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Jon
14 years ago

Simmons didn’t have to make fun of VORP – the guy asking the question already did.  He didn’t even bother to think about what it stands for.  Unless your replacement player is ALWAYS Tony Pena, someone has to be negative.

Richard in Dallas
14 years ago

OK. I’m ignorant. VORP?

Aaron Moreno
14 years ago

VORP is the German version of WARP.

Richard in Dallas
14 years ago

Thanks.  That clears things right up for me….

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

Richard—VORP is a stat which stands for “Value Over Replacement Player.” 

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/glossary/index.php?search=vorp

It gets mentioned a lot by non-state guys, often mockingly, as an example of a stat that illustrates how divorced statistical analysis is from “real baseball.”  Probably because it’s fun to say and doesn’t appear on baseball cards.

Richard in Dallas
14 years ago

Tongue out of cheek….  Thank you both.  I think I knew that , but passed some gas out of my cranial chapeau…

Colin Wyers
14 years ago

It would, of course, be nice if Joe Sheehan’s explanation of VORP was correct. Or if VORP was.

Jake
14 years ago

I can kinda understand the mainstream fascination with VORP and several similar “all-encompassing” stats … VORP, WARP, win shares – none of them have are easy to explain. 

Stats like OBP and OPS are very straight-forward – if you understand batting average, you can learn those two in no time… ERA+ and OPS+, while hardly anyone can quote the normalization formulas offhand, also are intuitive.

What’s the difference between VORP, WARP, and win shares again, and why are all three necessary?