WAR: Who is the most valuable so far?

Is Carlos Gomez the best player in baseball?

We are only 35 some odd games into the season, but some players are already have great seasons.  Let’s take a quick look at the players that are most impacting their teams positively.  For this we will use Baseball-reference.com WAR calculation.  In case you aren’t familiar WAR represents “how much better a player is than what a team would typically have to replace that player.”  Pretty basic on the surface but complicated to represent with numbers.  Read their full explanation here.  who let’s see who is pacing the majors this year.

Carlos Gomez has been ridiculous this year.  It took him three organizations and some time, but he finally fulfilling his prospect promise.  The pitchers get half the spots here and 5 of the top 6.  The steroid era is over apparently.  Let’s give the batters some credit and exclude the pitchers.

Well the Rockies and Braves both having two players on this list seem to back up their winning records.  You may be curious why Andrelton Simmons is on here.  Well this includes defense.  Since defense is inherently harder to measure, let’s look at just what happens at the plate.

This is starting to look more like what you might expect when you think of the best players in baseball (Wait…maybe not Starling Marte, but he’s having a good season.)  This is a measure I like because it focuses on the runs that a player creates at the plate or on the bases.  And runs are the only way to win a baseball game.  Finally, let’s get to the pitchers who having been keeping the runs off the board.

Kevin Slowey?  Travis Wood?  Matt Harvey is having a tremendous season and has launched himself to the top of the pitching board.  With familiar names at the top balancing out some surprises at the bottom…bottom of the top 10.

There you have it.  The best players of the 2013 as judged by the stats.