Marcus Semien is as much as his common tips. He’s eighth amongst all place gamers in WAR, comfortably the very best on a first-place Rangers squad. For the third straight yr and the fourth out of 5, he’s on observe to rack up four-plus WAR as one of many two greatest gamers on his workforce. For somebody who didn’t submit an above-average batting line till his seventh main league season, it’s a powerful accomplishment.

Maybe extra spectacular to me: he’s doing it proper below our noses, and nobody appears to note. Semien is sweet at all the pieces however not in a method that provides as much as an incredible offensive line. His greatest talent could be sturdiness. He’s clearly an excellent participant, however his explicit set of expertise are highlighted by the framework we grade him below. I’m all for Semien as a participant, and I’m additionally all for why he’s the poster boy for each what WAR will get proper and the place it has limits.

Let’s begin with how Semien does it. It’s pretty easy: he’s above common at each section of the sport. It begins along with his plate self-discipline. To place it merely, he doesn’t make unhealthy selections about when to swing. In every of the previous 5 years, he’s completed a powerful double: chasing fewer pitches than league common and concurrently swinging at extra in-zone pitches than league common. To state the apparent, that’s a good way to each rack up a pile of walks and keep away from strikeouts.

When you zoom in on Semien’s selections, they get even higher. He doesn’t have huge uncooked energy; he’s roughly common on the subject of any measure of prime exit velocity you care to select. He delivers additional base hits most regularly when he swings at one thing over the guts of the plate, extra so than whichever slugger you care to check him to. Guess what? He’s among the best within the enterprise at doing simply that. When pitchers throw him one thing over the guts of the plate, he swings a whopping 85% of the time. That’s the sixth-best price in baseball this yr, up there with aggressive hitters like Corey Seager and Freddie Freeman.

That may not sound spectacular by itself. In any case, a number of weak hitters dot the highest of this listing, too. Ezequiel Tovar is third, and he’s far too aggressive for his personal good. Joey Gallo and Christian Bethancourt characteristic prominently on the prime of the desk. Merely swinging at lots of pitches down the center doesn’t imply you might have it discovered. However Semien has the opposite facet of the equation below management, too. When pitchers throw him one thing within the chase zone (not proper on the fringes of the zone, however not an automated take both), he doesn’t swing. Of the 297 hitters who’ve seen at the least 100 chase pitches this yr, 243 of them have swung extra regularly than Semien. He’s an outlier in each instructions.

He must be, as a result of as we’ve already coated, his uncooked energy is pedestrian. With middle-of-the-pack exit velocity, you may count on middle-of-the-pack energy manufacturing. You’d be fallacious, as a result of Semien squeezes each final drop out of his contact high quality. His park-adjusted remoted energy is 16% greater than MLB common to this point this yr. It was 21% greater than common final yr, 61% above common in 2021. By swinging at good pitches, getting the ball within the air, and usually maxing out his batted ball alternatives, he places up solidly above-average hitting numbers with nice regularity.

“Solidly above common” does a very good job of describing Semien’s different contributions as properly. He’s a plus baserunner — not among the best within the league however inarguably above common. He’s a stable defender at an up-the-middle place. He’s a scratch defender at shortstop, which makes him a plus defender at second base. Regardless of the section of the sport, Semien is best than most main leaguers at it.

Precisely how useful is that skillset? That’s a query sabermetricians nonetheless wrestle with. By wins above alternative, Semien has been the tenth-best place participant in baseball from 2019 to now. However that assertion lacks context. WAR lacks context by its very nature. It’s an try to boil down all of baseball right into a single quantity, a objective that inherently removes nuance. Check out these aforementioned prime ten gamers, with a number of statistics appended:

Semien’s standout talent jumps out: he simply performs greater than the remainder of these guys. His offensive manufacturing is above common however not otherworldly. He’s not among the best shortstop defenders of our technology like Lindor. However he’s on the market each single day; he has a whopping 1,000 extra plate appearances than Trout, for instance. The truth is, Semien leads the majors in plate appearances over that span. Freeman is the one different participant inside 100, and José Abreu is the one different participant inside even 200.

Why does that matter? As a result of WAR is a counting statistic, which signifies that gamers above alternative degree rack up worth each time they play (on common). A median participant is price slightly below two wins over 600 plate appearances — round 1.85 to be extra exact. Give that participant an additional 130 plate appearances (Semien has averaged 732 within the final three non-COVID seasons), they usually’d be price extra like 2.3 wins above alternative.

When you’re a bit of bit higher than common, these additional plate appearances add much more juice. Contemplate a participant who produces 4 WAR per 600 plate appearances. That’s a fringe All Star, roughly — Matt Chapman or Eugenio Suárez in 2022. Flip that as much as 730 plate appearances, and that’d be extra like a 5 WAR efficiency. Likewise, Semien completed final yr with 4.2 WAR, proper in step with Chapman and Suárez. If he’d solely been in a position to play for 600 plate appearances price of time, although, he’d have completed the yr with 3.5 WAR, comfortably behind them.

Ought to we be giving Semien credit score for that additional taking part in time? It relies on the way you view the idea of alternative degree. The central idea of alternative degree is undeniably intelligent: When you’re batting in your workforce, another person can’t be batting, naturally sufficient. Worth relies on the distinction between what you probably did and what another person would have executed in your home. That idea will get prolonged to fielding, baserunning, and all the pieces else on a baseball diamond. It’s a sublime method of assigning worth, and the final idea of worth relative to alternative is pervasive not simply in sports activities but in addition in just about each analytical discipline you may think about immediately. However as Invoice James usually factors out, the true sticking level is in that definition of alternative degree.

WAR handles this query roughly by fiat. Or, properly, fiat isn’t fairly proper. In 2013, FanGraphs and Baseball Reference agreed to make use of the identical alternative degree worth of their calculations of WAR. That worth works out to 1,000 wins above alternative per yr, cut up throughout your complete main leagues. That’s primarily based on quite a lot of research that estimate manufacturing by freely out there gamers, but it surely’s simply that: an estimate.

For probably the most half, WAR being barely off simply isn’t that massive of a deal for single-season functions. When you calculate alternative degree fallacious, so what? Most full-time starters get 600–650 plate appearances a yr, so the gamers we’re evaluating once we have a look at WAR leaderboards are placing up their statistics over comparable workloads. One participant is normally method out in entrance, anyway; Semien might have batted 1,500 occasions final yr with out placing up as a lot worth as Aaron Choose.

Semien is true on the borderline of creating me rethink the argument, although. He performs a lot that the taking part in time variations actually do matter. He’s worse on a per-plate-appearance foundation than everybody in his basic neighborhood on the WAR leaderboards. It’s completely true that one of the best ways to calculate worth is relative to what you’d be getting from a alternative. The definition of alternative merely issues extra for Semien.

Contemplate this: if we have a look at wins above common as an alternative of above alternative, Semien drops to fifteenth as an alternative of tenth. Notably, he’s behind Fernando Tatis Jr. regardless of having batted greater than 1,000 occasions extra usually over that window. As an alternative of being a rounding error behind Trout, he’s 5.5 wins behind. Change the baseline, and worth modifications proper alongside it.

Which baseline is right is a trickier query, and in my view, worth is in the end closely depending on workforce context. Good groups have higher replacements than unhealthy groups typically. Final yr, for instance, the Dodgers needed to dip into their replacements after they confronted a wave of accidents. Their replacements had been nice, although, producing 2.5 WAR in 528 plate appearances as a result of Trayce Thompson, who they acquired for nothing in the course of the yr, put up 2.8 WAR. The Astros, however, bought 0.3 WAR out of alternative degree gamers over 708 plate appearances.

Who your direct alternative is issues so much, in different phrases. The issue with calculating that for Semien is that he principally hasn’t had a alternative. He performed in 161 video games final yr. The yr earlier than that, he performed in all 162. He performed in all 162 in 2019 as properly. My greatest guess is that Josh H. Smith would get additional reps if Semien performed much less, but it surely’s actually only a guess.

Smith seems to be like a roughly common participant to me. Our projections suppose he’ll be price 0.6 WAR in 175 plate appearances the remainder of the way in which this yr, which works out to round 2 WAR per 600 plate appearances. But when it’s not Smith as a alternative, it could be Travis Jankowski (by way of some infield/outfield switches), and we predict he’s a lot nearer to alternative degree. In different phrases, the context of alternative degree isn’t even clear once we decide a selected workforce and a selected yr.

The place does that depart me in fascinated with Semien’s worth? I’m inclined to facet with our calculation of WAR somewhat than attempting to recalculate some greater alternative degree, even after presenting the argument towards it right here. The reality is that sturdiness is effective. Semien’s additional taking part in time lets the workforce give different gamers relaxation and use situationally helpful guys after they’re at their greatest somewhat than overexposing them. His sturdiness is really spectacular, too, which makes me extra inclined to provide him credit score for it. Excluding 2023, he has eight items of black ink on his Baseball Reference web page — video games in 2019, plate appearances in 2019, video games in 2021, plate appearances in 2021, video games in 2022, plate appearances in 2022, at-bats in 2022, and sacrifice flies in 2022. In different phrases, he’s the perfect within the league at being on the market daily, and offering an above-average price whereas doing so.

Might you argue that WAR barely overstates Semien’s worth? Certain. However I guess you his teammates would inform you in any other case, and I guess you groups would as properly. The plate appearances we don’t see from his alternative could be impossibly difficult to worth, however that doesn’t imply they’re nugatory. It simply means our instruments aren’t good, and whereas I believe we’re fairly good at valuing manufacturing today, I don’t suppose we’ll ever get all the way in which to perfection.

Statistics on this article are present by video games of Saturday, June 17.