An All-Star Centerfielder and the Myth of WAR
The Mets recently traded for all-star centerfielder Cedric Mullins. The Silver Slugger Award winner is renowned for his prowess and power at the plate as well as for his deft fielding in center. Aside from his top ten MVP finish in 2021, Mullins has never had a season where he pushed for an all-star nod or Silver Slugger nomination. For the most part, since then, Mullins has been what he is: An average to slightly above average hitter and a solid defender manning the center of the outfield. While that doesn’t rise to MVP levels, it certainly has value, as evidenced by his WAR in each year since 2021 never dipping below 2.6.
That was before this season, Mullins has played in over 90 games, yet has only accumulated one-tenth of a Win Above Replacement. Which, if you just look at his batting stats on the year, don’t seem to line up. They seem to tilt towards the all-star centerfielder having one of, if not his best, year since that top ten MVP finish. Which begs the question: if he has more or less been the same player, why does he have such a high variance in WAR over the past four seasons?
The culprit isn’t anything drastic at the offensive end, as Mullins is enjoying his highest SLG and OPS in the past four years. Digging into the numbers, it appears that the steep decline in his WAR value is due to defensive metrics. Now I don’t pretend to watch every single Baltimore Orioles game, analyzing his reaction time and route taken on every ball in his vicinity. What I do know is that I routinely see web gem highlights of Mullins making spectacular run-saving plays.
Now, both things can be true at the same time: a player can make great plays while being a below-average defender at their position. However, in Mullins’ case, he always graded out as an average to above-average fielder at the most challenging position in the outfield. Now, an age-related decline can not be ruled out, but it is in only one metric that Mullins has struggled disproportionately, and that is Defensive Runs Saved, otherwise known as DRS. With this information now in hand, if you had to guess the metric Baseball Reference uses to calculate their WAR, which would it be? If you guessed DRS, you would be correct. This example helps show the flaw of relying on only one defensive metric in WAR calculation. Additionally, utilizing only one WAR figure for your valuation of a player is chained to the variance of the defensive metric used. This is exemplified by the difference between Mullins’ Baseball Reference WAR and Fangraphs WAR.
As his FWAR uses Outs Above Average or OAA, which is why he has a full win higher with Fangraphs. So his FWAR is currently 1.1, which is at this point in the season, is that of an above-average major league player. While by comparison his BWAR is .1, which is effectively that of a replacement-level player. So this now begs the question, how good of a player is Cedric Mullins.
If we go off of his previous body of work and combine multiple advanced metrics, Mullins is likely having a similar year offensively to his past three. While his defense, not quite up to the advanced level of years past, it is still in the same neighborhood. So this projects Mullins as an average to above-average centerfielder so far into the season and for the remainder, in spite of that .1 FWAR. This example serves as a reminder not to be overreliant on one advanced metric and to utilize a combination of stats.
