WAR, Roto Earnings, & Tying it All Together

Without a doubt, Fangraphs has changed the way many of us look at baseball statistics. And I will freely and happily admit that I am one of the many.

Their WAR calculations make for nice shorthand when I want to quickly compare two players. xFIP gives me a good idea of where I think a pitcher might be headed, and is even more invaluable in identifying pitchers who are performing well above or well below their anticipated levels of performance.

But there is what should be an obvious shortcoming to this type of analysis.

A.L. RF by WAR, 2011 (stats through June 22)

Player	HR	RBI	SB	BA	R	Off. WAR	$
Jose Bautista	22	47	5	.325	56	4.5	$19
Matt Joyce	10	36	4	.309	40	2.6	$12
Carlos Quentin	17	48	1	.256	34	2.1	$11
Brennan Boesch	10	38	3	.300	51	1.9	$13
Michael Cuddyer	10	29	7	.283	32	1.3	$11
Nelson Cruz	17	40	4	.241	29	1.0	$10
Nick Swisher	8	35	1	.235	33	0.9	$6
Ichiro Suzuki	0	21	19	.279	40	0.8	$11
Shin-Soo Choo	5	28	11	.245	30	0.8	$8
Jeff Francoeur	9	43	10	.257	30	0.7	$10
Nick Markakis	5	31	4	.269	31	0.2	$7
Torii Hunter	8	39	2	.243	31	0.0	$6
David DeJesus	5	22	1	.233	24	0.0	$3

Most of us aren't playing "WAR-ball." Most of us are playing Roto.

(The WAR used here is Baseball Reference's WAR offensive calculation. The $ value is using my customized Patton 5x5 formulas from 2010).

The point isn't that I disagree with WAR. In actuality, these rankings intuitively make sense to me, particularly from Bautista down to Cruz. What matters to us as Rotisserie/fantasy players, though, is what that player actually earns us across the categories we're playing with.

This is where the intersection of analytic data and Rotisserie-style scoring is useful. Is Brennan Boesch's batting average sustainable, or should I expect some kind of backslide the rest of the way out? Will the hitters behind Boesch in Detroit's line-up permit him to keep scoring runs at this pace, or is he a good bet to tail off? Diving deeper into the data at Fangraphs and Baseball Prospectus helps me to try and answer these types of questions.

However, you can't forget that your standard scoring categories are what will win or lose you your league. Your goal is to accumulate stats, not WAR.

Every month or so, Fangraphs' Rotographs arm runs positional rankings. Here is how they had the right fielders listed above ranked in mid-June.

Tier 1: Bautista ($19)

Tier 2: Quentin ($11), Cruz ($10), Joyce ($12)

Tier 3: Choo ($8), Swisher ($6), Hunter ($6), Cuddyer ($11)

Tier 4: Suzuki ($11), Boesch ($13), Francoeur ($10), Markakis ($7)

Tier 6: DeJesus ($3)

I threw in the earnings to date from the chart above. But forget the earnings to date thus far. The goal of this exercise isn't to rank what these players have done so far this year, but rather to handicap what they're going to do for the rest of the year. From this standpoint, do the Fangraphs/Rotographs rankings make sense?

Suzuki, Boesch and Francoeur are all probably too low. Right now, I could see lumping all of the Tier 3-4 outfielders together with the exception of Markakis.

Metrics guys hate Suzuki, but even in 5x5 the steals give him plenty of value. Boesch I talked about above. And then there's Francoeur.

When I initially conceived this article, I was going to write solely about Francoeur. I didn't pick American League right fielders by accident. I wanted to compare Frenchy to the rest of the A.L. RF pool and here we are.

Thing is, I agree with the sabermetricians on Francoeur. He's a barely acceptable Major League corner outfielder. When he goes through one of his long slumps at the plate, he's unacceptable.

That's well and good in real life. In Roto, he could very well put up a 20/20 season this year. 15/15 looks extremely realistic. An $18 season is well within reach.

At your auction, you have to discount guys like Francoeur because they stink in real life and could lose their job. Once the season starts, you have to accept it if Francoeur is providing value and holding onto his job. Discounting him because he's a bad player in real life is a losing strategy.