This line — that it’s easier to put up numbers without pennant pressure — is a lot like that. Nobody can possibly believe this. First of all, there’s the obvious flaw: If it was easier to put up numbers in non-pressure situations, then players would consistently and obviously have better years on lousy teams than they do on good ones. Does this ring even the slightest bell of truth? Does anyone believe Derek Jeter would have put up better numbers had he played for Kansas City? Does anyone believe Albert Pujols would be so much better if he had spent his career playing in the carefree world of the Pittsburgh Pirates? Roy Halladay was great for mediocre Blue Jays teams and is great for outstanding Phillies teams. Hank Aaron was the same great player with the same great numbers when Milwaukee won, when Milwaukee almost won, when Milwaukee wasn’t very good at all.
Second of all, many of the numbers that people have historically treasured — wins and RBIs in particular — are team-driven statistics. That means that it should be significantly easier for players to put up those numbers when they play on GOOD teams. Example: Jose Bautista has ONLY 82 RBIs, while Curtis Granderson has 98 RBIs. Why?
Well, Bautista has come up with runners in scoring position 133 times — and 16 of those was intentionally walked. In all, he’s come up with 306 runners on base.
Granderson has come up with runners in scoring position 159 times — and he’s not been intentionally walked. In all, he’s come up with 360 runners on base.
So, you tell me in which situation it’s easier to knock in a lot of runs.
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1. Paul D(uda) Posted: August 26, 2011 at 02:20 PM (#3909499)Bautista is the MVP.
Albert Belle, 1998 White Sox, is my candidate for this particular distinction. Not only was he terrific, but he played like a house on fire: remarkable for a guy with a bad-attitude reputation, on a club going nowhere, but visibly both enjoying and totally kicking butt at his sport.
I think Steve Carlton, 1972 Phillies, owns and then retires this award.
Actually, let's not go with "Pozsome". Sounds too much like "possum".
Phillies' W-L Percentage with Carlton that year: .730 in games where Carlton got the decision, .500 in games he started but didn't get the win or the loss. That .730 is better than the 1927 Yankees, the 1998 Yankees, and the 2001 Mariners.
Phillies' W-L Percentage in non-Carlton games: .261. That's .011 better than the 1962 Mets.
The best part was when people tried to pretend that Sabathia starts against Tampa in September, when both teams were not caring about who finished first, were "pressure."
Having an op-out clause can be very motivating. He was on fire, esp the 2nd half of '98.
It's both things. I have certainly heard it expressed that it's easy to put up gaudy numbers on a crappy team.
Yes. (Or "easier," anyway.)
Poz spends a significant chunk of TFA arguing against that position as well. He addresses both positions: that performance not in a pennant race has less value, AND players not in pennant races have less pressure.
Point is, seems to me the MVP that year had almost no "value" at all, at least when it came to the pennant race. Seattle still wins the division, Seattle still loses in the playoffs.
I imagine we're all pretty much in agreement here that value = value, no matter whether your team wins 100 games or loses 100 games. The player in question had exactly as much value on either team. What I don't get is the writers' attitudes. I mean, I know there's some Chasses out there, but I just mean the general blind spot. It's simple logic, no?
I think the issue is that writers (or the writers who only give the MVP to contending teams) don't see themselves as voting for the most valuable player, despite the fact they are literally voting for the Most Valuable Player. They're voting for the guy who took his team on his back and led team to playoff glory (or however they want to spin it). All the logical discussions of the meaning of "value" in the world isn't going to seem relevant coming from a position like that.
Yes. They are voting for the story.
I think we all understand the idea. If the top three candidates have literally identical numbers (.300, 50 HR, 150 RBI), and one did it for a team that won 110 games, one for a team that one 60, and one for a team that won its division on the last day of the season, I would bet that most of us would use that team context as a tie breaker, and give it to the final guy. He's the one guy whose performance was instrumental to his team's playoff berth.
But the logic breaks down in all sorts of ways. You also might end up deducing that a good LOOGY on the third guy's team was also more valuable than the other two sluggers - because he too may have been the difference between playoff baseball and golf in October. And of course many voters will exclude a non-playoff participant from the #1 slot on their ballot, but happily include him at #2 or #3.
This is especially true of hockey voters. For example if a guy is hurt and their team goes 0-10 and then he comes back and then the team goes 50-20 to finish the year in first they just *love* that #### and he will certainly win over a guy who is just as good and plays the whole season for a team with the same record or better...
This is true, but it makes it doubly frustrating to see attribute their reasoning to the word "valuable."
And if players were consistently and obviously having better years on such teams, wouldn't those teams start getting better? Then all of a sudden lousy teams become good teams, then the players on those teams start feeling more pressure, then they start playing worse, then the team gets bad again, and so on and so on. Chicken, meet egg!
Yeah, it sounds like a Yogi-ism: "Everybody on that team had a great year, because they were so lousy there was no pressure."
There really ought to be a Shannon Stewart Award :)
One factor that the Most Valuable Narrative voters usually overlook is that virtually no game in a baseball season is meaningless. Even a team that has built up a substantial lead by late August has to win some games down the stretch (as the Rangers appear to have forgotten in the last week). Today, every playoff-positioned team except the Rangers and the Snakes seems to have a commanding lead. But are the games on today's slate mostly play-out-the-string affairs? Reading down the schedule, it sort of looks like the Reds/Nats, Rockies/Dodgers, and maybe the Rays/Jays games are between two teams that have pretty slim postseason hopes. And even they shouldn't be folding at this point. Every other game features at least one team that needs to keep winning to stay alive or just to nail down the lead they have. And so, if you're an Astro, the Giants game tonight, while perfectly pointless from Houston's perspective, is a very serious deal for San Francisco. And if some Astro does a good thing to help the Astros win, it's highly valuable in deciding the pennant race. (And hence, why shouldn't an Astro be an MVP candidate? aside from the obvious reason that none of them is very good.) Very few major-league games, even in late September, are irrelevant to anything.
"[...] Many athletes truly believe that they are successful at what they do not because God made them fast and strong and agile, but because they're better people than the rest of us. And in order to believe that, they must believe that the games themselves are not merely contests of skill and luck, but are tests of character and determination and will. That's where all the ######## about clutch ability comes from. Clutch ability is that thing that wells up from inside of you when the game is on the line, that thing that separates the "winners" from the "losers," that thing which only an athlete can possess, and therefore only an athlete can understand."
"[...] But of course "attitude" is real, and so is "character" and "determination" and "will". [...] there are people in baseball who have the ability to be outstanding baseball players, but have bad attitudes." (Mike Ivie being a guy who constantly comes up in James' writings -- RNJ)
(In a different comment -- also centered around Ivie -- he comments that talent and attitude and determination etc only matter to the extent they manifest themselves in on field rests. And in another comment on Ivie he notes that there aren't 10 players with more raw ability at hitting a baseball. And that Pete Rose was not one. And that John Mayberry was.)
His specific complaint boils down to excessive deference to an athlete's opinion and the tendency to magnify the importance of various forms of determination out of all proportion.
Let us suppose that these are truly irrelevant games. And let us suppose that the Rockies hitters are likely to perform better because they are nice and loosey-goosey, no pressure. Unfortunately, the Dodgers pitchers are equally loosey-goosey, and equally likely to pitch better because of the lack of pressure. It all cancels out. As I said, the logic breaks down in many ways.
Many writers (and members of the public) believe this story which goes a long way in explaining MVPs coming disproportionately from pennant winning clubs.
It's even more terrible when people say things like this about survivors of illness or catastrophe: it was only their will that kept them alive.
Yep, all those other people who got, say, cancer, died because they didn't have the inner strength, or didn't love their families enough, or something.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/loved-ones-recall-local-mans-cowardly-battle-with,772/
Except, you know, for the part where it's true sometimes.
People absolutely do lose the will to live, and it absolutely hastens their demise.
Not to say that will can overcome any illness or injury, obviously not. But, attitude is a huge part of survival in the face of long term, endemic conditions.
I saw it with my own grandmother. When they told her they wanted to amputate her foot (diabetes) she basically said "I've had enough". She told my mother she was ready to go, and was dead before they could do the surgery.
This is obviously illogical. OF COURSE, he wanted to win. AND he wanted to fill up the stadium. AND even if you believe that the second was more important to him (unlikely, I might add), well, there is no way to fill up the stadium without winning. Was there anyone out there who really believed that Peterson was sitting in his office 12 to 16 hours a day , thinking: “You know, in the end, I don’t really care if we win.” But people kept saying it (still say it) out of sheer frustration. It’s easier, I think — rather than admit that the world is complicated, that honest effort doesn’t always pay off, that good plans fall apart, that luck isn’t spread out evenly — to question a person’s heart.
Bad example. In his later years, the Chiefs got increasingly flabby under Peterson. He had a bad habit of hiring coaches who were either old friends (Dick Vermiel, who was actually a good choice) or would be clearly subordinate to him (Gunther Cunningham, Herm Edwards). The front office guys had been there forever and felt no pressure to change things.
I have no doubt that Peterson preferred winning to losing. But after Marty Schottenheimer left, he was unwilling to shake things up or take any risks in order to win.
Posnanski is the MVP!
Daniel Sedin, meet Corey Perry.
Daniel Sedin, meet Corey Perry.
That's an excellent idea for a Poz post. Previous winners would include Rick Sutcliffe, Doyle Alexander, Randy Johnson and CC Sabathia.
I'm not saying that Peterson wasn't working hard, or that the hard work he was putting in didn't have the ultimate goal of putting a winning team on the field. I'm saying that, from his perspective, Peterson already was winning. He had been a general manager for nigh on 20 years, he was a local celebrity and a rich man. He had hired and fired everybody in the organization. He had things set up the way he wanted them. He was willing to work very hard within that framework, but I don't believe he was willing to set things up in a different way -- possibly a way he wouldn't like as well -- just because it might offer a chance of working out better.
I wasn't there, but even if I were I don't think I could tell you what she meant. I can tell you what I'd want it to mean, which would be exactly as you've described it. I'd want to believe her attitude had an influence on the timing of the outcome, much as I want to believe that about my uncle who held on to life just long enough for my father to visit him one last time. In the case of my uncle, if I separate what I want from what I know, then all I know is he died an hour after my father arrived, and that his holding on makes for a really good story.
...Which, I think, brings us full circle.
Yep, or Joe Thornton when he got traded, Peter Forsberg in 2003(?) and so on...
You can improve your odds of winning MVP if you miss 10 of your teams games!
King Felix was 13-12. A typical pitcher with the run support he actually got would have gone something like 8-16; a typical good pitcher (someone who pitches in the front of a rotation) would have gone something like 9-16. Overall the Mariners were 17-17 in games Felix started; with both a typical pitcher and a typical good pitcher on the hill, the Mariners would have gone something like 13-21.
Sabathia was 21-7. Based on his run support a typical starter would have gone something like 16-8, a typical good pitcher something like 17-8 (which might have been a CYA award line in another year by itself, mind you). Overall the Yankees were 23-11 - but they would have been something like 21-13 with a typical pitcher on the mound and 22-12 with a typical good pitcher.
Not to change the subject or anything, but probably the most amazing recent Cy Young season was Greg Maddux in 1995. He was 19-2, and the Braves were 22-6 in his starts, with run support where a typical good pitcher would have been below .500. Pedro in 2000 was almost as good (18-6, Sox were 21-8 when he started with below-.500 run support as well).
I read the opposite, in some study, somewhere. With regard to cancer patients and the "will to fight." That it made no difference.
on edit>
But then you read that having a pet or belonging to a book club extends your life by 5 years, so, I don't know what to believe.
But isn't it at least as likely as not that Peterson wouldn't be "willing to set things up in a different way" precisely because he set them up "the way he wanted them" and he wanted them that way because he thought that gave him the best chance of putting together a winning team?
The Phillies' run support for Carlton was better than for their other pitchers, but not all *that* much better. The expected winning percentage in a Carlton start for a typical 1972 pitcher, based on run support, was .480; for the other starters, it was .438. The Phillies won 9 more games than a typical pitcher would have won in Carlton's starts, 20 games fewer when another pitcher started.
For what it's worth, the best run support that any CYA winner has received by the method I am using was Denny McLain in 1968, the year he won 31 games; a typical pitcher in 1968 would have been about 20-9 with McLain's run support. I think that's probably a manifestation of the problem that I see in pitchers' parks, applied to a pitchers' era; it was easier to win in 1968 with just about any non-zero level of run support.
-- MWE
I'm sure he would say that if you asked him. But again, that's an example of what I'm talking about. Over time, the desire to win can get diluted by the desire to do other things.
In Peterson's last few years, the irreducible minimum was that he wouldn't do anything that would put his job in jeopardy. They wouldn't trade up in the draft or take a quarterback early. They wouldn't hire a coach who had the potential to be a Peterson rival.
Hospice nurses are just as susceptible to "the story" (and selection bias) as anybody else.
Hospice nurses deal exclusively with patients who have an abundance of "such endemic conditions." What they would tell us has nothing at all to do with VI's point.
My own grandmother lost the will to live in 1967. Unfortunately for her, she was so damned healthy that she stuck around until 1975.
I personally would not give extra credit for the player who won a close race. Once division play began you are comparing apples and oranges. The goal of any team is to reach the playoffs. With a week to go the 110 win team has accomplished its goal. If there are two other teams that are tied in a close race, one of these teams will not accomplish its goal. Assume that the two tied teams have a worse record than the 110 win team. They are likely tied not because of the star player, but because of the lesser or negative value of other players that prevented either team from winning in a rout. I think it's bad analysis to wait for whichever team wins the close race and say "you needed all of it" when there's another team that failed in its goal. Why would any team want to be in a close race on purpose. I can see valuing the teams equally however they got in the playoffs, but close races do not get extra credit.
I prefer docking players who play on poor teams not because I dislike the players, but because it's not the goal of the sport to rack up stats in games that mean nothing.
The issue is not everyone believes non-pennant race games "mean nothing." A team may be out of it, but playing a contender. In which case, a player's performance can have a palpable effect on the pennant race, even though their team is out of it. As Poz argues in the article, it can mean a lot for players and fans for a team to finish the season respectfully, without an embarrassing number of losses. Players and fans would rather lose 90 games rather than 100. They'd rather lose 85 games than 90. They'd rather lose 80 games than 85. Finishing over .500 gives hope to players and fans, even if they finish 10 games back. Whether a team wins or loses a late September game after they've been eliminated means a great deal to the fans watching that game, the players who play in it. So it's not that the games mean "nothing", but that they mean something different.
In any season, some teams will win a lot, some will win or lose a middling amount, and some will lose a lot. That is the inevitable shape of the season. To vote only for players on good teams basically discounts a huge chunk of the baseball played in the season. Baseball that brought highs and lows, moments of elation, and moments of huge disappointment, moments that showed tremendous hustle, or just some fine examples of the craft of baseball. One would think that the connoisseur of baseball would appreciate the whole thing. To focus only on the good teams strikes me as essentially the same as only caring about home runs or strike outs.
The games are not worthless, but they are worth less. Losing teams will play rookies that may not play if the team is contending. An injured player may be more inclined to shut it down, justifibly, if the team is losing than if they're in a pennant race.
There's been a couple of times where veteran players basically tried to turn down a trade to a contender, preferring to finish the season out of the pennant race. Billy Wagner and I think Derrek Lee both did this. They were chastised and eventually relented, because players are supposed to want to be in a pennant race and not just be content to pull down a salary and rack up stats.
If a player performs head and shoulders above the rest of the league then he can overcome being on a losing team. Often that's not the case and context needs to be looked at anyway, in which case the performance of the team matters.
Why are veteran players traded from teams out of contention to teams in contention late in the season? Because what they do is going to be more valuable for the contending team. Their home runs and such are not convertible into "baseball bucks" or some form of currency that holds its value forever and can be spent later. They have value towards the current season and that's it. This is why those trades happen. If context didn't matter the veterans would continue to play on the poor teams and rack up their stats for whatever value that was worth.
Wouldn't a player on a non-contending team face BETTER competition than one on a contending team in September? Baltimore is more likely to play teams in pennant races (since they aren't one) than the Yankees (since they are). Therefore the Orioles are likely to play fewer games against sub .500 teams with a bunch of rookies in.
The player's individual value does not change. If a player is worth five wins above replacement, that's five wins regardless of whether his teammates are good or not. It is an individual award. The quality of one's teammates is not something one can control. For an individual award, players should be judged on their individual merit.
I did this a few years ago:
From 2002 to 2005 there were 257 games played by teams in contention against teams out of it*. The contending team won 170 of those games for a .661 winning %. The contending teams record before the trial period was .553 and the out of it teams winning % was .394. Now then if I did Log5 correctly we should expect the contending team to win 65.5% of the time so according to Log5 contending teams over a 4 year period won 2 more games than expected. Which is statistically insignificant.
*: Contending teams were defined as teams that were within 5 games of the division lead or wild card provided that they were over .500. Also division leaders or wild card teams that had big leads were not counted as contending teams. The out of it teams were the bottom dwelling teams of each league. The winnning percentages provided were based on standings at the end of play on Aug 31.
Couple of things to note is that this is still very crude. All of the contending teams did not face all of the out of it teams evenly in that last month. So sometimes you might have the best out of it team playing 6 games against the two worst contending teams and none of the out of it teams face the best contending team. So the winning % is not properly weighted to reflect that. Also this doesn't reflect winning % at the time of play merely at the start of the month. In some cases the amount of contending teams at the start of the month were high but was quickly weeded out which again can cause havoc.
**: I did not use 2006 in this data because there were a handful of contending teams and most of them were at .500 or lower.
They're traded because the team that is trading for them is in a better position to utilize the player's value towards securing a playoff spot. That does not mean that the player's value changed.
Indeed. The player, in that equation, is exactly like money, pace Jay Z. The team that trades him hopes to parlay that money, which someone else wants to spend today, into prospects that they can spend tomorrow. The "wanting to spend today" part of it doesn't change the player's own value any more than a dollar changes its face value because some people want to spend it and others want to invest it.
This is absolutely true, see also the placebo effect. People who believe they are going to get better are more likely to do so.
The player's value is perishable, though. It has an expiration date. You have the depreciation of the player's ability and the expiration of his contract. The prospects are something they can "bank", the veteran isn't. But the prospects have value both to the contending team and poor team. Everyone wants prospects, everyone wants cash. The contending team is trying to leverage their already existing, depreciating veterans and add more to achieve a goal. The poor team no longer has the same goal. The veteran has "trade value" but less "use value" to the team trading him. If the poor team doesn't trade him for some reason, the "use value" expires. I am speaking value to the team. A vet racking up stats is less valuable for the poor team than the contending team, hence the trades. In the end it's a team game.
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