WARP Goes Mainstream; Gardenhire Confused

There is an article in today's New York Times, the newspaper of record in the U. States of A., essentially about WARP. This is good news for fans of logic and reason everywhere. It's very basic stuff and goes into no detail about formulae or anything, but there is a pretty hilarious statement from Ron Gardenhire about Luis Castillo:

"He's worth 15 wins, potentially," Gardenhire said of Castillo, a .293 lifetime hitter acquired from the Florida Marlins. "We lost 30 one-run games last year. With Luis's ability to get on base, steal bases, score runs and play defense, a guy like that can make a difference in at least half those one-run games going the other way."

Now, Castillo is a good player. He had a .391 OBP last year. But he also put up a team-hurting 10-for-17 in SB. His WARP1 was 6.0 and WARP3 6.2. So, Gardenhire, a true Good Baseball Man, is off by 150%. Also, Nick Punto had almost 400 AB last year at 2B with a WARP3 of 2.3. So, Castillo's impact is something closer to maybe four extra wins.

Castillo is certainly an upgrade. A good move for the Twinkies. But is he worth 15 wins? No, Ron Gardenhire, he is not.

Just to give you some idea, 15 was exactly Barry Bonds' WARP1 in 2004, when he walked 232 times.