We weren’t expecting that
Bill Simmons fields and answers a VORP question in his mailbag. Even ends it with a VORP joke that isn’t designed to make fun of VORP. Sure, he needed an assist from BP’s Joe Sheehan to do it, but let’s give him and the ESPN-Baseball Prospectus marriage some points for positively exploiting corporate synergy.
Well, it’s less a marriage than it is a shacking-up, but still.
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.
OK. I’m ignorant. VORP?
VORP is the German version of WARP.
Thanks. That clears things right up for me….
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/glossary/index.php?search=vorp
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.
Tongue out of cheek…. Thank you both. I think I knew that , but passed some gas out of my cranial chapeau…
It would, of course, be nice if Joe Sheehan’s explanation of VORP was correct. Or if VORP was.
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?