But Trout excelled in the kind of numbers that a few years ago weren’t even considered, mostly because A) They were impossible to measure, and B) Nobody gave a hoot.
Today, every stat matters. There is no end to the appetite for categories—from OBP to OPS to WAR. I mean, OMG! The number of triples hit while wearing a certain-colored underwear is probably being measured as we speak.
So in areas such as “how many Cabrera home runs would have gone out in Angel Stadium of Anaheim” or “batting average when leading off an inning” or “Win Probability Added,” Trout had the edge. At least this is what we were told.
I mean, did you do the math? I didn’t. I like to actually see the sun once in a while.
...Which, by the way, speaks to a larger issue about baseball. It is simply being saturated with situational statistics. What other sport keeps coming up with new categories to watch the same game? A box score now reads like an annual report. And this WAR statistic—which measures the number of wins a player gives his team versus a replacement player of minor league/bench talent (honestly, who comes up with this stuff?)—is another way of declaring, “Nerds win!”
We need to slow down the shoveling of raw data into the “what can we come up with next?” machine. It is actually creating a divide between those who like to watch the game of baseball and those who want to reduce it to binary code.
Repoz
Posted: November 16, 2012 at 10:24 AM |
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1. Gotham Dave Posted: November 16, 2012 at 10:33 AM (#4304121)And “saving runs by being a super fast outfielder with great instincts” is the same thing as Elias junk stats. Sure thing, Mitch. I said in the other thread than I didn’t care that Cabrera won but now I just wish he hadn’t so we could see Mitch whining instead of this smug ########.
I would bet my pay for the next year that the average "stat geek" likes to watch the game of baseball far more than Mitch "I chatted with some people who weren't there" Albom. What a dick.
"Cabrera led his team to the World Series and Trout faded down the stretch" was the main argument for Cabrera on a non-baseball site I visit. Well, technically, the argument was pro-"Cabrerra."
Mike Trout is a more exciting, dynamic, and just plain fun player. And that sense of fun and entertainment has, ironically, been overlooked by many who've framed him as the darling of the stats shut-ins or whatever in order to argue Cabrera's case.
Mitch Albom can take his tedious straw man horseshit and go crawl up his own ass. Where he'd no doubt continue to watch less baseball than the nerds he impugns in this priggish festival of nonsense he calls a column.
This MVP result was significant because it was the first time that people who should have known better -- such as most of the people who post here -- threw their tacit support to a player they knew to be undeserving because of the silliness of something like the triple crown.
Ha ha, who some writers vote on for some honor they created is significant (not only that, but significant because of the reactions to those votes by people here) but actual postseason games and series are meaningless exhibitions? your obliviousness is hilarious.
He led the league in SLG and OPS and his team won the pennant. It wasn't just the Triple Crown.
Know about it? He was there in the crowd, with Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson!
Yes, it was.
This straw man makes me want to stab myself in the eye. This is the exact thing they parade out in game broadcasts and the like, and the exact thing "stats nerds" are railing against.
One of these is irrelevant to the discussion because of the timing of the vote.
Kind of like "First Triple Crown in 45 years"...so if someone got the TC last year, then Cabrera doesn't deserve to be MVP. Yeah that makes sense.
[5] This is ridiculous. A player's underwear color does not reflect their true talent
Jason Giambi's magic gold thong says hi.
[12] We just can't kill this "looking more closely at stats = how the guy hit on even-numbered Thursdays" thing, can we.
Blame Elias Sports Bureau.
Selective advanced stats=bad.
Avg, 7th inning and on in September and August=good.
FTFY
Concur.
Hello Dunning-Kruger effect. A statement like this is symptomatic of widespread societal innumeracy. Far too many people are unable to grasp what should be fairly basic mathematical concepts and they betray this ignorance with statements that are 180 degrees from what "stat geeks" truly think. Where would you even start to educate someone like Albom?
I know the rules forbidding political talk in non-political forums, but this same innumeracy was behind the "unskewing" of polls that made several prognosticators look foolish a week ago. Math as art rather than science.
Since he's already disproven the maxim that 80% of succcess is showing up, I'd prefer to start on an easier case.
When "stat geeks" are so insistent that Trout was not only better, but "HE'S NOT THE MVP, OH THE HUMANITY!!!" better, I'm not sure Albom's the one in need of being "educated."
Most Valuable Player. I can't decide what it means but it would definitely seem to imply that they are not, necessarily, the best player. This is sort of the "We could have finished last without you", syndrome.
I have no problem with Cabrera and would have had no problem with Trout.
There is absolutely no reason that an analysis of who was the most valuable player should focus on how valuable the player's teammates were.
It is not the Most Valuable Team award.
Nor is it the Most Valuable Player Who Has The Most Valuable Teammates. Nor is it the "most valuable player on a good team." Nor is it the "most valuable player on a team that made the playoffs by the least amount."
Nor is it "most valuable player who happened to finish first in a silly grouping of three categories."
People want to focus on everything except the actual question. That is diseased, irrational thinking, and should be called out as such.
Thinking about it I’m getting a bit miffed now that they benefit off our work and then do nothing to validate our work to the general public. Screw you Theo Epstein!
"Diseased"? I can see irrational (pretty clearly), but "diseased"? Really? "Diseased"?
its the only way.
Even with an anonymous poll, though, they will say what is in their best interest to have people think rather than what they really think.
Sean Quixote. I like it. Has a nice ring to it. :D
Yes, diseased. If I asked you which home on your street had the highest value, would you add up all the furniture, possessions, money, and cars inside each house and base your answer heavily on that?
That is what people do with their bizarre interpretations of the words "most valuable." It is not sane.
This is the important point I think. For all the ######## that the Alboms of the world want to do sabermetrics or whatever you want to call it has made substantial inroads in the business of Major League Baseball. There are varying degrees of influence but every tea, in baseball uses this stuff to build their roster.
I don't think it lines up too well for four main reasons:
1. Rickey had 48 points of BA on Fielder, and it's not hard to imagine a sportswriter saying "the higher BA balances out the RBI difference and the steals balance out the home run difference" and so arriving at the right answer for the wrong reasons.
2. An argument that Trout was as good or better than Cabrera as a pure hitter requires some adjustments for park effects that are both somewhat complicated and somewhat uncertain. In 1990 no one would've had to argue that Oakland was a lot tougher place to hit than Detroit, and Rickey had a higher unadjusted OPS than Fielder anyway (not that anyone was looking at OPS).
3. In 1990 Fielder was some unknown guy who'd only hit in Japan and Rickey was an established star, just the opposite of the 2012 situation. I'd bet that if Trout was an established star he'd have won the thing.
4. Rickey didn't have anything like Trout's defensive reputation. He was probably undervalued, but he also wasn't ever as good as Trout is at the moment.
EDIT: Reason #5 is that Oakland won 103 games and Detroit only won 79, proving that Rickey is more of a winner or something.
More seriously, sports columnists already know they're smarter than their team's front office. Polling front offices to find that they use WAR or similar metrics would only prove their point.
I think this might be a good starting point for discussions.
Voting for the best player on a playoff team rather than the best player is like answering Ray's question by arbitrarily crossing off all the homes that aren't in the top eight neighborhoods by average property value. It's just asinine, particularly given that the ballot instructions explicitly say that the winner doesn't need to come from a playoff team.
Next year, the BBWAA should just mail out a sheet that says "VOTE FOR THE BEST PLAYER, YOU MORON" 500 times. Maybe then, a few voters might get the message.
Except in 2001 he would have won! We are losing ground, not gaining it!
There is – I'd say literally nobody – on BBTF (using us as shorthand for thinking-geek fans) who puts any store into what somebody is hitting in the sixth inning of home day games or whatever. Nobody; in fact the practice is ridiculed.
Sean's B-Ref (and Fangraphs and other such sites) count and post such things, true. But that's because they're there. More knowledge in more detail is always better than less and making a WAG about something. If nothing else, one can use the situational stats to dispel arguments for the specialness of somebody who's hitting .400 in the sixth inning. It's not that there are "too many" such stats; the stats are simply facts. Facts are good.
It tends to be only on broadcasts that one sees a flash of a number like "In home day games after a night loss, Adrian Beltre has hit .400 this year" – with implied claims that this means anything at all and that it tells you that something big will come of Beltre's PAs today.
That's pretty much my reaction, too. And I can't believe that anyone would need much more than to look at Trout's SB numbers and watch him play in the outfield to see how much better an all-around player he is than Cabrera. But then I've always favored the 5 tool player over the wooden Indian, even if Cabrera wasn't quite on that low level of fielding.
That said, I only wish they could have given two awards here. It's just kind of a sad coincidence that the first triple crown winner in 45 years eclipses one of the best half dozen or so seasons in the past 50.
This IMHO is a mistaken notion.
Voitng patterns over many, many years show that Cabrera won the MVP because he led the league in RBI for a playoff team. The TC; yes, that probably helped the narrative some. But it did not swing 12 ballots or anything like that.
Die in hell Mitch Albom, die in hell.
Cobb in his autobiography mentioned he was a 3x winner from 1907-1909 for leading in RBI, Hits and Avg.
oh, wrong sport.
I suspect this is something Ty or his ghostwriter acknowledged WELL after the fact.
Great mini-research to find the "Gehrig's 1936" answer!
I was one of the Trout voters, which I guess isn't surprising to anyone (ESPN, not BBWAA). I was considering putting Trout for NL MVP, too and waiting to see how long it would take for that editor to get mad at me.
Since 2000, there have been 10 RBI leaders who played for playoff teams. Two won MVP: Arod (the legitimate best player in the league that year) in 2007 and Cabrera in 2012 (the TC winner). Whatever historical correlation there is between that single category and the MVP is not present in 21st century voting patterns.
It was the Triple Crown.
I also think the fact that he has never won the MVP before and had such a great season probably helped as well.
I am going to just enjoy my favorite baseball player on my favorite team get some props. Wish it was not so bitter on both sides of the argument. I am sure in 2 or 3 years when they change the WAR formula perhaps Trout wasn't that much better than Miggy this season.
Don't sweat it, he led the league in a bunch of important offensive categories and is an entirely deserving MVP. The WARriors are basically talking to themselves at this point.
True but ...
“how many Cabrera home runs would have gone out in Angel Stadium of Anaheim” or “batting average when leading off an inning” or “Win Probability Added,”
Two of those things are essentially arguments that we do bring up. The current stat geeks (the real ones) are quite deep into the weeds. Park effects are easy and straightforward but there are guys who look at "how many of his HRs would have gone out if he played in ..." And now we're also adjusting for (or raising in arguments) quality of defense behind a pitcher, the average OPS of a batter faced by a pitcher, pitch framing, umpire effects, leverage (for relievers). Somebody at fangraphs did write a big article on Trout's lead in WPA (rather some adjusted version of it). The pitch guys are now looking at how batters/pitchers fare on fastballs, curveballs, etc. The defensive stats are essentially just a sum of small samples (he caught x% of fly balls in this zone and y% of fliners in that zone). And of course things like Rbase and Rdp are based on a miniscule number of opportunities.
I'm not saying we shouldn't -- if it's significant, it's significant -- but the story stat geeks tell is increasingly detailed. That is the appeal of something like WAR -- they've tracked down and incorporated those pesky "trivial" factors so you don't have to.
It shows up more in pitching that hitting as you can see above so take a look at the Verlander vs. Price discussion.
I know this is a throwaway line, but...it kind of gets at the whole thing.
That this ended being some knock-down fight about WAR is just crazy. Trout was really really really obviously better this year. It doesn't have anything to do with WAR. It has to do with him hitting almost as well as Cabrera, running the bases as well as anyone in baseball, and playing stupendous defense.
My buddy and I are having a different arguement. He agrees that Trout was better, but argues Cabrera was more "valuable" because of Aug/Sept and late/close games (if he can really step it up when it matters, what about October?), Tigers made the playoffs (despite LA winning more games in a tougher division), that stuff; essentially, the "value is however I choose to define it" arguement.
Tacit support = "I would vote for Trout, but if/when Cabrera wins, I'm not going to mail a box of rattlesnakes to the BBWAA offices."
Amen, Brother!
How come this angle isn't getting much, much more play?
There seems to be agreeent here that Cabrera would NOT have won the trophy if Granderson had hit 2 more HR, and the TC had eluded Cabrera.
This IMHO is a mistaken notion.
Voitng patterns over many, many years show that Cabrera won the MVP because he led the league in RBI for a playoff team. The TC; yes, that probably helped the narrative some. But it did not swing 12 ballots or anything like that.
Since 2000, there have been 10 RBI leaders who played for playoff teams. Two won MVP: Arod (the legitimate best player in the league that year) in 2007 and Cabrera in 2012 (the TC winner). Whatever historical correlation there is between that single category and the MVP is not present in 21st century voting patterns.
It was the Triple Crown.
'since 2000' conveniently cuts off before 98, when Sosa stole an MVP from McGwire, simply because of this effect.
Some examples since then:
2000AL Edgar (WC) lost to Giambi - who has ALMOST as many RBI, and more HR, and better SLG, & played for a division winner. The RBI/win thing helped Edgar.
2001AL Boone lost to Suzuki - for other reasons; his teammate had the cool many hits plus many SB plus he was new luster.
2004NL Rolen lost to Bonds. Well, the BBWAA noticed that 232 walks were a bit of an outlier maybe? Rolen got far more votes than he should have. The RBI/win thing helped him.
2005AL Ortiz (WC) lost to ARod, who was on a div winner, and who had other bigger ##s than Papi. Papi finishd higher than he 'should' have.
2005NL Jones lost to Pujols. Well, yes, Pujols hit 67 points higher than Andruw. Pujols would have won by more if not for the RBI/win thing.
So if I could word it more carefully, leading the league in RBI for a division winner is a very large factor in MVP voting. It seems to be less important now than it was from the 60s thru the early 90s, maybe because of the new playoff format.
The TC had likely little effect.
Yes, that was true from the mid 50's till the mid 90's. Thing is, during that period there were only 2, then 4 playoff teams. When they went to 8 and now 10, it's not surprising the affect has disappeared.
Well, most of us respectfully disagree. Given all the buzz about Trout, I think it had a huge effect. Everywhere you went, when people were discussing it, the traditionalists said "Cabrera - Triple Crown - case closed".
If he had not won the Triple Crown, I think he still gets some buzz, but does not win.
And as these things go, 2000 is a long time ago.
Or he stole it because his Maris-breaking homers resulted in a playoff berth and Mac's didn't. Just because you link RBI titles/playoff berths (where convenient) as if they're inseparable doesn't make it so.
But even if you're right that it was Sammy's RBIs that did it, it doesn't have much to do with my claim, since I'm specifically talking about changes in voting habits. Whatever correlation that existed in earlier years (and, I agree, a correlation is pretty obvious) isn't as strong any more. The 20 percent MVP rate for RBI-leading, playoff bound ballplayers from 2000 on should be pretty damn strong evidence of that.
Some more recent examples:
Granderson led the league in RBIs, as a centerfielder with a decent defensive rep, for a playoff team last year. He finished fourth, behind two postseason non-invites and a pitcher.
Teixeira led the league in RBIs in 2009 for the league's best team. Mauer ran away with the award.
Holliday led the league in RBIs in 2007, led the Rockies on one of the all-time great pennant surges in MLB history, won a playoff berth in a single-game playoff and lost the MVP to Jimmy Rollins.
Being really good is a big factor. Guys who drive in the most runs in the league tend to be really good.
Playing on a playoff team: Very important. No question. If the Tigers don't slip into the playoffs, Miggy's TC may not be enough.
Having a narrative: Way too important. And winning the Triple Crown is a ####### A narrative.
Don't get me wrong. Driving in runs has been and continues to be overvalued relative to other stats (Howard and Morneau's MVP support are exhibits A and B in this regard).
But the idea that RBIs=MVP is simply not the case today. Sure, they were 1/3 of Miggy's MVP case this year, but they were only meaningful as part of the set. If he's just the RBI leader, while finishing behind Trout in BA and Grandy in homers, he's not taking home the hardware.
As an Asperger's friend of mine once said, "The world is divided into 10 groups -- those who like binary code, and those who don't."
Go ahead, create a MVP voting system based on stats, and you will find, even if only using the last 15 years, that tying RBI-lead to division winners makes the correlation BETTER than leaving it out.
I believe it is true that no RBI leader on a division winner has ever lost an MVP award to a player whose team did NOT win (I have not checked pre-1946). Miggy would have been the first. Ergo, how can I NOT conclude that the TC was not The Thing which pushed him over? Unless, of course, a number of voters come out and say that it was the swaying criterion. In which case I will admit I am wrong :)
I wouldn't be surprised. Guys who play for division winners fare better in MVP races. And the guy who drives in the most runs in the league tends to be among the league's best players, and is frequently reflected in other stats (BA and homers and SLG).
In 2008, Albert Pujols was the MVP as a member of the fourth-place Cardinals, finishing comfortably ahead of Ryan Howard of the division-winning Phillies. Howard's 146 RBIs were 22 better than the NL runner-up.
You won't find many other examples because MVPs (particularly in the expanded playoff era) predominantly come from playoff-qualifying teams. But it was just last year where an RBI leader from a division champion RBI leader, Granderson, finished behind two guys from also-rans (Ellsbury and Bautista) in the AL MVP race. It just so happened that those two guys finished behind a pitcher.
Strawman. No box of rattlesnakes was involved. In the past, people would express their disagreement on the internet. That is all that was at issue here. In the past, people wouldn't say "I'm ok" with a clearly undeserving player winning. That is what happened here. And why did it happen? Because of the silly grouping of three stat categories. As people specifically stated.
As people also specifically stated, this was merely resignation to an incorrect but understandable (coming from the BBWAA) result, which, since everyone you're referring to specifically stated that, given the opportunity, they would have voted for Trout, can hardly be construed as any kind of support for Cabrera's candidacy (apart from the kind that comes from fondness for Cabrera as a player, which was expressed in some cases).
I hope nobody in Washington or Colorado is reading that sentence, because I'm dead sober and it's even freaking me out a bit.
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