Era-Adjusted WAR - All Time Ranking

[RiceBondsMT2Yng]

Has BO weighed in yet on this era-adjusted WAR study done at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 2023? The below list uses updated stats through the 2024 season and is based on bWAR (from Baseball Reference):

https://eckeraadjustment.web.illinois.edu/#rankings



There's a parallel study/ranking based on fWAR (from FanGraphs) with some pretty interesting differences. Here's a side-by-side of the top 25:



Obviously, I find the results particularly fascinating because my favorite player, Barry Bonds, is atop a lot of these lists. It's confirmation bias - I already assumed that Bonds would be at the top or near the top of any dispassionate analysis of the relative quality of players.

But I'm not enough of a baseball nerd to even pretend to understand the underlying models for bWAR and fWAR, although more knowledgeable members have attempted to explain it. So I have no idea how persuasive this study's era-adjustment methodology is to a person in the know.

A couple of interesting tidbits from the original study done with stats through 2023. Bonds wouldn't be the era-adjusted home run king. That would be Ruth:



As of 2023, Bonds and Ruth were not the #1 highest WAR per PA players in history, adjusted for era. That would go to Trout. 2024 saw a drop off of course, and we are in the middle of his decline, so he should fall further down the list:



Bonds barely registered among the most dominant single season WAR performances, adjusted for era, in history. He, like the peer players atop the all time lists, was just incredibly great year after year after year after year. Ohtani and Judge are no joke:

[OhioLawyerF5]

Thanks for sharing that, Alan. Great stuff. Certainly some cool things to think about. One thing that really stands out to me is Zack Grenkie. That's a little surprising. I view him as a clear HOFer, but this puts him on a whole other level, when you adjust his career for the era.

[NYBBFAN]

Bret Saberhagen just behind Shohei?!? Guess that’s why they’re called Sabermetrics.

Crazy how exclusive the 500HR becomes. No Thome!

[livfreely]

So Willie Mays is the one to invest in. Thanks for sharing this


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[no10pin]

Originally Posted by NYBBFAN

Bret Saberhagen just behind Shohei?!? Guess that’s why they’re called Sabermetrics.

Crazy how exclusive the 500HR becomes. No Thome!

Yeah, I love Sabes, but I would have never guessed he had the best adjusted season all time up to 3 years ago.

[OhioLawyerF5]

Originally Posted by no10pin

Yeah, I love Sabes, but I would have never guessed he had the best adjusted season all time up to 3 years ago.

He was pretty filthy on RBI Baseball back in my NES days.

[callou2131]

That shows me that Ripken, while respected, isnt spoken in the same words as the greats, and he should be.

[tjforce]

This list shows me that any list like this is so hard to digest because of what steroids did to guys like Bonds, A-rod, Clemens, etc.

What if those guys never used... and to take it a step further, what if those guys never used and didn't have to play in a league where half of their contemporaries were steroid users?

[Skipscards]

I’m not familiar with this study and will have to take a look. WAR is already era adjusted so I’m not sure what they’d be adjusting.

[kyle1707]

I like mookie Betts just fine

But war loves him.

Never really understood it

[ObanMontecristo]

in my mind, there’s clearly something wrong with any statistical analysis that says the best pitching seasons all happened since 1985

[towerymt]

Originally Posted by callou2131

That shows me that Ripken, while respected, isnt spoken in the same words as the greats, and he should be.

That BRef dWAR...

Edit -- 4th all time, 35.7:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/l...f_career.shtml

[no10pin]

Originally Posted by ObanMontecristo

in my mind, there’s clearly something wrong with any statistical analysis that says the best pitching seasons all happened since 1985

I thought the same thing, at a high level it seemed the majority of modern era players got a bump and the majority of players from prior eras dropped a bit. I think this statement from the first website explains part of it.

Q: Why does era-adjusted WAR seem to lower the rankings of pre-integration players?

It reflects the fact that the MLB talent pool was smaller and less competitive in earlier eras, primarily due to smaller populations, exclusionary practices like the color line, and limited global recruitment. Competition from other sports is also accounted for. Era-adjusted WAR aims to level the playing field by considering how many players were interested in baseball and had access to MLB at a given time.

I also think Skip is on to something, WAR is supposed to be era-adjusted already. If they do an exercise to adjust the player stats themselves and then put those adjusted stats through the WAR calculations, it feels like things are being modified twice.

[TBTC Baseball]

I'm all for something saying Chipper is top 50 all-time.

A little harsh on the HR impacts to Sosa and McGwire though. They "lost" at least 100HR, if not more. Ortiz loses 20?

[RiceBondsMT2Yng]

My vague recollection from Skip’s WAR for Dummies post a few years ago was that baseline WAR doesn’t really factor eras in. It weighs a player’s quality against a theoretical, prototypical AAA player from and of that time. May have misremembered…

[no10pin]

Originally Posted by RiceBondsMT2Yng

My vague recollection from Skip’s WAR for Dummies post a few years ago was that baseline WAR doesn’t really factor eras in. It weighs a player’s quality against a theoretical, prototypical AAA player from and of that time. May have misremembered…

My understanding is that there isn't an era adjustment necessarily, but many of the components are compared to the league average for that season. That creates a sort of era adjustment which feels duplicated by adjusting the actual stats as well.

[RiceBondsMT2Yng]

Skip, did you ever get a chance to review the study. Would be curious what you thought.

[bub838]

I need to know what Stifle thinks

[mfw13]

Great research, but why are taxpayer dollars being used for this type of research (it appears to have been conducted at a state university)?

This is the type of government waste that DOGE should have been trying to cut....

[ObanMontecristo]

totally separate from the talent pool issue, there’s an implicit bias here in choosing statistics that matter more (or less) today and applying them to players from 100 years (or even 30) years ago. Steals, moving runners, fewer strikeouts (for hitters) more strikeouts ( for pitchers), pitching wins, not to mention the lack of modern fielding metrics for many older eras.

[OhioLawyerF5]

Originally Posted by mfw13

Great research, but why are taxpayer dollars being used for this type of research (it appears to have been conducted at a state university)?

This is the type of government waste that DOGE should have been trying to cut....

University studies are more about teaching students to conduct research than anything. Plus, the results of university studies often bring in money and endowments to the school, which more than pays for itself. There is a lot of government waste. But this isn't it.

[TBTC Baseball]

Originally Posted by mfw13

Great research, but why are taxpayer dollars being used for this type of research (it appears to have been conducted at a state university)?

This is the type of government waste that DOGE should have been trying to cut....

Looks like their research is directly tied to graduates getting work for MLB teams. https://ecklab.github.io

[SleepyWill]

Anyone else find it amusing that Pedro Martinez is #45 on this list.

[RiceBondsMT2Yng]

Originally Posted by SleepyWill

Anyone else find it amusing that Pedro Martinez is #45 on this list.

Well, Randy had approx. 4100 IP to accumulate WAR. Maddux had 4900 IP. Clemens 5000 IP. Pedro had a little more than 2800 IP. So it's not so much amusing as it is expected. The adjusted WAR per 9 innings rate, whatever it is, would probably be more to your liking.

[SleepyWill]

Originally Posted by RiceBondsMT2Yng

Well, Randy had approx. 4100 IP to accumulate WAR. Maddux had 4900 IP. Clemens 5000 IP. Pedro had a little more than 2800 IP. So it's not so much amusing as it is expected. The adjusted WAR per 9 innings rate, whatever it is, would probably be more to your liking.

Was referencing that Pedro's jersey number was also #45. . .