- Posts: 1129
- Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2012 6:16 pm
I think it's less about dominating a smaller pond (although that's definitely part of it) and more about just much heavier workloads for early pitchers. WAR is a counting stat, so it sees guys throwing 500 innings of above-average production as massively valuable, even if they weren't totally dominant on a rate basis. If you just filter out pre-1893 pitchers you get a more reasonable list with more variety in terms of era.
For me the biggest flaw is catcher defense is probably undervalued. Fangraphs addressed this by adding framing value for recent catchers, but I'd love to see framing extrapolated back through history to make comparisons across eras easier. Should be able to get a rough estimate by analyzing walks and strikeouts allowed.