Baty vs. Vientos

[roger_that]

It's curious how their stats are close at this point in the season but their WAR are far apart. Vientos has recently departed the negative WAR, and sits at 0.0 today, while Baty is at 2.4 WAR points, sixth on the team, ahead of Senga (2.3 WAR), Diaz (2.1), and McNeil (2.0). But compare Baty head-to-head with Vientos, and the WAR disparity seems a little weird.

Baty listed first: BA .248/.246 OBP .309/.294 SLG.437/.429 OPS .746/ .723

An edge for Baty, sure, but a very small one.

As far as playing time goes, Vientos has ten more PAs than Baty, 361/351.

Walks and strikeouts, very similar. Baty 28/84, Vientos 21/83.

Of course, Baty has shown defensive superiority, both in terms of fielding ability and versatility, but that can't account for a 2.4 WAR difference, can it? Maybe it's the combination of defensive ability and the small edge Baty has offensively?

Still seems a bit weird to me.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I noticed that too. I've never really taken the time to understand WAR, so it's a mystery to me why the numbers are so different.

[metsmarathon]

Baty’s OPS+ is higher than Vientos’ at 112 to 105

And Baty has been the better defensive player by about 11-12 runs or so according to both bbref FanGraphs.

So much so that vientos defense negates his offense, at least using bbref’s calculations. FanGraphs has a slightly different calculation, with Baty having the war edge 1.9 to 0.5

But in either case, the bulk of the difference is defense.

[Edgy MD]

It is sort of meant to be a mystery, as bWAR and fWAR are based on proprietary formulae, so try as we might, there is only so much that we will understand.

But some areas that probably fuel the discrepancy are the positions (Baty has played second and third while Vientos has played third and DH), the related defensive workload (Baty has played 776 innings and Vientos has played 491), double plays (Baty has grounded into six and Veintos nine), basestealing (Baty has stolen six bases without being caught, and Vientos has yet to attempt), baserunning beyond stolen bases, etc.

I might guess the on-base percentages are a big factor. A .294 figure versus .309 may only a be a 15-point difference, but that can be meaningfully significant if one number is on the positive side of the replacement-player line and the other is not.

[Gwreck]

I understood that there is a positional adjustment in WAR calculations as well. Vientos has played a significant amount of time at DH and Baty has played almost exclusively in the field.

His value over a replacement player is necessarily lesser because it’s easiest to “replace” someone at DH than anywhere else.