I didn't RTFA but if it starts with Derek ####### Jeter then I'm not interested

It does not start with Derek ####### Jeter. It doesn't even discuss whether Jeter's legendary ####### adds to his MVP case in any year.

It starts with the best ####### player to never win an MVP award.

By WAR, the top 10 position players of the MVP era never to win the award:

1) Mel Ott - 110.8
2) Eddie Mathews - 96.1
3) Adrian Beltre - 93.5
4) Al Kaline - 92.9
5) Wade Boggs - 91.4
6) Arky Vaughan - 78.0
7) Luke Appling - 77.6
8) Ozzie Smith - 76.9
9) Paul Molitor - 75.6
10) Lou Whitaker - 75.1

Two of the players mentioned in the article (Jeter and Murray) don't crack the top 10. Jeter is 13th (behind Thome and Palmeiro) and Murray is 24th.

And the top 10 pitchers of the CYA era never to win that award:

1) Phil Niekro - 95.9
2) Bert Blyleven - 94.5
3) Mike Mussina - 82.8
4) Nolan Ryan - 81.3
5) Curt Schilling - 79.5
6) Rick Reuschel - 69.5
7) Kevin Brown - 67.8
8) Don Sutton - 66.7
9) Luis Tiant - 66.1
10) Juan Marichal - 62.9

Best ever to never get a single MVP vote? Chet Lemon, not even for the '84 Tigers, a season where he had 427 putouts.

Two of the players mentioned in the article (Jeter and Murray) don't crack the top 10. Jeter is 13th (behind Thome and Palmeiro) and Murray is 24th.

The article probably should have stopped with Boggs, after that there is a clear gap. I think he brought up Jeter and Murray because they are still in our recent memory as being guys who constantly did well on the MVP votes but ultimately didn't win any.

Arky Vaughn would have been a nice addition. Criminally underrated (outside of these circles). Should have won the award in 1935, and had a strong case in '38.

Arky Vaughn would have been a nice addition. Criminally underrated (outside of these circles). Should have won the award in 1935, and had a strong case in '38.

The article does mention Vaughn, but that is the context of the Ott paragraphs. The article basically says that these players are great players, didn't win the MVP, and to be fair probably didn't deserve the MVP because someone else had a better year that year.

Ott’s finest season may have been 1938. The NY slugger set career highs in WAR (8.9) and OPS+ (178), leading the league in those categories (as well as runs, home runs and OBP). He settled for fourth in the MVP vote, behind Cincinnati catcher Ernie Lombardi (who led the league with a .342 average), Chicago’s Bill Lee (22–9, league-leading 2.66 ERA), and Pittsburgh’s brilliant shortstop Ark Vaughn (.322/.433/.444). Ott or Vaughn were probably the best choices for the award, but Lombardi’s nod hardly qualifies as a robbery.

That run for Boggs from '85-'89 is remarkably consistent, high-level ball. And for Boggs to lead the league in OPS during the HR-crazy 1987 (albeit with a big HR boost himself) is a great bit of trivia and a major accomplishment.

BA may be flawed but to hit .350 with 100 walks over five years is massive, period.

Can you run the best seasons never to have won an award?

@10: If WAR is your benchmark, the best eligible season to not win the award is Dwight Gooden, 1985 (13.3 total WAR). For hitters, the best eligible season is Rogers Hornsby (12.3 WAR), 1924.

@9: And to think he was basically ignored by the voters at the time... let's raise a toast to Peak Boggs!

And a chicken.

Is Nolan Ryan the best pitcher ever to not win a Cy Young? (Other than Cy, of course.)

Is Nolan Ryan the best pitcher ever to not win a Cy Young? (Other than Cy, of course.)

um... no. Bert Blyleven holds that distinction, and it's not really that close between those two, as listed above Phil Niekro is in the conversation though.

BA may be flawed but to hit .350 with 100 walks over five years is massive, period.

BA is not flawed (unless you want to join me as the only two people in the world annoyed that it uses AB not PA in the denominator). It's in fact the single-most important offensive component. All else equal, turn an out into a hit and you increase both your OBP and your SLG. This is reflected in the run estimators where, give or take, a base is a base however you get it and then a hit adds a "bonus." True enough in the modern era, we are approaching a game where ISO is producing as many runs as BA.

Turn Boggs into a 250 hitter while keeping his BB and XB/H about the same and he's got a line around 250/350/350 which might play but ain't gonna get you into the AS game. He'd have to be a 250 ISO hitter to match his old OPS -- roughly Kyle Schwarber. Which should make us more impressed with Schwarber.

Most obviously if you had a 250/300/400 hitter and you could:

a) add 50 points of BA turning him into (give or take) a 300/350/450 hitter; OR
b) add 50 points of walks turning him into a 250/350/400 hitter; OR
c) add 50 points of ISO turning him into a 250/300/450 hitter

you would choose (a) and it wouldn't be close. Of course in the real world, even if you could add those 50 poinnts of BA, it would probably require more contact and more slap hitting, maybe producing a line more like 300/330/420 and now those 3 lines are roughly equivalent. And while it's apparently relatively "easy" to add walks and power in the modern era, coaches have been trying to figure out how to raise BA for 150 years without a lot of success.

BA is not flawed (unless you want to join me as the only two people in the world annoyed that it uses AB not PA in the denominator).

I'm not one of the two. My only objection to BA is not counting sac flies as ABs. There's no logical reason why a run-scoring flyout to center is an AB but a run-scoring groundout to second is not.

Ah, I hadn't seen Booey's earlier post.

BA is not flawed (unless you want to join me as the only two people in the world annoyed that it uses AB not PA in the denominator). It's in fact the single-most important offensive component. All else equal, turn an out into a hit and you increase both your OBP and your SLG. This is reflected in the run estimators where, give or take, a base is a base however you get it and then a hit adds a "bonus." True enough in the modern era, we are approaching a game where ISO is producing as many runs as BA.

Turn Boggs into a 250 hitter while keeping his BB and XB/H about the same and he's got a line around 250/350/350 which might play but ain't gonna get you into the AS game. He'd have to be a 250 ISO hitter to match his old OPS -- roughly Kyle Schwarber. Which should make us more impressed with Schwarber.

Most obviously if you had a 250/300/400 hitter and you could:

a) add 50 points of BA turning him into (give or take) a 300/350/450 hitter; OR
b) add 50 points of walks turning him into a 250/350/400 hitter; OR
c) add 50 points of ISO turning him into a 250/300/450 hitter

you would choose (a) and it wouldn't be close. Of course in the real world, even if you could add those 50 poinnts of BA, it would probably require more contact and more slap hitting, maybe producing a line more like 300/330/420 and now those 3 lines are roughly equivalent. And while it's apparently relatively "easy" to add walks and power in the modern era, coaches have been trying to figure out how to raise BA for 150 years without a lot of success.

Sorry, my brain isn't fully functioning right now, but how is ba not flawed.

I agree that it's a good stat, but without including pa it's inherently flawed, the sacrifice bit is a miniscule portion of the discussion. But it doesn't mean it doesn't have flaws and hasn't been overrated for decades. Mind you it's being underrated nowadays as I think your comment is pointing out.

If I had a choice between a .800 ops player and one has a .300 average and the other has a .250 average. I'm talking the .300 average player 7 days a week no matter the structure of the other numbers. The ability to control the ball in play is a better skill than power or walks which can be negated by careful pitching. But still it doesn't mean that ba isn't flawed.

I agree that it's a good stat, but without including pa it's inherently flawed,

I can't for the life of me figure out why you want to include the times a player has no opportunity to hit safely in a measure of his rate of hitting safely? Is the stat more helpful or informative if it tells us Barry Bonds' hit .218 in 2002?

Which is why you list ba and obp together pretty much all the time. Neither tells you the full story without the other.

Which is why you list ba and obp together pretty much all the time. Neither tells you the full story without the other.

Yes, that makes sense. Including PA in the BA calculation, IMO, does not.

can't for the life of me figure out why you want to include the times a player has no opportunity to hit safely

1. Unless he was IBB'd, he did have the opportunity to hit safely, he chose not to swing. (I have no problem with excluding IBB if you want -- it was never much of an important issue until Bonds.)

2. If the denominator is PA then it immediately tells you (based on previous PAs) "how likely is the batter to get a hit in this plate appearance" which is what you want to know when a player comes to bat with runners in scoring position. Instead you have to go through some mental gymnastics of "how likely is it that the PA will result in an AB times the probability of getting a hit conditional on the PA being a AB."

3. Shifting both BA and SLG to PA would allow us to quickly identify what the probability of a walk/HBP is (OBP - BA) and not force us into committing mathematical heresy when we add OBP and SLG to get OPS.

4. Along the same lines as 2 and 3, we now have readily available K/PA, BB/PA, HR/PA, IP contact/PA ... these are the natural probability distribution of the event "plate appearance" except that we are missing H/PA (or single, double, triple/PA if you prefer).

5. And of course it's already there just not obvious ... OBP is H/PA + BB/PA (+ HBP/PA...)

6. You'll like this one -- PAs include SFs as outs.

When a player comes to the plate, he (99.99% of the time) has a plate appearance. He may or may not have an AB. Isn't the logical question "what are the likely outcomes of this plate appearance?" Since MLB is all about gambling now, you want a lay on bet on whether Kyle Schwarber is going to get a hit in this plate appearance -- wouldn't you like to know how often that's the result before deciding whether the 5:1 odds you are being offered is a good bet or not? Or are you going to ask for a push if it results in a non-AB?

It's not worth fighting 120+ years of tradition.

how is ba not flawed.

You're gonna have to tell me how you think it's flawed first.

And to think he was basically ignored by the voters at the time... let's raise a toast to Peak Boggs!

Too lazy to look it up, but wasn't there a point where Wade Boggs hit.400 over the course of 162 games? I memory serves it was the second half of one season, and then the first half of the next season. I'm thinking it was something Bill James mentioned in one of his early Abstracts.

Yes and i believe tony gwynn did it as well. Though i think Tony only got to .398

1. Unless he was IBB'd, he did have the opportunity to hit safely, he chose not to swing. (I have no problem with excluding IBB if you want -- it was never much of an important issue until Bonds.)

I want BA to tell me what BA tells me, how effective was the player at hitting safely when he was trying to hit safely. A BA based on AB does that. A BA based on PA does not.

2. If the denominator is PA then it immediately tells you (based on previous PAs) "how likely is the batter to get a hit in this plate appearance" which is what you want to know when a player comes to bat with runners in scoring position. Instead you have to go through some mental gymnastics of "how likely is it that the PA will result in an AB times the probability of getting a hit conditional on the PA being a AB."

That is not what I want to know in that situation. To me, it's a BA/PA situation that is going to lead to more head-scratching. Well, Wade Boggs is only a .280 hitter, but that's because he walks a lot, so we're going to need to back out those walks to see how likely it is he'll get a hit if he puts the ball in play seems far more Gymakata to me.

Too lazy to look it up, but wasn't there a point where Wade Boggs hit.400 over the course of 162 games?

Yes, 6/9/1985 to 6/6/1986, where he batted .401/.489/.541. He had 257 hits in 641 at-bats for a .4009 average. 12 HR, 92 RBI, 125 runs scored and 109 walks. The Red Sox played 81 home and 81 road games in that span.

Red Buttons...never got a dinner.

#25 - Gwynn actually did better than that. He hit .403 over 179 games from 7/3/1993 to 5/9/1995, .401 over 183 games (7/3/1993 to 5/14/1995), and an even .400 over 184 games (start 1 game earlier in 1993 or 1 game later in 1995).

If you want to split it between only 2 seasons rather than 3, he hit .4003 from 7/3/1993 to 8/11/1994 (when the strike ended the season) in 165 games (257 hits in 642 AB's).

I'll go with Josh Gibson as the best player to play during the MVP era (after 1922) and not win the award.

My only objection to BA is not counting sac flies as ABs. There's no logical reason why a run-scoring flyout to center is an AB but a run-scoring groundout to second is not.

One reason for me is that there is no defense for a SF. If a ball is hit deep enough, there is absolutely nothing the defense can do to prevent the run from scoring. On a grounder, a fielder does have ways to try and prevent it.

@30. He might very well be... unfortunately, we can't really know.

Yeah, I mean Gibson was a great player but I think it's a stretch to claim definitively that he was better than Ott.

One reason for me is that there is no defense for a SF. If a ball is hit deep enough, there is absolutely nothing the defense can do to prevent the run from scoring. On a grounder, a fielder does have ways to try and prevent it.

Sure, but that usually means standing at the edge of the grass to begin with.

Excluding sac bunts from ABs makes sense, because it's obvious the player is specifically giving himself* up to move his teammate up a base. The same certainty doesn't exist for any other productive out, and thus there's no reason to single one class out (and of course, in one circumstance).

Additionally, scorers don't care how deep a ball is hit in awarding a sac fly. If you hit a ball in the air and a runner scores without an error, you get credited with one, even if you just popped the ball up in foul territory.

* And if a player does not square to bunt, but tries to bunt for a base hit and moves a baserunner but is thrown out at first, he should also be charged with an AB.

Yeah, I mean Gibson was a great player but I think it's a stretch to claim definitively that he was better than Ott.

Also, if you're going to include Gibson as the best to not win an MVP, why not Wagner? They both had equal opportunities to do so.

Did the NeL award MVP's? If not, then I don't think it counts as being part of the "MVP era".

2. If the denominator is PA then it immediately tells you (based on previous PAs) "how likely is the batter to get a hit in this plate appearance" which is what you want to know when a player comes to bat with runners in scoring position. Instead you have to go through some mental gymnastics of "how likely is it that the PA will result in an AB times the probability of getting a hit conditional on the PA being a AB."

But even with RISP, the calculation that matters isn't "hits vs. non-hits," it's "hits vs. outs." A walk with RISP isn't a negative outcome (even if the bases aren't loaded), it still keeps the rally alive.

There are plenty of issues with BA, but this is not one of them IMO.

Did the NeL award MVP's? If not, then I don't think it counts as being part of the "MVP era".

No reason to perpetuate that mistake by the baseball writers of that era.

@35: I was going to include Wagner, but he was eligible for 3 awards (Chalmers) so I figured he was already taken into account (though not mentioned).

I'll go with Josh Gibson as the best player to play during the MVP era (after 1922) and not win the award.

The Negro leagues were major leagues. Did those leagues give out an MVP award? If so I’d be shocked if Gibson didn’t win at least one.

Well, Boggs can be content in the knowledge that he holds the MVP of beer drinking on long plane flights

@40: BBREF doesn't mention any such awards for Gibson.

Late to the follow-up here. I should've said "incomplete", rather than flawed. It performs as it is designed. I view it like pitcher wins in that there are many pitchers who don't rack up wins that are excellent pitchers and there are strong hitters with a low BA. But it's hard to accumulate large numbers of wins or compile a high BA without being highly skilled.

Wade Boggs is only a .280 hitter, but that's because he walks a lot, so we're going to need to back out those walks to see how likely it is he'll get a hit if he puts the ball in play seems far more Gymakata to me.

I might be misreading this (you're talking BABIP?), but it still won't tell you that. You'd have to back out strikeouts, too.

I am mostly interested in knowing how frequently players do things and having all of them based on the same # of opportunities makes intuitive sense to me. I agree with those upthread who consider getting a walk something that happens when a player could've also possibly gotten a hit, but didn't. They might've swung and missed multiple times and hit some long foul balls, but in the end, they were unable to get a hit. Doesn't mean a walk is bad or they are settling, it's just not a hit.

I might be misreading this (you're talking BABIP?), but it still won't tell you that. You'd have to back out strikeouts, too.

No you don't. I'm not talking BABIP. I'm talking BA based on PAs, not ABs (Boggs would be a career .280 hitter. Now everybody would be lower, but Gwynn doesn't fall nearly as far, for instance).

So, if you want to figure out how likely is for Wade Boggs to get a hit vs. make an out in a second-and-third situation (because if he walks, so be it, the opposing team might do it for him anyway), you'd have to go back to the traditional method of BA calculation.

Doesn't mean a walk is bad

But that's absolutely the effect of measuring BA with PAs instead of ABs. Eric in 37 succinctly explains the problem with this approach. We want to know hits vs. outs, not hits vs. outs plus slightly less positive events than hits.

Gotcha, SOSH. I got hung up on "... if he puts the ball in play".

Re: 37, where would a sac fly count? as a hit, since it's a positive outcome? That reads snarky but isn't intended to be.

I'm personally OK with accounting for the fact that hitters walk when they're trying to get a hit. Thinking it thru: when a guy comes up with RISP I am mostly concerned with OBP. But if I know he only gets a hit in 2-out-10 plate appearances that has more immediate relevance to my interests than knowing he gets a hit in 2-out-8 at bats that don't end in a variety of other ways - because in the moment I don't know if the plate appearance will end in such a way that it is later considered an "just at-bat" or not.

Re: 37, where would a sac fly count? as a hit, since it's a positive outcome? That reads snarky but isn't intended to be.

If it were up to me, all outs other than sacrifice bunts* would simply count as empty ABs. Unless we know for certain the player is giving himself up, which we do with true sac bunts (player squares), I don't see why they should be seen differently than any other advancement out.

*And if MLB decided to make count all outs, including sac bunts, as ABs, I'd be OK with it. But that's the only place where I'd draw the line.

But if I know he only gets a hit in 2-out-10 plate appearances that has more immediate relevance to my interests than knowing he gets a hit in 2-out-8 at bats that don't end in a variety of other ways - because in the moment I don't know if the plate appearance will end in such a way that it is later considered an "just at-bat" or not.

So peak Barry Bonds was the last guy you'd want at the plate with RISP?

Re: 37, where would a sac fly count? as a hit, since it's a positive outcome? That reads snarky but isn't intended to be.

In run/win expectancy terms, trading an out for a run with a runner on third and less than two outs is usually a roughly neutral outcome (with some obvious exceptions). I would be inclined to treat them as outs (as OBP does), but I'm not gravely offended by how it's treated now.