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wRC+ and Lessons of Context

by Neil Weinberg
July 25, 2014

This introduction is a setup. Don’t fall for it. I’m going to present you with two stat lines and ask you to silently compare them. Your job is going to be to determine which player had the better season at the plate. Remember, it’s a trick.

  • Player A: 697 PA, .372/.463/.698, .476 wOBA, 42 HR, 59 2B, 103 BB, 61 K
  • Player B: 716 PA, .323/.432/.557, .423 wOBA, 27 HR, 39 2B, 110 BB, 136 K

If I hadn’t primed you, it would be hard to suggest anything other than that Player A had the better season. He’s leading everything, except for a slight disadvantage in walk rate. Player A had the better season, right? It’s obvious. Even though I told you it was a trick, you’re still struggling to find a way to argue the opposing side. I’m telling you that Player B actually had the better season, but that’s because I have more information. I know a couple of important pieces of information that you don’t have and it makes a world of difference.

I know the year in which each season took place and the park in which each hitter played. Those are two really important bits of information when evaluating a baseball player and without them you’re left to assume that Player A had the better season, which simply isn’t the case. Played A, if you haven’t figured out, is Todd Helton in 2000 and Player B is Mike Trout in 2013.

It’s an extreme example used for illustrative purposes. More runs were scored per plate appearance in 2000 than in any season since 1930.In 2013, that number was dramatically lower. In 2000, teams scored 5.14 runs per game. In 2013, they scored 4.17 runs per game. That’s a huge shift in the run environment. Put another way, the value of adding a run in 2013 was substantially higher than adding a run in 2000.

If you want to compare players across time, you need a statistic that accounts for the differences in run scoring. Maybe that’s an easy thing to understand if you want to compare Ted Williams and Joey Votto, but it can actually make a pretty big difference over just a decade or two. The early years of Derek Jeter’s career, for instance, were much different than the later years of his career when it comes to league-wide run scoring.

There’s another fun little quirk about baseball that doesn’t show up in the other major American sports; The playing fields are different in all 30 home parks. Not only that, but because baseball is played outdoors and is heavily dependent on the flight of the ball, different altitudes and climates play a big role. In other words, it would be harder to hit a home run in San Diego than in Colorado even if the pitcher threw you identical pitches in both cities.

The bottom line is that identical results in separate contexts do not necessarily indicate equal performance, skill, or talent. This is a fundamental aspect of sabermetrics and advanced analysis in baseball. You need to do everything you can to control for context or you may wind up with the wrong answers to your questions about the game.

At FanGraphs we have many statistics that attempt to do this. One of the most visible and notable ones is Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+), which is an all-encompassing hitting statistic that weights each offensive action properly (like wOBA), but also adjusts performance based on park effects and league average.

So while Todd Helton’s raw production looks more impressive than Trout’s, Helton actually had a 162 wRC+ in 2000 while Trout had a 176 wRC+ in 2013. You can read in detail about wRC+ here (including the precise formula), but it tells you how much better or worse a player was than league average, which is set to 100 during each season. It is also park adjusted, so not only can you compare production across time, but you can compare players from vastly different home parks.

For example, if a player has a 120 wRC+, it means their offensive production is 20 percentage points better than league average during that year after controlling for their home park. Sure, Todd Helton out slugged Trout by .140, but he did so in a park that was more conducive to offense and during an era in which the overall offensive baseline was much higher.

It’s very simple to understand, but extremely important nonetheless. Sabermetrics has many goals and important principles, but one of the most critical is the effort to control for the context of events. If we want to make comparisons among players from vastly different eras and evaluate their relative contributions, we need to strip out anything and everything outside of their control that impacted the raw output we observed.

If you’ve been reading sites like FanGraphs for a long time, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but for those who are new to advanced statistics in baseball, controlling for context is a cornerstone of the entire enterprise. We use statistics in an effort to communicate the best possible representation of the truth. Once you’ve learned the basics of wOBA, making the jump to wRC+ is relatively easy and it provides a more accurate picture of what a player is doing at the plate than any other rate stat we have to offer.

Have questions about wRC+ or controlling for context? Ask in the comments!





wOBA As a Gateway Statistic
 
How to Use FanGraphs: Leaderboards!

Neil Weinberg is the Site Educator at FanGraphs and can be found writing enthusiastically about the Detroit Tigers at New English D. Follow and interact with him on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44.

15 Comments
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bob
8 years ago

In the team depth charts, can explain what Fld means? Obviously it’s fielding related but what are the numbers?

0
Neil Weinbergmember
8 years ago
Reply to  bob

That would be their projected fielding runs (think UZR or DRS). I think we call it Fld instead of those because ZiPS and Steamer aren’t technically projecting a specific defensive stat, if that makes sense.

0
Tucker
8 years ago

Is there any thought given to scaling wRC+ to every ballpark a player plays in, rather than just his home park? I know it would result in a lot more computing, and that the difference is likely pretty small, but I wonder if players in the NL West have seen their numbers inflated by playing in Colorado often.

0
Neil Weinbergmember
8 years ago
Reply to  Tucker

I don’t know this for a fact, but since the max games you can play in any single park is 9-10 games, and you’re sure to play in at last 16-18 parks, almost sure to wash out over a full season. This is probably more of an issue if you want monthly samples, but you have to know those stats are going to have wider error bars. Good question, just not sure it would change anything, especially considering that park adjustments are based on comparing production between your park and the other parks for everyone.

Might be a fun project for someone to play around with.

1
Eric
8 years ago
Reply to  Tucker

Just ran some numbers on Mike Trout. His wRC+ is 0.192449482 runs per plate appearance. If you factor in all the away game parks he’s played this season individually, then his wRC+ is 0.200616892

So…it’s about 6-8 runs difference for the season.

Eric

0
DFSguy
7 years ago

Is there anything similar to wRC+ for pitchers?

0
Neil Weinbergmember
7 years ago
Reply to  DFSguy

You can calculate it for pitchers, we just don’t have it on the site. More often we see things like park adjusted ERA (ERA-) or park adjusted FIP (FIP-), but wRC+ is doable too

0
Dave
7 years ago

Does wRC+ work for a game by game basis or is it a running total throughout the season?
For example: Lets say Gregory Polanco plays away tonight.
Gregory Polanco wRC+ is 178 at home
Gregory Polanco wRC+ is 89 on the road

Is there a way to incorporate this?

0
Neil Weinbergmember
7 years ago
Reply to  Dave

You can calculate wRC+ for any sample of PA. Not sure exactly what your question is regarding the home/away split

0
Matt
7 years ago

In the third paragraph I believe you have a typo, it says “Played A, if you haven’t figured out, is Todd Helton in 2000 and Played B is Mike Trout in 2013.”

I believe you mean Player and not Played.

Just to help, not be a jerk. Great analysis and breakdown of the value of the new age advanced metrics which many people struggle to comprehend. Love the site and the articles on it!

0
Neil Weinbergmember
7 years ago
Reply to  Matt

Appreciate it, thanks!

0
Rev0466
7 years ago

Where can I find the daily wRC+ stat for all batters on fangraphs?

0
Neil Weinbergmember
7 years ago
Reply to  Rev0466

On the leaderboard, you can go to the dropdown menu called Split and pull up daily stats for Yesterday and Today, which will show you wRC+ for a single day. You can also find daily wRC+ for individual batters on their player page if you click the Game Logs tab.

0
stansfield123
6 years ago

Question: is there an offensive stat that also accounts for base running?

0
Neil Weinbergmember
6 years ago
Reply to  stansfield123

Our OFF (Offensive Runs Above Average) accounts for base running. It is not a rate stat, however, so you may wish divide by PA to compare players who have played a different number of games. Also, RE24 includes SB/CS but not other kinds of base running (such as taking an extra base).

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Updated: Sunday, January 29, 2023 7:57 AM ETUpdated: 1/29/2023 7:57 AM ET
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