Friday, May 03, 2013
Corcoran: Harper, Buchholz are early headliners as Awards Watch returns
(sportsillustrated.cnn.com)
You know it’s early in the awards season when…
Read More...Most Valuable Player: National League
3. Carlos Gomez, CF, Brewers: Season Stats: .367/.418/.644, 5 HR, 10 RBI, 4 SB
Prior to 2012, Gomez’s career-high in home runs was eight, and his .250/.305/.463 line last year represented career-highs in all three categories, so he is set up for a larger fall than most here. Still, one has to recognize how valuable he has been so far this season. After all, the reason Gomez didn’t wash out of the majors ...
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1 2 >I suspect the MVP/Cy Young battles will calm down the next few years (triple crown vs super-rookie is unlikely to repeat) while the HOF vote battles go sky high.
This is, of course, the whole point.
Someday, they will understand that it isn't really the analyst who makes the case for Trout or Verlander - it is the data.
I would have voted for Trout. That said, I do think there are other factors than can and should be considered other than data. Clubhouse presence, clutch performance (whether or not its repeatable the next season is irelevant), leadership, and other attributes that will never be quantified all contribute to a team's performance. I don't think those kinds of intangibles can make up a gap as large as the one between Trout and Cabrera, but they certainly can tip the scales in a closer "statistical" race, and should never be discounted just because we're not smart enough to assign a number to their value.
I totally agree. In this case, I think it matters that Cabrera played somewhat out of position. The data doesn't care about that because it simply measures what happened, but it is part of his value (by my definition of value - that's a whole other story). Most teams with a star first baseman wouldn't have the option of picking up another one without relegating one to DH-hood - Cabrera's versatility gave the Tigers better options (not his fault that they pissed that advantage away by pretending Delmon Young is a real major league player).
The data says Mike Trout played baseball better than Miguel Cabrera this year. After that, reasonable people can make any kind of adjustment they want. I'm surprised nobody made the argument that Trout produced all that goodness while consuming less than one half percent of the team's payroll.
Who is not giving Cabrera credit for being a 3B? If anything, many of the pro-Cabrera people seem to want to give him credit not only for the actual value of playing 3B, but for the intangible of being a "team player" and agreeing to do it.
And there is nothing wrong with doing that - it does add value to the team. How much weight you give it is another matter; as Rants suggests in #4 it probably doesn't outweigh the on-field difference in this case.
That said, if the Angels had made the postseason or the White Sox had held on I think Trout would have won the award. Postseason narratives matter a lot more than they should (IMO) in the award voting, and the narrative story of the last month-plus of the season was that the Tigers rode Cabrera to the postseason while the Angels folded down the stretch, with Trout not doing as well as he did earlier. (Note that neither story, especially the Angels' piece of it, is exactly true.)
-- MWE
This line reads like an obnoxious way of saying: I pledge to vote for the deserving winner, unless he plays for the team I used to cover.
FWIW, he voted for Price over Tiger and best pitcher Justin Verlander for the Cy.
http://www.freep.com/article/20121116/COL01/311160108/detroit-tigers-miguel-cabrera-mvp-award?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
Cabrera over Trout is the Battle of New Orleans.
In a small way though, I feel like we are losing something if we turn the MVP vote into "WAR king" and nothing else.
That's an understatement. It's actually the opposite of truth. The Tigers surged to an 18-13 record in September/October, while the Angels stumbled to a 19-11 finish. Angels not only finished with a better record than the Tigers, they did so in a much tougher division. Had the two teams switched places (Tigers playing 20 more games vs the Rangers/A's while Angels gain 20 games vs the Twins/Indians) their records would not have been remotely close.
Cabrera receives credit in WAR for playing 3B and not costing the team any more runs than he typically did at first base. That's worth about 1.2 WAR right there. Above and beyond that, he deserves credit for cheerfully accepting the position switch, and not making a Soriano of it.
But if you're going to intangibles, Trout gets extra points for his hustle, and the infectious pure joy with which he played. It turned the season around for a team that played like a corpse before his arrival, and took some of the pressure off of Pujols as he made his uncomfortable transition to his new home.
Which player gets the net benefit of intangibles is debatable.
Just ask any sportswriter; they'll all tell you.
Say Roy Hobbs is a leading candidate for the NY Knights, fighting a close division race with Clu Haywood of the Yankees.
Hobbs goes 3-4 with 2 homers in a win over the Yankees. Haywood goes 0-4. The next day Hayood is 3-4 with 2 homers against the last place Florida Mud Hens, while Hobbs takes the collar against the the also-ran Oakland B's. For those two games, they have the same total batting line and equal WAR. But it should be clear that Hobbs has been more valuable to his team's chances of winning the division.
So we need some kind of point system, with an adjustment for opponent faced, with games against division rivals being worth more points.
It's not just the Triple Crown; Cabrera led the league in SLG and OPS. No one's buying the ca. 12% park adjustment between Anaheim and bigger, colder CoPa and they shouldn't -- particularly when Trout hit far better at home. So Trout and Cabrera aren't as close offensively as WAR would have you believe.
It then comes down to whether defense and baserunning overcome this difference. WAR says "yes, clearly." "No" is a perfectly acceptable answer.
This is the centrist, reasonable way to evaluate this thing, and it bends over backward for Trout because it says nothing about the fact that Cabrera moved positions and his team won the AL pennant. There's simply nothing wrong -- much less the kind of surpassing "wrong" being blared about -- for the MVP to be the league leader in SLG and OPS whose team won the pennant. Nothing.
This is the line that gets me. I don't see what this has to do with anything. Are you going to hear anything other than cliches?
The park factor might be wrong and it might be right, but you cannot determine that by size and temperature.
No, but it doesn't make much sense on its face and the writers aren't going to dig much further, nor are they under any obligation to do so.
And if, as is always the case, there are people supporting your argument who are being rude.
Take away park adjustment and Cabrera is what, 5-10 runs better than Trout on offense?
"No" is not a perfectly acceptable answer. It is not plausible to anyone who has watched these players run the bases or play the field. To start with, Trout should be treated as worth 34 homers, not 30, because of the homeruns he took away from opponents.
I don't see how it doesn't make much sense. There are dozens of other elements that affect park factors.
Dodgers Stadium is both smaller and warmer than Comerica too, but everyone accepts that it's a pitcher's park.
Olney was saying that all the players, coaches, and managers were telling writers that they were out of their minds if they didn't vote for Cabrera, while all the GMs and other FO types were telling writers that they were out of there minds if they didn't vote for Trout. Maybe that would be a more interesting topic for an article or two than continued beating of the "old school vs mom's basement" horse.
It doesn't make sense that the difference in offensive output between Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout was explained by differences in their home parks, given the dimensions of those parks and the climate of those parks and the characteristics of the two hitters. For those who want to spend a bunch of time browbeating (and, frankly, boring) people into believing that Cabrera had a huge advantage in wind currents, molecule shapes, and the like, it's a free country -- have at it.
Cabrera getting credit for moving to a position that showed greater respect for his skills is a completely Cabrera-centric argument. It's like he'd been batting 7th, and they moved him up to 3rd. Should he complain about that? More to the point, should we be impressed when he doesn't? No.
Trout had 4 more BB+HBP: advantage 1.3 runs
Cabrera +13 doubles: 10 runs
Trout +8 triples: 8 runs
Cabrera +4 singles: 2 runs
Cabrera made 40 more outs (AB-H only, excluding GIDP): -10 runs
Cabrera hit 14 more homers: +20 runs.
The net works out to +12 runs for Cabrera. Trout makes up half of that with his homer-saving catches alone.
Then there's the rest of their defense in preventing hits. Trout's basestealing. Going 1st-3rd, 2nd-home. These baserunning events are just as quantifiable as the triples and homers they hit, to anyone who want to bother looking them up on BB-ref. Or if you don't want to calculate it yourself you can take the BB-ref calculation that says +10 Trout.
Cabrera won 22 of the 28 ballots.
This is the opposite of how most sports writers work (intentionally or not). First they decide the answer, then they find evidence to justify it. Which is why in 2010 Morosi was arguing Cabrera over Hamilton for MVP because of the Rangers record without him, park effects, and lineup protection.
No, we don't. All the games are worth the same in the standings.
dimensions and temperature are only a small part of what makes a park a good hitter's park or a good pitcher's park.
When I brought up the idea, my wife would even allow a vote!
A-Rod himself gave the writers all the cover they needed for not voting for him, repeatedly answering MVP questions with "How can I be the MVP of the league when I'm not even the MVP of my own team." And you know what? By Bref-WAR, he was right (if barely).
Even more fun (and not just because following the Royals would have relevance in an awards discussion) would be votes like 1985 AL MVP or 1982 AL Cy Young when there were at least two better runners-up than the winner.
Not sure if it was posted here, but Susan Slusser whote an article where she explains her Cabrera vote, and she claimed McCarthy was the only player that said it was obvious Trout should win...
This guy is awesome!
Only if it comes down to a tiebreaker.
The rival could just as easily lose on a day when you aren't playing them.
Doesn't this logic apply to salary? Trout made like 20 million dollars less than Cabrera this year. You can buy a lot of wins with 20 million.
How? They are at the same place in the standings. Yes, on paper it helps more to win the head to head. Because you are assuming that the opponent can't make up the ground by being better against the chumps. But if they can, the question is moot. Yes, your odds were better than even when you're both playing the tailenders. But they won, you lost, and it's back to even. Unless the head to head plays a tiebreaker, it's all the same.
No this is idiotic. Trout has a 4 WAR lead per B-R. You're arguing that park factors are off by 4 wins? Or the Cabrera was actually somehow *way* better than a -4 defender at third? Trout's probably wasn't worth +21 runs, but he was worth at least 10. Doesn't come close to narrowing the gap.
Frankly, there is no statistical argument for Cabrera as the MVP. If you're voting for him it's because you think the triple crown is cool, or because you think that the MVP has to come from a playoff team.
WAR isn't the beginning point, and you've got the "gap" wrong.
Cabrera dodsn't have to make up a WAR "gap"; Trout has to make up a gap in offense.
I think he does make up that difference even if you assume that the park effects for the two wash each other out. Trout was nearly as good offensively then better on the bases. Then add in that be was dramatically better on defense while playing about half the season at a much more important defensive position.
Cabrera was great in 2012, Trout was greater.
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