View: https://twitter.com/jay_jaffe/status/1456235909544820742
Jay Jaffe on Twitter: "by fWAR, Buster Posey was the most valuable position player in the game from 2012-17 this side of Mike Trout, and nobody else was particularly close during that span. In fact, by fWAR, only Trout surpasses him over the past *decade* even with Posey's decline and 2020 opt-out."
I'm not saying that he will, but he should be a first ballot hall-of-famer.
Worth noting A HUGE amount of that value in fWAR comes from the defensive positional adjustment from being a catcher, and it's probably out of whack. For instance, from 2010-2019, also in the top-20 players by WAR are Jonathan Lucroy, Russel Martin, and Yadi Molina, all of whom get massive bonuses there. For reference, Adrian Beltré has a 'Def' value of 59 over that period, whereas all of the catchers have a value
over 200. Defensive metrics are already hard, and for catchers it's basically unfinished further, which is why Fangraphs themselves specifically note in their glossary about WAR:
"For this reason, catcher WAR is probably the least precise of all of the positions."
Not sure whether Jaffe doesn't know that, or is ignoring it because it's convenient, but it's not a particularly valid argument.