WAR, what is it good for?

It also explains the similarity, too. ... They are both masturbatory exercises.

It isn't a statistic. It is a judgment -- based on biased reasoning with regard to what is valuable in a baseball player. They took some contrived measurements (that introduced their own biases -- something actual statistics tries to avoid at all costs), threw them into a hat and gave it an acronym. Most people who throw the numbers around have no clue how to calculate a WAR (using any of the various ways -- because the biased inputs that go into the soup differ from practitioner to practitioner). On top of it, they can't offer any empircal reason for why it is a meaningful measurement of any sort.