Judge Aaron stood alone. Well, Judge Aaron usually stands alone. This year, he has company. The judge led all players with 8.3 war. Shohei Ohtani is behind him with a 7.8 war (6.5 as batsman, 1.4 as pitcher) behind him, Cal Raleigh is right behind he with 7.6. The difference in victory was less than three quarters, and it was a very tense game for the leader of baseball wars. It made me wonder how frequent these games were, so I made a spreadsheet. I’ve scored top three war players every season since 1901 and checked if this year’s game was an outlier and if so, how it’s going there compared to past seasons. The short answer is yes, and there is almost no historical standard for this game to be really nervous.
I have to make some comments on the data and methods here before entering it. First, I used Fangraphs War, which is because I work here and because I am a fan of Fangraphs. (I’m also a fan of Fanggraphs graphics, which makes me a fan of Fanggraphs graphics. I can keep going.) Ohtani leads baseball in Warp, Baseball prospectus The version of war. As Ginny Searle on Wednesday bpthe judge led Raleigh in baseball reference battles (not including pitch frames) and twists (because DRC+ believes that Raleigh’s due offensive performance was slightly lower than his actual performance). Still, we’re going to use it with FWAR, or we’re referring to it in Fangraphs, War.
Second, no matter which version you use, you really shouldn’t figure out the war like this. It’s a great stat that can capture a lot, but it has the same error bar as any stat and there may be some value players that we can’t measure. If you choose MVP based on the score of the win or compare any two players, you might have done something wrong. But I checked it out and it turns out that no one would fire me for handling the war irresponsibly. Today, we did some fun wrong.
Third, I blend hitting and pitching battles together, but only if it benefits from the players involved. That said, I ruled out any part of the season, and it was a negative war in total. Back to General DH, we didn’t dock NL pitchers on their performance on the board when we evaluated their contributions. When we talk about pitchers’ wars, we just talk about their pitching battles. We didn’t caress them because the rules said they had to go there and hit them a lot. The same is true for a post player who has to throw some in garbage time. Therefore, we only include positive contributions. If you are a hitter who plays well or a hitter who loses no-score garbage time, you will get some rewards this way, but you won’t be affected by any gaps because of a part of your job description. If Shohei Ohtani was going to have a negative war on one side of the ball, that would be another matter, but that seems to be the fairest to me.
Fourth – Sorry, I’m just kidding. No fourth. The three paragraphs of comments about the data are large. Let’s get started.
As of last night, the difference between the judge and Rolei was 0.69146424 in the war. This accounts for only a quarter of the victory. If you are going to keep your score at home, hopefully your handwriting is very, very small. It was a very tense game. In terms of seasons, the gap between the first and third-place warriors is the smallest, ranking 30th since 1901. We are in the 77th percentile. The average difference is 1.73 war and the average standard deviation is 0.92 war. We are not in the outlier realm, but we are certainly on the smaller side of the ledger:
Outlier season belongs to Babe Ruth, who found a home run in an accidental lab accident, which allowed him to lead the league 10 times in 13 years starting in 1919. In those 10 years, he led third place twice with a 6.0 war, with an average lead of 3.81. Ruth didn’t have a three-way lead, and Rogers Hornsby surpassed him, with Hornsby’s average lead of 3.14 War. It was a different period. But even if we ignore Ruth and Hornsby and from 1932 the average has only dropped to 1.56. That’s still more than twice the gap this season. By any historical standard, this is very close to the game. Here is the 10-year rolling average:
Once you get rid of Ruth’s shadow, I really don’t know how to explain this picture, but just say there are some ups and downs. Generally speaking, we have been in trouble for the past 15 years or so. However, you may notice that these numbers ticked at the last ticking there. That’s because of the judge. Not only is the gap particularly low this year, but it is also low for judges. His pace is the third time in four years and the fourth time in nine years leading the league. He is one of eight players who have only four leads the league in baseball history, and his average profit in third place is 2.0 War. He led the 3.9 War in the historic 2022 season and 2.4 in 2024. That is the highest average in game history. In his War Leadership season, the judge led third place with 8.0 war. That was the seventh highest total ever between Hornsby and Hornace Wagner.
In other words, it’s another way to appreciate the fact that the judge had rarely had other baseball games before. This is the top ten in history. The average lead (a player who leads the league in the war at least twice) is on the left and the right lead is on the right. The company is very good:
The biggest average war gap
To get both players close to the judge, we need to get Ohtani to play the game like no one before him and make Raleigh’s best catcher season in history challenging. We also have to let the judge deal with the flexor pressure, which kills him, which is still the war he creates by limiting his throwing and forcing him to sometimes dh’s ability to make him cause.
Before summarizing it, I must admit that this article would look very different if it had been run yesterday. This is the conclusion that began in yesterday’s draft:
There is no guarantee that things will be kept at this close distance. These numbers have changed when this article is running. The judge can fire three home runs and push the lead up more. Anyway, the three players have been close for a while and October is getting bigger and bigger in the windows. This is indeed worth noting.
Well, the judge hit a huge two home run last night. Before he did so, the difference between him and Raleigh was only 0.364966393 War, the 12th highest war ever. That is the 91st percentile. This is indeed a smooth situation. In a day, it could go from a historical outlier to “I swear, it’s really worth noting.” If the judge ends with the kind of hot streak that only he can make, the whole article will make no sense. If Raleigh reignites the magic of the first few months of the season, we may be back in outliers. Anyway, the War Leaders game was tense all season long, and that was another interesting thing.
