can you show your work?
The reason that Fangraphs is so convinced about their "rightness" re: the idea that your average MOTO hitter is overpaid for being a MOTO hitter is that they've done their math to back up the suggestion. They've got a WAR formula, they like it pretty well, and they're sticking by it. What I understand you're saying is, there's a disparity between the WAR formula and what the teams are doing, so therefore teams must know something WAR doesn't. Some people would call you out for "appeal to authority", but I do think there's some merit to the suggestion (I mean, these guys are paid to be good at understanding baseball...). Thing is, I'd like to see some evidence to support what you're saying.
It's great that you have confidence in your assertion, but I just can't buy into a claim like that without seeing ground-up evidence. 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. I confess I've thought about writing this up myself a few times, but unfortunately I'm going to be laptop-less for about a week, so I won't be able to do it real soon. Don't mean to challenge you to write something; it's your blog... but I gotta say I'd love to see your math.
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