If WAR is hell could there be one baseball stat to rule them all?
‘One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them; In the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie.’
There was one ring to rule them all in J.R.R Tolkein’s ‘Lord of the Rings’. Sauron intended it to be the most powerful of all rings, able to rule and control those who wore the others.
In baseball we have the statistic WAR — be it bWAR (Baseball Reference Wins Above Replacement Player) or fWAR (Fangraphs) Wins Above Replacement Player. Both bWAR and fWAR are useful platforms for measuring baseball players and for this article I will be using bWAR.
Baseball WAR is a comprehensive statistic that attempts to define a player’s contribution in a relative sense to his peers and his forebears. Even the creators admit WAR is an imperfect measure of player value. But the reason it’s better than what was being used before — which was EVERYTHING. A very useful attribute of WAR is that it normalizes offensive, defensive, and pitching statistics for ballparks and eras so that they can be more fairly evaluated. A player with a career zero WAR is equal to an average minor league level replacement player. A 5+ bWAR season is an elite level season.
Alas, along the way WAR has become tedious and well, annoying. There are anomalies such as comparing two players that you know were not the same level of ballplayer, yet both end up having similar career WAR totals. Keep in mind that WAR is a cumulative stat and for most players the longer you play the more career bWAR you will likely accumulate.
Prime example of WAR is weird
Writer Joe Posnanski recently compared Hall-of-Famer Harold Baines and non-HOFer Chet Lemon.
Baines played 22 seasons, batted .289 and had 384 HRs with a career bWAR of 38.8 in 11,092 Plate Appearances.
Lemon played 16 seasons batted .273 and hit 215 HRs in with a career bWAR of 55.6 in 7,874 Plate Appearances.
Lemon carded 43% more bWAR than Baines, with only 71% of the Plate Appearances! The reason is mostly defensive as Lemon was a terrific defender and Baines was not. Still, even if you feel Baines is not HOF worthy, you probably never thought Chet Lemon was a viable HOF candidate during or after his career. WAR is a measure that can fail to tell the whole story. Boiling down a player performance to one number is bound to have some inconsistencies.
One Statistic to Rule them all — what about Total Bases per Plate Appearance?
Is there a better, easier to calculate, single number (as WAR does) that can succinctly and more clearly describe a player’s effectiveness versus his peers? What if defense was not part of the equation? Defensive WAR does make a difference in a player’s overall WAR total but it’s not entirely responsible for the difference in the career bWAR of Baines vs. Lemon. While it’s said that pitching and defense win championships, scoring runs is the point and player offense is what is most often the determining factor. If you can hit the club will find a place for you in the lineup.
We’re long past the time when valuing batting average, home runs, and RBIs were the offensive statistical holy trinity. Winning the Triple Crown still has meaning, but today we use OPS (on base average plus slugging average), and OPS+ (the average MLB hitter is 100, anything above that is above average so an elite OPS+ of 140 means the player is 40% better than average). Using OPS and OPS+ has kept Kyle Schwarber at the top of the Phillies lineup despite his under.200 batting average. Schwarber’s 2023 season OPS is .823 (.721 is the MLB average) and his OPS+ is 123 (his career OPS is +122 so this season is no fluke). But as recently as 20 years ago a player with a sub .200 batting average would not be playing for long in MLB. We have ‘Moneyball’ to thank for that.
About that one summarizing offensive statistic, how about Total Bases Per Plate Appearance? Total Bases has always favored power hitters since it’s calculated by taking Singles, Doubles x2, Triples x3, and Home Runs x4 and adding them all together. Great players have lots of Total Bases. But a truer measure of a player’s contribution might be to divide those total bases by total plate appearances! How many bases does the player achieve per plate appearance?
All-Time Total Bases Leaders
You can’t help but love reading a list that starts with Henry Aaron and that’s not because his last name starts with two ‘A’s.
Going beyond the top 20, the rest of the list of the top 50 All-time Total Bases leaders https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/TB_career.shtml contains only Hall-of-Famers, will-be HOFers, Adrian Beltre, Miguel Cabrera, Carlos Beltran), and ‘would-be — HOFers-were-it-not-for’, (Pete Rose, Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmiero, Gary Sheffield, Manny Ramirez, and Sammy Sosa).
My ‘invention’ of a new metric
Ok so maybe it’s not really an invention. But since it’s not a common metric, Total Bases per Plate Appearance is rarely thought of as a measure of a player’s offensive productivity. Higher on the all-time TB list was a player I hadn’t thought of much — Vada Pinson. I saw him play when I was very young and even that was after his best days were over. Pinson and Johnny Damon stick out and they had eerily similar careers with bWAR totals of 54.1 for Pinson and 56.3 for Damon. Both played 18 seasons. The bWAR numbers are similar enough that they would pretty much appear to be the same. Damon was a slightly better fielder over his career. However, if you take their Total Bases/Plate Appearance something else emerges. TB/PA is .386 for Damon, .410 for Pinson. 10,917 PAs for Damon, 10,405 for Pinson. Damon has a higher career bWAR and a lower TB/PA than Pinson. Damon was much better in the postseason which is probably why he’s more fondly remembered. Who was better? 6% higher TB/PA for Pinson makes a stronger case for him but neither belong in Cooperstown.
Ranking the top 11 (had to include Stan the Man) players by TB/PA tells a bit of a different story than does the cumulative all-time list.
The career leader in TB/PA is Babe Ruth and it’s so cool that Lou Gehrig (career .524 TB/PA) is right behind Ruth all-time which is exactly how they batted in the Yankee lineup. Lou was great at protecting the Bambino!
For those the haters out there, Harold Baines checks in a #43 on the all-time Total Bases list. As noted, while career Total Bases (like WAR) is a cumulative total, by playing long enough to achieve all-time numbers, you still had to be a great player if not a HOFer. Baines’ career TB/PA is .415 which is one tick ahead of Honus Wagner. This is an area in which TB/PA begins to break down. There is no baseball list in which Harold Baines should ever be listed higher than Honus Wagner. But it does make me think again about Baines. 43rd all-time in Total Bases out of 23,000 players is something.
The next 25 All-Time Total Base leaders include non-HOF players like Dave Parker, (one above Mike Schmidt), Luis Gonzalez, (right ahead of Eddie Mathews), Todd Helton, Robinson Cano, Vada Pinson, Jeff Kent, Dwight Evans, Johnny Damon who checks in at #73.
Some TB/PA numbers that are not as impressive: For his HOF career Robin Yount averaged .386 TB/PA. Wished-he-would-be-a HOFer Pete Rose averaged .362 TB/PA for his career. HOFer Rickey Henderson .344 TB/PA for his career. Those three represent the lowest TB/PA numbers in the top 50 for Total Bases in MLB history. Yount was a good defensive player at SS and CF, and Rickey Henderson was the greatest base stealer in history. Pete Rose hit a lot of singles — the most in history, along with having the most total hits in history. Otherwise, Rose’s case for the HOF is shakier based on merit. But the guy with the most hits is impossible to forget. Or forgive as many still feel.
Single-season Total Base Leaders
The all-time list for single season Total Bases is also filled to the brim with HOFers. That list also includes Sammy Sosa, Luis Gonzalez, and Barry Bonds in the top 20. Babe Ruth heads this list as well with 457 Total Bases (in 693 PA) in 1921 the year he hit 59 home runs while playing his home games at the Polo Grounds. That’s .659 TB/PA the single-season best TB/PA average in MLB history. The TB/PA all-time list is one area in which pre-1900 players have no shot to appear. Unsurprisingly before the end of the ‘Dead Ball’ Era in 1920 there are exactly zero players that appear in the top 330 all-time.
Take note that this is the second appearance of Luis Gonzalez’ name on these all-time lists. His failed HOF candidacy needs revisiting.
How about the 2023 season?
Looking at this 2023 season, Angels Shohei Ohtani finished with 325 Total Bases in 599 Plate Appearances so .543 TB/PA. This is great but not among the all-time great single seasons for TB/PA.
For comparison’s sake Phillies leadoff hitter Kyle Schwarber through 150 games (he’s played 149), has 262 Total Bases 180 of which come from his 45 Home Runs! He has 17 doubles, 1 triple, and 45 singles to make up his 108 hits. 45 singles and 45 home runs. Schwarber has achieved those 262 Total Bases in 675 Plate Appearances for an average of .388 Total Bases per Plate Appearance.
Shohei Ohtani has 43% more Total Bases per Plate Appearance than Kyle Schwarber. Nobody is saying they are the same player. Yet slightly more than every three PA’s Shohei bags one more base than does Schwarber. That may not seem like much but over the course of this season it’s resulted in 73 more total bases in 54 fewer plate appearances. It’s a staggering difference if you really think about it.
This season the MLB leaders in Total Bases through Sept 18:
Source: https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/2023-batting-leaders.shtml
The races for this season’s league MVP’s align with popular sentiment when tabulating TB/PA. Shohei Ohtani is far and away the best player and that’s considering we’re only looking at one aspect of his prowess. Ronald Acuna has had an amazing season, and his teammate Matt Olson also belongs in the NL MVP conversation. So does Acuna’s former teammate Freddie Freeman who this season became a 20HR/20SB man for the first time in his future HOF career. Freeman’s Dodger teammate Mookie Betts rightly should be part of the MVP conversation. Maybe MLB award voters will consider using TB/PA as another metric in making their choices. But I am not counting on that.
Could TB/PA be the one statistic to rule them all? If WAR can’t do it, then TB/PA can’t either. Having one perfect statistic to encompass everything about an MLB player would end all the arguing. And what fun would that be?
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and now Substack.com.
