Many of the talking heads on radio and TV have commented on how playing in the WBC and skipping part of spring training negatively affects player performance during the regular season. As a Texas Rangers fan who has wondered the same thing, I decided to do a quick and dirty analysis.

The Ground Rules

• WBC rosters were pulled from Wikipedia 2017 World Baseball Classic rosters.
• Player WAR data was pulled from FanGraphs on July 10, 2017.
• Only MLB players were included.
• Only players with MLB statistics in both 2016 & 2017 were included.
• A WAR differential is defined as the difference of the 2017 WAR and 2016 WAR (2017 WAR – 2016 WAR)

The Results

Here’s the RAW data as I compiled it from the above sources.

The last column in the spreadsheet is the difference of the 2017 WAR and 2016 WAR and has a mean of -1.1 for all the players in the list.

The histogram below shows how the data is skewed to the negative, which is easily seen in the list just scanning visually.

Another interesting chart depicts the correlation between 2016 and 2017 WAR. The slope of that trend line is 0.59.

Here are the top (bottom!) 20 players, and two of my Rangers are in the list. Rougned Odor is 36th on the list with a -1.8 WAR differential.

There could be many other reasons for the decline in WAR and it very well could have nothing to do with the WBC.  It was an interesting exercise and the numbers make me wonder if MLB has really looked at the WBC and how it affects the MLB players that participate.