Robbie Ray has been by far the most valuable pitcher in the American League in 2021. His RA9-WAR, a FanGraphs stat that measures value on what actually happened as opposed to what should have happened, is 6.5 after today's start. That's 1.2 WAR higher than the next best AL pitcher in Gerrit Cole.

The funny thing is that simply not calling this "RA9-WAR" would make the post feel less insecure to a lot of people.

"advanced stats think an average pitcher would have a 5.33 ERA against the same teams. Because Ray has a 2.71 ERA, that means over 159 IP, he's allowed 46 runs less than the average pitcher. Now, because it's using RA instead of ERA, it's actually 43 runs, but it's a minimal difference.

For a "barstool conversation" (IRL not a reference to random sports website), there's a ton of really easy ways to reframe RA/9 WAR especially if you're willing to sacrifice 10% of the stat's accuracy to carve out the more wonky aspects of it (park & opponent factors and RA/ERA [when difference is minimal])

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