After the WAR came JAWS

 

Photo credit: Tage Olsin

When I cover MVP "chases" in football, basketball, baseball, and hockey, I focus on what players accomplish in individual victories. Because they play to win the game, the "value" in "most valuable player" is the substantial contributions they make to winning.

Other awards, however, honor individual play as well. These are team sports; the best players can't win games alone. Great players may be on bad teams. Comparative stats, advanced stats, etc. are useful in determining the best players, regardless of team success. While winning is paramount, individual awards for outstanding play provide another layer of motivation for the players and interest for their fans. The Hall of Fame in each sport is the ultimate individual honor because it sums up a player's career as being among the best who ever played.

Baseball is the most individualistic of team sports because it is broken down into individual actions: players don't have to rely on others to block for them; good offensive players aren't double-teamed. Player performance, particularly in batting and pitching, is easily quantifiable. We can reliably measure how great a player is regardless of how successful his team is. But the statistics favored today to determine the "best" can be quite complicated. 

After I discussed Ichiro Suzuki's Hall of Fame career last week, I discovered the JAWS stat at BaseballReference.com. JAWS builds upon the well-known WAR (Wins Above Replacement) and is short for "Jaffe WAR Score System" (named after its creator, Jay Jaffe).

"Wins Above Replacement" refers to how many more games a team likely won with this guy playing instead of "a Minor League replacement or a readily available fill-in free agent." JAWS "is their career WAR averaged with their 7-year peak WAR."

I don't know how stats for hypothetical replacements are compiled, and I don't know all the math in the calculations for WAR or why. Yet the concept makes sense and I'll trust the nerds who've settled on the formulas.

JAWS addresses something I wanted to address in my Ichiro piece: a player's best years should be more heavily weighed in assessing his greatness and career. I was thinking of the ten best years, but JAWS has the seven best years (which don't have to be consecutive).  

In Ichiro's case, the 7-year peak WAR was 43.7 while the 19-year career WAR was only 60.0. As I remarked previously, Ichiro's last ten years weren't great. However, the average of the two numbers, his JAWS, is 51.9. This is good for 17-best of all time among right fielders. Joe Jackson (of Black Sox infamy) and Dwight Evans (52.3) are the only non-active right-fielders ahead of him who are not in the Hall of Fame, and fifteen below him are in the Hall.

Billy Wagner, a 2025 Hall classmate of Ichiro, is the reason I discovered JAWS. Among relief pitchers, he is sixth in JAWS and second behind Mariano Rivers in ERA (among non-active players). Every pitcher ahead of him in the Hall, as well as three below him. Wagner is eighth all-time in saves. He is only the ninth relief pitcher selected to the Hall of Fame and he belongs with the others.

CC Sabathia is the third member of the Hall of Fame Class of 2025. He is 55th in JAWS among starting pitchers. Aside from Roger Clemens, every non-active, non-Hall of Famer ahead of him won fewer than 230 games; CC won 251. Dozens of Hall of Famers rank below him in JAWS. 

Wagner got into the Hall on his tenth and last year of eligibility on the BBWAA ballot. That's likely because relief pitchers aren't valued as much as regular starters and everyday players. Ichiro and CC entered their first year of eligibility, and statistics like JAWS probably helped their cases.

There are 351 Hall of Famers. CC and Ichiro certainly belong in the group. But they weren't even close to being the best of all time or even in their eras: Ichiro's OPS (.757) didn't get him into the Hall; CC's ERA (3.74) didn't get him into the Hall. 

JAWS, however, puts their careers in perspective. Ichiro was great for ten seasons, from which the seven best are double-accounted for in JAWS. The best of Ichiro, not his career totals, is the reason he deserves Hall of Fame status. 

CC was great for exactly seven years, including a four-year stretch (2007-2010) when he was arguably the very best in the game: Cy Young for Cleveland in 2008, followed by going 11-2 and carrying the Brewers to the playoffs following a mid-season trade in 2008, then leading the AL in wins in 2009 (with a World Series title) and 2010 with the Yankees. 

If CC had been a little worse in his best years, and a little better in other years for a more even career, we may say, "Huh. Hall of Famer? I guess, maybe." Plenty of pitchers with career numbers similar to CC's have had to wait it out because they never attained the heights CC did.

I'm thankful for the information that tools like JAWS can provide. It answers questions we may have about the 2025 Hall of Fame class. Congratulations to them all. 

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! James is available for writing, editing, research, and other work: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.