As longtime league members will remember I developed a WAR system to evaluate Dynasty League players’ cards. My system proved pretty prophetic and consistently predicted the upcoming season’s playoff teams.
The release of those numbers always generated discussion, some complimentary and some not so complimentary. The fuWAR moniker came out of one such discussion. (Thanks Timmy!) Despite the responses people would ask when they would be released, so I continued doing them.
With the switch to OOTP, the days of fuWAR disappeared. Until now.
As we’ve learned OOTP, like real life MLB, is much more complicated and unpredictable than games based on cards and dice. First, the underlying game ratings are hidden by an intentionally imprecise scouting system. Second, player values aren’t static. They change over time, due to OOTP’s development engine. That uncertainty (IT’S A FEATURE, NOT A BUG!) makes it more difficult to evaluate players in the game.
Rather than throw your hands into the sky and scream at the gods. Rather than desperately turning to soothsayers and charlatans for assistance in finding players to help you win. Rather than consistently not making the playoffs and constantly being taunted with scorn and derision from your more competent competitors. Rather than living with the stink of failure.
I shine a little light into your deepest, darkest pit of loserdom.
I give you OOTP fuWAR!
To help you make sense of your team’s place in the Whalehead hierarchy, I will start with the main course…fuWAR projections.
Essentially I figure out how much fuWAR is on each team’s 40-Man by their players’ OSA 20-80 rating. I then figure out the strengths of each team’s opponents. Lastly I put a team’s fuWAR and opponent’s fuWAR into the Pythagorean formula, which gives me a winning percentage.
The error bar for fuWAR projections is ± 3 wins. This basically means if you are within 6 games of a Wild Card spot you are in playoff contention. I’m sure the underlying system is less precise than the ± 3 wins but that’s the baseline error I’m suggesting you use to make a judgement on where your team currently sits.
View the projection as a temporary data point to help estimate where your team’s talent fits into a leaguewide context. It’s not perfect. It’s not absolute. Having said that, it’s much better than asking Bob for his opinion on your team.
As I’ve mentioned, player evaluations evolve over time in OOTP. Your players could get better or worse. The money you spent on player development might be wasted. Your coaches might be hurting your players more than they help them.
At the same time, the OSA scouting reports, which are the base of fuWAR, might suck. OSA’s scouts might not know the difference between a young Josh Donaldson and a young Will Middlebrooks. (Of course, neither did Da Pirate.)
In other words…your team might still be a smoldering pile of shit, even if fuWAR says it’s a playoff team.
Maybe things would have been different last year for one Whalehead GM if he had fuWAR to help evaluate his team. Instead…
Anyway, I’ll update things again after the Rule 5 Draft protections are completed on Monday. I will also update and post fuWAR estimates at different points of the year, so we can look back and see how well it does in shining light into the dark chaos.
December fuWAR Win Projections
Some fuWAR Breakdowns
This is each team’s current OVR fuWAR broken down by the 40-Man and the Farm rosters.
Colorado shows up better in the wins projection than Baltimore because the Orioles have some of its good players still on the Farm.
That will change.
This is a look at how much potential for improvement each team has on its rosters. Essentially I figured out OVR and POT for all players and subtracted OVR (what the players are right now) from POT (what they could become).
I’d expect players on the 40-Man to be closer to reaching their potentials, so higher numbers could indicate how much teams could improve during the year, if their players develop well.
The last two breakdowns…
The first has fuWAR for organizations broken down by Batters, Starters, and Relievers. With the color coding it’s easy to see the strengths and minuses of teams, useful for trading.
The second is a breakdown of how fuWAR are built. Teams with high numbers in 80-55 have some really good players. Players with high 50’s have a bunch of average-ish players.
fuWAR awarded per OSA OVR rating.
If you are trying to match up your team, relievers are converted using the following scale.
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