Really? According to the latest isometrics…crusty aflatoxin-jazzed Yaz Bread is some pretty vile ####!
At the center of the debate is baseball’s triple crown, an incredibly rare achievement that is within reach for Cabrera. The fact that Trout is going to finish with the better season, regardless, has led many to pooh-pooh the fact that Cabrera has the chance to become just the 14th player since 1901 to win the elusive title. And while the triple crown in and of itself doesn’t signify greatness, it has only been won by great players. And most often, the league’s best player has won it.
...Which brings us back to this year’s MVP debate. Cabrera hasn’t been a better player overall than Trout this season. But rather than cutting down the triple crown, we really should be praising Trout’s season. Since 1901, there have been 12,000 qualified position player seasons. Fewer than 200 of them have posted 9 WAR or better, and Trout would be just the second (Alex Rodriguez, 1996) to do so before his age-21 season. That Trout is on pace to finish with a WAR that is so much higher than Cabrera’s is essentially uncharted territory.
The triple crown is, as Keith Law said in his Wednesday chat, a statistical quirk. It’s one that doesn’t account for the full breadth of a player’s contribution. And while Cabrera might pass Josh Hamilton in homers, the triple crown wouldn’t necessarily make him the player most deserving of the MVP.
Still, that doesn’t take away from the fact that winning the triple crown is incredibly rare. Yes, RBI is one of the categories — and yes, it doesn’t account for all of the nuances that more modern statistics do — but the triple crown is not evil. In fact, it’s actually pretty cool.
Repoz
Posted: September 21, 2012 at 01:02 PM |
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1. AROM Posted: September 21, 2012 at 01:31 PM (#4242177)Going into August, Trout was hitting 353/411/608. Since then he's hit 274/360/452. If you knew at the beginning of the season a 20 year old with his other skills would OPS 812, you'd probably be pretty happy with that season. But after the hot streak he had in the middle of the season those numbers look like a fade.
Yaz 67: 193/12
Robbie 66: 198/7.3
Mantle 56: 210/11
TB 47: 205/9.6
TB 42: 216/10.2
Ducky 37: 182/8.1
Gehrig 206/10.1
Klein 33: 176/7.3
Foxx 33: 201/9.0
Rajah 25: 210/10.1
" 22 207/10.0
Cobb 09: 193/9.5
Lajoie 01: 198/8.3
EDIT: I guess it would be close to Chuck Klein's season
It doesn't? Would it be possible to win the Triple Crown and not have a year that someone would consider great? I doubt it. 50 home runs and 150 singles, with no other extra base hits?
I'm surprised Cabrera's doesn't grade out higher than Klein's, because at first blush, Klein's looks like the weakest of the Triple Crowns: a .368 average is pretty boss, but 28 homers and 120 RBIs are nothing special. Klein had put up higher HR and RBI totals in each of the previous five seasons. Plus, of course, he was playing in a notorious hitter's park.
I guess it just goes to show how quickly the offensive level faded in the NL in the early 1930s.
For Cabrera to win the TC (assuming Trout, Hamilton, Encarnacion, et.al. don't fall off cliffs), he'll probably need to finish with OPS+ in the low-mid 170s and WAR a bit over 7, even closer to Klein
For Cabrera to win the TC (assuming Trout, Hamilton, Encarnacion, et.al. don't fall off cliffs), he'll probably need to finish with OPS+ in the low-mid 170s and WAR a bit over 7, even closer to Klein
We can quibble over this, but I think that if you think a guy is a true talent 820 OPS guy and he hits for an OPS of 1020 for a couple of months you call the 1020 a hot streak rather than the 820 a fade.
Not something that would happen in real life, but the weirdest OOTP season I've seen was a player named David Terry who was playing on a computer team. He won the triple crown in a year in which he came close to league records for caught stealing and GDP, had a comically low walk number (15 or so), and had the lowest league-leading home run total in my organization's history. He did this as a below-average LF playing in a bandbox stadium and hitting behind the guys who finished #1 and #2 in OBP. Imagine a late-career Jim Rice trading 30 walks for base hits and also attempted 80 SBs and you get the idea. He had an OPS+ in the low 120s and the computer rated him as something like 5 runs above replacement for the year, even with the triple crown. If something like that had happened in real life it'd be obvious to most everyone that it wasn't a great season, and the smarter observers would realize that it was actually a pretty bad year.
The only way I could see it happening is if the player had a high average but rarely walked, played poor D, and milked an offensive ballpark for all it was worth, so those hits and homers weren't really as valuable as they normally would be.
Dante Bichette in 1995 is the example that comes to mind. Led in HR and RBI, finished 3rd in average. So if Gwynn and Piazza hadn't had such great years, Bichette would have won the Triple Crown with a slg heavy 130 OPS+ and a whopping 1.0 WAR.
Edit: though he finished 2nd in the MVP voting, so I guess voters at the time did think it was a great season. Maybe people just didn't understand park effects back then?
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2012&month=0&season1=2008&ind=1&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter;=&players=0
Cabrera 2012 is on the second page, about the 45th best season over the past 5 years. Now he's got 10 games left, so he could still crack into the top 35.
Someone get Jeff Francoeur to Colorado STAT!
I think people keep missing the really amazing part of Trout's season. He's been the best OFFENSIVE player in baseball. Stealing 43 and getting caught only 5 times is a significant value. Leading the league in grounding into double plays is a significant demerit for Cabrera.
You don't have to count his fine defense to establish that Trout is the best player in baseball, that's how amazing his season is.
Someone get Jeff Francoeur to Colorado STAT!"
Amusing, but I've thought ever since Coors opened that this might be possible. Not for Francoeur, or anyone like that, but Juan Gonzalez or Vladimir Guerrero or someone like those two might have a real chance. The biggest trick would be to keep any power guys from being in front of the Big Gun in the lineup, when your ballpark is encouraging power for everyone. If one of the guys ahead of you is also hitting 25+ homers, your chances of wining the RBI title drop a lot. Klein, milking the Baker Bowl, on a really bad team, whose next-best homer hitter hit a grand total of nine, is probably the closest. - Brock Hanke
I still vote for this season as the most astonishing home/road split in MLB history
Yeah, I agree. Pre-humidifier Coors was a Triple Crown waiting to happen. Walker and Helton were legitimately great hitters, but they weren't amongst the absolute best of the best of their era. If they could put up .370/45/145 type seasons in their peaks, the mind boggles at what even better hitters like Manny or Thomas or Pujols could have done if they'd played their prime in Colorado.
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