Right away I want to point out an inconsistency in the selection of the outfielders for this team. Andres Torres played primarily center field for the Giants, but he logged significant playing time at each of the outfield positions. Ditto Carlos Gonzalez, except with left field as his main spot. Seeing as we had two star outfielders without a fixed position, I picked the three outfielders with the highest swp and put them wherever they would fit. Had I stuck strictly with positions, Torres would have been left out and Andre Ethier would have taken his place in right. Here's how their two lines compare:
Torres: 1,828 / 2.9 = 630
Ethier: 1,755 / 3.7 = 474
As you can see, Ethier was more valuable in terms of both my newly included columns. (Defensively, it was a different story: 1.6 dWAR for Torres vs. -1.7 for Ethier. Yikes!) But I've thrown my lot in with swp, and that's how the story goes. Plus Torres is a better fit to bat leadoff than flash-in-the-pan Kelly Johnson.
MVP candidate Carlos Gonzalez (or CarGo as the fans have dubbed him) had an incredible season, but he had rather low-valued swp. That might be because power hitting outfielders are relatively easy to come by. See as an example his Rockies teammate shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, who logged the same number of Wins Above Replacement, yet scored measurably fewer swp (due to an injury-shortened season).
But, wait, that logic can't hold, because isn't first base one of the deepest positions in terms of production? Then how come Aubrey Huff and (especially) Adrian Gonzalez had such highly valued swp? Maybe it has something to do with all the walks they drew. Maybe it's all the extra-base hits. Maybe there's just something about this sabermetrics movement that I don't understand.
What I do understand is that Mark Reynolds is way overrated, at least by traditional offensive measures. He's still better than average, but leading the league in strikeouts three years in a row? Makes you wonder if the Orioles front office (the team that just recently acquired Reynolds) has access to the latest evaluating measures.
I also understand that Ubaldo Jimenez was as impressive as Tim Lincecum was disappointing. I don't know if WAR takes into account park effects, but to give up just 10 home runs in high-altitude Coors Field is a feat of absolute mastery. Only two pitchers in the league (Roy Halladay and Adam Wainwright) had higher swp's, but no one could best him in WAR for pitchers. He was a bit wild, with a K/BB ratio dwarfed by Cy Young winner Halladay, but he's only 26 and looks to have several more great seasons ahead of him.
Tim Lincecum's season was a silly one: as you can see he's way down there in swp, whereas he was among the leaders in the last two years (where he won two Cy Youngs). He still piled on the strikeouts this year, leading the league for the third straight year, but I guess he just gave up too many hits and let too many runs score.
Just a word on a couple of over-valued relief pitchers: Heath Bell was one of the best in the game - you generally don't see a reliever with WAR above 3.0 - but seeing as swp highly overvalues the save stats (30 swp per!) it takes him a lot of points to get to one WAR. Conversely, someone like Hong-Chih Kuo, who pitched comparably, but didn't rack up as many prestige stats, has points that more accurately represent his value.
Just for a second, look at Luke Gregerson's swp/WAR ratio. Wow, right? It would take him nearly 1,300 swp to log 1 WAR! Looks like the Padres made the right decision trading him to the Marlins for a young center fielder - get the most you can for him while his traditional stats are over-valued.
NEXT: NL Wild Card
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