WAR Changes and Updates!

A few weeks ago, you may have seen this tweet:

In today’s Crazy Big Nerd News, FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.com have agreed to standardize Replacement Level. #SABRanalytics

— robneyer (@robneyer) March 8, 2013

Today, we’ve rolled out those changes, and some other ones!

Here are the details:

– Replacement level is now set at an even 1,000 WAR per 2,430 game season. Batters are given 57% of all total WAR with pitchers receiving the remaining 43%. This will cause players to drop in WAR by about 0.3 WAR per recent season.

– The leagues for batters are now zeroed out in terms of runs above average. Most of this adjustment is done in Batting, while the final league adjustment is done behind the scenes. We will soon have a “League Adjustment” stat which shows exactly what the league adjustment is for each player. On a seasonal level, AL position players will see about a 0.2 decrease, with NL position players receiving about a 0.4 decrease in WAR.

– Infield fly balls are now part of our pitcher WAR calculation. They are counted the same as a strikeout in the FIP calculation (though generic FIP on the site has not changed). You can see Dave Cameron’s original post to find out more about this change.

– UZR has been given a minor update. There was a small issue with calculating the foul line and this has now been corrected. Also, the 2012 park factors were updated. Players may have had their UZR values changed by a run or two at most.

Dave Cameron will have another post up in about 15 minutes going into more detail on the replacement level changes.