The rejection of that comes from ignorance though. Or an immature worshipping of randomness.
Imagine they did miss the playoffs by one game and they ran Joe Panik out there all year long and he ended up at -0.1 fWAR and -0.2 bWAR. Would you look at that as a missed opportunity, not upgrading on him with say a useful platoon player? Of course you would.
Or would you instead say, hey remember that walkoff single Panik got on May 22nd? WAR is wrong and he was worth a win this year, so it was fine to carry him. You can't expect a bench player to be worth two wins. No, of course you wouldn't. That would be retarded.