Detroit Tigers: JaCoby Jones is Already a 1 WAR player

Every article we will do will include “sample size” but worth noting the Detroit Tigers already have a 1 WAR player in JaCoby Jones.

The Detroit Tigers have had so many stories early on in the 2020 season that give fans much-needed excitement.  JaCoby Jones continues to be a presence in the lineup and last night, he took advantage of a missed play by White Sox outfielder Adam Engel for an inside-the-park home run.

The home run was a nice exclamation point for the Tigers’ victory last night. But as I was combing through Twitter, I found this stat.

Check out the names on this club, quite a bit of the heavy hitters who are part of the 1 fWAR club (Fangraphs measure of WAR). It’s impressive because everyone on the list has played 16 or 17 games except for Jones and Trout, who have played 13 games so far.

The reason why this is rather impressive early on is that Detroit in 2019 had just two players above 1.0 fWAR in Niko Goodrum and Victor Reyes. In case you were curious about how WAR works in terms of how a player stacks up, here’s the chart from FanGraphs.

• Scrub: 0-1 WAR
• Role Player: 1-2 WAR
• Solid Starter: 2-3 WAR
• Good Player: 3-4 WAR
• All-Star: 4-5 WAR
• Superstar 5-6 WAR
• MVP: 6+ WAR

If you look at Jones’s numbers, it’s easy to see why. His slash line is .333/.391/.786 and a wOBA (weighted on-base average) of .486. We all winced when he left the game on Sunday with his oblique injury and breathe a sigh of relief that it wasn’t serious.  Jones so far in a small sample size with a high WAR is one of the main components of the Tigers’ early success so far. Detroit has not needed to tinker with the lineup too much and having the ability to have the play of Jones so far in the 9th spot, you can’t argue the results.