Stan Javier vs. Aubrey Huff: Win Shares as a Counting Stat
Let’s compare a player on the 2001 Seattle Mariners, who won 116 games, and a player on the 2001 Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who won 62 games. Specifically, let’s compare Stan Javier and Aubrey Huff. Here’s what Javier and Huff did in 2001.Basic Offensive Statistics, 2001
Player | Position | G | PA | AB | H | 2B | 3B | HR | R | RBI | BB | SO | Outs | BA | OBP | SLG |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Stan Javier | LF | 89 | 323 | 281 | 82 | 14 | 1 | 4 | 44 | 33 | 36 | 47 | 212 | 0.292 | 0.375 | 0.391 |
Aubrey Huff | 3B | 111 | 434 | 411 | 102 | 25 | 1 | 8 | 42 | 45 | 23 | 72 | 330 | 0.248 | 0.288 | 0.372 |
Advanced Offensive Statistics, 2001
Player | OPS | OPS+ | RC | RC/27 | Win Shares | pWins | pWORL |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Stan Javier | 0.766 | 109 | 41 | 5.22 |
11 |
9.5 | 1.4 |
Aubrey Huff | 0.660 | 74 | 44 | 3.60 |
5 |
8.9 | -0.5 |
Aubrey Huff created 7% more runs than Stan Javier.Of course, this doesn’t mean that Aubrey Huff was a better player in 2001 than Stan Javier. He quite clearly was not. And their Player Won-Lost records reflect this.
And Huff accumulated 12% more context-neutral offensive player wins (7.2 - 6.4).
Aubrey Huff won 8.9 games against 11.6 losses, good for a 0.434 winning percentage. He was actually a slightly below replacement-level player, worth 0.5 Wins below Replacement Level.Look at it this way. Aubrey Huff created 7% more runs than Stan Javier and earned 12% more offensive wins for doing so. But, Aubrey Huff also used up nearly 56% more outs than Stan Javier (330 vs. 212) and earned 45% more offensive losses (9.0 - 6.2) for doing so.
Stan Javier, meanwhile, won only 9.5 games, similar to Huff. But unlike Huff, he only lost 7.9 games, good for a 0.545 winning percentage and 1.4 Wins over Replacement Level.