Rollins is black, but he's also short.

<brains of sportswriters spontaneously explode>

I think the blackness overrides the height when you control for jumping ability.

I'm putting all you Mets in the filter except Sam.

Why does Sam only get a pass? I don't dabble in "my team is great, your team sucks" baby crap either.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to say he can make it up with playing time, much like Sabathia can be worse per inning than Beckett but still deserve the Cy more because he threw more innings. Did Rollins do so? I dunno. But it was probably pretty close.

No it wasn't- if you gave Utley 165 extra PAs (to tie Rollins in PAs) he'd have to hit something like .175/.105/.425 to match Rollins. (That's not a typo, an approx .105 OBP and an OPS of .530, so Utley was more valuable even though Rollins had 165 more PAs)

Rollins had more PAs than Wright/Holliday/Pujols
subtract their respective stats from Rollins and you are left with sub sub sub replacement level performances.

Rollins performance in PAs beyond Pujols (avg/OBP/SLG):
.179/-.232/.391
Utley: .194/.102/.430
Wright: .143/-.418/.446
Jones: .192/.073/.345

Those extra PAs Rollins obtained compared to his MVP competitors had no value- they had negative value.

Rollins Runs/OBP?
What kind of crap stat is that?
Try Runs/PA
or Runs/Time on Base
or Runs/Out

Why does Sam only get a pass?

Non-Met fans find him to be entertaining is my guess

Lemme see. Beltran, Ramirez, Ramirez, Chipper, Braun, Chase, Hanley and Wright all play important defensive positions.

Rollins? Wasn't he the DH? I forget.

I'm just wondering what criteria, if any, was used to give him this award. If you want a leader, there are other ones with good stats. If you want good offensive production from an important defensive position, there are other ones too. He had a decent season and played in every game.

I am not saying Rollins was terrible - in fact, he was great. He just wasn't the greatest... and I don't think its as close or as forgivable as other people are making it out to be. The MVP of the Phillies this year was Ryan Howard, and Rollins tried to give it away. I'd have been more satisfied with Holliday, Utley, Howard, Wright, or even Fielder... just because he carried the Brewers on his back for the first half instead of the second shouldn't discount him (the anti-Morneau factor?)

So are the mental adjustments for Coors Field just too large for a Rockie to overcome?

Holliday: BA/HR/RBI .340/36/137
Rollins: BA/HR/RBi .296/30/94

Holliday: OBP/SLG/OPS+ .405/.607/150
Rollins: OBP/SLG/OPS+ .344/.531/118

Holliday had good defense and good baserunning, as well. It's not like he's Manny out there. Rollins makes up for a lot with position and little things, but 32 points of OPS+ is huge.

And scoring the pennant-clinching run in the 14th inning of the game of the year, after a miraculous stretch run, to boot.

Non-Met fans find him to be entertaining is my guess

No doubt. I just don't want to be lumped in with the stereotypical Met fan, that's all.

Rollins performance in PAs beyond Pujols (avg/OBP/SLG):
.179/-.232/.391
Utley: .194/.102/.430
Wright: .143/-.418/.446
Jones: .192/.073/.345

Wait.. Wright would have had to have had an on base percentage LESS than zero in the next 100 at bats or so to match Rollins? That's adorable.

If you like slugging from players who play important defensive positions, check out the following: Ryan Braun, .634;

The best you can say is that Ryan Braun occupies an important defensive position.

And scoring the pennant-clinching run in the 14th inning of the game of the year, after a miraculous stretch run, to boot.

He tripled in the tying run, too. But it was the 13th.

He doesn't deserve it, I admit it. But I have no problem with anyone winning the MVP if
A) he had his career year in statistical terms (true of JRoll)
B) he was a leader of his team and other players in the league think he's a good candidate (also true of JRoll)

And I would be saying that no matter who won. If I were a voter I'd have a bias toward players having their career year who are unlikely to ever be MVP candidates again, and I don't see what's wrong with that. It would have been real tough to decide btw Rollins and Holliday for me. If Albert Pujols never actually wins an MVP, who cares? He's in the Hall of Fame anyway. Probably also true of Wright. But they'll have plenty more chances.

Also, everyone can stop pretending to be surprised. If you don't think that in an award based on one season and one season alone there might be a seemingly unfair advantage given to the player(s) who missed the fewest games (in this case, zero), you haven't been paying attention.

Harris #91-

Actually, it's not as uncommon as you may think to hit 50 homers with a .300 avg and NOT be named MVP. Here's the list, since the award became official in 1931:

1938 - Hank Greenberg .315-58*
1947 - Johnny Mize .302-51
1947 - Ralph Kiner .313-51
1949 - Ralph Kiner .310-54
1955 - Willie Mays .319-51
1961 - Mickey Mantle .317-54
1995 - Albert Belle .317-50
1996 - Mark McGwire .312-52
2000 - Sammy Sosa .320-50
2001 - Sammy Sosa .328-64*
2001 - Luis Gonzalez .325-57*
2001 - Alex Rodriguez .318-52
2002 - Alex Rodriguez .300-57
2002 - Jim Thome .304-52

* = Lost to someone else who also hit .300-50


That's 14 times, 11 if you don't count the seasons where someone else who accomplished the same feat won instead...

I thought Rollins was a perfectly fine #2, and it's not that he's an unacceptable MVP. I just figured that Holliday, leading 2 of the Triple Crown categories and a prominent player on one of the great comebacks of all time, would have it sewn up. The Coors Field Effect looms so large in popular imagination that even deserving Rockies take a huge hit when people look at their statistics.

Ooops. Sorry, Harris. You beat me to it...


...though it does appear you left a few names off your list, so I guess my post had at least a little value after all... :)

Discussion of replacement value has a philosophical aspect to it; different definitions of it make sense to different people, but it's a hypothetical concept and there is no one, true answer. My contention is that in the context of the Most Valuable Player award, it might well make sense to define it as 0. If we are not trying to determine who's the "best" player, but rather to do a literal accounting of who added the most wins to the team, then it makes a lot of sense to me that it's not relevant whether you added those wins due to quantity or due to quality. It's just, who added the most.

James once did an analogy with outs and bank accounts... I'll use investment portfolios. If we all opened portfolios in April, closed them in October, and gave out a Most Valuable Portfolio award at that time... and if Jimmy's portfolio is worth $134*, and no one else's is worth that much... can't you argue that he deserves the Most Valuable Portfolio? Even if he invested $527**, and other people invested $400 and ended up with only a little less than $134? He most likely doesn't deserve the Best Investor award, but he does in fact have the Most Valuable Portfolio.

I'll give you a more concrete example: AL Cy in 2002. Zito had 229.3 IP, 70 ER (2.75 ERA); Pedro had 199.3 IP, 50 ER (2.29 ERA). By #103's logic, the margin between them is a 6 ERA (20 ER in 30 IP), therefore Pedro is better. But Zito won. Was that the best choice? Ehh, probably not. Was it defensible? Yup, because if it's 0 replacement value, then it makes perfect sense, and in the context of a yearly award, there's a lot to that argument.

* Rollins created 122 runs, and NL shortstops other than him created 12 fewer runs per 700 PA than NL left fielders other than Matt Holliday (88-100).
** As mentioned, Rollins made 527 outs.

Here's the guy's who HAVE won MVP with a .300-50 season:

1932 - Jimmie Foxx .364-58
1938 - Jimmie Foxx .349-50
1956 - Mickey Mantle .353-52
1965 - Willie Mays .317-52
1977 - George Foster .320-52
1997 - Ken Griffey Jr .304-56
1998 - Sammy Sosa .308-66
2001 - Barry Bonds .328-73
2006 - Ryan Howard .313-58
2007 - Alex Rodriguz .314-54

10 seasons, compared to 14. Looks like you're more likely NOT to win with such a season...

The Coors Field Effect looms so large in popular imagination that even deserving Rockies take a huge hit when people look at their statistics.

Two other factors. The writers do look at splits when they look at Coors Field. If Holliday hit similarly at home and away he probably would have won the award. But his OPS+ was 195 at home and 130 on the road, among many other statistics that differed.

Larry Walker won an MVP in Coors ten years ago, in an absolutely bizarre year when he hit as well on the road as at home. Every other season he was in Coors he hit far worse on the road, but that season he was an MVP candidate and actually won (SLG over .700 on the road, wow).

Also, I think Holliday also was just not quite famous enough to be taken seriously for the first 7/8 of the season -- another Coors Field Effect, in which the park generally contains mediocre-to-bad teams that play in the Mountain Time Zone and whose players aren't mentioned very much.

If Helton had had Holliday's year he might have won the award. He's famous.

I'm just wondering what criteria, if any, was used to give him this award. If you want a leader, there are other ones with good stats. If you want good offensive production from an important defensive position, there are other ones too. He had a decent season and played in every game.

Therefore it must be a combination of factors. Maybe intuition was involved.

Its perception. Though one of a few canditates to deserve consideration, Rollins appeared to have career year(which he did) AND lead the Phillies to the playoffs. Wright, though he played well down the stretch, suffered greatly by the Mets collapse and was partly responsible for that.

As stated above, no one outside of serious fans hadn't heard of Holliday until the last 2 weeks of the season.

Pujols is a victim of his own brilliance.

As stated above, no one outside of serious fans hadn't heard of Holliday until the last 2 weeks of the season.

He was an All-Star, as he had been in 2006.

I have no problem with Rollins winning the award either (star player, first place team, that's cool), but I did want to express the opinion that he didn't have the best year in the NL in 2007. (I think that David Wright did, or at least I am a lot closer to being certain Wright did than Rollins did. And for the record, I do not like the Mets at all :)

So, no fuming from me; I just want those hypothetical weisenheimers in 2057 to be able to look up this thread and say "hey, there were some people back in '07 who weren't swept up in the J-Roll Love."

He was an All-Star, as he had been in 2006.

Also true of Alexis Rios. And Freddy Sanchez. That doesn't mean that much anymore.

Saying that people literally hadn't heard of him, is an exaggeration of course.

Anyway, when we had an MVP thread about six weeks before the end of the season, I distilled the wisdom of the entire thread and combined it with my own insight to declare that if the Cubs won the Central David Wright would be the MVP; if the Brewers won the Central Prince Fielder would be the MVP; if the Cardinals won the Central Pujols would be the MVP; and if through some strange machinations the Rockies made the playoffs, Matt Holliday might possibly be the MVP; and if Peavy won the pitching triple crown it could be him too. There was no mention of Rollins at all in the conventional wisdom, since the Mets were going to win the division, and hardly any mention of Holliday either. And of course, Peavy did win the pitching triple crown, and it was established once and for all that people eligible for the Cy Young award are not considered eligible to also win the MVP.

Peavy did receive two 4th-place votes!

And after finally looking at the actual voting...Carlos Marmol? Adrian Gonzalez? lolwut?

Rollins is black, but he's also short.

brains of sportswriters spontaneously explode>

Ha, I thought the same thing. I actually didn't realize that Rollins was only 5'8" until just about now.

When I was first scrolling through BTF I thought the headline was saying that Jimmy Rollins got some votes today in the MVP election. I thought it was just a continuation of the Mags type shenanigan articles being written. Then I looked again and saw that Jimmy actually won the darn thing. Couldn't believe it. Never saw that coming.

Years from now I'm thinking the 2007 NL MVP elextion is going to be that blank spot in most peoples memory when trying to recall past MVP's. I'm also betting another SS suffers from the same problem.

Get over yourself, last year's AL MVP was a lot worse. Morneau winning was like if Carlos Lee had won this year. ZOMG lookit all those RBIs! If the Astros had won the division, you never know, man.

Wait.. Wright would have had to have had an on base percentage LESS than zero in the next 100 at bats or so to match Rollins? That's adorable.

yes

My contention is that in the context of the Most Valuable Player award, it might well make sense to define it as 0.

Per ESPN Phillie SSs hit .297/.345/.530 with 140 runs and 94 RBI- 785 PAs and 531 outs
Phillie 2Bs hit .325/.400/.535 with 124 runs and 111 RBI- 762 PAs and 466 outs

Utley was more valuable

That's still giving Utley credit for things that happened when he wasn't playing, which is still not replacement player level = 0. (Iguchi of course is far from a typical replacement 2B anwyay, but that's not even the point.)

Booey - I was in the process of posting that list as well - if not for tickets to the UNC-SCSU NCAA hoops game - I'd have beat you to that one as well.

I'm with giving Sam a pass as well because I don't find him to be a blind homer.

If Albert Pujols never actually wins an MVP, who cares?

He won in 2005.

That's still giving Utley credit for things that happened when he wasn't playing, which is still not replacement player level = 0.

But even if you go by raw counting stats, it seems pretty clear that Rollins didn't accumulate the most value in the NL. Rollins was 5th in Runs Created, behind Holliday, Wright, Fielder, and Hanley Ramirez. Rollins led the league in PA - being the leadoff hitter on a strong offense who never missed a game - but only finished 9th in the NL in Times on Base - behind the aforementioned four guys plus Helton, Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, and Jose Reyes. Granted, he led the league in Runs scored, but Holliday was only 19 runs scored behind Rollins and beat him by 43 RBIs. Holliday also led him in Total Bases.

If Rollins's competition is Holliday, Wright, Fielder and Hanley Ramirez now, then he was more valuable on defense than all of them.

Rollins was 5th in Runs Created, behind Holliday, Wright, Fielder, and Hanley Ramirez.

Right, and unlike any of those guys, he is a SS who can field.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying Rollins clearly had the most value if replacement level = 0. I'm saying no one clearly did, it's arguable that he did, and if it's arguable under a plausible definition, then he's a defensible choice.

Right, and unlike any of those guys, he is a SS who can field.

Fair enough. I don't think he's a particularly egregious choice, although I probably would have voted for Holliday and Wright ahead of him.

...last year's AL MVP was a lot worse.

Beat out a shortstop who is supposedly a media favorite.

Maybe sportswriters outside of Gotham have a bias.

I'm with giving Sam a pass as well because I don't find him to be a blind homer.

Et moi?

Nerds can't win popularity contests, even at BBTF.

Hence Jeter.

and if Jimmy's portfolio is worth $134*, and no one else's is worth that much... can't you argue that he deserves the Most Valuable Portfolio? Even if he invested $527**

I told him to stay away from mortgage-backed securities.

While I think that Rollins was a pretty terrible MVP choice, his victory did win me a $5 bet with my dad, so this gets my thumbs-up.

Did anyone read that article Posnanski wrote this week where he mentioned that the Zoilo Versailles MVP vote wasn't as bad as everyone thinks it is? I got a kick out of that.
I was there. It wasn't as bad as everyone thinks. In fact, it was correct.

Never underestimate the awesome comedy power of the name. If he'd been Jose Versailles or Eddie Versailles, it'd be fine.

Those extra PAs Rollins obtained compared to his MVP competitors had no value- they had negative value.

They had value in preventing a much worse player from getting those AB's. That counts for something in my book. I can see arguments for other players winning, but I don't see this as a good argument for Rollins NOT winning.