JAWS

JAWS is an analytical metric created by researcher Jay Jaffe to assess the Hall of Fame worthiness of players. The name stands for "Jaffe WAR Score". It works by comparing the average of the WAR values accumulated by players eligible for the Hall of Fame over their top seven seasons and their career WAR with those of players already in the Hall. This includes both offensive and defensive WAR and the comparison is made position by position, with players ranking above the median of current Hall of Famers considered as being worthy of induction in Cooperstown. A player's JAWS is calculated by averaging his career WAR with the total WAR from his seven-year peak -- that is, his seven most valuable seasons (consecutive or non-consecutive). [1]

Jaffe developed this method on his blog, "Futility Infielder" and in a later book, The Cooperstown Casebook (2017), which ranks players who are or should be in the Hall of Fame and determines who should be in or out based on objective criteria, as demonstrated by JAWS.

Further Reading

• Benjamin Alter: "Assessing Hall-of-Fame Worthiness: Flaws in JAWS", Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 51, Number 2 (Fall 2022), pp. 105-111.
• Jay Jaffe: The Cooperstown Casebook: Who's in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Who Should Be In, and Who Should Pack Their Plaques, Thomas Dunne Books, Macmillan Publishers, New York, NY, 2017. ISBN 9781250071217