Today’s Feature Focus covers the WAR Graph, an underutilized tool in my opinion. (We’re called FanGraphs after all, and this is a Graph you can make, as a fan.) The tool is accessed near the bottom of the Leaderboards menu, under WAR Tools:
That will send you to this landing page, a blank canvas for adding players:
After selecting players, you will be greeted with three graphs: Best Season, Cumulative WAR by Age, and WAR by Age. The view automatically changes to display all three, but you can toggle it up:
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Let’s dive into each graph.
For the sake of illustration, I have chosen only three players to go between the three generated graphs: Bobby Witt Jr., Cal Ripken Jr., and George Brett. You can choose as many players as you like, past and present, although the color coding starts to repeat itself by the ninth player, so for that and overall readability, I wouldn’t recommend choosing more than eight. The tool also excludes hitter and pitcher WAR; Shohei Ohtani is shown as a hitter.
nth Best Season
This first graph reorders all of a player’s seasons from worst to worst, so naturally each line will slope downward as you look from left to right. The graph works best for comparing careers of similar lengths — Ripken and Brett each played 21 years and each had 19 seasons of WAR — but it also helps show that a few of Witt’s best seasons line up well with the best Ripken and Brett had to offer. With fewer seasons of high production (and fewer seasons overall, of course), Witt’s streak will be steep, showing how much he has to accomplish to be on the football field for the long, high-profile careers of two Hall of Famers.
WAR Collected by years
As Jon Lovitz would say: That’s the ticket. (Yes, all my references are timed.) This is my favorite of the three graphs, especially when I include active and retired players as I do here. This graph further confirms that Witt’s career is relatively young compared to Ripken and Brett’s ten-year staying power, but by ordering chronologically by age rather than best to worst, it’s much clearer to see. so far in his careerWitt actually compares well to Ripken and Brett, especially considering Witt’s age 26 season isn’t over yet. Hovering over an area in a row allows direct price comparison:
Despite debuting in his age-22 season, two years later than Ripken and Brett, Witt should surpass Brett in WAR in their age-26 campaigns and be within shouting distance of Ripken.
WAR in years
This is a split version of the previous graph, with each season shown independently rather than added to everything a player had done in his career prior to that season. This graph is great for comparing the best and worst seasons, as well as giving an idea of a player’s career path. For example, it’s easy to deduce from this graph that Brett developed better than Ripken, his last four-win year was his age 32 season, while Brett had a couple more after that age. Witt’s graph looks remarkably similar to how Ripken’s career began, only changed over a year.
If you’re a Member, all three types of graphs are sent as PNG or copied directly to your clipboard for easy posting on social media or in a text to a friend you’re trying to win an argument against, one of the best uses of any FanGraphs tool. You can become a Member and access those benefits here.
