Using the two following passages:
Passage 1:
WAR is trying to answer the time-honored question: How valuable is each player to his team? Baseball is the sum of many different parts and players can help their teams win through hitting, base running, defensive play, or pitching. Comparing two players offensively is useful, but it discounts the potential contribution a player can make by saving runs on defense. WAR is a simple attempt to combine a player’s total contribution into a single value.
The goal of WAR is to provide a holistic metric of player value that allows for comparisons across team, league, year, and era and a framework for player evaluation. While there will likely be improvements to the process by which we calculate the inputs of WAR, the basic idea is something fans and analysts have desired for decades. WAR estimates a player’s total value and allows us to make comparisons among players with vastly different skill sets. Who is better, a slugging first baseman or a superlative defensive shortstop? WAR gives you a method for answering that question.
Passage 2:
The BBWAA has chosen MVP awards for each league since 1931. Previous incarnations of the MVP award include the Chalmers Award, which was given out from 1911 to 1914, and League Awards, which were given out from 1922 to 1929. The winners of these awards are not included in this study, mainly because previous winners were not eligible to win again, invalidating one of the bases of this study.
The BBWAA does not offer a clear definition of what “most valuable” means, leaving the judgment to the individual voters. Among its official criteria are the player’s “strength of offense and defense,” the number of games played, and the player’s “general character, dis position, loyalty and effort.”
Initially, one BBWAA writer in each city with a team filled out a ten-place ballot, with ten points for the recipient of a first-place vote, nine for a second-place vote, and so on. The BBWAA began polling three writers in each league city in 1938, and reduced that number to two in 1961. Beginning in 1938 more weight was given to the first-place vote, increasing it from 10 points to 14.
Several previous studies have tried to identify the statistical drivers that correlate well with MVP ballot ing, including Wood (1999), whose dataset also begins in 1931, and Hanrahan (2003), which uses 1938 as its starting date. Silver (2003) was an early study using sabermetrics as its basis, which used WARP3, a derivative of WARP.
Based on the two passages, Write a reflection of at least 200 words in which you discuss two or more differences in the ways the articles are written. Discuss how each difference would affect the way a member of your discourse community uses the article. Do the different approaches affect how likely they are to read one article or the other? Do the differences help you figure out whether members of your discourse community are intended readers or incidental readers?
The two passages present information about player value and MVP awards in baseball, but they are written in noticeably different styles and with different focuses.
Passage 1 is written in a more explanatory and analytical style, focusing on the concept of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) and how it is calculated to measure a player's total contribution to their team. The passage delves into the methodology behind WAR and its goal of providing a holistic metric for player evaluation. This detailed and technical approach would likely appeal to members of a discourse community who are interested in the analytics and statistics of baseball. Those who are more data-driven and enjoy diving into the nuances of player performance would find this passage valuable and informative.
On the other hand, Passage 2 takes a more historical and procedural approach, discussing the history of MVP awards, the criteria for selecting MVPs, and the voting process. This passage provides a more traditional and narrative account of how MVPs are determined, appealing to baseball fans who are interested in the history and tradition of the game. Those who enjoy learning about the evolution of awards in baseball and the factors that influence MVP voting would find this passage captivating.
The differences in writing style and focus between the two passages would likely attract different types of readers within the discourse community. Those who prefer a more data-driven and analytical approach would likely gravitate towards Passage 1, while those who appreciate a more historical and narrative approach would prefer Passage 2. The different approaches help to distinguish between members of the discourse community who are more interested in statistics and analysis versus those who are more interested in the history and culture of baseball.