USA Today: White: Sabermetrics system: stats redefine award winners

More important is that these advanced metrics are part of the vocabularies of an increasing number of the Baseball Writers Association of America members who vote on the annual awards. And that membership now includes — since last year — representatives of such outlets as Baseball Prospectus, a website and book publisher where many of these measures are developed and discussed.

“Players are more aware of comparative tools,” said Christina Kahrl, who has been with Baseball Prospectus since its inception in 1996 and who had an AL rookie of the year vote this year. Kahrl’s colleague, Will Carroll, voted on the NL Cy Young and rookie of the year awards.

“With agents and things like arbitration, they’re going to get more and more interested in performance metrics.”

Kahrl says she’s not sure what to expect from this week’s MVP announcements, especially in the AL, though the numbers clearly point to Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins and Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals.

“Defensive metrics indicate (the New York Yankees’) Derek Jeter had his best (defensive) season in about a decade,” Kahrl said. “Mauer’s team was one loss away from being maybe the sixth-best team in the (AL). It’s going to be interesting.”

HA! Fedorable Neal Caffrey and Mozzie finding Kate is going to be interesting. Not the AL MVP race.