In 1972, Steve Carlton had an amazingly great season for an amazingly bad team. His Phillies went 59-97, but Lefty was 27-10! In 41 starts he threw 30 complete games, 8 shutout, 346 innings and had an ERA of 1.97! He won 27 games despite getting more than 4 runs of support in only 9 starts. In 4 of those games he got exactly 5 runs. It was an amazing season. Philadelphia went 22-4 over his last 26 starts, this from a team that won 38% of all its games and just 26% of the games that Carlton did not start.
Philadelphia was 29-12 in games he did start and 32-87 in the games. That’s 70% vs 26%. He is credited with a 12 WAR season, but something is amiss.
If Lefty was worth just 12 wins to Philly, then they should have been a WAR-hypothetical 17-24 team in his 41 starts, were those starts covered by a replacement level MLB pitcher. 17-24 is a 41% rate, but Philadelphia won just 26% of his non-starts that season.
Something doesn’t add up: Reynolds, Chapman, Fryman and Twitchell were the 4 other most used starters that season. They ran FIPS of 3.89, 3.91, 3.90 and 2.60, combining for 77 starts. They were somewhat worse than the league average that year, but they weren’t replacement level throwers. Philly was 23-54 in their 77 starts, a 30% win rate. Yet Carlton’s WAR assumes that Philadelphia would win 40% of Lefty’s 41 starts were he replaced by a AAAA arm.
Assuming that the Phillies win just 26% of those games (the actual rate) then they would have gone 11-30. That is an 18 game difference from their actual record, yet Carlton gets credit for only 12 WAR. He’s been ripped off.
WAR simply demands a bit of eye of newt and toe of frog.