Sorry this is late

2017 Final Ballot

The only change from previous seasons is that I have used DRA for fielding rather than DRA.

1. Aaron Judge 8.21 WARR adj+
2. .Jose Altuve 7.88 WARR adj+++
3 Nolan Arenado 7.83 WARR
4. Joey Votto 7.57 WARR
5. Charles Blackmon 7.39 WARR Adj-
6. Giancarlo Stanton 7.32 WARR
7. Max Scherzer 7.31 WARR adj-
8. Mike Trout 7.05 WARR
9. Corey Kluber 6..90 WARR adj-
10. Kris Bryant 6.68 WARR adj-
11. Stephen Strasburg 6.61 WARR adj+
12. Paul Goldschmidt 6.25 WARR
13. Carlos Correa 6.20 WARR adj+
14. Justin Verlander 6.16 WARR adj+
15. Jose Ramirez 5.94 WARR adj-

Rest of the top 20
Andrelton Simmons
Mookie Betts
Tommy Pham
Gio Gonzalez
Corey Seager

1) Jose Altuve - Great all-around season in a year, postseason run separates him from the pack
2) Corey Kluber - best P
3) Aaron Judge - great bat, better fielder than I expected, postseason bump
4) Max Scherzer - best NL pitcher, small postseason bump
5) Carlos Correa - postseason is a large percentage of his total season due to injuries
6) Justin Verlander - postseason moves him up from 14
7) Stephen Strasburg - strong postseason
8) Andrelton Simmons - Ozzie Smith type season
9) Giancarlo Stanton - max power
10) Nolan Arenado - small postseason bump breaks tie with Trout
11) Mike Trout - lowest I've ever placed him
12) Jose Ramirez - still couldn't recognize this guy in a lineup
13) Gio Gonzalez - If starting pitching is supposed to win championships why did Washington fail?
14) Joey Votto - best bat
15) Justin Turner - postseason bump gets him on-ballot

16-20) Anthony Rendon, Corey Seager, Zack Greinke, Charlie Blackmon, Kris Bryant
21-25) Tommy Pham, Chris Sale, Marcus Stroman, Francisco Lindor, Mookie Betts
26-30) Clayton Kershaw, Carlos Carrasco, Gary Sanchez, Zack Cozart, Robbie Ray

Correction

The only change from previous seasons is that I have used "DRS" for fielding rather than DRA.

1) Mike Trout: Best ML player and center fielder - IMO, despite his limited number of games, just noses out...
2) Jose Altuve: Best NL player and second baseman.
3) Aaron Judge: Best ML right fielder.
4) Joey Votto: Best ML first baseman.
5) Corey Kluber: Best ML pitcher.
6) Charlie Blackmon: Best NL center fielder.
7) Giancarlo Stanton: Best NL right fielder.
8) Kris Bryant: Best ML third baseman.
9) Jose Ramirez: Best AL third baseman who also played a lot at second.
10) Carlos Correa: Best ML shortstop.
11) Anthony Rendon
12) Paul Goldschmidt
13) Marcell Ozuna: Best ML left fielder.
14) Justin Turner
15) Chris Sale

NL pitcher Max Scherzer was #16 on my list.

DL, is there a typo somewhere ? Goldschmidt doesn't crack your top 30 ? I am curious.

2) Jose Altuve: Best NL player and second baseman.

Did Houston change leagues again?

-- MWE

Did Houston change leagues again?

-- MWE

Actually, it was originally ML for him, but when I changed Trout to #1, my mind subconsciously went NL mode based on Houston's million years in that league. ;-) Make Altuve just the best ML second baseman and Votto the best NL player and first baseman instead.

2017 Ballot

Miscounted a couple of guys (Bryant and Goldschmidt) so there's a slight chance from the prelim:

1. Jose Altuve, 2B, Houston Astros: does everything- 164 OPS+, +4 baserunning and +3 fielding
2. Joey Votto, 1B, Cincinnati Reds: 168 OPS+ leads NL; 155 RC is 2nd in MLB; +11 fielding ain't too shabby either
3. Corey Kluber, P, Cleveland Indians: the best pitcher by fear thanks to a 202 ERA+ and 201 IP
4. Aaron Judge, RF, New York Yankees: 171 OPS+ and a respectable +9 fielding
5. Giancarlo Stanton, RF, Miami Marlins: 165 OPS+ and +10 fielding
6. Mike Trout, CF, Los Angeles Angels: an MLB leading 187 OPS+ in an injury shortened season
7. Max Scherzer, P, Washington Nationals: best pitcher in the NL with a 177 ERA+ in 200 IP
8. Charlie Blackmon, CF, Colorado Rockies: 142 OPS+ and NL leading 157 RC
9. Jose Ramirez, 3B/2B, Cleveland Indians: 145 OPS+ and 126 RC while playing two tough defensive positions
10. Nolan Arenado, 3B, Colorado Rockies: 132 OPS+ and +20 fielding
11. Chris Sale, P, Boston Red Sox: 157 ERA+ and MLB leading 214 IP
12. Clayton Kershaw, P, Los Angeles Dodgers: 180 ERA+ in only 175 IP
13. Kris Bryant, 3B, Chicago Cubs: 143 OPS+ and +2 fielding
14. Carlos Correa, SS, Houston Astros: huge numbers like a 158 OPS+ in a partial season
15. Steven Strasburg, P, Washington Nationals: 176 ERA+ in only 175 IP

16. Freddie Freeman, 1B/3B, Atlanta Braves: yet another player putting up huge numbers in a partial season
17. Anthony Rendon, 3B, Washington Nationals
18. Zack Cozart, SS, Cincinnati Reds
19. Paul Goldschmidt, 1B, Arizona Diamondbacks
20. Gio Gonzalez, P, Washington Nationals

Here's my ballot... same as my prelim

1 ALTUVE, JOSE 9146
2 JUDGE, AARON 8992
3 STANTON, GIANCARLO 8827
4 VOTTO, JOEY 8531
5 KLUBER, COREY 8489
6 TROUT, MIKE 8388
7 BLACKMON, CHARLIE 8213
8 BRYANT, KRIS 7821
9 RAMIREZ, JOSE 7666
10 SALE, CHRIS 7603
11 SCHERZER, MAX 7311
12 RENDON, ANTHONY 7227
13 CORREA, CARLOS 6903
14 GOLDSHMIDT, PAUL 6834
15 OZUNA, MARCELL 6657

16 ARENADO, NOLAN 6587
17 TURNER, JUSTIN 6540
18 STRASBURG, STEPHEN 6427
19 SEAGER, COREY 6386
20 LINDOR, FRANCISCO 6345
21 BETTS, MOOKIE 6266
22 GREINKE, ZACK 6234
23 SPRINGER, GEORGE 6211
24 KERSHAW, CLAYTON 6203
25 CAIN, LORENZO 6171

Here’s Brock Hanke’s ballot for 2017. As you know, I start by sorting DL’s header by Win Shares and then by WAR and add the two ordinals to get a ranking. This time, I didn’t messs with this by including postseason or anything, because I had what appears to be a breakthrough in understanding why Win Shares and WAR have so many huge differences, and why WAR overrates pitchers compared to Win Shares. On Bill James’ site, there was a thread that touched on this issue, and so I mentioned the trouble I am having here and asked for help.

Well, I got some. Some very nice gentleman told me that WAR assigns 40% of all baseball value to pitchers. Since baseball has to be close to 50/50 between scoring runs and preventing runs (although see Bill James’ explanation of why he uses 52% preventing runs in Win Shares; the “variance out of bounds” concept is a standard in statistics), assigning 40% to pitching would leave only about ten percent to fielding. I ain’t buying it. Ten percent is too low. Bill assigns ABOUT (not exactly) 1/3 of value to pitching and ABOUT 1/6 to fielding, which is normal. The 7% or so switch from fielding to pitching doesn’t sound like much if you’re comparing it to pitching value in general, but that same switch is literally a third of all fielding value. When I pointed this out, a different gentleman said that he believed the ten percent fielding because teams spend about 40% of their money on pitchers. Well, they do this because 1) They have to pay 13+ pitchers, or over half the roster, and 2) What they are paying for fielding is really hard to separate from what they pay for offense, because both are the province of position players.

Anyway, I do think that this disagreement as to how much of value is fielding is probably what is at the bottom of the disconnect between the two systems regarding pitching. So, this year, I just made a summed ordinals list, because neither system adds in value for postseason or anything like that to their listed rankings. And here’s that list:

1. Jose Altuve
2. Giancarlo Stanton
3. Aaron Judge
4. Joey Votto
5. Mike Trout
6. Jose Ramirez
7. Charlie Blackmon
8. Kris Bryant
9. Nolan Arenado
10. Anthony Rendon
11. Corey Kluber
12. Carlos Correa
13. Mookie Betts
14. Corey Seager
15. Paul Goldschmidt
16. Marcell Ozuna (tied for 15th, count Goldschmidt for the final rankings)

1. Altuve - edges out Judge w/ post-season bump
2. Judge - historic rookie campaign
3. Trout - blew everyone away offensively, even Judge & Stanton; missed too much time
4. Stanton - most homers since Bonds in 2001
5. Votto - .320/.454/.578 is tough to argue against even with subpar baserunning and defense

6. J. Ramirez
7. Bryant
8. Blackmon
9. Pham
10. Kluber - best hurler

11. Rendon
12. Sale
13. Turner
14. Arenado
15. Scherzer

Goldschmidt is just out of the top 30. Fangraphs didn't like his defense which dropped him down.

My 2017 MMP ballot:

First, a quick review of my revised MMP system. I take the average of bWAR, fWAR, and gWAR for each player, adding in BP framing runs for catchers. I then adjust for positional median and standard deviation, resulting in my mWAR (Michael WAR, Mengel WAR, My WAR, mean WAR, median-adjusted WAR, whichever you prefer) and plug it into a rate-based salary estimator. Finally, I add a post-season bonus based upon cWPA. Values in parantheses are salary divided by $1M.

1. Aaron Judge (17.79)
2. Jose Altuve (17.42) - even a post-season bonus couldn't bump him ahead of Judge - he would've been #1 if DRA didn't hate his defense so much.
3. Giancarlo Stanton (15.95) - NL MMP
4. Mike Trout (14.92) - best player on a per PA basis; first full year he's not at least AL MMP
5. Joey Votto (14.17)
6. Corey Kluber (13.45) - MMPitcher
7. Max Scherzer (11.95) - NL MMPitcher
8. Carlos Correa (11.87)
9. Charlie Blackmon (11.83)
10. Jose Ramirez (11.46)
11. Justin Turner (11.13) - post-season bonus bumps him ahead of
12. Kris Bryant (10.95)
13. Stephen Strasburg (10.912)
14. Chris Sale (10.909)
15. Tommy Pham (10.88)

16-25. Anthony Rendon, Paul Goldschmidt, Andrelton Simmons, Marcell Ozuna, Mookie Betts, Nolan Arenado, Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Francisco Lindor, Justin Verlander)

All-MLB team:
c - Gary Sanchez
1b - Joey Votto
2b - Jose Altuve
ss - Carlos Correa
3b - Jose Ramirez
lf - Tommy Pham
cf - Mike Trout
rf - Aaron Judge
dh - Nelson Cruz
sp - Coey Kluber, Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Chris Sale, Clayton Kershaw
rp - Kenley Jansen

Everyone who voted last year has submitted a ballot. Anyone else who wants to vote should post a preliminary ballot in the discussion thread today.

My Turner at #13 is Justin.

Voting ends today

Election is over