Wins Above Replacement is the most widely cited advanced stat in baseball. It attempts to answer one question: how many wins did this player add compared to a freely available minor-league replacement? A 6-WAR player added roughly 6 wins to their team that season.

There are two main versions: bWAR (Baseball Reference) and fWAR (FanGraphs). They use different formulas, especially for defense and pitching, and they often disagree. It’s not unusual for one system to rate a player as a 5-WAR star while the other says 3.

The disagreement usually comes from defense. Both versions include defensive metrics (DRS for bWAR, UZR for fWAR) that can swing wildly from year to year. A player might grade as elite defensively one season and below average the next, with no obvious change in their play.

This is exactly why Baseball Nut created NUT Score. NUT measures the same thing as WAR — player value in wins — but excludes defense entirely. It uses wOBA for hitters and FIP for pitchers, both of which are stable, predictable, and don’t depend on which version you’re looking at.

What is a good WAR?

NUT Score was created as an alternative to WAR. Both measure player value in wins, but NUT excludes defense — which WAR includes using metrics (DRS, UZR) that are unreliable in single-season samples.

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