Super Linear Weights is a method for evaluating the contributions of a baseball player towards his team. It was designed by Mitchel Lichtman and it calculates the total value that a baseball player contributes towards his team in terms of runs, where 0 represents the number of runs the average player adds. It uses linear weights to determine how many runs a player contributes on offense and Ultimate zone rating

Ultimate zone rating

Ultimate zone rating is a sabermetric statistic used to measure fielding. It compares the event that actually happened to data on similarly hit balls in the past to determine how much better or worse the fielder did than the "average" player...

 (UZR) to determine how many runs he saves on defense.

Super Linear Weights measures value, or how much a player actually contributes to his team, as opposed to ability, or how good the player is independent of the context in which he plays (park, team, league, etc.) An example of another measure of value is Bill James' Win Shares

Win Shares

Win shares is the name of the metric Bill James describes in his 2002 book Win Shares.It considers statistics for baseball and basketball players, in the context of their team and in a sabermetric way, and assigns a single number to each player for his contributions for the year. A win share...

. Some examples of measures of ability are Pete Palmer

Pete Palmer

Pete Palmer is a major contributor to the applied mathematical field referred to as sabermetrics. Along with the Bill James Baseball Abstracts, Palmer's book The Hidden Game of Baseball is often referred to as providing the foundation upon which the field of sabermetrics was built.Palmer began his...

's Total player rating

Total player rating

Total player rating , also known as Batter-Fielder/Pitcher Wins is a metric for measuring the value of baseball players, and to enable players to be compared against each other even when they played for different teams, at different positions, and in different eras...

 and Keith Woolner

Keith Woolner

Keith Woolner is an author for Baseball Prospectus and is the creator of the runs-based statistic VORP or Value Over Replacement Player. VORP is acknowledged by the sabermetrics community as one of the key concepts in the analysis of a player's performance and market valuation.-Education and early...

's Value over replacement player

Value over replacement player

In baseball, value over replacement player is a statistic popularized by Keith Woolner that demonstrates how much a hitter contributes offensively or how much a pitcher contributes to his team in comparison to a fictitious "replacement player," who is an average fielder at his position and a below...

. Measures of value are often used to compose lists of the best players in a certain season or of all-time, whereas measures of ability are often used to predict a player's performance in future seasons.