A thought experiment occurred to me last night because of this thread. Imagine two really good position players who add about 5 wins above replacement or maybe 3.75 wins above average over the course of a year. One does it consistently with baserunning, defense, and better than average hitter. One is more of a one-tool player who hits lots of home runs.
Let's say they both are good for about +50 runs a year, give or take. One consistently adds about a third of a run per game, night in night out. One is very silent or downright negative most nights, with lots of nonproductive outs, but one in every five days is good for + 1.5 runs. Maybe he has two games in a row of great production, sandwiched by 8 of nothing, roughly. At the end of the year, whatever your favorite metric for value added, they've added exactly the same number of runs adjusted for all the factors you view relevant. Let's call one of them Aaron Judge and one of them Mookie Betts.
Is one obviously more valuable than the other? Putting Judge in the equation is almost certainly going to detract from the point I'm trying to make, because he has not added his value consistently every fifth day, but instead has been a tale of two halves. But, for purposes of the thought experiment, imagine he has spread it out more over the course of the year.
I don't know that the answer is obvious. Even in a short elimination series, I don't know that the answer is obvious. I do know that we never (rarely?) question position players whose win added distribution is clumpy like we do starting pitchers.