I've been working lately on making the components of WAR more obvious graphically. Here's what we'll call my rough draft:
Figure 1: WAR charts for Ronny Cedeno, Adam Dunn, and Ben Zobrist.
PT is playing time, and is the replacement component of war. O is for offence, which is essentially bRAA. D is for defence, and that's UZR plus positional adjustment (or just positional adjustment if you're a catcher). Thoughts?
1 recs | 37 comments
I like it.
Would this be something you could automate at StatCorner?
My only quick suggestion before running to the laundry: maybe a horizontal dotted line around 2 wins to mark the league average? Not super necessary, since we all understand that it’s around 2, but if the point is to add context and maybe make it easier for people to grasp . . .
Cool stuff.
Teej - September 16, 2009
Wait, the pink bar incorporates this, if I'm reading it right.
Never mind. I think.
Teej - September 16, 2009
I didn't get it at first.
After looking it over a couple times, I finally figured out what the arrows are supposed to mean. Cedeno’s offense drags him down alot, while Adam Dunn’s defense drags him down. I would prefer the regular numbers over this.
Janic - September 16, 2009
This isn't meant to replace numbers at all
Graham MacAree - September 16, 2009
did you see this?
Graham,
Cool. I just saw something related at Beyond the Box Score today: http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2009/9/16/1032763/introducing-diamondview-composite#storyjump
toshi - September 16, 2009
I did see it
That’s a neat toy to play with
Graham MacAree - September 16, 2009
Is Ronny's pink bar at 11 because that's what his defense is without the offense dragging it down?
JamMasterJesus - September 16, 2009
I think that pink represents the average runs created.
The best way to read it would be to start at 0 for replacement. Then look at pink for Average player at this position modified for playing time (WAR being cumulative). Next read the offensive/batting component (blue) and lastly, read the defensive/fielding component (green). This brings you to the black line which is the total WAR for the player.
Graham, I reckon if the black line should go all the way across. When I look at this, one of the important comparisons is to compare zero (replacement player) to pink (average player) to black (this player) as these are the end results so they should be represented similarly on the graph. Perhaps the pink should just be a reference line and not a bar.
rdave - September 16, 2009
Ohhhhhhhh. Thanks a ton (if thats true)
JamMasterJesus - September 16, 2009
I think I like it more if the pink bar doesn't overlap with the other two - it should be its own arrow
also, you’re using B for batting and F for fielding at the bottom and O for offense and D for defense at the top – that’s a little confusing too. I like it though.
seattlebruin - September 16, 2009
Agreed
It also took me a second to figure that out. O and D are listed in the description but B and F aren’t.
rdave - September 16, 2009
I agree with this.
If we’re just going with offense and defense bars (not breaking them down), I’d prefer to actually have those two relative to average, and then have a third bar be the total RAR of a player, coming up from negative whatever (rep runs below average) to meet where the hitting and defense arrows end up.
If you break it down more, say hitting, baserunning, position, fielding (or whatever), then individual arrows, one after the other, for all of those would be neat.
Sky Kalkman - September 17, 2009
Other than the above SB mentioned O/D vs. B/F disparity, these are quite useful.
The absence of Jeff and Matthew has really forced you into service, hasn’t it?
abender20 - September 16, 2009
Feedback received
Run two:
________________________________
Graham MacAree - September 16, 2009
This is a lot better
I didn’t like the first one, it felt like there was too much happening, primarily due to the bulk pink box. One thing that might possibly be worth clarifying would be that the average is a positional average. Otherwise the key is very useful.
Also, and this is as much a pet peeve than anything, the scales are obviously different between players. I realise that they are there to contextualise the magnitude of the arrows, and therefore show us that Ronny’s offence isn’t as bad as Dunn’s is good, but at-a-glance that’s my inference. Presumably, though, something gets lost in translation with a fixed scale and you end up cramping the graphics in some cases.
Overall, though, very useful representation.
MarkE - September 17, 2009
Maybe I'm misunderstanding Graham's original post
But I thought that the positional adjustment is incorporated into the green “Defense” line. That way the pink line or bar or whatever should be the same for all players, assuming the same amount of playing time. I think it’s better to break it out that way because it makes more sense to put fielding in the context of others at the same position, rather than hitting or playing time. Also, for catchers, if you wrap the positional adjustment up with the playing time component, then you wouldn’t be displaying any defensive adjustment at all. I think it’s more reasonable to make it look like all catchers have the same large defensive adjustment, rather than saying that they all have zero defensive adjustment.
Nadingo - September 17, 2009
My thoughts exactly
Graham MacAree - September 17, 2009
That's not bad.
Maybe make 0 thin and black and the player’s value bold and red?
Sky Kalkman - September 17, 2009
This whole idea is awesome.
I actually liked the original better (just to make things difficult). It seemed pretty intuitive to me that the pink box represented the contribution of an average player with the same amount of playing time. Then the blue and green arrows showed how the player jumped up or fell down off of that pink platform. I’ve spent a lot of time poring over fangraphs’ player value tables, though, so maybe that’s why it made sense.
I think if you just use a pink line and label it as “average,” it makes it a bit more confusing. How is that average level determined? By labeling it “playing time,” the process is a bit clearer.
Also, I think you spelled :(edeno wrong.
Nadingo - September 17, 2009
Pink good, changing scales on axes bad
I agree with Nadingo, the pink boxes were clearer. And it also makes things clearer if you always show the same scale, so it’s easier to compare players.
helpless optimist - September 17, 2009
The problem of course with not scaling is that Albert Pujols breaks everything
Graham MacAree - September 17, 2009
Oh the perils of democracy
I like the platform idea better as well but the other’s also have a point that it crowded things up. I wonder what the best solution to this would be.
Graham MacAree - September 17, 2009
I like the first one better, but either way this is a great idea.
So many people are visual in terms of how they process information that this can’t help but be useful.
Sec 108 - September 17, 2009
I hate to point it out
But you still have Offense as B for Batting at the bottom of the chart…
Otherwise, I think the bar for the average is better than the field.
Ike Clanton - September 17, 2009
Whoopsies
Graham MacAree - September 17, 2009
I prefered the original
I think it’s a great chart and really straightforward.
This now one is harder to read because of the repeated horizontal lines.
Llewdor - September 17, 2009
Have you played around with...
the positions/opacities of the arrows? Technical design usually suggests that you connect two inter-related sets of data, and I wonder if this would be a little clearer with the offensive and defensive arrows next to one another.
jwiscarson - September 17, 2009
That's a good idea. I'll see whether I can wring some more clarity out by putting them all closer together
Graham MacAree - September 17, 2009
I think it's a nice idea, my one build would be to use bolder colours as they are more impactful on the white background.
EnglishMariner - September 17, 2009
This one. Feels very intuitive, the order of the information and how the eye follows it across the graph.
If that makes any sense at all.
Kermit. - September 17, 2009
why?
I’ll ask the question I always ask with graphics, why do this? Do you feel the numbers, on a stand-alone basis, don’t express the relationships well? Can you “see” something graphically that you can’t see from just looking at the numbers.
I know graphs are cool and add pizzazz to a page, but I’m a graphical purist.
studes - September 18, 2009
I'm not answering for Graham here, but some people learn and communicate visually.
Also, some are verbal and some kinetic. Graphs help communicate to people who grasp things better via that medium rather than just seeing an equation on a page.
Sec 108 - September 18, 2009
Not everyone is comfortable with raw numbers.
This is something that I think a lot of people that are by nature comfortable with math don’t understand; those of us without said inclination will sometimes see numbers whose meaning they do not automatically grasp and the information has no chance of actually sinking in. It took me far, far longer to understand the concept and meaning of WAR than it really should have, and I am less math-phobic than a lot of other people that I know.
Putting those numbers in some sort of easily digestible form such as this makes it much easier for the information to take hold for some of us; makes them less scary, if you will. I have been told many times (usually by Graham) that the math behind metric analysis in baseball isn’t especially difficult, but that’s a huge part of making those of us intimidated by equations and raw numbers more comfortable with these concepts.
Aaron Campeau - September 18, 2009
Good point
I do understand that some people pick up things visually better than through numbers. In fact, I’ve built a couple of baseball websites on the concept. But I wonder in this case. Why create a graph to essentially represent three numbers that are on a similar scale? Is it really that hard to understand?
Baseline: +30
Offense: +20
Defense: -20
I have spent the better part of a 25-year career communicating numbers and concepts through graphics, so I understand the desire. However, graphics can be very misleading unless implemented correctly (the Internet is full of bad graphics, though this isn’t one of them, Graham!) and I wonder if this particular situation requires them.
studes - September 18, 2009
I understand your point, but in this case I think that the graphic is being implemented correctly so I guess I just don't see the harm.
Aaron Campeau - September 18, 2009
True, no hard.
Just time and energy. Two things I wish I had a lot more of!
studes - September 18, 2009
er, harm.
studes - September 18, 2009
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