Both strike me as valuable in understanding the value of careers. However, I recall years back Bill James looked at two metrics in his Historical Baseball Abstract - Peak Value and Career Value. In other words, who was the best at their peak (even if their career was unexpectedly short) and who was the best over the course of their career?
Career Value seems adequately covered by WAR, either total or per-game...but Peak Value strikes me as something very interesting and different to stare at. Much of this gap in appreciating Peak Value today feels driven in part by baseball's early counting stats obsession, where talent was viewed myopically as simply the accumulation of raw stats.
Talent is a function of both level and duration. James' Peak Value insight - like so many great insights - is not limited to baseball. For example, you could use that talent framework anywhere - the business world, music, TV shows, books, technology etc. Some elements of our culture are enormously impactful, even if they only last a few years, while others are appreciated for their longevity.
Anywhere achievement can be witnessed and assessed, understanding the difference between Peak Value and Career value - both of which are valuable - creates deeper understanding. Peak greatness - even if for short periods - is an insight I feel we are missing today that James tried to capture. Perhaps something to focus on again.
I like your thinking. In developing his JAWS metric, Jay Jaffe analyzed players' 7-year peak WAR. It is a player's best 7 seasons by WAR, not necessarily in a row, and it is used in the JAWS calculation which has been viewed a good judge of Hall of Fame worthiness. I can't seem to find a total listing of all players, but each position is broken down on Baseball Reference here: https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/jaws_C.shtml. JAWS is an average of total career war and total WAR over those 7-best seasons. I think this is a step in the right direction but think it could be improved by some weighting based upon difference in top-7 WAR versus not-top-7 WAR (essentially how much worse a player was when they were not at that 7-year peak). Also, it may be worthwhile to consider how much of a player's career was accounted for in that 7-year period, as a player's value could be artificially inflated if they played 20 seasons compared to a player who played 10 seasons with equal peak and non-peak years.
Both strike me as valuable in understanding the value of careers. However, I recall years back Bill James looked at two metrics in his Historical Baseball Abstract - Peak Value and Career Value. In other words, who was the best at their peak (even if their career was unexpectedly short) and who was the best over the course of their career?
Career Value seems adequately covered by WAR, either total or per-game...but Peak Value strikes me as something very interesting and different to stare at. Much of this gap in appreciating Peak Value today feels driven in part by baseball's early counting stats obsession, where talent was viewed myopically as simply the accumulation of raw stats.
Talent is a function of both level and duration. James' Peak Value insight - like so many great insights - is not limited to baseball. For example, you could use that talent framework anywhere - the business world, music, TV shows, books, technology etc. Some elements of our culture are enormously impactful, even if they only last a few years, while others are appreciated for their longevity.
Anywhere achievement can be witnessed and assessed, understanding the difference between Peak Value and Career value - both of which are valuable - creates deeper understanding. Peak greatness - even if for short periods - is an insight I feel we are missing today that James tried to capture. Perhaps something to focus on again.
I like your thinking. In developing his JAWS metric, Jay Jaffe analyzed players' 7-year peak WAR. It is a player's best 7 seasons by WAR, not necessarily in a row, and it is used in the JAWS calculation which has been viewed a good judge of Hall of Fame worthiness. I can't seem to find a total listing of all players, but each position is broken down on Baseball Reference here: https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/jaws_C.shtml. JAWS is an average of total career war and total WAR over those 7-best seasons. I think this is a step in the right direction but think it could be improved by some weighting based upon difference in top-7 WAR versus not-top-7 WAR (essentially how much worse a player was when they were not at that 7-year peak). Also, it may be worthwhile to consider how much of a player's career was accounted for in that 7-year period, as a player's value could be artificially inflated if they played 20 seasons compared to a player who played 10 seasons with equal peak and non-peak years.
Thank you for this - super helpful. I greatly appreciate your insights in this thoughtful reply. Thanks again and keep up the great work!
Thank you!