My Awards Ballot: What Would a Reasonable Therapudlian Do?
I had the privilege of casting a ballot for BBTF’s postseason awards. On a mailing list I’ve discussed my overall ballot, but here, in Sox Therapy, I thought I would explain the Red Sox who made, and didn’t make, my ballot and why, so you can all lambaste me for failing to do you proud.
For AL MVP we voted for 10 candidates. I had Papi #1 and Lil Papi #10. I left Manny off the ballot. If the MVP were a “best player” award, I would have filled out the ballot differently, but to me the MVP is not a “best player” award. (If you think it is, please let’s agree to disagree, I’m not really interested in debating that point.) The criteria for the MVP include “actual” value “to his team”, and intangibles like disposition, character, loyalty, and effort. So I start my analysis with the best players but do not end the analysis there; I look at the importance of the player to the fortunes of the team, with its particular mix of personnel in the context of the ebbs and throes of its particular season. The MVP is about a contribution that defies belief, shocks the conscience, and captures the imagination. Applying that standard, Papi is MVP, Papelbon is deserving of a spot, and Manny is not. Discuss.
I voted Papelbon #3 (out of 3 candidates, behind Santana and Halladay) for AL Cy Young, and #2 (out of 3 candidates, between Verlander and Zumaya) for AL Rookie of the Year. The Cy to me is about sustained excellence, not so much intangibles. Noting that there was not a lot of sustained excellence among the AL starters, I decided to give one of the three Cy spots to a relief pitcher and I judged that Papelbon had the most sustained excellence of any reliever. The ROY to me is about most auspicious debut, and based on that I put Verlander ahead of Papelbon.
I didn’t put Francona in my top 3 for manager of the year. I’m not sure what else to say there. This is the hardest one to vote for, because it’s almost entirely subjective. I think Francona had a pretty good year (ducks), but nothing special.
It was suggested that I had Red Sox bias, but I don’t think I had Red Sox bias. I have stated my views about what the MVP is on this site many times over the years and my ballot was consistent with those views. (I do allow for the possibility that I had Papelbon bias, though.)
In preparing my ballot I did not ask “What Would a Reasonable Therapudlian Do?” but perhaps I should have. If I did, what would I have done?
Toby
Posted: October 20, 2006 at 10:59 AM |
35 comment(s)
Related News:
Boston
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
I had Ortiz #3 for MVP (Mauer #1, Jeter #2). Manny at #10.
To repeat: biggest series of the season: .818/.900/1.545.
OK this is sox therapy lets sling some mud... Whats more impressive, David Ortiz's 54 home runs (45 vs. AL pitching, 9 vs. NL pitching) or Ryan Howard's 58 (48 vs. NL pitching, 10 vs. AL pitching)?
I sure wish the Manny Fan Club would get off this "He had a great series against the EE" bit. It's not as if you can gleam anything definitive from 20 PA's, even if it was in a 5-game series against NY. And let's not forget the bulk of his production came in a 4-6 performance in game 1.
Manny is a great hitter and he's paid $20M/year specifically to put up a 1.545 OPS in a 5-game series against NY. It's not as if they're relying on him to be the face of the franchise or anything like that.
Yours in sport.
What about a 2.445 OPS? Does that count extra?
This is all beside the point anyway. I defend Manny because a) I like watching him hit, b) I think those who attack him for "not caring" and the like are missing the point and way off base, and c) it will be virtually impossible for the Red Sox to significantly improve this offseason if they trade him.
Re: Ortiz vs Howard - (per BPro) Howard faced pitchers who collectively allowed a .412 SLG, Ortiz .408. When you consider that the picthers who faced Howard also faced a fair number of pitchers themselves, driving down their SLG against, I imagine the difference might grow wide enough to become somewhat significant.
Howard did have some second half though. .355/.509/.751 - Yowza!
So do I, but some people think otherwise.
Manager's decision.
Let's take an extreme example, and I'll get back to the original question. If the manager chose to bat Papi 9th, with 8 pitchers ahead of him, Papi wouldn't have too many RBIs. He probably wouldn't have too many ABs, either, what with all the extra IBBs he'd see. And Ortiz would be nowhere near the MVP discussion. While Ortiz is a stud of a hitter, without opportunity he's nothing.
Why do I bother with a nonsense scenario on offense to answer the question? Because it relates (potentially) to defense. Ortiz has no defensive opportunity, and it's due to his manager's decision to align the defense that way. It could be argued that Boston's defense would be better with Manny at DH, Youkilis in LF, and Ortiz at 1B; but that's not what the manager had decided. And we can't let the "what-ifs" into the discussion, or else we would need to discuss the MVP merits of J.T. Snow (what if he had regular playing time?) and the like. Ortiz is relegated to the defensive equivalent of the bench; lacking opportunity, his defense contributes nothing to the argument. To me, he should be counted ahead of the player who is equivalent in hitting but plays defense poorly, and behind the equivalent hitter who plays defense well.
That being said, there is no equivalent hitter to Ortiz in the AL in 2006. He's my MVP.
I don't give much CYA respect to Papelbon; it's hard for anyone to deserve a "best season" type of award when they miss a whole month of the season. My ROTY rankings - and rationale - match Toby's.
I had Papi fourth on my MVP ballot, after Jeter, Mauer and Sizemore. It's extremely hard for me to see how Papi could end up ahead of all four of those guys. I'm sure most non-Sox fans, and non-sox / non-WPA fans especially, would not understand why Papi would be in my top 5, so obviously this is a somewhat specialized argument. I watch the Sox every day, and Papi really did win an incredible number of games, more than the context-neutral numbers say. But he wasn't as good as the best hitters who also played defense, and hte best players on teams that made the playoffs.
I give a pretty significant playoff boost in MVP balloting. I've got two ways of justifying it. One, as with all awards, the MVP is defined by its past, not by a set of transcendent principles, and so having good enough teammates to make the playoffs is a part of the process. Two, given that we don't know with that much exactitude what makes a team good, I tihnk it makes sense to give extra points to guys on really good teams.
Catchers play an important defensive position, but they don't play it often. If you want to diss Ortiz for playing defense only 10 games, you have to diss Mauer for playing defense only 120 games.
There is a view that catching requires rare skill, but rare is not the same as valuable. I don't think Jeter could play catcher effectively, but I also don't think Mauer could play shortstop effectively. Many catchers catch because they can't play anywhere else. On days when Mauer is not catching, where is he playing? 1b, 3b, of? No, he is playing DH or resting.
There is a view that most catchers can't hit a lick, while most hitters can hit well, so you are better off having a Mauer catch and a typical (or replacement level, take your pick) DH at DH than having an Ortiz DH and a typical or replacement catcher catch. According to BP's VORP, though, Ortiz plus a replacement catcher is worth significantly more than Mauer plus a replacement DH. And I believe BP's VORP understates their relative values, because it considers Ortiz a 151-game DH, rather than the 10-game 1b, 141-game DH that he is, and considers Mauer a 137-game catcher, rather than the 120-game catcher, 17-game DH that he is. You could do much the same exercise with players other than Ortiz and with stats other than VORP.
And of course for me that's only a starting point, because I also consider the other silly intangible factors I mentioned in the intro, and Mauer doesn't score particularly well (nor particularly poorly) on those.
Mauer's a fine player and it's certainly nice for the Twins and their fans that he's only 23 and making in the six figures rather than the eight figures. I don't regret leaving him off the ballot.
Based on their 2006 seasons, you can't state definitively that Manny is "more defensively able" than Ortiz. Ortiz simply didn't have the opportunities to demonstrate his defensive abilities one way or the other, and those opportunities were out of his hands. Granted, Francona might have made him DH because his defense might be worse than Manny. He also might have done so to reduce wear and tear on his knees, or because he doesn't want Manny sitting next to him in the dugout while the team is in the field, or because he's a simpleton who doesn't know what he's doing. The only thing you can definitively state is that Manny had more defensive opportunities, and he didn't do much with them to help his case for MVP.
Perhaps my difficulty is in the differing definitions of value.
We're all there.
There's no way that a bad shortstop has less defensive value than a DH. I really don't get it if that's what you're saying.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that a bad shortstop loses something in the MVP discussion because he did poorly with the opportunities he had. The DH neither gains nor loses in MVP discussions from their lack of defensive opportunity, much as they neither gain nor lose because they didn't pitch.
Think back to Pedro in 1999. He likely added more value in the 20% of games he played in than any hitter did in 100% of the games. (Even if he didn't, I recall it was a close call. For the sake of argument here, let's say he clearly added more value.) Should we "dock" Pedro because he must've been such a bad hitter that his team elected to use a DH? I say no. It sounds like the Ortiz/defense argument - which docks a one-dimensional performance simply for being one-dimensional - would say yes.
Papi really did win an incredible number of games, more than the context-neutral numbers say.
That's essentially my thinking when I wrote, "There is no equivalent hitter to Ortiz in the AL in 2006." I think Ortiz has a significant advantage here, and that it surpasses the defensive advantages of the other players on the short list of context-neutral offensive comparables.
I give a pretty significant playoff boost in MVP balloting. I've got two ways of justifying it. One, as with all awards, the MVP is defined by its past, not by a set of transcendent principles, and so having good enough teammates to make the playoffs is a part of the process. Two, given that we don't know with that much exactitude what makes a team good, I tihnk it makes sense to give extra points to guys on really good teams.
One, I think what you're saying here is that if the BBWAA jumped off a bridge you'd go with them. Two, from the perspective at the end of the season, the part of "what makes a team good" that we don't understand is insignificant compared to the part that we do understand. As such, bonus points should also be insignificant. I choose 0.
I'm pretty certain that VORP weights the replacement level to which it compares each player by how many games the player had at each position. However, I also believe that the replacement level for DH is lower than that for 1B.
Does a bad manager have less managerial value than the third base coach?
Does your pet dog have less companionship value than a dog still in a cage at the pet store?
Is $500 more valuable than what's behind door number 1?
In each case we're trying to determine value of a known vs. an unknown. You can try all you want to develop assumptions about David Ortiz and what he would have done in the field for a season, but it's not part of the 2006 evidence. If you want to base it on his career fielding, you'd need to demonstrate first how prior-year stats have any relevance in current-year MVP discussion. And they really don't. No matter what you do, if you try to rate Ortiz's full-season defense by filling in anything other than his full-season defense, you might as well try to make the case for Mark Kiger (or Tom Seaver) winning the 2006 Cy Young.
Simply put, you shouldn't enter unknowns into a discussion of 2006 actual performance. What would have happened had Ortiz played defense? Well, what would have happened had Jeter been in the starting rotation? Or had Mauer been with the Tigers? Or had Sizemore been batting 8th all year? Each of those would have drastically changed the opportunities the player had. They don't change their intrinsic value, merely the value they had the opportunity to contribute. We can discuss and debate all of the above, but they're not part of the factual evidence of the 2006 season.
As Robert alluded to earlier, the definition of "value" depends on what you're valuing. A certain level of performance has more value to a team if it's at a lower salary; it has more value if it drives ticket sales, ad revenue, and merchandising volume. But we're not talking about salary, nor profits. We're talking about on-the-field performance in the 2006 season. We have to work within the context of the opportunities presented in that timeframe.
When you do that Ortiz comes out 10th among AL hitters in WARP (using ZR for fielding runs). Of course I do think Ortiz is more valuable than his context neutral stats would suggest, just not to the level that WPA would suggest. I don't see any way he's the MVP this year, but I don't see any way he's only as good as LWTS would suggest either.
1) I definitely agree with MCoA that Jeter is the MVP and both Mauer and Sizemore were more valuable than Big Papi as well.
2) If you want to proclaim a DH most valuable, you've also got to convince me Hafner wasn't better than Big Papi.
3) Leaving Mauer off your ballot, Toby, can only be seen as an oversight. The kid had an awesome year, at an amazingly demanding position. Also, he's an athlete; if you watch him move, you know he could play any corner position on the field reasonably well--and with some experience, superbly well. I hope his knees hold up, 'cause he'll be fun to watch for a long, long time.
Anyway, when are we going to start kibbitzing about what Theo absolutely, positively has to do this off season?
I think catchers get, effectively, triple credit for catching. First, we use counting stats like VORP that compare them to other catchers rather than to other players. Then we compare them to other players by using rate stats rather than counting stats. And then we ignore the fact that they play defense only about two-thirds of the time in the first place.
Catchers are, by the nature of the position, only two-thirds as useful as other position players. We intuitively understand that a reliever is inherently not as useful as a starter; relievers just don't have the innings of starters. Why do we not understand that a 120-game catcher is inherently not as useful as a 155-game shortstop or center fielder? For some reason, we actually think the reverse. I don't understand where the catcher-worship comes from.
And on top of that, we overrate Mauer's 2006 because he was 23 and cheap, and we figure he will be even better in years to come. But projections for 2007 and beyond don't count in MVP voting for 2006. For 2006, there were plenty of players who hit while playing catcher. I mean, old friend Josh Bard posted an OPS+ about the same as Mauer's, albeit in half the plate appearances.
Mauer was 5th in the AL in VORP (Behind Sizemore, Jeter, Hafner, and Fatass), he played 120 games at Catcher and 20 at DH. His counting stats are more then enough to warrant a spot in the top ten. And Mauer doesn't need any adjustments to be in this race. He was 6th in EQA and had less PAs then one person who finished ahead of him. If he were a good fielding outfielder or a decent fielding 3rd baseman, he would belong in this conversation. As a sick defensive catcher, he's definately a top ten (and IMO a top 3) candidate this year.
Also, how does being the first catcher to win a batting title not fit that description?
When you figure the average shortstop, for example, most of the plate appearances are concentrated in the top 30 guys (30 starting shortstops, each playing every day). When you figure the average catcher, the plate appearances are distributed much more widely among the top 60 guys, because backup catchers get so much more playing time than backups at other positions. So the pool to which you are comparing Mauer is heavily watered down by all the playing time given to backup catchers.
Anyway, I still don't get your logic. By most reasonable counting stats, rate stats, or intuition, Mauer's at least on a top-10 list of MVP candidates. Leaving him off your list entirely is hard to defend. Your anti-catcher arguments seem mostly to be assertions; you might want to dig up Woolner's old article on defining replacement value (plus any subsequent refinements) and see if you're really confident that there's significant bias in VORP, and that it's greater for catchers than other positions.* But even if the average catcher is weak and Mauer's numbers look inflated by comparison (if I understand what you're positing), isn't "value" partly about the rarity of what a particular player is adding to a team's output? I.e., every team has to put a catcher on the field; if the offensive bar IS set lower for them, it reflects that good ones are rare or that the work load beats 'em down and depresses their numbers. (And I don't know of anybody in this debate who is weighing Mauer's cheapness or ecomomic value in this situation.)
*I could argue there's also some bias in the DH average: Some teams use the DH position to give tired or gimpy players a "day off," and this might dampen the position average relative to full-timers. But I really don't think that potential source of bias is quantitatively significant.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main