Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Granillo: “Rise of the Robot Umpires”
(www.baseballprospectus.com)
It troubles me that the world is just one big rip-off of Ferro Lad.
Read More...We’ve all thought it. Heck, many of us have even said it. Watching the exploits of Eric Gregg, Phil Cuzzi, Jim Joyce, and so many others, it’s hard not to believe it at least once. “We want robot umpires!”
A new project by Dan Levy is working to explore just what might happen if baseball ever heeded that call. Rise of the Robot Umpires is a graphic-style novel set in the not-too-distant future where the commissioner finally ...
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1 2 3 >His angle on that is the clutch argument, which I also heard from Colin Cowherd (does he cover baseball often?):
Then he cites "clutch" stats, Late & Close, RISP, 2 outs RISP.
If this happens, can we get rid of the old Verducci Effect and replace it with this one?
I lost a lot of respect for Verducci listening to his thoughts on the MVP race.
Thanks, but we already knew that. The question is why they should matter in an MVP vote.
Anyway, this was about the triple crown, and was about non-voters. Because it was the statheads who abandoned logic and sold out to say they were "ok" with an undeserving player winning the MVP because he happened to lead in a silly grouping of three categories.
I'd disagree here....Cabrera was not undeserving in my mind, just not the most deserving...that's why I'm finding it hard to get worked up...I think Trout should have won...but its not like a guy who I think should have finished 12th stole it from him or anything like that.
Does not compute. Only one player can win (yes, yes, there were co-winners in 1979, nyah nyah nyah; that is beside the point). And it's called "most valuable," not "one of the most valuable." If the second most valuable player won, he is undeserving.
The only way Cabrera is deserving is if (a) he was better than Trout, or (b) he was as good as Trout.
If this were the only year baseball were played, I would agree with you. But it's widely recognised that winning the Triple Crown is ordinarily an MVP-level achievement or better. It's a once in a generation thing, whereas MVPs are awarded every year.
Edited for horrible typos.
1987 AL: Bell over Trammell (or Boggs)
1987 NL: Dawson over lots of guys, most notably Ozzie, Jack Clark, and Eric Davis
1989 NL: Mitchell over Will Clark. They chose the wrong Giant.
1991 NL: Pendleton over Bonds
1992 AL: Eckersley over LOTS of guys. A reliever as MVP? Seriously?
1995 AL: Mo Vaughn over several players, especially Edgar and Belle. Made no sense whatsoever.
1996 AL: Juan Gone over AROD (and many others). Another total "WTF" selection.
1998 AL: Juan Gone again. Voters loved their ribbies back then. I probably would've picked Nomar.
1998 NL: Sosa over McGwire. Consolation prize. 11 more rbi's is > 100 points apiece of OBP and SLG?
1999 AL: Pudge over Pedro
2002 AL: Tejada over AROD. Absolutely terrible, especially considering they played the same position.
2006 AL: Morneau over several players, including Jeter and teammate Joe Mauer. Another "WTF."
2006 NL: Howard over Pujols
I honestly believe that this is because every single argument advanced in favor of Cabrera is pure speciousness, sophistry, or idiocy (sometimes all three).
Look at this article. Cabrera won because team results matter - this is ludicrous! Angels' wpct was higher than Tigers'. Angels' wpct with Trout was higher than Tigers' with Cabrera.
If Cabrera supporters/voters would just say 'Triple Crown, mmkay?' and leave it at that I truly think the 'outrage' level would be much lower.
I agree. If the voters could reassure everyone that the horrible "logic" (or the all three you mentioned) were not actually the reason they voted Cabrera, people wouldn't be as outraged. But by continuing to trot out worse and worse arguments for their selection makes people believe this is how they vote in general (or will in the future), when really all they want to do is reward a triple crown, and these arguments are just what they feel necessary to do that.
Voters - you liked the narrative. That's the beginning and end of the argument, more or less. The Angels having a better record in a better division and NOT making the playoffs was icing on the cake for the arguments that were going to get thrown around about team performance. It was a perfect storm.
A correction: It's never about the non-voters. We don't matter that much, you big doofus.
That Eric J said he wouldn't get worked up over a Cabrera win had no bearing on the outcome.
That Booey said he'd personally vote for Trout but he'd be OK with a Cabrera victory is not a blow to the stathead cause.
Susan Slusser was not all set to pull the lever for Mike Trout, but suddenly was emboldened to tab Miguel Cabrera because of something posted by a guy who calls himself Jose Can You Seabiscuit.
We're just not that important. If we were, then the fact that Mike Trout has gotten unanimous support on this site would have resulted in more than the measly six first-place votes sent his way. It didn't, because we're not.
And no matter how many different goddamned ways you want to say it, you can't claim "I'd personally vote for Trout, but I'm not going to go ballistic if Cabrera wins" is the equivalent of "SoSHU 4Cabrera 4Ever," unless you don't actually know what the word equivalent means.*
You're free to get as breathless in exasperation by this outcome as you'd like. None of us will stop you. But you don't have a say in whether the rest of us save our inhalers for a far greater injustice. Sorry big guy, but my outrage supply is limited. I don't just toss it around willy nilly, and never at someone else's behest.
* Possible, since you seem to struggle with the meaning of a lot of words. Or, at least mine.
The "outragers" keep liking to point out that the Triple Crown is nothing more than leading the league in 3 overrated categories seemingly selected at random, but they conveniently forget that Miggy also led in slugging, total bases, and OPS. That's 6 well known categories that Cabrera led the league in. I'd bet that most players who collect that much black ink in a single year (and make the playoffs) will be serious candidates for the MVP. Obviously the TC was the difference between getting 22 of 28 first places and a much closer vote, but I'm honestly not so sure that Cabrera wouldn't have won anyway if he'd hit two fewer homers. 42 homers wouldn't have gotten him the Triple Crown, but it would've still been 12 more than Trout hit. This isn't like Mo Vaughn over Belle in 1995 or Tejada over AROD in 2002 when the latter pretty much crushed the former in almost every statistic yet lost anyway. Using traditional stats, Cabrera really did beat Trout in a lot of categories.
Like I said in an earlier thread, this was a mistake, but a more understandable one than many the writers have made in the past.
I had heard before that it was next-to-impossible to get Ray to change his mind about anything. Apparently, this includes getting him to change his mind about what my opinion actually is, which seems like it should be manageable by the simple expedient of telling him what my opinion actually is.
Even if baseball history had never attached any special significance to leading in avg, HR, and RBI all in the same season, that's still 3 big categories that the writers have always considered to be important that Cabrera led everyone in (plus a few more lesser categories). He'd still have the "led his team to the playoffs" angle and the "selfless teammate" narrative for moving positions to accommodate Fielder.
Meanwhile, Trout still finishes behind Cabrera in all the above mentioned stats that writers consider most important, plus he still misses a month of the season and his team still watches the playoffs from home (yes, with a better record than the Tigers).
So no, I don't really think the TC was the difference between Miggy winning a blowout vote vs losing a blowout vote. I think it was the difference between him winning the blowout vs a really close vote that could've gone either way.
But Cano didn't win the award. It was the fourth best player who won the MVP.
Winning the Triple Crown may be a once in a generation thing, but having a season as good as Cabrera did isn't. He was more valuable in 2011!
Actually, I think it proves that the MVP doesn't matter.
I actually find sabrists outrage at this funny, and the MSM's position further proof that I have little need to waste my time reading their spin.
Manny Ramirez (1999) and Todd Helton (2001) had better Triple Crown numbers than Cabrera did this year and neither won the MVP for their league in those seasons.
I understand your point, and I don't want to jack up the outrage even more, but by WAR Cabrera over Trout is worse than Tejada over A-Rod. Now, many will (justifiably) quibble with the exact WAR figure, but it seems likely that this year's vote certainly belongs in your list of the worst ever.
I do.
Only by WAR. Just going off more traditional stats, I'd still go with Trout, but it's not nearly the blowout WAR makes it seem.
Really? I'm not seeing it. Trout may have won, but I'm guessing it would've been a lot closer than 22-6.
There were also a lot more huge offensive seasons back then so their numbers didn't stand out from the pack quite so much. Helton, for example, was going up against a 73 HR, .863 slg season by Bonds and a 64 HR, 160 RBI campaign from Sosa. Hard to beat that. Plus he played in pre-humidifier Coors, possibly the greatest hitting park of all time, so his numbers can't be taken entirely at face value.
Cut the WAR difference in half, then. It's still a worse decision than five of the other ones on your list. Again, it's fine to quibble with WAR, but this is at least in the same neighbourhood as those terrible MVPs.
Name-calling. Fun.
My point was not that people here influenced the vote; my point was that people here were "ok" with a result that they shouldn't have been "ok" with. My point had nothing to do with the actual results per se. My point was not that people should have been OUTRAGED and started sending scorpions through the mail. My point was simply that people should have said they were "not ok" with it.
That is it. "I am not ok with the result since a player who didn't deserve to win won, simply because he happened to win the Triple Crown." Done and done.
Really? Out of all the names you've been called by all the Primates in all the threads, "big doofus" is the one that got stuck in your craw?
And you have no say in this. For some bizarre reason, you don't seem to get this.
I get to choose what I'm OK with, what I'm outraged by and what I'm simply going to ignore. If I ever seek outside counsel on which of these reactions is appropriate, I'll be sure to consider you as a possible provider, champ.* Until then, don't tell me what I can and can't be OK with, OK?
* Crossing my fingers that such a nickname won't offend your suddenly delicate sensibilities.
Well, it's like I said before; this was a mistake, but at least it's a more understandable one than many. Some of the ones I listed have no rhyme or reason behind them at all. Vaughn over Belle? Belle beat Vaughn in basically every category (most of them handily) AND his team was much better. They may as well have just drawn names out of a hat that year.
I'd be fine calling this the 14th worst MVP selection of the last 25 years. And I don't remember this much outrage over many of the ones from above that were equally bad or worse.
It means that it's your duty to insult everyone that said they wouldn't freak out about it and accuse them of being anti-reason and intelligent thought, or something.
I actually expected a higher level of discourse from you, believe it or not. I'll lower my expectations.
Well, what does it mean to be "ok" with it? Let's start there, since that's what people here said.
For me, it means that I understand baseball history, so I don't pretend that the MVP award is purely about statistical value and nothing more. It never has been, so I understand that the voters are merely following tradition by attaching special significance to a rare achievement that goes beyond mere value stats. It also means that I've seen so many bad choices over the years that my OUTRAGE meter is nearing empty. And lastly, it means that I don't see why we're all required to act like this is something we've never seen before and that it's such a miscarriage of justice that it's our responsibility to keep fuming about it over the internet and criticizing others who said they don't care as much as we'd like them to.
The Triple Crown is just a fun but ultimately meaningless piece of trivia? Sure. But so are writers awards like MVP's in the first place. Personally, I like the fun trivia type stuff.
Well, I'd appreciate that. (-:
For me, it means that I understand baseball history, so I don't pretend that the MVP award is purely about statistical value and nothing more.
Check.
It never has been, so I understand that the voters are merely following tradition by attaching special significance to a rare achievement that goes beyond mere value stats.
Double check.
It also means that I've seen so many bad choices over the years that my OUTRAGE meter is nearing empty.
And if you live a bit longer, you'll see even more of them. I still haven't gotten over the year that Steve Carlton posted a 12.1 WAR, transformed the 1962 Mets into the 1927 Yankees, and still couldn't finish higher than 5th in the voting.
And lastly, it means that I don't see why we're all required to act like this is something we've never seen before and that it's such a miscarriage of justice that it's our responsibility to keep fuming about it over the internet and criticizing others who said they don't care as much as we'd like them to.
Ah, but here you don't understand. THIS TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE IS REALLY IMPORTANT!!!!
Because it's a perfectly legitimate result.
If you need some reference to WAR, it's "ok" in that people are demanding that we genuflect to a methodology that denominated Ben Zobrist the "Most Valuable Player" in the 2011 AL which ... um yeah.
If you need additional reference to WAR, take note that the inherent uncertainty in the relationship between runs and wins is significantly higher than even a dominant season by one guy. The Orioles were +11 actual wins over pythag; that implies 22 wins of uncertainty (they could have lost 11 more than pythag). Carlton's 1972 was 12 WAR.
Actually if people just look at WAR and start going ballistic about other people's inability to do arithmetic and notice that Trout's is higher, that's genuflection, for sure. But most of the MVP arguments for Trout feature, early on, his leading the league in Runs and Stolen Bases, and also in OPS+, which is a less controversial formula than WAR. The weakest MVP argument for Trout is one which points at a single WAR number and says "so there," and it isn't that bad an argument even so.
Really? Because Trout had around a 3.5 WAR per FG and BR. Didn't someone on another thread figure out that was the biggest gap of a non MVP winner in like 50 years?
Distance from the WAR leader isn't the only way to measure a bad MVP selection, though. The ones I'll actually get worked up about are the ones in which there are numerous players who are clearly better than the guy the writers pick. Andre Dawson wasn't even close to being one of the top 4 right fielders in the NL the year he won the award. Gonzalez over A-Rod in '96 was absurd, yes, but so was Gonzalez over Griffey, Gonzalez over Belle, Gonzalez over Thome... Ditto the '95 AL vote, in which Mo Vaughn beat not only Belle, but Frank Thomas, Edgar Martinez, John Valentin, Tim Salmon, and Randy Johnson, all of whom had noticeably better years.
Cabrera? Yes, Trout was clearly better and should have won, and you can make arguments that Cano or Verlander should have beaten him as well. But he at least had the kind of season that normally puts you in deserving MVP contention. And since he did it in a way that was tailor-made to draw the attention of MVP voters, I figured it was inevitable that he'd win, and went with the "serenity to accept the things I cannot change" approach.
Which is all I meant by being OK with the result. It's incorrect, but it's not the first time, won't be the last, and is far from the worst, and I like to think I have better things to do than work myself into a frenzy on the topic. (I fully expect to be proven wrong when the annual Morris debate starts up again, of course.)
Via a model that said Ben Zobrist was the best player in the American League in 2011. GIGO.
No "frenzy" is needed. "The award went to an undeserving player" is all that was asked. When Dawson won in 1987, people who knew better weren't "ok" with it. That doesn't mean that they stormed the BBWAA headquarters. All it meant is that they said that the result was without justification.
Maybe, but like #41 said, you don't measure selections based solely on the WAR gap between them (especially cuz WAR fluctuates and the gap may be significantly lower in a few years anyway). IMO, the 2nd or 3rd best player winning the award isn't nearly as big a travesty as when a guy who may not even be in the top 10 wins it (1987, 1992, 1995, 1996, etc). Also, I know many here disagree with the way voters give special significance to things like the Triple Crown, but they always have and probably always will, so I see no reason to be surprised or upset that they did it again. I'd guess that's the main reason several of us have said we were "ok" with this result; cuz the voters were basically just following protocol. I'd have had no problem with Sosa over McGwire in '98 if Sammy had beat Mac in the HR race, even though with all the walks McGwire's season would still almost certainly have been the better of the two. Cuz setting the new HR record is significant beyond the actual value those HR's produced to his team. Ditto with the Triple Crown. You're free to disagree, of course.
I actually do understand why people aren't okay with the result and while I wouldn't put it there myself, I certainly don't think they'd be crazy to rank it near the top of the "bad MVP" list I posted above. We're all free to disagree. The only thing that annoys me is why some people are getting so upset that others aren't bothered as much as they are. Why is that a requirement, and who has the right to tell anyone else what they should and shouldn't care about? If it bothers you, fine. I understand and respect that. If it doesn't bother others, that should also be fine.
The bums will always lose! Do you hear me, Mr. Lebowski? The bums will ALWAYS LOSE!
It means recognizing that the MVP award is trivia, but that if it helps Cabrera get into the HoF, it serves a purpose this year.
I'm not sure what other inference you could possibly have drawn from repeated statements such as "Trout was the best player" and "I would have voted for Trout."
Explained, a gazillion times. The other inference is "...but I am ok with Cabrera winning the MVP because he won the TC."
Change that to "...and I am not ok with Cabrera winning the MVP despite the fact that he won the TC" and I have no issue.
How do you feel about "I believe Trout was the best player, but I don't care who gets the MVP award"?
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