Baseball Update: Learning Sabermetrics, Part 4

If you missed any part of the Learning Sabermetrics series, click here.

WPA (Win Probability Added)
Goal: WPA quantifies the contextual value of any given play.

Translation: Measure's how valuable a player is in the late innings. Let's say Chase Utley hits a two-run home in the eighth inning to give the Phillies the lead, then Brad Lidge blows the save, Utley is not penalized for Lidge's mistake.

My Take: WPA measures what "happens" in a game instead of looking at what "should" have happened. Fangraphs has a live WPA scoreboard for every game, for you can see the turning point of the game good or bad. I like WPA because the stat is not used to evaluate the talent of the player and instead looks at the talent of the team. I also love WPA because it's a storytelling stat. You can look at the scoreboards and see everything that happened and the turning point of the game. WPA is also used in other sports such as NFL, NHL, and NBA.

Win Shares
Goal: Win Shares attempts to measure how many wins a hitter or pitcher has personally notched for his team in the standings.

Translation: It's as easy as it sounds. Okay maybe not, here's a better definition on how to calculate Win Shares.

My Take: Win Shares has been quickly replaced by WAR, which is unusual because Win Shares was just introduced in to the World in 2002. Unlike WAR though, Win Shares looks exclusively from a team's actual win total. This is a better stat when looking at MVP's and all-star team selections.

Win Shares is an interesting stat. It was introduced and quickly replaced by WAR. In the end though Win Shares is an interesting answer to an interesting question: given the number of wins a team actually has, how can we figure out how they add up? As Dave Studeman of Harball Times said, "The Win Shares system actually goes to great lengths to make sure the total contribution from all players equals the number of games his team actually won. None of the other stats do that."

I hope you have enjoyed this series of posts. My goal for this series was to better understand Sabermetric statistics and pass along the information that I have collected and how I understand them. Sabermetrics are a bigger part of the baseball today whether we're ready or not. I feel like I have a better understanding of Sabermetrics after studying the glossary's of great sites like Fangraphs and reading column's of Alex Remington. I have a better understanding of Sabermetrics by writing this series. I hope you have a better understanding after reading my posts.