Wins Above Replacement (WAR)

Also written: WAR, bWAR, rWAR, fWAR

Standard statistic · MLB

An estimate of how many wins a player contributed beyond a freely available replacement-level player, combining batting, baserunning and fielding with an adjustment for position — or, for pitchers, run prevention.

There is no single WAR. The two most-cited versions, Baseball-Reference's (bWAR, also written rWAR) and FanGraphs' (fWAR), use different fielding inputs, and value pitchers differently — Baseball-Reference from runs allowed, FanGraphs from fielding-independent pitching — so the same season can carry two different numbers. Since 2013 the two sites have used a common replacement level.

Formula

Position players: WAR = (batting runs + baserunning runs + fielding runs + positional adjustment + league adjustment + replacement runs) ÷ runs per win
Each site estimates every term with its own model; pitchers are valued separately.

On StatVault

StatVault does not compute or display bWAR or fWAR, and the MLB corpus carries no WAR values. For a single-number season and career value it shows VAL (Value Above League), its own era-adjusted, position-aware value metric, alongside league-relative OPS+ and ERA+.