2024 FanGraphs WAR Update

Today, we’ve made some changes to Wins Above Replacement that completes the move from UZR to the full suite of Statcast equivalent metrics in FanGraphs WAR. This process began in 2022, when we replaced UZR’s range component with Statcast’s Fielding Runs Prevented, which is Outs Above Average (OAA) converted to runs above average. UZR will continue to be calculated on FanGraphs through the end of the 2025 season. Today’s changes are retroactive to the 2016 season.

Here is the complete list of what is included in this update:

You can read more about the Statcast metrics here:

We’ve added XBR (Statcast’s baserunning metric) to the Advanced section of our leaderboards. We have also added a new Statcast fielding section to our leaderboards, which include all of the additional metrics that have been added to WAR.

There are a handful of notable changes in WAR from the update, but almost all players’ WAR totals are within 1 WAR of their previous totals from 2016-2023. We’ve updated Legacy WAR (L-WAR) on the leaderboards if you’d like to see all the changes.

Here are the players whose WAR increased more than 1 WAR:

WAR Changes 2016-2023
Name Previous WAR New WAR Change
Yadier Molina 11.1 14.1 3.0
J.D. Martinez 19.6 22.5 2.9
Tucker Barnhart 3.6 5.5 2.0
Jacob Stallings 3.3 5.1 1.8
Trea Turner 35.6 37.2 1.7
Robinson Chirinos 2.6 4.2 1.6
Yasiel Puig 7.0 8.6 1.6
Roberto Pérez 6.4 8.0 1.6
Carlos Correa 29.0 30.5 1.5
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. 10.1 11.6 1.5
Jose Altuve 40.3 41.8 1.4
J.T. Realmuto 31.2 32.5 1.3
Gio Urshela 6.3 7.7 1.3
Yasmani Grandal 24.6 25.9 1.3
Christian Vázquez 11.2 12.5 1.3
Hunter Dozier -0.4 0.9 1.3
Austin Hedges 5.7 7.0 1.3
Michael Pérez -1.8 -0.6 1.2
Martín Maldonado 7.3 8.5 1.2
Amed Rosario 7.6 8.8 1.2
Brandon Drury 6.4 7.6 1.2
Ty France 6.5 7.7 1.2
Buster Posey 20.5 21.7 1.2
Eric Hosmer 3.7 4.9 1.1
Albert Pujols -0.7 0.4 1.1
Alejandro Kirk 6.3 7.4 1.1
Austin Romine -0.7 0.4 1.1
AJ Pollock 8.3 9.3 1.1
Stephen Piscotty 5.0 6.1 1.1
Matt Duffy 3.4 4.4 1.0

And here are the players whose WAR decreased more than 1 WAR:

War Changes 2016-2023
Name Previous WAR New WAR Dif
Mookie Betts 51.7 48.8 -3.0
Joey Gallo 15.1 12.7 -2.4
Andrew Benintendi 13.1 11.0 -2.1
Paul Goldschmidt 36.5 34.6 -2.0
Gary Sánchez 16.0 14.3 -1.7
Michael Conforto 18.5 16.8 -1.7
Jarrod Dyson 6.0 4.3 -1.7
Matt Chapman 27.5 25.9 -1.6
José Ramírez 45.0 43.5 -1.5
Delino DeShields 3.9 2.4 -1.5
Max Muncy 19.5 18.1 -1.4
Kyle Schwarber 12.8 11.4 -1.4
Avisaíl García 10.1 8.7 -1.4
Brett Gardner 14.4 13.1 -1.4
Tyler Flowers 11.9 10.5 -1.3
Adolis García 11.1 9.8 -1.3
Mike Zunino 13.0 11.7 -1.3
Yoán Moncada 14.9 13.6 -1.3
Aaron Hicks 10.9 9.6 -1.3
Pedro Severino 0.4 -0.8 -1.3
Omar Narváez 9.0 7.7 -1.3
Freddie Freeman 43.5 42.2 -1.2
Adam Eaton 10.8 9.6 -1.2
Rougned Odor 8.6 7.4 -1.2
Brandon Lowe 14.1 12.9 -1.2
Mike Yastrzemski 11.0 9.9 -1.2
Aaron Judge 41.6 40.5 -1.2
Francisco Lindor 43.7 42.6 -1.1
Leonys Martin 4.7 3.6 -1.1
Eddie Rosario 10.9 9.8 -1.1
Justin Turner 27.9 26.8 -1.1
Matt Olson 24.9 23.8 -1.1
Alex Verdugo 9.2 8.1 -1.1
Kyle Seager 17.7 16.6 -1.1

If you have any questions, or notice any errors, please let us know in the comments.





David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.

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Cool Lester SmoothMember since 2020
8 months ago

Amazing!

One of the reasons I love FanGraphs is that you guys keenly understand that WAR is a process, not “the answer.”

Give me all the Tom Tango stats, hahaha

Lanidrac
8 months ago

If only they would finally stop basing their Pitching WAR off of FIP…

Cool Lester SmoothMember since 2020
8 months ago
Reply to  Lanidrac

I’ll take their raw RA9-WAR over rWAR for career totals eight days a week

Lanidrac
8 months ago

Then fWAR for pitchers needs to switch to being based on RA9 instead of FIP, since we’ve long known that pitchers do in fact have significant control over their BABIP.

As it is, fWAR for pitchers is even worse than bWAR for pitchers due to being based on a heavily flawed theory that was debunked around 20 years ago.

formerly matt w
8 months ago

I disagree. Between Jim Palmer’s 91.6 RA9-WAR and 67.6 rWAR, I’ll take the one that at least tries to take into account the effect of pitching in front of Brooks Robinson, Mark Belanger, Paul Blair, and Bobby Grich.

formerly matt w
8 months ago

Now I’m sorting the pitching value columns by various measures and I wanted to pour one out for Glendon Rusch, who has the second most negative BIP wins of all time behind Jim Kaat, in one-third of Kaat’s innings. Rusch had -11.8 BIP wins out of 19.8 career fWAR, leaving him with 7.6 RA9-WAR. Weirdly, rWAR thinks he pitched in front of approximately scratch defenses and gives him 5.4 career rWAR.

Bruce Ruffin is even more extreme, with -8.4 BIP wins out of 13.7 fWAR, and Zach Duke had -8.3 BIP wins out of 15.4 fWAR, but they both made some of that back with LOB wins (2.4 for Ruffin, 5.5 for Duke). Ruffin has 9.8 rWAR and Duke has 10.7, both getting some credit for bad defenses but I guess not that much credit.

(There are some 19th century pitchers with truly freaky numbers, like John Coleman and Bill Stearns, but I’m chalking that up to “19th century baseball was weird.”)

Anyway I’m not saying rWAR is always better than RA9-WAR or fWAR, but they’re all worth looking at.

Cool Lester SmoothMember since 2020
8 months ago

I respect that!

I just don’t like the rWAR methodology in accounting for defense…or their defensive stats.

The granularity of the Statcast numbers Tom uses in the Snell/Strider article he cites below are my ideal application of the rWAR concept.

Last edited 8 months ago by Cool Lester Smooth