussion from rec.sport.baseball. Every year, this exact same debate happens on websites and online forums. EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Every single discussion of this piece (that I’ve seen), whether on Twitter, BaseballThinkFactory.org or in the comments on Joe Posnanski’s piece eventually distills down to this discussion.
Read the full article here: https://www.sports-reference.com/blog/2017/11/a-discussion-of-war-wherein-i-ardently-attempt-to-avoid-any-war-related-puns/
Originally published: November 21, 2017. Last Updated: November 21, 2017.