{
  "abstract": "This paper introduces iWAR, a system for estimating wins above replacement from historical Retrosheet play-by-play records. We compare its runs-allowed (RA) and fielding-independent pitching (FIP) versions with Baseball-Reference WAR (bWAR), FanGraphs WAR (fWAR) and run-based alternatives. The common historical sample contains 1,471 team-seasons across 79 years and 1,441 consecutive franchise pairs. Under the fixed conversion to wins, same-season mean absolute error was 3.695 credited wins per 162 games for iWAR RA, compared with 4.724 for bWAR and 4.744 for fWAR: reductions of 21.793% and 22.112%. The paired differences were -1.030 and -1.049, with conditional 95% calendar-block intervals of [-1.367, -0.706] and [-1.398, -0.725]. Calibration preserved most of these advantages. A broader bWAR comparison across 118 years retained a smaller advantage; modern differences were smaller or sometimes reversed. PythagenPat reconstructed records more closely than every WAR total. Next-season replay gave nearly identical fixed-map errors for iWAR FIP and fWAR, while calibration changed their ordering. An amended chronological learned-model analysis of 1,552 franchise pairs gave neural RMSE 10.163, versus 9.946 for the development-selected ridge comparator (difference +0.217; conditional interval [0.015, 0.474]). This work provides a new, specialized framework for analyzing WAR across eras and provides context for future work using learning models.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.39088",
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Michael Doane"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/bjxvs8q2eknke.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.39088",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "bjxvs8q2eknke",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.39088",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "cs.CE"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "stat.ME"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.39088",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-29",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/bjxvs8q2eknke.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:36:41Z",
      "native_id": "2610.39088",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.39088"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "mathematics",
      "origin": "arxiv:stat.ME",
      "subfield": "statistics"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Comparing wins above replacement across baseball history",
  "title_text": "Comparing wins above replacement across baseball history",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-01T12:21:00Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/bjxvs8q2eknke",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}