I can make arguments that all four teams in our division will be weaker than they were last year. Miami is obvious, but the Mets traded their best pitcher for prospects and probably start two rookies in the rotation, and aren’t spending a dime. The Braves lost two of their best hitters in Bourn and Chipper Jones and have only replaced one of them, and are fiscally constrainted to the point where they will probably just go with internal options in 2013 for other holes. Lastly the Phillies traded away a ton of guys mid-season and go into 2013 with two near replacement level pitchers in the rotation to go along side a slew of expensive, aging stars who may regress just as they did in 2012. One other obvious team is the Cubs, who are in 100% rebuild mode and are actively looking to move their best pitcher in Garza.

Here’s the records for the Nats intra-division last year:
Atlanta: 10-8
Miami: 9-9
Mets: 14-4
Philly: 9-9

Can you see us going 14-4 against Miami this year, or improving marginally against both Philadelphia and Atlanta? I can; and perhaps that’s the easiest place to find the 5-6 extra wins for this team.

As for the rest of the teams in the NL, perhaps you can argue that they’re going to be worse just by virtue of the fact that they’re not spending money to improve. Teams like Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Colorado and San Diego all seem to be relatively idle this off-season, which implies they’re going to be stagnant or worse. Maybe its as simple as the phrase, “If you’re not trying to improve, then you’re worse.”

So while WAR may not be zero sum, the translation to wins is. Is it possible for fWAR to improve across the league so that the mythical replacement team only wins 40 games? Or is WAR weighted to correct for that so if every player had career years, their WAR in comparison wouldn’t go up?

I’m not sure i’d say its a “zero sum game” when it comes to calculating WAR for an entire league of players; You have 5WAR players who get hurt and contribute negligible WAR from year to year (Dan Haren from 2011 to 2012) and you have 10WAR players who appear out of nowhere (Mike Trout). When a good player misses time and is replaced by a replacement-level player … that WAR is lost, gone. It isn’t necessarily just transfered to another player.

Haren: I thought maybe I was selling him short; this is a 6WAR pitcher 3 times in the last 5 years after all.

Espinosa: completely shocked that his WAR is that high … you’re absolutely right, most of the fanbase seems to be running out of patience for the guy. Meanwhile he’s actually a pretty valuable player. You could kind of tell this from his OPS+ figures (which were near 100 even as he was batting .220 by virtue of his power).

WAR: just looking at the calculations that go into the stat, and then looking at the differences between the 4 versions, and then looking at the fact that baseball-reference is constantly tweaking the stat … it does give you pause. Even WAR fantatics agree there’s about a 15% variance/margin of error. 85% accurate is actually pretty UN-accurate when looking at standard deviations from the mean or thinking about a statistic in a “mathematical statistical” sense. You’re right though; HRs and WAR on a career level can be viewed in similar light. Good point.

Your conclusions are a little high for me, probably around Harper and Haren, but it does reaffirm that we should be good (although I think that you are low for Strasburg; I’d put him down for 6 WAR if you think that he can pitch 200 innings).

Harper got a WAR boost last year for playing plus D at a premium position, so the fact that he’ll play mostly a corner OF spot will, all things being equal, lower his WAR (at least, that is how I think it works). I don’t know exactly how the formula works, but I would guess that Harper would have to add about .30 OPS to compensate for being moved off CF just to stay even in WAR. That brings him up to .850 OPS, which is remarkable for a 20 yr old. What gets him to 6 WAR, .925 OPS? I am guessing at the numbers, but Trout just had one of the top 20 seasons all time in terms of position player WAR, and he had huge boost due to his fielding in CF and baserunning. I love Harper but it seems hard to project that for him, especially playing a non premium defensive position. Haren – I can get to 2-3 WAR for him, but I find it hard to expect anything more (possible, sure, but not expected). Both Haren and Scioscia have acknowledged that his stuff isn’t what it was a few years ago, so he’d need to be lucky to get back to those numbers. 4.5 WAR could happen, but I’d take the under. I also think the Nats are paying him like a 2-3 WAR guy (roughly $5m per 1 WAR), and I’d be happy if he was worth 3 WAR.

Separately, I think Espinosa is an interesting player. Don’t you get the sense that most Nats fans have this attitude of ‘this is his last year to prove himself’? But he has the 7th best WAR for 2Bs over the last two years. I think we, as a fan group, are undervaluing him. Probably ’cause of the strikeouts.

As for WAR, I think that you should overcome your reservations. I like it, and find it useful. No doubt that you are right about the accumulator stat, but are HRs, Ks, hits, RBIs so different? If you hang around long enough, you’ll get a bunch of those too. What WAR lets me do looking back, though, is more easily look at peaks. During your HoF post, I went back and looked at Edgar Martinez after you said that you thought he was awesome, and WAR helped me reappraise my view of him. Much longer peaks than Ortiz, for instance. But I’d say this about it: it isn’t precise. My general rule of thumb is to give it a .5 cushion on either side, meaning a 3.8 WAR season and a 4.1 WAR season are essentially the same thing. Too much subjectivity around things like UZR and baserunning to take them at face value precisely.