In Motion: Center fielder WAR Graphs

by Bill Petti on Mar 16, 2011 1:00 PM EDT in Player Profiles

For my next installment of In Motion, I thought it would be interesting to see what WAR Graphs might look like in this context.

The screen shot above depicts center fielders and their cumulative WAR over time (the x-axis shows age, but you can also change it to account for seasons). The color of each data point is related to how much WAR each player earned in that individual season--dark red indicates elite, dark blue indicates negative WAR.

Looking at Mickey Mantle and Ty Cobb it's impressive how good they were up to age 30. Mantle, in particular, had some incredible seasons before he was 26. However, we can see how injuries started to chip away at Mantle's greatness and a decrease in the slope* of his WAR graph. We also see how Wilie Mays' consistency would lead him to catch and essentially mimic Ty Cobbs phenomenal career.

(*Comparing WAR Graphs gave me an idea for comparing slopes of WAR accumulation--an idea I'll be returning to later this week. Stay tuned.)

I've loaded 10 center fielders into the tool, but displaying all 10 at the same time gets quite messy. In addition to Mantle, Mays, Snyder, and Cobb you can also look at Edmonds, Griffey, Jr., Speaker, DiMaggio, Ashburn, and Beltran. You can pick and choose which players to highlight and track as well, to increase readability.

I am having some problems embedding the visual here, so be sure to check it out in all it's motion glory here.

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Awesome….just awesome.

Blog: Splashing Pumpkins | Twitter: @splashinpumpkin

by Julian Levine on Mar 16, 2011 1:03 PM EDT reply actions

I think the graph would be a lot better if colour was used to distinguish between the players. We can deduce the awesomeness of a particular season by looking at the slope before and after a point so the colour to show the “heat” of a particular season is not necessary.

by siggian on Mar 16, 2011 1:30 PM EDT reply actions

Yeah, I had a hard time following who was who.

But man, I love this.

On Twitter: @baseballtwit

by adarowski on Mar 16, 2011 1:45 PM EDT up reply actions

True, it works better with 2 or fewer players

But you can alter the color with the drop down to be unique per player, etc.

Writer at Beyond the Box Score and tortured Mets fan (is there any other kind?)

by Bill Petti on Mar 16, 2011 2:03 PM EDT up reply actions

So the different colors are kind of an alternative to wwar

Dave Gershman - Beyond the Box Score
Penn League Report / Twitter: @Dave_Gershman

by Dave Gershman on Mar 16, 2011 2:05 PM EDT reply actions

Sort of

The colors do show when a season was elite versus average, but the color coding is automatically assigned by the program. So there is no specific logic behind it like with Adam’s work.

Writer at Beyond the Box Score and tortured Mets fan (is there any other kind?)

by Bill Petti on Mar 16, 2011 2:49 PM EDT up reply actions

So there is no specific logic behind it like with Adam’s work.

OH SNAP :)

On Twitter: @baseballtwit

by adarowski on Mar 16, 2011 11:52 PM EDT up reply actions

Wouldn’t the slope of the accumulated WAR just be the yearly WAR?

by mycr0ft on Mar 16, 2011 2:11 PM EDT reply actions

Yes, but only if you are looking at two successive points

If you are looking at a line of best fit for multiple points, however, it doesn’t work. Nor does the average WAR per year over that period.

Writer at Beyond the Box Score and tortured Mets fan (is there any other kind?)

by Bill Petti on Mar 16, 2011 2:48 PM EDT up reply actions

I am in awe..

Not only of the cool as hell and easy to understand data you are displaying with all of these, but also the mere fact that Google Docs can do this (for basically free), and Business Intelligence providers for the most part cannot do anything even close to this. (I work in the field.. so I know…). I too am a Gapminder fan, and it is cool to see this kind of stuff applied to stuff I really like.

by Wayne Stepalavich on Mar 16, 2011 2:39 PM EDT reply actions