I remember Cal Eldred. He was a cornerstone of my pitching staff...

I couldn't find any statistics on walk-off hits, so I went back through Cleveland's schedule and looked at the game logs of every home game Cleveland played that they won or lost by 3 or less runs. By my count, Hafner has only even had four chances to even get a walkoff hit. On May 14th (fly out), May 16th (walk off HR), May 21st (walk) and July 9th (lineout). So he's 1-3 with a walk and a walkoff home run. I have no idea what, if anything, this means, to be honest. The whole walkoff things seems a bit silly to me in the first place.

Hafner is hitting .354/.466/.667 in 58 "close and late" PAs (48ab, 10 bb)
Oriz is hitting .323/.397/.877 in 73 "close and late" PAs (65ab, 8 bb)

Ortiz does have an opportnity advantage- more PAs and less walks (due presumably to having Manny bat behind him)

Mauer is hitting .369/.448/.535

and he's hitting .340/.463/.509 "close and late"

AND HE'S A CATCHER

Even with 5 walk off hits to date- i don't see any possible way that Ortiz has been more valuable than Mauer

I don't see how a player who has contributed the biggest individual story of the year can be discounted.

Is there nothing between giving a player the MVP award and ignoring his acheivments? I think Ortiz's clutch value is why we even have the discussion... if he was just having his season with a "normal" scattering of success, we'd wouldn't need to bring up Manny outhitting Ortiz as the Red Sock representative and that Wells and Mauer were clearly better candidates, and that Hafner is outhitting him at the same position.

We can all agree that leading the league in HR, by itself, is not the criteria for MVP. Ortiz's performance in the clutch is why we'd even be considering a player with no defensive value who isn't even a top 3 hitter in his league, or the best hitter on his own team.

With even a token nod to position, Wells and Dye and Ramirez and Mauer are clearly ahead. Hafner and Thome are outhitting Ortiz at the DH position. There's an argument for Jeter being ahead. Under normal circumstance, why would Ortiz even be a talking point?

No one will remember Chase Utley's streak. Do you really remember the year Santiago had his streak? Or Castillo (do you even remember that streak existed)? Or Vlad's year? Or Molitor's?

I do remember Santiago's and Molitor's.

***

I think it's far too early to worry about who the MVP is yet. I suspect Mauer has the lead right now.

I think it's far too early to worry about who the MVP is yet. I suspect Mauer has the lead right now.

Unfortunately, the sportswriters vote on it, and the Ortiz bandwagon is picking up steam

I think it's far too early to worry about who the MVP is yet.

I agree. There will be some great story written between now and October that will likely decide it.

How long has walk off hits been talked about? I don't remember hearing about it even as recently as a couple of years ago. Of course, visiting players can NEVER get a walkoff hit.

Without looking it up, I know that Santiago and Molitor's streaks were in 1987. Vlad's was 1999. I'm not positive about Castillo's, but I'd guess 2003. Anyone know for sure? And didn't Nomar have a 30 gamer during his ROY season in 1997?

I can't speak for everybody, but I probably WILL remember Utley's (and Rollins) streaks. I just think they're fun to follow. :)

Of course, visiting players can NEVER get a walkoff hit.

This has gotta be at least partially responsible for the increased drumbeats. A team like the Red Sox packs the press boxes when the team is at home; every reporter, every columnist and their dog is there taking in the free game. On the road, it's just the regular beat guys plus maybe one or two others at a time.

So the reporters' perceptions are skewed in favor of players who perform at home (and especially those who perform memorable feats at home).

I know that Santiago and Molitor's streaks were in 1987

I could have sworn this was 1988, but you may well be right. 1987 would make more sense b/c of the offensive explosion that year.

I remember Molitor's, it was a VERY big deal at the time. Santiago's too, but Molitor's definitely had the most hype since my fandom (1980). I remember ESPN breaking in for what would have been his last chance, but I think he ended up on deck after Rick Manning made the final out - which was part of the break-in. That's going from memory, not Retrosheet.

I don't even remember if ESPN had baseball back then, but I remember someone breaking in for it.

my apologies for throwing down a gauntlet and then not responding .. this day turned into a bear, and tomorrow ain't any better.

ARod better than Manny, etc, even tho stats are worse?

Are we talking only value for this year?

Part of ARod's "stats" are that he plays a good third base, andManny plays a lousty LF. If you include those stats, and I do, you can conclude that he's a beter player. So no, ARod's stats are not worse. He's been the best player in the past decade, even if he doesn;t have the most (RBI, whateevr, I can;t get the ##s right now).

More to the bigger point, any saber-head (like me) worth his salt KNOWS to adjust raw stats for ballpark, position, defense, etc.

(If you have a counterpoint and I don't; respond for days, I'm not ignoring you, it's just one of them times)

Hafner is hitting .354/.466/.667 in 58 "close and late" PAs (48ab, 10 bb)
Oriz is hitting .323/.397/.877 in 73 "close and late" PAs (65ab, 8 bb)

The moment you accept "close and late", you accept WPA. The logic is exactly hte same, and WPA is a far better measurement of the in-the-moment, narrative value of production. And by WPA, Big Papi is lapping the field in the AL. I'm quite confident that another value stat that measured value by end-of-game score would also find that he's had a huge season, huger than his stats.

He's producing in big spots, he's winning close games. If you want Hafner over Ortiz, and you find that you're basically alone among baseball fans, you might want to consider why that is.

I don't think there's a bad MVP choice among Jeter, Ortiz and Mauer. I like Jeter at this point. But I'm quite surprised at how many people here don't think Ortiz deserves to be among the leaders - not to get all sanctimonious, but I thought we got through this unreconstructed Moneyball crap a few years ago.

"The moment you accept "close and late", you accept WPA."

Not even a little true. Not that I care that much about close and late anyway. Close yes. Late no. Not for hitters (except Pinch Hitters, WPA is fine for comparing Manny Mota and Lenny Harris).

Close and late percentages are not colored by teammates and opportunties. WPA is. Ortiz has had 26% more close and late opps, his WPA should be higher than Hafner's.

"The moment you accept "close and late", you accept WPA."

I think the moment you accept WPA, you accept PPA (Pennant Probability Added), and Bucky Dent becomes your 1978 MVP.

Dye's stats, IMHO at least, are clearly better than A-Rod's this year. it's not like a-rod even plays a very good third base, so you can't really use his defense to make up the gap. nevertheless, a-rod is a much better ballplayer than jermaine (who i love dearly).

a-rod's stats are worse than manny's, too; manny is a bad left fielder, but his OPS is almost 200 points higher. That's the difference between A-Rod and Jack Wilson.

If you accept that the only reasonable measurement of "value" is "wins" then who is most valuable is a very easy thing to measure. Whoever has the most win shares is the most valuable in any given year. This is based upon stats but is corrected for what team actually won the games. I don't remember what James said the margin of significance was but I think it was 3 win shares. So far this year there are nine players with between 19 and 22 win shares which makes all of the guys mentioned so far reasonable candidates. There are another four guys with 18 win shares so really it should come down to how they play down the stretch. What I think is frustrating to a lot of people is that given it is close the winner is likely going to be whoever is the most famous.

BTW I think it is plain crazy to award Ortiz extra credit for those walkoff hits. That's not looking at performance in context that's taking a couple of blips out of context and magnifying it completely out of proportion. Moreover it takes credit away from his teammates. Credit for a win is a zero sum game, the more you give to Ortiz the less you have to give to the other guys who all contributed to those victories.

If you accept that the only reasonable measurement of "value" is "wins" then who is most valuable is a very easy thing to measure. Whoever has the most win shares is the most valuable in any given year. This is based upon stats but is corrected for what team actually won the games. I don't remember what James said the margin of significance was but I think it was 3 win shares. So far this year there are nine players with between 19 and 22 win shares which makes all of the guys mentioned so far reasonable candidates. There are another four guys with 18 win shares so really it should come down to how they play down the stretch. What I think is frustrating to a lot of people is that given it is close the winner is likely going to be whoever is the most famous.

BTW I think it is plain crazy to award Ortiz extra credit for those walkoff hits. That's not looking at performance in context that's taking a couple of blips out of context and magnifying it completely out of proportion. Moreover it takes credit away from his teammates. Credit for a win is a zero sum game, the more you give to Ortiz the less you have to give to the other guys who all contributed to those victories.

I think the moment you accept WPA, you accept PPA (Pennant Probability Added), and Bucky Dent becomes your 1978 MVP.

Has reductio ad absurdum ever been more eloquently applied? Good job, Joe.

Also, what #104 said.

If Ortiz is the frontrunner, then my vote is for Miguel Tejada.

Both are great players.

Both are a close second best at their position this season.

Both are on teams that won't make the playoffs.

If Ortiz is the frontrunner, then my vote is for Miguel Tejada.

Both are great players.

Both are a close second best at their position this season.

That sound you hear is me banging my head against my desk.

Doesn't anyone ever look at Carlos Guillen's numbers? Tejada is the third best shortstop in the league. Throw in defense, and he isn't all that far behind Jeter.

That said, my vote is for Mauer. His OPS is .124 better than the second best catcher in the major leagues. The value he adds compared to any other catcher is ridiculous. That we are having arguments about who the best is at the position of every other contender should clue people in to just how much of a positional shift Mauer ought to get.

If you accept that the only reasonable measurement of "value" is "wins" then who is most valuable is a very easy thing to measure. Whoever has the most win shares is the most valuable in any given year.

Per The Hardball Times, through 8/5/06:

22.3 - Ramirez
22.1 - Jeter
21.7 - Mauer
19.7 - Guillen
19.4 - Thome
19.3 - Ortiz
19.3 - Morneau
19.2 - Granderson
18.5 - Hafner

Doesn't anyone ever look at Carlos Guillen's numbers? Tejada is the third best shortstop in the league. Throw in defense, and he isn't all that far behind Jeter.

Win Shares agrees

If you accept that the only reasonable measurement of "value" is "wins" then who is most valuable is a very easy thing to measure. Whoever has the most win shares is the most valuable in any given year.

This is ridiculous. Even if you accept that "'value' is 'wins'", that doesn't mean you rely on any one stat. I'm quite suspicious of any conclusions based on a single stat, no matter how all-encompassing and adjusted-for-whatever.

I think the moment you accept WPA, you accept PPA (Pennant Probability Added), and Bucky Dent becomes your 1978 MVP.

I agree. And I don't think that Bobby Thomson had the greatest year of all time (OK, I don't know that he'd come out first, but he'd be way up there).

It's not reductio ad absurdum. The same absurdity in PPA applies to WPA, just on a smaller level.

I agree Harold. It is one data point. But a very interesting one, in its efforts to quantify a large number of different aspects of the game.

Me, I would give the award to Jeter.

Not because he necessarily deserves it. Just because I want him to win it. And to continue a very long and time honored tradition of giving the award to a great all-rounder on a pennant winning Yankee team, instead of a possibly more deserving Red Sox offensive force.

the moment you accept WPA, you accept PPA (Pennant Probability Added), and Bucky Dent becomes your 1978 MVP

I'm late to this party, but yes, Joe, that's the most elegant way of putting it I've read.

The problem with trying to quantify Ortiz's heroism is that it's always a sliding scale. Let's say Ortiz and Manny are dead even in aggregate numbers. Ortiz hits five walkoffs during a regular season to help the Sox win games. Then, in the 163rd game, a playoff against the Yankees at Fenway, in the bottom of the 11th after the Yankees have taken a 3-run lead in the top, on an 0-2 count with two outs, Manny hits a grand slam off Mariano Rivera. How do you quantify an edge for either of them? Ortiz has five times as many walkoffs, but isn't Manny's hit ten times more heroic than any of his?

I think the moment you accept WPA, you accept PPA (Pennant Probability Added), and Bucky Dent becomes your 1978 MVP.

So, because of the risk of that, you reject contextualization? You say that you only consider "close" and not "close and late" - but Papi has been great in close games, and WPA is a rough measure of that.

Obviously, we don't just give hte MVP to the guy with the highest WPA, or hte highest PPA, or the best VORP+UZR, or anything like that. We have to weigh all these different factors.

I don't really know what to say when someone says that Papi doesn't have a huge amount of extra value from the arrangement of his production. I think that ignoring "late" production misses the way that baseball is played - every event depends on what came before it, and you cannot assume that later events would have happened regardless of earlier events. In other words, a homer in the 1st that happens to win a 1-0 game is different from a homer in the 9th that wins a 1-0 game - a game can always play out differently after an event, but a walk-off is a walk-off. I don't think we should ignore all non-WPA measures of value - far from it - but I think that the dismissal of narrative stats doesn't work.

How do you quantify an edge for either of them? Ortiz has five times as many walkoffs, but isn't Manny's hit ten times more heroic than any of his?

Obviously, you can't quantify any of it particularly well. But that in no way suggests it isn't real - it just suggests that it's interesting and complicated, like most of hte rest of life. if you want to ask the question of who's been the most valuable player, you need to weigh all these factors as best as you can, and it's always going to be a judgment call.

That said, my vote is for Mauer. His OPS is .124 better than the second best catcher in the major leagues.

Mauer is at .973, but don't forget the NL Joe Mauer, Brian McCann, who's at .975. I have them both in fantasy. If only everything else went as well as my catching.

Using park adjusted LW, with defense and position adjustments, Mauer is at +45 and Ortiz is +30. I'm willing to consider WPA, but I don't know if it makes up for that kind of difference.

In the NL its Beltran +49, Pujols +45.

Using park adjusted LW, with defense and position adjustments, Mauer is at +45 and Ortiz is +30. I'm willing to consider WPA, but I don't know if it makes up for that kind of difference.

Ortiz has 563 WPA, to Mauer's 244. Ortiz is having an absolutely freakish year in terms of in-the-moment leveraged production.

Some people don't like the narrative stats - oddly, they're heavily Yankee fans - and I can see the case against WPA. I think refusing to use it at all is significantly overstating hte case, but it certainly should be tempered by the use of stats based on different theories of value.

But regardless, to the degree that a player's value should be measured by the situation in the ballgame as it happens, Big Papi has a massive advantage on Mauer, more htan doubling his production.

By the way, here's the 2005 WPA leaderboard for AL hitters...



Just, you know, tossing it out there.

What's the scale here? Am I right in saying Ortiz is worth 5.6 wins and Mauer 2.4?

If that's the case then I can see a vote for Ortiz, as the defense and position between him and Mauer is worth about 2 wins.

Sorry, those are the Fangraphs numbers. I believe they scale every game to -50 / + 50.

Does that mean a win is 50 points or 100 points? I think it means it's 50, which would put Ortiz at 11.2 and Mauer at 4.9.

Some people don't like the narrative stats - oddly, they're heavily Yankee fans - and I can see the case against WPA

What's also interesting is the number of Red Sox fans who swear by WPA.

Ortiz is having a good year for WPA - but I wouldn't call it "absolutely freakish". Pujols is 100 points better this season. And Bonds is at 303 in about 250 AB.

And, while I know it doesn't scale linearly, Ortiz is "on pace" for 807 WPA - fewer than last year.

So yeah, he's had a lot of situationally important hits and won a lot of games in spectacular fashion, but even WPA doesn't seem to consider this the most amazing performance ever.

TomH - I understand if your reply is slow. No worries.

You asked this question.

"PLEASE NAME ME A PLAYER WHO IS BETTER THAN SOMEONE ELSE WHO HAS BETTER 'STATS'"

I answered it by naming a number of players with better stats than Arod who aren't as good of a player.

Now your asking:

Are we talking only value for this year?

That was never at any point part of the orginal question. I answered it, and I would guess most people would agree that Arod is better than most players on that list I made, despite having worse stats.

WPA has the virtue of measuring both drama and mathematical probability at the same time, making it hard to resist. The ideal result for a manager, however, is not a death-defying snap of victory from the jaws, but the dull accumulation of an early two-run lead plus the predictable parade of relief pitchers that secures it. I guess I'm agnostic about this; I have no problem with an MVP award going to an actually excellent hitter like Ortiz who is also the hero of many of his team's exciting wins. Why not? But I'm skeptical that the runs he creates actually somehow count more than the runs that someone else creates in a different inning.

I love how MHS keeps sighing in near disbelief that people aren't blindly agreeing with his argument-free assertions augmented with the odd appeal to authority(mixed in with some kind of dumbass appeal to popular opinion, as if baseball games were determined by ballot). Ortiz, as a defense light slugger, is at the least not significantly better than Ramirez or Hafner. Given that Mauer/Jeter/Sizemore/Wells all play some valuable form of defense, I think that the first ballot culling can ditch the two guys who don't wear a glove.

I think the moment you accept WPA, you accept PPA (Pennant Probability Added), and Bucky Dent becomes your 1978 MVP.

I doubt that is true. Try calculating PPA, I'd be willing to bet that Bucky Dent is not the leader in this stat for 1978.

He probably would get into the leaderboard, because that shot would have a lot of PPA in it. And if he hit that shot while adding a lot of PPA during the regular year, then he sure as hell would have had a good argument. In fact, just eyeballing 1978, my best guess for the leader in PPA would be Jim Ed Rice, who coincidentally won the MVP. In fact, I bet if you do your historic PPA, you would find a strong correlation to the winner of the MVP award and the PPA leader. That is at least true until the disease of sabermetrics started infecting sportswriters and up until recently when the art started catching up with common sense.

But it sounds like you just made the reverse mistake of where you started. Before you ignored context completely. Now you are ignoring performance except in extremely high context situations.

I seriously doubt that any attempt to figure "PPA" is going to totally ignore contributions made throughout the year.

It makes a nice soundbyte to say that. But why not figure up Papi's PPA while you are at it. I'd bet he looks surprisingly good in that metric.

Sorry, those are the Fangraphs numbers. I believe they scale every game to -50 / + 50.

Does that mean a win is 50 points or 100 points? I think it means it's 50, which would put Ortiz at 11.2 and Mauer at 4.9.

No, a point is defined as .01 wins. It takes 100 points to earn a win. One of the most disturbing things about the proliferation of WPA this season is this notion that 50 "points" is a win. By that reasoning, a 90-72 team is 18 wins better than a .500 team.

MSH, you didn't understand the question as I meant it - probably my fault.

The discussion was stats versus 'true value'; is there value other than stats. Your stance was there certainly is, and I wished for you to give a concrete example. I should qualify the challenges as: name a player in 2006 (or, pick your time period over multiple years, it doesn't matter) who is better (more valuable) than another, despite the 'stats' in favor of the other guy.

My response is likely to be this: maybe if player A is better but has worse stats, someone is reading the wrong 'stats'. I take the position that interpreted correctly, we have arrived at the point where numbers capture who is better about 98% of the time.

WPA: Yes, it is not a good measurement for "value added for the year", since it is no context-dependent. But, I certainly would not throw it completely out. "Close and late" does measure something beyond "close", since a 1-1 game in the 8th is more certain to be a close game in the end than a 0-0 game in the 1st.

GWRBI, and "Victory Important RBI" and "walk off hits" and many other clutch measures, all have their place as worth SOMEthing. Probably much less than the sportswriters and many fans will make of them.

My co-worker, die-hard Yankee fan, gets the creeps every time I even mention the word "Papi", he's so spooked of the guy.