Thirteen, quizzically, wonders why a site he thought to be (marginally) respectable should --- > show such irrationality about Kendrys Morales.  ;- ) 

The below questions are, of course, very fair:

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You're sort of bringing me in at the end of the movie here: you're saying WAR undervalues RBIs, OK, got that, but why? What specific thing is wrong with the formula? What skill makes one guy a good bet to produce RBIs? Is WAR undervaluing clutch hitting, and if so, are all of these supposedly overpaid MOTO guys career clutch hitters? Is it undervaluing power? We know how well team wOBA correlates with runs scored, and how well team WAR correlates with wins... if you give a bump in wOBA or WAR to players with power, does it improve the correlation?

I'm interested in your idea, but I can't buy in until I see the work.

- See more at: http://seattlesportsinsider.com/comment/91044#comment-91044

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The thing is, we've indeed discussed this at great length, the last ten years.  As you say, we've brought you in at the end of the movie.  That is exactly the disconnect.  You missed the earlier stuff.

But your question set looks like a great opportunity :- ) ... we'll have to get to a systematic series on it.  But the questions deserve at least a cursory point in the right direction.

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Just real quickly here, for starters, taking your questions in order:

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1.  One of the specific things wrong with the WAR formula vis-a-vis RBI, is that it makes no distinction between players producing the same WAR under vastly different circumstances.  Take, for instance, part-time heroes like John Jaso.

Very often we are not disagreeing about what (say) John Jaso's production would be worth -- if he could be counted on to produce it under full 550-AB exposure, with advance scouting ranged fully against him, pitchers focusing on him, etc etc.  What we're disagreeing on, is whether a certain player truly has the diamond-hard batting skills that Kendrys Morales does.  Not slash line:  batting skills that hold up under all conditions.

So:  one of the specific skills that makes (say) Raul Ibanez a good bet to produce RBI's, as opposed to (say) Dustin Ackley who had a Raul-like OPS+ as a rookie, is that Raul's strike zone had been proven to have no holes in it.  

You pencil a young, part-time, 120 OPS+ first baseman into your lineup to get Morales' 90 RBI, and then you find the guy is overexposed and his production doesn't hold up under the bright lights.

We remember a very sharp debate about David Dellucci after the 2006 season; Big Blog wanted to steer clear of pricey free agents and sign Dellucci, who would 'deliver the same production for a fraction of the cost.'  Cleveland had the same idea, quadrupled Dellucci's salary and started him Opening Day ... and his production fell from 125 OPS+ to 75 OPS+ that year.

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2.  Clutch hitting isn't particularly the point, no.  The point is a getting a guy who has demonstrated an ability to deliver his usual slash line against tough pitchers having a good day.  I would trust Kendrys Morales to hit .280 in a playoff series against Detroit; I would trust Alex Liddi to hit .120.

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But -- as Bill James put it, the Red Sox are looking for a player who is not nervous when the game depends on him, and Justin Verlander is pitching.  Justin Smoak legitimately freaks out with two men on base.  Other guys don't.

There isn't a magical ability to hit .400 in the playoffs, but there certainly is an ability to get scared, and some guys have that. You'll never find a single baseball man who disagrees.

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There is also a "bully" effect in baseball, running away from fights when the other guy's bigger.  Here is a Bill James / SSI article on it, which (um) shows its work.  Juan Marichal's WAR level soared when it mattered most; Bert Blyleven's WAR disappeared when anything was on the line.

Similarly, some batters feast on lousy pitching, but disappear against star pitchers.  GM's scoff at them as "mistake hitters" and won't pay you for them.  It does NOT show up in their RISP or their WAR, or in any stat, other than their splits against great pitching and fringe pitching.

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3.  Correlation is a handy tool, but we want to be careful not to take inferences so far that they are no longer necessary inferences.  

Certainly the 2013 Red Sox, who are 78-55, are going to have a huge pile of WAR.  But last year, they were 69-93 and didn't have a big pile of WAR.  Did they use the WAR paradigm to gain WAR?  Did they add all these wins by purchasing WAR in the free agent market?   What caused these WAR?

Sure, we want a huge run differential.  How do we get from that understanding, to saying Kendrys Morales will affect our team run differential by X runs?  Nobody guarantees us that you can subtract Felix Hernandez' 6 WAR from the 2014 Mariners, and not have them throw in the towel in May.

How does WAR deal with the issue of a team that loses hope and quits on the season?  Bill James just wrote a piece on that (easily observable) phenomenon.

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4.  And past WAR -- say for Nick Swisher -- don't imply a "correct" projection for his WAR going forward.  Supposing that a player really has affected his team by +25 runs in a vacuum, and there were no collateral effects .... why does that mean that we pay for +25 next year?

GM's have to bet on UP seasons or DWN ones.  That's what makes a ballgame.

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5.  WAR has never addressed the question of, "what causes a player to have an UP or DWN season?"  Does having zero proven RBI men in the lineup tend to create a Critical Mass effect in which everybody has a bad year and you score 513 runs?  Is it chemistry?  Why does Chone Figgins under- or over-perform?  This is 'one of the specific things wrong' with overconfidence in WAR as a tool to build future pennant winners.

Everybody tells you that Raul Ibanez raised the Mariners' game in the training room ...and that he kept the Mariners in it, psychologically, at several pionts this year.  Are you and I going to tell the Mariners that Raul didn't do that, from behind our monitors?  :- )

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6.  WAR dogma assumes that any* AAA player could come up and give you 0.0 WAR production with no transition period.  The entire WAR concept is grounded in the idea that you can have 0.0 WAR at any position by handing in a document at the post office.  (The 2010 Mariners had a dozen players with negative WAR - including Casey Kotchman with 457 at-bats and -0.8 WAR.)

And it assumes that any young pitcher who got 0.67 WAR in 1/3 of a season, could give you Joe Saunders' 2.0 WAR and 200 IP if you merely scheduled him the 20 extra starts next year.

That's not the case.  As Bill James said, most of a good player's value is in being average for a full season.  Very often we are merely talking past each other on this point:  Joe Saunders' game holds up against all attempts to "book" it.  Erasmo Ramirez' has not been proven to do so.

A GM will pay you 10 times as much for a 2.5 WAR pitcher as he will for an 0.7 WAR pitcher who did it in 1/4 the innings.  That's because the 0.7 WAR pitcher probably couldn't do it back-to-back-to-back-to-back within the same season.

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7.  You've got each of the factors we mentioned in the previous post, such as ... Why is the INDUSTRY AVERAGE for items A, B, and C --- > necessarily the CORRECT purchase price for items D, E, and F?

Supposing that the industry average were to pay $9M for Kendrys Morales' production, does that prove that it is always incorrect to pay less or more?  What if the supply and demand is idiosyncratic (which it IS)?

Teams pay triple for closers what they do for setup men, WAR for WAR.  Why's that?  Are you saying that they shouldn't?

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8.  WAR does not address the dynamics of roster construction ... how the presence of a good shortstop allows you to go shopping in a pleasant pool of left fielders, and the concept of Player Pairs, and so forth.  

Stars & Scrubs isn't captured by WAR.  How do you quantify the Stars & Scrubs ability to riffle through the deck in May and June, in your lower roster slots, trying different players?

Kelly Gaffney has a piece on that, here.

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9.  Here's a piece wherein Cameron suddenly realizes that no-hit, high-WAR players -- ie Chone Figgins -- don't keep racking up high WAR totals.

In other words, we thought Chone was a 5-WAR guy, paid him as such ...and found out that he never should have been paid as a 5-WAR guy.  

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10.  There are many other complicating factors; that's a sample.  But James said it better.  "We do not have near-perfect measurements of baseball players; it is foolish to assume that we do."

Cheers,

Jeff