When talking baseball with those outside the internetosphere, statistics followers often find themselves in a conundrum. The discussion often leads to an exchange something like this:

me: Sorry, your favorite player isn’t as productive as you think.

them: His .309 batting average! Have you seen the batting average! Plus he’s not very tall!

me: [Confused, a little angry, I don’t want to offend] Sir, as a statistics follower, I do not recognize batting average to have the same merit you have placed on it. Also, I’m not very tall. What does that say?

Yeah, making fun of David Eckstein is becoming a bit hackish. But the point is there’s no easy way to tell the other person that all they once thought about BA and RBI was wrong. It isn’t easy to tell them that broadcasters, especially baseball broadcasters, generally make things up as they go along. It ruins the fantasy.

This page exists to clear some of it up. We’ll start with some big names: WARP3, VORP, and Win Shares.

Warp3 and VORP

Stands for Wins Above Replacement Level - version three, and Value Over Replacement Player, respectively. They both kind of remind me of QB rating, if you’re into that sort of thing. They both ask: what is this player worth compared to someone the team could find on the waiver wire?

The ‘3′ in WARP means it is regular WARP but adjusted historically. Because, as has been pointed out more times than necessary, a homer in 1998 means less than it did in 1928. What’s important to remember when judging players, is the judgment should be based on how well he guy performs compared to his contemporaries. So if we can quantify that, then we can compare the relative value of players across different eras.

Win Shares

Wins shares assign an amount of team wins each player is responsible for. Pitching, hitting, and defensive contributions are considered, and categorized so viewers can see how many win shares come from what aspect of a players performance.