Fangraphs WAR vs. Baseball Reference's WAR

[thefeckcampaign]

You guys lost me. I got on this to find out something basic.

If you add all the players WAR on a particular team, did that total equal the amount of wins that team received that year?

[Jeffy25]

You guys lost me. I got on this to find out something basic.

If you add all the players WAR on a particular team, did that total equal the amount of wins that team received that year?

That isn't quite how it works.

I'll give you an example.

Let's say your team scores 4 runs tonight.

But they can have a runs created total of 4.96.

That's basically saying the team earned another run, or should have scored another run, but they didn't execute that run (maybe too many guys were left on base, maybe some guys thrown out on the base paths) etc.

Over the course of the season, those Runs Created will come close to the teams actual runs scored, but it won't be accurate.


WAR works as a reference total, it isn't going to be exact. Sometimes, the best team WAR wise isn't the team with the most win. If you want to have a good chance of projecting wins, or looking at a stat and being able to get a good guess what their wins total will be look, take a look at their runs scored vs runs allowed. It won't be accurate (look at the 2011 Giants) but it's usually fairly accurate. Sometimes, a team wins a few close games, or loses a few close games that could have easily gone the other way. These numbers are just to give an approximation or to get you close for an evaluation.