That being said, I cannot believe that either the PD or Cleveland.com allowed this piece to see the light of day. Here is the gist of the author's position: with Josh Hamilton the Rangers play (as of 07.22) .661 ball, without him .421. Both Ian Kinsler and Adrian Beltre have a higher WAR than Hamilton. Thus, WAR is a silly "new-fangled" statistic that provides no useful information.
I could take innumerable stances against this contention. How about "WAR accounts for games played, rather than games not played, especially those lost after breaking your arm trying to score from third on a pop out to between home and third. Maybe WAR rewards those who do not make god awful stupid decisions. You would need to take a WAR/G average to build in games missed due to injury." Or "Look at the top 10 in career WAR (Ruth, Bonds, Cobb, Mays, Cy Young, Aaron, Walter Johnson, Wagner, Speaker, Clemens) and tell me that it does a poor job of ranking players. Of the top 63 in career WAR, all of them are either in the Hall of Fame, definitely will be in the Hall of Fame (think Maddux), or have been caught up in the steroid scandal. If you want to allow a couple of 19th century guys and Peter Edward Rose, then it covers the top 83." I could take issue with this entirely subjective and unsupported statement --
"And maybe it doesn't matter that Hamilton continues to drive in runs at a lofty pace; is such a feared hitter that the batters around him get better pitches to hit; is an outstanding base-runner; has excellent range in the outfield and a great throwing arm; plays hard almost to a fault; is integral to the Rangers' excellent camaraderie and chemistry, etc."
Thankfully, I do not need to make any of those arguments. All I need to do is simply point out one of the most basic logical theorems: CORRELATION DOES NOT PROVE CAUSATION!!!!! Did I put enough emphasis on that? Am I going to waste my time digging into the myriad of reasons that Rangers did not perform well during those 38 games? Absolutely not. The pure fact is that just because Texas plays 200 points lower without Hamilton does not mean it was because Hamilton was not in the lineup. For instance, the Cardinals had a higher slugging percentage when Albert Pujols was on the DL. Weird. That is because there are an incalculable amount of variables at play. Hey, my Indians are 0-5 this season when I watch the game at a bar. Thus, obviously, the place at which I watch the game has a direct negative influence on the Tribe's ability to win. Right? Right?
If the author wants to express his deep and abiding man-crush on Josh Hamilton or continue to live in an antiquated fantasy world where batting average is still the premier statistic, I'm cool with that, but it is simply deplorable that a respected media outlet would print the ramble. The author closes his piece as follows --
"Maybe Hamilton's "Wins Above Replacement" is so far off the charts it's simply invisible."
Maybe Mike Pettica's understanding of baseball is so minuscule it's simply non-existent and the only reason that he is still being paid is that he has 40 years of experience. (Nice assumed "that" and contracted "it's", you hack.)
Cheers.
