A Free Country
Posted: September 17th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 160 Comments »
I’m a big fan of Ken Rosenthal. To me, he is everything I want in a baseball writer. He loves the game, he works like crazy (Robo-thal), he is passionate about things, he breaks stories left and right, and he is open to new ideas. He is also one of the good guys in the business … one of those guys who you can disagree with and have a civil discussion. We disagree, for instance, about Andre Dawson’s Hall of Fame case. He strongly believes Dawson belongs in the Hall of Fame because of his blend of power and speed, his classiness and so on. And I fully respect that opinion. I’m willing to be swayed to his opinion because I respect Dawson that much. I just think Dawson’s inability to get on base is too striking to overlook. Point is, we can disagree without losing respect for each other.
I bring all this up first because I’m about to comment on Ken’s Fox Sports piece MVP Award Deserves Robust Debate. There is a lot in the piece that I agree with. But there is an overriding point that I wildly disagree with. Here is how Ken leads off the piece:
Joe Mauer is American League Most Valuable Player.
How do I know?
The sabermetric community, through web sites, message boards and blogs, tells me so.
I’m inclined to agree with the choice of Mauer, but that’s not why I’m writing. No, I’m writing because of the cyber-shoutdowns of anyone who offers dissent, anyone who dares suggest Derek Jeter, Kevin Youkilis or whoever is a legitimate alternative to Mauer.
Ken goes on like this for a little while. He gets into some reasonable arguments later about why Mauer is not just a slam dunk MVP (missed about a month with injury, has spent 24 games as a DH, etc). But the point of his piece is not Mauer specifically (he tends to agree that Mauer should be MVP) but to fight back against Sabermetric bullying, I guess. Another quote:
Last I checked, it’s a free country. Last I checked, the MVP is a subjective choice. Yes, voters from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America occasionally screw up. But the beauty of the award, as outlined by the instructions given to voters, is “there is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means.” Which, of course, drives sabermetricians nuts.
The award is not for highest VORP. It is not for most win shares, most runs created, most wins above replacement player. It is for something that no one can quite define, and — goodness gracious! — voters sometimes apply different interpretations from year to year.
Well, I have a couple of issues with what Ken is saying here. For one thing, I don’t think the beauty of the MVP award is that there is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means. I don’t tend to find much beauty in ambiguity. I don’t think the statement: “I say the color blue is the best of all colors,” is a particularly beautiful statement just because there’s no clear-cut definition involved. But for years and years, that’s what the Baseball Writers (and I’m part of this) have done. Baseball Writers have determined that there’s no clear-cut definition for value, and as such one year it’s about a team’s performance, one year it’s about RBIs, one year it’s about leadership, one year it’s about pitching well in the ninth inning, one year it’s about the sweet music of clutch performance. I don’t buy it. I’m not saying there’s just one way to judge a player’s value — there are countless ways — but I’m saying that the things it takes to win baseball games do not just change at a sportswriter’s whim. And not all definitions of baseball value are valid or intelligent. Having “that look in the eyes” does not make a guy MVP.
And because of this, yes, I think the award IS for the highest VORP, the most win shares, the most runs created, the most wins above replacement level … and also the best OPS+, the best ERA+, the best Eqa, the best WPA, the best Total Average, the best UZR and however else you want to measure value (even most RBIs, most runs, more home runs, best batting average — if you want those limited stats). Because these are honest attempts to quantify value. Use one of them, use several, use your own stats and observations. But don’t tell me that baseball value — like porn and art — is something you know when you see. That has been the problem for years, this idea that we can just invent our own standards and yardsticks and touchstones because … well, who is going to stop us? No. Value is value. Saying an eight is more valuable than an ace in poker doesn’t make it so.*
*Bill James once made this MVP argument using poker as an example. He wrote how just because a player wins with three eights, that doesn’t make any of those eights as good as an Ace. And I remember sending him a devil’s advocate email saying “But in that particular poker hand, where the player wins with the 8s, doesn’t that mean that the 8 IS actually more valuable?” And he wrote back asking the perfect question: “OK, which of the three 8s is most valuable then?”
My bigger issue with Ken, though, is his bashing of the Sabermetric community for pushing Joe Mauer. He seems to be making the point that now the Sabermetrics are so engrained in baseball and in the media that people don’t have to shout down the mainstream media, they don’t have to push Mauer with such bullying force, they don’t have to act like the brute squad from The Princess Bride. Thus the: “Last I checked, it’s a free country,” bit. It strikes a fun image of stat-heads holding mainstream media members hostage with slide rulers and mechanical pencils.
Trouble is: It’s nonsense. I don’t buy that Sabermetrics are much more respected inside the game now than ever before. And I don’t buy that statistically inclined bloggers are the new power structure in baseball. The mainstream media is still, you know, mainstream. I don’t know how many television and radio announcers use advanced stats. I don’t know how many columnists and beat writers use advanced stats. I don’t know how many scouts and baseball executives talk about stats. But when I go from game to game on radio or TV or read my favorite newspapers, I don’t find myself bogged down with a lot of numbers, to say the least. I’ve got to believe that Ken’s whole notion that baseball bloggers are so powerful and overbearing that they are stifling free speech and people’s willingness to push for Derek Jeter as MVP over Joe Mauer is pretty comical.
I think the power that comes from the best bloggers who use statistics is that what they write MAKES SENSE. It isn’t loaded down with a lot of the myth-making and moral-judgments that some of my least favorite sportswriting has. To me, Derek Jeter isn’t a great player because he can rise to the occasion, because he has this sixth sense out there, and because he plays brilliant defense that is so subtle it does not show up in the statistics. No, he’s a great player because he gets on base, and he hits for some power, and he steals bases at a high percentage of success, and because he is extremely durable at a tough defensive position, and, if you want to get away from stats, because his teammates seem to like and admire him enough that they credit him for much of their own success. The power of the best baseball bloggers is that they try to pierce through vagueness and wave away myth and get at the heart of things. Sometimes, they do. Sometimes, they don’t. But, to a new generation of sports fans, it makes a lot more sense than saying: “This guy’s just a winner.”
Ken wants honest debate in the MVP award … a worthy cause, but this seems an odd year to be demanding honest debate. You have a catcher — and a darned good catcher — hitting .374. He also leads the league in on-base percentage and slugging percentage. He is the best hitter in the league, and he’s a Gold Glove caliber catcher. What honest debate is there to be had? How can anyone be more valuable? You can poke holes in his case — he missed some playing time at the beginning of the year, he doesn’t play for a great team — but I don’t think that’s honest debate. Nobody is close. Derek Jeter’s numbers are dwarfed — even with the difference in playing time. Mark Teixeira and Kevin Youkilis and Kendry Morales are all good hitters and they are all first basemen — quite a different role than a catcher — and Miguel Cabrera might be better than the three of them.
Baseball’s MVP award is probably the most cherished award in American sports (maybe the Heisman Trophy). People care about it, which is a good thing. It seems plain to many of us that Mauer is not only the MVP, but he’s OBVIOUSLY the MVP. And so we say it as loudly as possible. We don’t want anyone to miss it.
Finally, there’s this:
OK, that’s it, end of analysis. I don’t pretend it’s complete. I don’t pretend to know all the answers. I just want to have a nice, civil discussion about a fascinating MVP race, a discussion that includes number geeks sitting in their basements, overworked hacks in press boxes across America and fans of all ages, colors and philosophies.
Ken, I love ya. I do. You’re the best. Please don’t use the geeks in the basement thing. Please. I sense you’re using it ironically here — but the thing is it’s just hackneyed and stupid and just plain horrific. We baseball writers and broadcasters for years have had a monopoly on presenting the game. Pitching was 90 percent of baseball because we said so. Managers needed to bunt more because we said so. Pitchers needed to go nine innings and pitch through pain because we said so. You judged a hitter on his batting average, a pitcher on his victories, a fielder on the number of errors he made, a player on his ability to perform when the chips are down — all because we said so. You know what? We were pretty stupid.
And some baseball fans — for the love of the game — pulled out their calculators, worked on spreadsheets, and tried to figure out what was really happening in baseball. And they still do. Sometimes they’re on. Sometimes they’re off. But they keep trying to see through the smoke. Some get paid, but most don’t. They don’t do it for money or because it’s their job. They do it because they are endlessly fascinated by baseball. That merits respect. And they’re right an awful lot. I learn new stuff about baseball from them every day.
They’re right about Mauer too. He’s the MVP by a million miles. If there’s an honest argument to be made for Derek Jeter over Joe Mauer, I haven’t heard it yet.
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Every year I made this simple point on my Baseball Toaster blog, and (since I no longer have said blog) I’ll make it again here:
Awards are celebrations, not measurements.
Exactly, awards should celebrate the best players in the league. And the best player is Joe Mauer.
Who exactly are these militant bloggers and saberists in their basements that are trying to intimidate Rosenthal into voting for Mauer? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sabermetrician who wasn’t interested in a discussion. That’s why there’s 47 comments on The Book Blog when they post something about the difference between Wins Above Average and Wins Above Replacement.
Jeter’s MVP this year will be the makeup call for the Morneau MVP.
Joe, this is yet another reason why I heart your writing so much!
Joe, not sure if it was published, but if so, do you have a link for the Bill James MVP/Poker article? Thanks.
The most valuable 8 in the winning poker hand of three 8s is the one you picked up last. That’s the one that came through in the clutch. That’s the one that delivered the victory. That’s the one that will look valuable because your hand won. All the ace did was sit there looking pretty in a losing cause.
Three, but the third musical genius isn’t George, it’s Ringo.
Joe,
I think you miss his point. His point is that people should be allowed to make their arguments, even if their wrong without being shouted down as stupid, old-fashioned, biased, ignoramouses. They may be wrong but they have just as much right to make their argument as anyone else. It seems to me that many people view stats as infallible when in many cases they can be manipulated to suit a perosn’s argument. Take your post about the KC DH, you posted that the stats from the DH position were below replacement level (a level btw that is not concretely defined). Yet a poster later showed that the players who batted in the DH spot for KC posted above replacement level (by your definition) when batting in other parts of the order, some posted decent numbers. Now your overall point that maybe the Royals should have given some of their better minor leaguers a shot is a good one, but not necessarily proven by your cherry-picked stats.
I do not claim to have insight into why the KC front office has chosen not to promote some of these players, have you asked them their reasons? I wonder why the Yankees with Shelley Duncan and Juan Miranda having such great seasons in AAA weren’t able to trade them for some ML bullpen help or a 5th starter.
I would agree with Ken that the personal attacks in some posts by bloggers goes beyond the pale. If your argument is a good one and your reasoning is sound you should welcome those who argue against you. They will in fact help you prove your point by their weaker arguments. Those who are right do not fear the voices of the opposition, they welcome them. I would think as Americans (most of us) we would keep this in mind.
1. Playing time is a guideline when voting for MVP.
2. He could easily argue that your entire post is a reason why Joe Mauer should win the Hank Aaron Award, while MVP voting is far more subjective.
I think some columnists are responding to the very concept that Mauer is the overwhelming statistical choice. Some columnists naturally buck against conventional wisdom, and of course some think the Yankees’ record is a big point in Jeter’s favor, and some see Jeter play every day and let that color their enthusiasm. Not that I know any of that to be true of Rosenthal.
By the way, I’m surprised to hear Joe credit the concept that Jeter is great in part because his teammates like and admire him, unless I’m reading something wrong there.
The only honest argument for to be made for Derek Jeter as MVP comes from those that believe the MVP needs to come from a winning or playoff-bound club.
And from past voting, it seems like there are a lot of those folks.
I think Ken is just taking a little umbrage at the idea of “There is no debate, it’s a slam-dunk”
Not true Mark…since there was only one ace, that last 8 was the Alex Rodriguez of 8’s.
[...] Posnanski questions Ken Rosenthal’s call for a debate over the AL MVP Award: Ken wants honest debate in the MVP award … a worthy cause, but this seems an odd year to be [...]
Regarding Mauer as a Gold-Glove caliber defensive catcher:
Todays “Upon Further Review” post(http://uponfurtherreview.kansascity.com/?q=node/1469), a statistically based sports blog from the Kansas City Star, ranks Mauer #29 out of 38 qualifying catchers in terms of defense–and it does so based on numerical performance. Joe, are you giving Mauer a little bit too much credit defensively?
Rob Neyer of ESPN makes a similar point on his blog: http://myespn.go.com/blogs/sweetspot/0-5-70/Groupthink–sabermetrics–and-Joe-Mauer.html
What I thought was funny about Rosenthal’s piece is that there is a definition of what an MVP is. There are guidelines that are sent out with the ballots. Is this not a definition of what the award is supposed to mean? And to those that say a team needs to be in contention, the guidelines specifically say wins and losses don’t matter. MLB does define what valuable is supposed to mean, it is a shame that year after year so many writers seem to forget that.
On a totally unrelated topic, when the fans asked the Royals to score some runs for Zack and play a little defense behind him, we didn’t necessarily mean all in one game!!!
Sometimes the MVP race is so close that there is time for an honest debate.
This is not one of those times. People who say Joe Mauer should not be MVP are dumb. Plain and simple.
For someone like Rosenthal, who has heard insults about his diminutive height his whole life, you’d think he’d shy away from the easy insults (i.e., bloggers in the basement). Which, by the way, is a generalization that may or may not be true depending on individual circumstances, but what if the proverbial basement is an elaborate, expensive, and spacious haven of manly glory?
The fact is Rosenthal is short… very very short, so insulting his height, while too easy and very lame, is true. The “bloggers in the basement” thing, ironically written or not, is very very very stupid.
Rosenthal may work diligently but he has a monster pompous streak which is exhibited somewhat in this piece but was fully turgid on Outside Lines when that blogger got the MSM’s typewriter jammed when he brought up the obvious thought that people would think Ibanez could be ‘roidin’.
How big is Bill James basement and does he do all of his work there?
I’m basically on Joe’s side in this argument. Still I think it’s a perfectly good argument to make that baseball at its best is both an art and a science, and seeing baseball entirely or even primarily through the prism of mathematics leaves out some aspects of the game. The sabermetricians’ goal sometimes seems to be to see through the mystery of the game, and I think it makes sense, for a fan if not a scout, to keep some mystery in the game. I know some people enjoy numbers, but it’s also true that over-analyzing something can decrease one’s capacity to enjoy it. There’s beauty in a perfectly turned double play that cannot be expressed numerically.
Last night, watching the Orioles-Rays game, MASN put up a graphic of the six AL Cy Young contenders. One of them was NOT Zach Greinke. All of them had more wins than Zach Greinke.
The mainstream is still the mainstream, indeed. There’s a long way to go.
Don’t forget that personal relationships are very important for reporters. If Rosenthal sucks up to Jeter and that leads to greater access then of course he’s going to write a column like this. You see the same thing with Jon Heyman of SI.com and Scott Boras.
Big Steve,
You are an idiot and are missing the entire point.
Anti-sabermetricians don’t care about mystery, they just want the mystery to be explained using the terms and data that they are comfortable with, regardless of its accuracy.
You’re argument is like saying:
“Sure, we could use this digital thermometer to see if this infant is feverish, but wouldn’t it honor the mystery of life more if I just put my palm on his forehead?”
Sure, using your hand might make you feel warm and gooey inside and remind you about how your grandma did things, but if the goal is to find out the babies’ temperature, stick the digital thermometer where it needs to go, no matter the stench!
Generally agree with Joe’s point about media vs. “stathead bloggers” (if the SBs were so powerful, Bill James would be in the Hall of Fame already).
My one small quibble is with this:
“Baseball’s MVP award is probably the most cherished award in American sports (maybe the Heisman Trophy).”
The Heisman isn’t even in the running (I suspect it used to be the most important, years ago), because it’s an award that is invalidated by subsequent events. Every time a Heisman recipient fails in the NFL, he tarnishes the award a little more. It’s not entirely fair, as the college and pro games are different, but I just don’t get the feeling that most people care that much about it any more.
I dunno, I kind of agree with Rosenthal there. Not entirely, but it seems like when the Mauer for MVP thing started, a lot of people here at least immediately began mocking any other MVP candidate and calling people idiots if they thought different. I also would tend to agree with the choice of Mauer, but there are legitimate reasons why people would vote for someone else, even reasons that have nothing to do with team record. Missing a month is huge, because this award isn’t “best hitter”, it’s who was most valuable to their team, and he missed an entire month, a month in which he did absolutely nothing for his team. They might at least be in serious contention if he had been there, but he wasn’t. If he had played in April but missed September, he might not even be talked about for MVP anymore, ala Carlos Quentin last year (and yes, Mauer has been much better than Quentin was). Now I think even with that missed month Mauer is probably the MVP, but it’s still a perfectly viable reason to not vote for him.
That said I do think Rosenthal goes too far, because there’s no need to make fun of “sabermatricians” or stick everyone into one group. But his overall point, that many (not all, but many) of the Mauer for MVP group are essentially declaring anyone who thinks Jeter, or Teixeira, or Youkilis, or Morales, or whoever deserves consideration is an idiot, is absolutely true. It’s been happening in the comments on this very blog since Joe first mentioned Mauer for MVP, and if it’s happening here, where the commenters have always come off to me as intelligent and open minded, then it’s probably happening everywhere. I don’t mind people trumpeting Mauer, I think he probably deserves it. I don’t mind people using stats, I’m a stats guy, I love stats, and they show how good Mauer has been. What I do mind is the name calling and insults when someone says “Hey, but what about that missed month?”.
@ JohnA #25
“Big Steve,
You are an idiot and are missing the entire point.”
I really don’t see any reason at all for this conversation to sink to that level.
@BigSteve #23
“There’s beauty in a perfectly turned double play that cannot be expressed numerically.”
4-6-3.
It’s beautiful in its simplicity.
Ken lost me with all of his foolishness in mocking those who are “in their basement” and other such comments.
It’s cheap and stupid and lazy.
The reason why sabermetric types are so worried about Mauer is because we’ve seen it all before – the writers get seduced by a single stat (often a counting stat) or a storyline (such as Jeter’s breaking the Yankee hits record – see FJM on Deadspin yesterday for one example of a person who thinks Jeter should be MVP and, bizarrely, uses the hits thing as a large part of his reasoning). Hell, we saw it in 2006 when Jeter was probably the most valuable hitter and Morneau won because he had a lot of RBI and the Twins pulled off a big rally to make the playoffs.
And Mauer *is* a slam-dunk case. What worries us is that the more people like Rosenthal attempt to insist that it’s not, in spite of all available evidence, the more we get worried that the writers are going to find a way not to give it to him, and that’s what leads us to question the sanity of people who are desperately trying to find ways to argue that the award should go to someone else.
Re. #16, if you read that catcher defense blog entry, you will laugh. the guy generates an uberstat, out of limitations conventional stats, that transmutes their limitations into something truly terrible. he literally adds up all good events (CS, etc), divides by all bad events (E, SB), and gives us…..DEFENSIVE RATIO!
(to see what’s wrong with this, uh, methodology, think about the relationship between 100/2 and 50/1…you won’t have to think very hard)
“They might at least be in serious contention if he had been there, but he wasn’t.” Doesn’t that, in a way, bolster his case for the MVP?
“the more we get worried that the writers are going to find a way not to give it to him” Which can also apply to the AL Cy Young race…
Kyle Litke and others: the reason a lot of people began mocking any other MVP candidate is because you’re wrong, there ARE no legitimate reasons to vote for someone else. Even without that extra month, Mauer has provided more value to his team than any other player has provided to any American League team. This isn’t based on one crackpot stat; this is the conclusion that you’re compelled to come to by looking at it in any one of dozens of reasonable ways. There’s just no argument for anyone else. Pointing out this fact doesn’t in any way get in the way of legitimate debate or discussion, because that’s not what people who support Jeter or Teixeira or Morales are interested in. They’ve just got their own ridiculous and unsupportable ideas they want to throw into the mix, and that doesn’t do anything for anybody.
That Joe Mauer is the 2009 AL MVP is just basic stuff, really. It shouldn’t be controversial or hard to understand. If you can’t even get your head around that simple truth, you probably don’t have anything worthwhile to add to any baseball discussion or debate.
I have chimed in before on this debate, stating several times that Mauer is the correct choice for AL MVP. I also tried to express how valuable players like Derek Jeter have been this year, and implored people to wait for the end of the season before a decision is made.
However, I think we are all wrong on the issue. The AL MVP should be Zack Grienke. Take a look at his WAR (it is the highest in the AL), 8.3, nearly a full win above Mauer’s. AND tied for the league lead with Pujols.
I know some people are horrified by the thought of a pitcher for the MVP, since they already have the CY Young. However, it explicitly states that pitchers are eligible for the MVP. Why should Mauer get it if at the end of the season he was not the most VALUABLE player around?
@ #9 Joe in Jersey – This isn’t a freedom of speech issue and Rosenthal is being pedantic in using the “free country” expression.
Of course everyone has a “right” to their opinion if you want to twist the first amendment around to mean such a thing. But that’s not the point. The point is that baseball writers often deserve to be shouted down as ignorant and this is a clear example. Just because someone has the opinion that anyone is more valuable than Joe Mauer doesn’t mean that opinion must be respected by others. What if someone gives JD Drew a first place vote over Mauer? Is that opinion worthy of respect? What if they give Nick Punto a first place vote over Mauer?
To earn respect, an opinion must be informed, based on reason and analysis and defensible.
2 years ago some writer gave Brett Favre a vote as NFL MVP during Tom Brady’s record 50 TD season when the Patriots went 16-0. That writer is an idiot – as is anyone who suggests that Jeter is more valuable than Mauer.
@ BigFlax #31 – Here ya go, buddy:
http://deadspin.com/5360509/expository-writing
“To: the BBWAA
Re: MVP Voting
Hey Guys,
Just wanted to remind you of the guidelines for MVP voting, because there’s been some confusion this year. It’s really quite simple. You should cast your vote based on these four criteria:
1. Is the player beloved?
2. Is the player respected?
3. Is the player a Yankee?
4. Did the player do something that another Yankee – who was also beloved and respected – had once done?
Any questions, please direct them to Jeannie in my office. She can send you a type-written sheet with these guidelines, which can be mounted side-by-side with a picture of Derek Jeter pumping his fist and will be suitable for framing.
Cordially,
Bud Selig”
On a stylistic basis alone, Rosenthal is just a cut above mediocrity. His tedium needle seems to be stuck on high. One could read reams of his prose and not be moved to action about, well, about anything, really. Forget all of their arguments, their stances, their positions–a sportswriter isn’t worth reading unless he or she can write affecting, effective, brilliant prose.
Joaldo, you are like a breath of fresh air.
I think you can make a better case for Greinke than for Jeter, but it’s not a great one. That “nearly a full win” is about 8 runs, and I just don’t think you can have enough confidence in FanGraphs’ various adjustments and such to be absolutely positive that 8 run difference = more valuable player. Mauer is ahead of Greinke by a similar margin or more in VORP and Win Shares (not a fan of Win Shares, but anyway).
I kinda love the idea that bloggers and sabermetricians are now bullies. That’s hilarious.
Just because I enjoy being a devil’s advocate I will try to make a rational case for Jeter, although I’m not convinced I believe it myself:
1. The MVP should IMO be the player who contributes the most to his team over 162 games. As such the vote should be based mostly on counting stats, not rate stats. I’d be interested to see someone make the case for Mauer without citing rate stats. Look at the stats Joe uses in asking “how can anyone be more valuable?”: BA, OBP, Slugging pct. Mauer is not in the AL top five in any major counting stat.
2. Jeter has more hits than Mauer. He’s scored more runs than Mauer, been on base more than Mauer. Mauer has more total bases than Jeter but if you add in Jeter’s sizable edge in stolen bases and look at TB+SB Jeter re-takes the lead.
3. Entering today’s games Jeter had played 1,162 innings of shortstop. Mauer had caught 802 innings. That’s 40 more games of defense contributed by Jeter at a vitally important position. Inning for inning I think nearly anyone would agree that Mauer plays a better catcher than Jeter does shortstop, but a 40 game difference is a lot to ignore.
Game for game Mauer has been the outstanding position player in the league, but this is an award given for performance over 162 games. Missing a month of games and DHing for another 25 games is a huge consideration.
So I think there is still room for honest debate. But you may disagree. After all, it’s still a free country.
Bill James said it best. This idea that there’s something inside an athlete that puts him on a morally higher ground than his contemporaries (and you and I) is stupid. This is pretty much what too many writers pull, year in and year out. I refuse to believe Derek Jeter is a better baseball player than me because of some superhuman ability to lift his team, rather than the fact that he hits/fields/throws/etc better than me.
Sure, if player A has a higher VORP / WARP than player B by a little bit (we’ll say 5-10 runs, .5-1 wins), but player A did it in mop up duty for a 60 win team while player B found themselves in many more hi-lev situations and came through, I can understand it. Of course, in this case, Jeter is WAY behind Mauer, and according to baseball-reference’s 2009 splits on him, is NOT coming through in the “clutch” (a 70 tOPS+ in hi-lev situations, meaning he’s hit ~ 30% worse in the “clutch” than average).
In the end, Mauer will probably still win, thanks to Teixeira likely splitting some Yankee-votes.
I’m preaching to the choir, but if Mauer doesn’t win, it will border on the worst pick ever.
He’s the best offensive player in the AL, and it’s not even that close. (See the link below.) And he’s a CATCHER!!!! And a decent one, at that.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/league/al/sort/runsCreatedPer27Outs/type/sabermetric/order/true
And even though he missed about a month, his raw offensive totals are still almost number 1 in the AL, and by the end of the year, he probably will be number one.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/league/al/sort/runsCreated/type/sabermetric/order/true
Androcass @ #27
I agree with you. Generally football individual awards are somewhat of jokes anyway, as usually the MVP/Heisman is more like the “Best QB or RB” award. Add in all the NFL mediocrity, and the sneaking feeling I have that the unofficial fix is in against Tim Tebow and now Sam Bradford so Archie Griffin can continue to have one accomplishment to balance out his crappy NFL career, and who really cares about the Heisman anymore?
NFL, MVP award last year was Peyton Manning. Maybe could’ve gone to Drew Brees, but note how no one made the Mauer-fuss for Brees, even though he probably was better than Manning.
Baseball awards are way more important, I feel, because the writers and fans are aware that it’s much easier to isolate a single player’s actual performance. Of course, sportswriters also tend to get their panties in a bunch because all the concrete facts make justifying subjectivity harder (like how maybe Brees performed better overall than Manning, but Manning was able to carry his team to wins, looks kind of true and no one’s around in the mainstream to fully, satisfyingly disprove it).
*btw, I find it hilarious to be called bullies. How much must the conventional MSM voters be feeling the heat knowing “carried his team” is still an often-used term to justify terrible player evaluation in their community? We’re bullies for having the respect for the sport enough to want to see individual awards go to the deserving individual? It’s things like this that are why Ron Santo and Tim Raines aren’t in the Hall, too.
@41:
Jeter has also made 113 outs more than Mauer.Mauer has more home runs, runs created, and has racked up more points in sabermetric counting stats like WAR (even without the benefit of his defense) and VORP,
[...] Poz summarized: "Not all sabermetricians are computer-crunching dorks sitting in our basements, Ken! We’re not bullies, either! However, the discussion for AL MVP begins and ends with Joe Mauer! To prove this, here is an array of stats that have names with more random letter groupings than your Alpha-Bits breakfast! End of argument! I’m not listening! Did you hear me? I said I’m not listening!" [...]
“Jeter’s MVP this year will be the makeup call for the Morneau MVP.”
Mauer’s MVP would be that also.
JohnA sez:
“Big Steve,
You are an idiot and are missing the entire point.”
Thank you for being so open-minded. Now go back to your basement.
How can you win MVP if your team doesnt make the playoffs? If joe mauer wasn’t on the Twins, they wouldnt make the playoffs. He is, and they’re not going to make the playoffs. How valuable is he really?
Kyle Litke,
Rosenthal’s playing time-based argument against Mauer’s candidacy would be a lot more convincing if his first alternate (Youkilis) didn’t actually have *less* playing time than Mauer this year (526 PA to 523 in the same number of games).
Playing time is a legitimate concern. Mauer’s other contributions overpower it. That is all.
@46 – Fair points.
Mauer has a HR edge over Jeter but he still ranks outside the league top ten in HR. In the major counting stats where Jeter beats Mauer – runs and hits – he’s second in the league.
Isn’t runs created basically a rate stat? It has a numerator and a denominator, right? If you calculate just those elements that go into the runs created numerator, Jeter is ahead of Mauer. A similar way of looking at this would be Joe’s “production” stat from last week, in which Jeter at that time was slightly ahead of Mauer.
Again, I’m not necessarily arguing that Jeter is the correct choice, just that there’s a debate to be had. I tend to agree with Rosenthal’s point – although he made it poorly – that the argument for Mauer has at times been really strident.
@41 That sounds like a perfectly reasonable argument to me.
But your wrong cause I said so;)
Jake, your logic is flawed. This analogy has been said before, but I guess it should be repeated.
If I have a 50 dollar bill and four 10 dollar bills, and you have five 20 dollar bills, and the person with the most overall money wins, then you are going to win (go to the playoffs). Even though my group loses, it doesn’t mean my 50 dollar bill isn’t the most valuable bill out of them all.
The basic runs created formula can be written in either of two ways:
(Times on base)*(Total bases)/PA
or
OBP*(Total bases)
Basically, it’s the product of a rate stat and a counting stat, which makes it a counting stat.
A nice column on this from the “MSM”, whatever that means anymore. I mean, you and Neyer aren’t exactly bloggers liing in your mom’s basement. But whatever:
http://hamptonroads.com/2009/09/call-award-al-player-year-and-give-it-twins-mauer
I don’t think it’s really that silly to give the top honor in a sport to the player we enjoy the most (and conversely, who we’d miss the most).
Moralizing sportswriters may do a terrible job making the point, but as consumers of baseball, we enjoy not just the success of our own team, but the individuals who play the game.
Is it stupid to say that I like baseball more because of Derek Jeter’s mystique? Am I wrong for getting bored during Dice-K’s interminable dilly-dallying?
I watch baseball because it’s fun and dramatic and I can talk about it with my friends. If the writers want to give the MVP to the player who brings the most to the sport, that’s fine with me.
* Now, if they change the definition of the MVP to: most wins-added and Rosen-squirrel starts saying that it’s all about batting average and RBI, then we have a problem, but I have no problem with celebrating the players who make baseball special.
@46 beat me to the punch here…
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Almost – what you should really be looking at is accumulated value (however you choose to measure it) less opportunity cost (presumably in similar units).
So deferring to you the choice of value, you should really be looking at 300 bases – 420 outs vs 286 bases – 307 outs. There are various things you could do to put the numbers on the same scale.
At this level of sophistication, you might compare against a hitter with a .333 slugging percentage – so 420 outs is 140 bases; 307 outs is 102 bases.
“There’s beauty in a perfectly turned double play that cannot be expressed numerically.”
4-6-3.
It’s beautiful in its simplicity.
“-5″ asserts one basement dweller, soon hooted down by the rest. “You CAN’T subtract first basemen from middle infielders, the units don’t match!”
This is complicated, and people get so upset about it.
But I think what some people are starting to react against (and it seems Joe disagrees that this is an issue) is the sort of vitriolic certainty that pervades some SABR-types (of which I consider myself to be a part).
To say the MSM is a monolith that hates analysis and stats is silly. As silly as the basement-geek thing. I hope that’s where Rosenthal was going with this.
And, by the way, shouldn’t Grienke be the “objective” AL MVP? Isn’t he leading in WAR?
@60 Dude you are crazy. You can’t give the MVP to a pitcher. That’s what the Cy Young is for, duh? This can not be argued.
For every pushy sabermetrician, there are 600 angry sportswriters who have used the “geeks in their basement who don’t watch baseball and it’s played on the field and not on a spreadsheet and hate America” bit as a way to try and shut down discourse before it even begins. When it comes to an honest debate, sportswriters have a long long way to go to catch up with their mortal enemies the sabergeeks who are the ones, after all, who are trying to remove bias from analysis. SABR types should apologize for being pushy the day that the MSM apologizes for being anti-intellectual and trying to keep everyone else out of the club so they can hold onto their jobs. Rosenthal knows this, which is why his “Golly, I’m just tryin’ to have a friendly debate!” bit is so particularly disingenuous. Ugh.
@Big Steve
I apologize for the “idiot” remark. Uncalled for, although not sure how it means I don’t have an open mind.
Can you please explain your “mystery” theory in more depth so that I can understand it. Because from where I sit (in a second-floor apartment, but nice try with the good joke) it looks a lot like willful ignorance.
@50 An old riddle, that has well worn answers.
The MVP should win the award on his own merits, not by taking credit for his teammates / GMs work. Put another way, it’s not acceptable to give ARod credit for the value of his home runs and Jeter value for being on the same team as those home runs – a double counting problem.
Accepting the premise in @50 implies the conclusion that a pinch runner who scored in his only season appearance is more valuable than Pujols on a team that missed the playoffs by one game.
We already need a playoff neutral measure of value (to determine which of two players on the same playoff team was more valuable: Jeter? or Teizeira, or ARod, or Rivera…), and we already need to check 4 playoff teams worth of players; it’s little more work to do the lot.
“#
50: Jake said at 3:59 pm on September 17th, 2009:
How can you win MVP if your team doesnt make the playoffs? If joe mauer wasn’t on the Twins, they wouldnt make the playoffs. He is, and they’re not going to make the playoffs. How valuable is he really?”
So considering that since the Yankees would have made the playoffs with or without Jeter, Jeter can’t possibly be the most valuable player, right?
Let’s just give it to the best player on the team to most marginally win a playoff berth.
Re: 50. Either some of you guys need to turn your sarcasm meters on or I need to turn mine off. I don’t think he was being serious.
@ 55: Sorry if I’m being dense but how is the product of a counting stat and a rate stat a counting stat? The product of a whole number and a fraction is a fraction, isn’t it?
No matter how you get to RC you’re measuring production on a per plate appearance basis, which in this case favors Mauer. If we took the same stat and made the denominator 162 it would favor Jeter.
Joe….simply…thank you
What Shane just said… Thank you, thank you
Zack Greinke … another very fine outing.
Slick,
This is not the Academy Awards where a good year is considered a great year just because it is some feel-good lifetime achievement award.
Mikey,
Jeter has over 200 ABs on Mauer. Part of it is games, the other part is that even though they are separated in the ABs category, Jeter only leads Mauer by 7 in walks. Of course he is going to see more pitches to hit batting leadoff compared to Mauer. Oh and if we ever see the day a catcher plays every single inning of the year, that very catcher will likely never walk again. Catching is a valuable position even if they do not always see 162 games Jeter will not play 162 games this year as he missed 7 games and has never played more than 159.
Why debate over the DH with Mauer? His league has it for a purpose and he should not be punished for how Ron Gardenhire uses him.
Why are we punishing a guy for not making the playoffs? It is a collective game. Jeter has Teixeira, Matsui, Damon, Swisher, Posada, Cano, and A-Rod. Mauer has Cuddyer and Morneau. There is a major imbalance there.
In making his argument for Jeter Mikey made Ichiro my new choice for MVP (not really, I still go with Mauer but bear with me). Ichiro has more hits than Jeter, plays Gold Glove defense and in 10 fewer games has stolen 1 fewer base. If Ichiro had Texiera and A-Rod following in the batting order I’m pretty sure he’d be beating Jeter in runs scored too.
55 at 10:
Regarding this: “playing time is a guideline when voting for MVP.”
This argument has been made a lot since the “Mauer for MVP” chant started, and I think it needs some debunking.
Joe Mauer has more ABs this year than almost any ML catcher; in fact he ranks among the top five. Sure the guy missed a month, but when healthy he is a horse (like Russell Martin is for the Dodgers). So if playing time is a factor when voting, that he racks up so many ABs as a catcher should cut in his favor.
The retort will likely be that he has DHed this season. But if you look at the catchers with the most ABs, many — maybe all, I can’t remember — have spent some time DHing. That list includes Mike Napoli, Jorge Posada and Victor Martinez.
I suppose my point is that, once again, Mauer’s position should be considered. There is a reason catchers don’t usually have as many ABs as other fielders — the same reason they don’t tend to win batting titles or lead their league in OPS+.
this geek in the basement thanks you for sticking up for us.
I usually blog from my dining table.
The refusal of so many baseball writers, commentators, and players to accept anything other than the way they’ve always done things is exactly why baseball as a sport is stuck in neutral. Fans are smarter and have more information than ever before………most baseball talking heads are still using the same tactics they did in 1990.
[...] Poz summarized: "Not all sabermetricians are computer-crunching dorks sitting in our basements, Ken! We’re not bullies, either! However, the discussion for AL MVP begins and ends with Joe Mauer! To prove this, here is an array of stats that have names with more random letter groupings than your Alpha-Bits breakfast! End of argument! I’m not listening! Did you hear me? I said I’m not listening!" [...]
Joe,
I think the correct answer to Mr. James would have been: The 8s as a whole are better than any one, or two for that matter, aces in poker, thus, a player who demonstrates above average skills in three or more areas trumps a player with total dominance in just one areas, etc….
So, in this example, D. Jeter is really, really, really good at being a team leader (an Ace, if you will) and Joe Mauer is really, really good at hitting the baseball, hitting the baseball for power, and getting on base. I think that Joe’s 3 8s as a whole are a lot better than Mr. Jeter’s Ace.
For whatever it’s worth, I posted my own rubric for deciding MVPs (not just in baseball, but any sport) a couple of years back after reading another of Joe’s posts:
http://tewalkerjr.com/blog/?p=871
The short version:it’s the player you would pick if you had first pick of every player in the league and you knew that the season they were about to play for you would be exactly like the season under consideration in MVP voting.
You can use any stat you want, or include character considerations, or whatever. But you’re trying to pick the player who would help you put the most wins on the board.
I think what bothers sabermetricians — it certainly bothers *me* — is that so many people who cover the game professionally aren’t interested in getting to an answer that’s substantively correct. Some of them would rather reward their own favorite, or stick to tradition, or shun outsider opinion, or spread the wealth among players, or do something else besides pick the player who would best help a team *win*.
(Josh @62 — this is all an amen to your “anti-intellectual” comment.)
…most baseball talking heads are still using the same tactics they did in 1990
Or even in 1890.
Mikey: Runs created isn’t technically a “counting stat,” I guess, in that it doesn’t count discrete events. But it increases as playing time increases, which makes it more similar to counting stats than to rate stats.
Let’s see if this makes sense: The league lead in OBP at the end of April will be similar in magnitude to the league lead at the end of the season. The league lead in RBI at the end of April will be many times smaller than the league lead at the end of the season. The league lead in runs created does the same thing as the RBI lead – it increases as the season goes on. So it’s counting stat-y, if you will.
Sorry, JohnA, butI think my problem was bringing up the concept of art and mystery in a thread about ‘value.’ Maybe the MVP is the ultimate example of an award that actually can be reduced to numbers.
But I stick by my belief that there are aspects of the game — the way players look when they’re dancing through a double play, the visual perfection of a great hitter’s swing or a great pitcher’s wind-up , the back and forth between and pitcher an batter in a long at-bat, the way the energy of momentum goes back and forth between teams in an important game — that cannot be expressed mathematically. Just the way we talk about the game being ‘reduced to’ numbers is indicative of the problem. And why would we want to subtract the personalities of the players from how we experience the game we love as part of our lives?
Again I’m not saying advanced metrics have no place in the game, and perhaps the MVP discussion is the best place for those measures. But I think even saber-geeks should acknowledge that they m want to keep their minds open to enjoyment of other aspects of the game.
Ah, the beauty of golf and tennis. A clear individual winner, thus a self-evident “MVP.” Boy, Nadal’s winners to unforced errors ratio was terrible…Tiger’s greens in regulation was bush-league…who cares? They won, or they didn’t. And rankings don’t matter nearly as much as who won–that’s all anyone cares about. But baseball would be so much less fun it if were so simple. Seriously, who cares about any tennis or golf stats?
And there are times when looking beyond the numbers is patently ridiculous. During a class in my second year of an MBA, an obviously hung-over, ill-prepared student told the professor, “I really think we need to look beyond the numbers here,” to which the professor replied, “Well, this IS a financial accounting class, so what say we stick with them for a while?” But baseball, to my mind, is not accounting, regardless of how many people would like it to be. (Hell, even accounting *does* have its “beyond the numbers” considerations…if Wendy’s is using hamburger scrap in chili, should that count against the chili’s profit margin, or since it was going to be thrown out if it wasn’t use, is it just a “free good” in calculating chili profitability? The answer is pretty damn important if you’re Wendy’s and want to know how much to promote chili).
But in baseball, a guy racking up obscene stats may be a complete a-hole and nightmare teammate (paging Monsieurs Belle and Kent, your padded cells are ready). Doesn’t that count? They might also be a guy that makes a really freakin’ long season incrementally more pleasurable. Where’s that stat? “Clubhouse enjoyment value over replacement player”–CEVORP? They may be a guy that played hurt for stretches at a “good”, but below their non-injured “great”, level but who, if they just were interested in maximizing VORP, would have opted to keep their tookus rooted to the pine. Or a pitcher that pulled himself after seven scoreless, because why risk an eighth on a tiring arm if “wins” are a worthless stat anyway?
There may be a guy that *did* have a great year in the clutch (and regardless of whether you think “clutch” is a concrete individual difference variable or a heebyjeeby myth, the fact is that “clutch” can actually be measured post facto–regardless whether you want to give them “credit” for it–says that YES some players in fact have years that are indeed more clutch, and therefore potentially more valuable. Does it indicate future performance? Maybe not…but it’s what they *did* and thus *should* be considered in the value of a season. Some things shouldn’t just be swept aside by tsunami-grade wave of cold ceteris paribus logic.) Someone that did actually–again, whether you believe it to be purely by chance or thanks to their innate unflappability–performed best “when it mattered most” and perhaps had greater value.
I would go as far as to say that the construct of “true value” is not a completely statistically definable one. In fact, I hope that’s not even a debatable statement. “True value” is not perfectly measurable. It’s just *not*. We can try, and we can maybe get close…but an obvious point is interpreting stats from 162 games is quite simply not actually playing 162 games. Honestly, if you think “true value” is *completely* measurable, then you *are* a stat bully.
But let me clarify: I am much more down with sabermetrics than Morganmetrics. If sabermetrics were a basis for MVP awards, there would be a whole lot less travesties.
And sabermetrics says that Mauer is the MVP, and Greinke is the Cy Young. But so does common sense. These guys are having historic seasons, and just happen to be doing so for decent and utter crappola teams, respectively. I hope they both win, and at this point will be pretty p-o’d if they don’t. Yes, sabermetrics only can take you so far…but they *can* take you pretty far, and largely discounting them is as ridiculous as insisting that every single important thing in baseball is indeed quantifiable.
What was my point again? No idea…I think it had something to do with chili.
As a Ranger fan, and seeing most of the AL players multiple times, and taking any mix of sabrmetrics and sight evaluations, Mauer stands alone among any conceivable selection for AL MVP. I wouldn’t admit my biases (I have some including overscoring defensive goodness), but I sure as hell don’t have a “popularity bias”.
And Joe – being first introduced to your writing via many, many links from LoneStarBall, you have escalated in a few short years from “interesting” to “the best baseball writer extant” in my not so humble opinion. It’s greatness to acknowlege Ken’s work (and body of work) and still make the salient points we should all take into account.
Circle me, Inigo Montoya.
This whole notion of free speech is interesting. Rosenthal’s contention that the MSM writers are not being given a forum for their views because they are being “shouted down” by the newfangled bloggers is absurd! That would be like saying that conservative politicians don’t have a forum because Keith Olbermann is yelling too loudly, or that progressives are being stifled because Glenn Beck just went on another rant. There are plenty of mainstream media outlets carrying the “traditional” baseball views. The good news is that Rosenthal must be reading the blogs to feel that he is being shouted down.
That being said, does someone deserve a forum for their viewpoint if it’s factually and obviously wrong? Do they deserve equal time? I can’t say that is the case here, but it’s a possibility–and just an interesting debate, but probably not for this blog!
On a side note, on ESPN, Buster Olney named Greinke his Cy Young front-runner, followed by F. Hernandez. And that was before today’s game. So, at least there’s some love coming out of CT.
Good. And agree. Mauer is a better hitter. But Jeter has contributed more to his franchise over the course of his career. Do we measure one season or many? Last year in Premiership soccer, soccer writers gave the award to Ryan Giggs not because he’d had a decent season (Jeter’s was better) but because he’d played 20 years for the same team and made stellar contributions to his sport. Were they wrong just because someone else (and more than one) had a better season??? This debate is not about emotion vs. numbers, it’s about one year vs. recognizing a legendary career.
I find all of this kind of humorous, as part of the “conventional wisdom” says that catchers are inherently tremendously valuable merely because of their position.
So it seems that those who are attempting to downgrade Mauer are trying to have it both ways – and Jeter proponents the opposite both ways.
In any case, I hardly think the writers err on the side of sabremetrics. I agree with Joe that it’s hardly made a dent – the only time a player who is not on a playoff team wins the MVP is when it’s undeniable (say, Pujols in years other than this one).
Mauer flirted with .400, and never got too far away from it. That’s pretty damn cool. But Texeira or Jeter will win. Moreso with Greinke – he has had a ridiculously better season than any other AL pitcher, but he’s a longshot.
The MVP voting is SO old-fashioned, Ken Rosenthal has nothing to worry about.
Semi-off the subject, but one of my favorite things ever was what Rob Neyer wrote about Reggie Jackson being a “bad influence”. Drove his teams right into the ground, he did – it’s staggering the success of the teams he played for. Just shows how much being a model teammate matters.
“But in baseball, a guy racking up obscene stats may be a complete a-hole and nightmare teammate (paging Monsieurs Belle and Kent, your padded cells are ready). Doesn’t that count? They might also be a guy that makes a really freakin’ long season incrementally more pleasurable. Where’s that stat? “Clubhouse enjoyment value over replacement player”–CEVORP?”
- How does having a personality help your production? Many greatest of all time players have been complete jerks. It didn’t take away from their ability one bit.
“They may be a guy that played hurt for stretches at a “good”, but below their non-injured “great”, level but who, if they just were interested in maximizing VORP, would have opted to keep their tookus rooted to the pine.”
- If they played “good” while hurt, and their replacement would have played between “good” to “very good” then playing through the injury hurt their club. Playing hurt likely would have also extended the life of the injury, meaning he was playing at partial ability much longer then had he sat for 15 days to begin with and come back at full strength. Then, if he played fantastic, got hurt, played good then made the injury worse resulting in him sitting the last month of the season entirely, he irresponsibly and irrationally hurt his club.
“Or a pitcher that pulled himself after seven scoreless, because why risk an eighth on a tiring arm if “wins” are a worthless stat anyway?”
- If he pulled himself because of a huge lead in a game late in the season, why not limit the pressure on his arm today and instead give 100% when the team actually needs it most? If his arm was tired and it was close, why not hand it to the pen so they can preserve the win instead of putting it to chance with your lollipops?
But if a player continually is unable to show stamina or deliberately tries to pad his stats by picking and choosing when he plays, it will show up and likely eliminate him from possibility of rewards. Who would give a pitcher the Cy Young when he averages fewer then 6 innings an outing? (Dice-K anyone? Just 10pts in CY voting) Who would give an MVP to a guy who randomly calls injuries when guys he cant hit are on the mound resulting in amazing padded stats but over only a fraction of the time? (Milton Bradley anyone? Just 9 points in MVP voting) The best way to find out who falls under these categories though? Statistics.
“There may be a guy that *did* have a great year in the clutch. Someone that did actually–again, whether you believe it to be purely by chance or thanks to their innate unflappability–performed best “when it mattered most” and perhaps had greater value.”
- Clutch is worthless without tablesetters, which limits it as an individual performance. Should a guy be punished solely because he wasn’t given very many opportunities to be “clutch”? Or what if he was just the tablesetter all year long? Is he now less valuable because he merely got on and scored the run where the other guy got the RBI because he hit in the “clutch”?
“And sabermetrics says that Mauer is the MVP, and Greinke is the Cy Young. But so does common sense. These guys are having historic seasons”
- Yet still some want to dismiss common sense, instead pointing to something the cant back up with any actual evidence and say someone else was more important because he smiles so much or whatever. And that’s what it boils down to – “Stats” = “Evidence”, “Feeling” or “heart” or “observation” or whatever = “Opinion” or “Bias”. If you were told to make a hard concrete decision on something which was very important, would you really go with a feeling? Would you base that decision on a bias created from seeing a small sample size with your own eyes? Would you give an answer solely because you pick because of personal preference? Or would you look at the evidence to form your conclusion?
I appreciate Chris T’s reference to Jeter’s overall career. His body of work is outstanding. But truth be told, there were a lot of years he wasn’t the best shortstop in his league, or his division, and in this decade even on his team. Albeit he is a face of the franchise type player, and earns his career kudos. the MVP award is in fact given *each* year, not for a career. If a single standout year in which a player makes his team competitive yet the team doesn’t win any level of championship can’t be accounted, how does one explain Alex Rodriguez winning an MVP on a team that doesn’t finish in the upper half of their divison? Right – all around goodness that surpasses player popularity as well as team standing. Just my opinion
Chris Toulouse – the award is the 2009 AL MVP. It should be based on performance in the AL in 2009. Jeter can win the 1996-2009 AL MVP.
(All right, no he can’t, because A-Rod was better. But you get the idea.)
This “I have a right to my opinion, and you’re oppressing me by proving me wrong!” deal is a standard argument from members of the dominant group when a hitherto repressed minority starts making its voice heard. In politics, it’s called “political correctness.”
In both cases, it’s complete and utter garbage, and self-serving garbage at that.
I heart you, Joe Poz.
1) There is no pro-Yankee bias in the MVP voting – in the last 24 years A-Rod is the only Yankee to have won it
2) Only A-Rod in 2003 played for a team that missed the postseason
3) Whilst catcher is more important position than SS, it is paired by Mauer only having played 94 games there compared to Jeter’s 137 games at the second most important position.
4) I love how people use “Gold-Glove calibre catcher” for Mauer which really is a subjective call since UzR, etc doesn’t work for the position – our eyes tell us that he’s a great catcher but people thought the same of Jeter at SS for years until defensive metrics got more attention.
I think that Mauer should be the MVP over Jeter but that is soley based on his hitting (and walking of course) – but if a voter thinks the MVP should come from a postseason team I have a lot of respect for that.
“2) Only A-Rod in 2003 played for a team that missed the postseason”
Do you just mean in the AL? Because Ryan Howard also won an MVP award on a team that missed the postseason in 2006.
Great thread. Love it.
@70 & 72 – I’m not looking to punish Mauer for DHing 25 games, only saying that it’s a fair consideration when comparing defensive contribution.
We’ve got two guys who play the most important positions on the field. One has played about two-thirds of his team’s innings and played them beautifully. The other has played over 90% of his team’s innings and played them, I think, pretty well although I know others will sharply disagree.
When we’re comparing offensive performance it would be silly to separate Mauer’s ABs as a catcher from his ABs as a DH, and nobody has. But when we’re talking defense – which has been a prominent part of the argument for Mauer – I think we have to take DH games into account.
I like Tim’s take @78, that you’re looking for the guy you’d take first if you could take any player knowing exactly what kind of season he’d have. I think that would be a really interesting question to put to some managers and GMs. I don’t think the answer would be clear-cut or unanimous, which is kind of the point of this whole thread.
You don’t like the guys the sportswriters pick for MVP? Fine!
But since this really IS a free country, I have to point out something: the MVP award BELONGS to the sportswriters. They can vote for anybody they want, for any reason they want. If Joe Posnanski wants to vote for the guy with the most win-shares, cool. If Ken Rosenthal wants to vote for the guy with the most RBIs on a playoff-bound team, that’s his call. If Jon Heyman wants to vote for the guy who treats him the nicest in the locker room, it’s no skin off my nose.
And if you think the winner is utterly undeserving? You have a few choices.
1) Relax. It’s just a freaking trophy. I say the same to people still mad that “Dances With Wolves” won the Oscar instead of “Goodfellas.” What difference does it make to your life?
2) Create your own award, and give it to anybody you want. Call it the Bill James Trophy. You can automatically give it to the guy with the highest VORP each year. “But it’s not as prestigious as the MVP,” someone is wailing? So what? If you don’t respect mainstream reporters in the first place, why do you care who they give THEIR awards to?
3) Gripe about it incessantly on blogs.
——-
Incidentally, it makes NO sense at all for Joe Posnanski to scoff at the Gold Gloves every year, and THEN to point to Joe Mauer’s Gold Gloves as proof that he’s a great catcher. Make up your mind: are the Gold Gloves a bad joke or are they a reliable indicator of fielding prowess. I say bad joke (even we Yankee fans know Derek Jeter isn’t an elite defenseive shortstop). What do you say, once and for all?
I wish Greinke was getting a bit more play for the MVP. His sabermetric numbers are outstanding. But as a starter in the DH era, the only starting pitcher to win an MVP was Roger Clemens in 1986. So he has no shot, as I detail here:
http://sportsphd.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/pitchers-for-mvp/
if a voter thinks the MVP should come from a postseason team I have a lot of respect for that.
Really? Because Jeter ranks 6th on his own team in OPS (and is neck and neck with Damon for 7th).
So this tells me two things: 1. The Yankees are getting to the post-season because they have a lot of damn good players (as opposed to the contribution of one); 2. if you are looking to reward a Yankee, it would appear that quite a number of them did more than Jeter to get the Yankees to the post-season.
#62
Google Bert Blyleven and Jon Heyman together, and then also check out the weirdness he said about him on my blog (which I suck at updating lately). They’ll make their often times biased points, and then give the good ole boy “well I was just saying how I feel!” routine.
It’s amazing how stubborn people can be over crap. Try to convince a Red Sox fan from the 70’s-80’s that Dwight Evans was a far better player than Jim Rice and no one would agree. Try to tell a 50 year old guy that Clete Boyer was a better defender than Brooks Robinson, and get chewed out. Tell a person that Tim Raines who used cocaine for a year (when he was 20 and then kicked it and became a model citizen and likeable guy, I digress) was more valuable than the warrior Andre Dawson (who I think should be in the Hall, barely), you get told the value of game changing power / speed combos (kind of like what Reggie Sanders and Steve Finley had). Baseball has a long, storied history, but it’s also the league most stuck in its own history among the Big 3 in the USA (NFL, MLB, NBA). It’s arguably why basic APBRmetrics are already used a lot (like PER, and Off/Def efficency ratings rather than PPG and Opponent PPG).
The biggest irony of all is that 99 times out of 100, we agree when players are good. Obviously sports writers will always have their Ecksteins / Pierres / Theriots to salivate over, and SABR-nerds will have guys like Biggio, Giles, and Dunn to yap about, but overall, same thing.
# 92…
Oh really?
A list of players in the last decade to win the MVP on a non-playoff team:
Barry Bonds, 2001 NL, 2004 NL
Ryan Howard, 2006 NL
Albert Pujols, 2008 NL
Alex Rodriguez, 2003 AL
So yes, there’s 5 times that the MVP was not from a playoff team.
@ 95
Yes, it is their award. That is the problem. Every year, same thing, make everything about them. The Hall of Fame isn’t for them, yet they have the ultimate say over who gets in, since we all know the VC isn’t reliable for anything (Joe Gordon went from 12% of the VC vote in 2007 to election. Make sense? No? Okay.)
McKingford,
Ranking players by OPS without accounting for things like, say, defense and position is the kind of thing that gives “statheads” a bad name. Here are the various positions for the Yankees this year, ranked by sOPS+ (that is, OPS+ where the denominator is league average at the position):
SS 138
2B 126
1B 122
DH 120
3B 120
C 117
RF 116
LF 115
CF 104
Still want to argue that Jeter isn’t the most valuable player on his own team?
Brian @87:
You said: “If you were told to make a hard concrete decision on something which was very important, would you really go with a feeling?”
You should read up on psychology when you have the time…we’ve largely moved on from the completely “rational man” assumption. People *don’t* base decisions on pure utility maximizing criteria much of the time (see prospect theory–paraphrased as “losses loom larger than gains”–for instance, which won a flipping Nobel Prize in ECONOMICS, because it helps explain “irrational” behavior–which, by the way, isn’t really irrational at all…it’s just *human*. )
You said: “And that’s what it boils down to – “Stats” = “Evidence”, “Feeling” or “heart” or “observation” or whatever = “Opinion” or “Bias”. ”
Yes (mostly…I think the majority of things in baseball are quantifiable) and no (importantly, some are simply not). This was my main contention: “I would go as far as to say that the construct of “true value” is not a completely statistically definable one. In fact, I hope that’s not even a debatable statement. “True value” is not perfectly measurable.”
(I would like to hear someone who believes this is an absolute falsehood to explain his or her logic.)
Again, much IS measurable. And relying on quantitative measurement versus more qualitative methodology is, I think, a superior way to evaluate performance–but that’s assuming they are mutually exclusive dichotomies, that you have to embrace one absolutely. All I’m saying is that you DON’T. And when either side of the quant vs. qual divide completely rejects the other, they are revealing themselves to be narrow-minded and agenda-driven…more interested in a “cause” than “truth.”
There’s a reason that social scientists don’t just rely on quantitative methodology in research, but also embrace things like ethnography. Combining both gives a richer perspective. (And I’m not saying they are of equal value in understanding baseball, I’m saying that if you flat out reject either out of hand you are inherently *limited* in the totality of your understanding).
The one thing I do find kind of funny is that the sportswriters that sabermetrics folks despise tend to both (1) look at statistics (just the “wrong” ones, according to sabermetrics community) and (2) consider less quantifiable constructs like leadership, clutch, etc. The sabermetrics community just shoots for #1, with the “right” stats. It’s ironic that at least the “idiot sportswriters” are attempting (in however a misguided way we might think it is) to consider “everything”–no one in their right mind COMPLETELY rejects statistics. *No one* But sabermetrics completely throws out anything *BUT* statistics. Which perspective is more lacking?
(That’s devil’s advocate right there. I’m 95% sabermetrics, 5% “other” and feel much more comfortable with the 100% sabermetrics camp than the 50-50 camp, much less even more of a split. But I do like to argue.)
“but if a voter thinks the MVP should come from a postseason team I have a lot of respect for that”
I do not, because the official MVP criteria specifically says that the winner need not come from a playoff team. If you believe that MVP has to come from a playoff team, you are ignoring the definition of MVP.
“less quantifiable constructs like leadership, clutch, etc”
I’ll give you that “leadership” is difficult to quantify. “Clutch” is quantifiable, though, and it doesn’t exist.
From a recent Poz post:
Ali needed Frazier to bring out his boxing courage. McEnroe needed Borg to unleash his tennis genius. Michael Jordan needed the NBA to feed his competitive hunger. Joe Montana needed the NFL and the final two minutes to generate his gift for the dramatic. Maradona needed the World Cup to set loose his artistry.
In one paragraph we have: courage…genius…competitive hunger…gift for the dramatic…artistry.
Well damn, perhaps baseball is the only game played on earth where these things don’t matter. Or perhaps everyone should line up to attack Poz for his naive hyperbole.
Jay, I think you’re missing the point. It’s not that baseball players don’t need athletic genius, competitive hunger, etc., or guys like Mauer/Jeter/Tex don’t have it.
Joe’s point is that those things are necessary to bring out the best in someone…which is then reflected in the results, which are perfectly quantifiable. That’s where the value is.
Nick Punto may have all the biggest “heart” in the world, but anyone outside of Bill Smith and Ron Gardenhire know he doesn’t add four million dollars of value a year.
Dave @ 103:
“Clutch” is quantifiable, though, and it doesn’t exist.
If you are defining “clutch” as an innate individual difference, yes some research suggests it is more myth than fact.
Even if you treat clutch as purely quantifiable, if you are defining “clutch” as statistically “how did this player perform in key situations, e.g. close and late?” then of course it exists. What happened, happened, even if you would like to devalue it by saying “it doesn’t *matter* that it happened because the idea of clutch is untenable.” Which is kind of ridiculous given that it happened.
Define your time period. Define your definition of “clutch”, say the one over at fangraphs. Analyze data. Players differ on clutch over your time period. Define the most important time period–let’s say each year, since we were talking about the MVP earlier. Players differ on clutch over the season. Decide how important that is to you in your player value analysis, but obviously acknowledge that they did indeed differ.
Jay — yes, I agree, in that respect, clutch does exist; fair point.
The way I read your first post, I got the perhaps mistaken impression you were referring to the “innate individual difference” you refer to in your more recent post.
Dave @ 105: “Joe’s point is that those things are necessary to bring out the best in someone…which is then reflected in the results, which are perfectly quantifiable. That’s where the value is.”
It would be nice and convenient and neat to believe that things like artistry, courage, etc. are able to be ultimately captured in statistics. That would perhaps imply that the person with the best statistics is the more courageous, the best artist, the most dramatic, and on and on.
Statistically, Kurt Warner is a better quarterback than Joe Montana, and Daunte Culpepper a better one than Dan Marino, and on and on.
(I don’t know…speaking of untenable arguments.)
And Punto is kind of silly example. I’m saying that a player’s value can’t be *completely* represented quantitatively, but that much of their worth certainly can. When you are paying somone with a .646 OPS millions of dollars, yeah in that case there’s probably no need to look “beyond the numbers” and talk about “heart.” A more interesting example would be Varitek, for instance, who some would argue still brings a lot of value (handling the pitching staff, leadership with a capital “C”, etc.) and others think is a completely waste of space / lumbering stiff (.212/.317/.400).
Jay, you’ll have to forgive my Punto example. Just trying to get a gratuitous shot in at the two individuals who I am convinced are trying to ruin my life.
By the way, because I know a handful of you are interested in this:
I just got my Pavement reunion show tickets, b*tches!!
Back to regularly scheduled programming.
Dave–
My dissertation is ruining my life, and I have to get back to it–but I actually told my wife last night that if we end up in a small-market town I’m going to try and root for the team at least a bit because it’s just not fair being a Red Sox fan anymore. We make a multi-million-dollar mistake (Lugo, Penny, Smoltz, etc.) oh well, bench ‘em or cut ‘em, we’re still marching to the playoffs. Good god, our arguably “most important” offensive player heading into the year almost completely forgot how to hit for most of the year, and we’re still making the playoffs. Twins make a bad signing or two, and, well…
from the “vegetarian pirahna: the story of nick punto” blog:
“I saw those three letters I love to see by Nick Punto’s name: DNP. It’s much better than GIDP- although that typically requires hitting the ball hard and on the ground. I guess that’s the one upside to weak pop-ups to second.”
Funny in a painful way.
I couldn’t disagree with Ken more. The ambiguity of the MVP award is the WORST thing about it. Every year there is a discussion on what exactly the MVP means, and every year it is different depending on who the writers want to win. They need to define wheather it is actually Most VALUABLE Player or Most OUTSTANDING Player. BIG difference. ARod won on a last place Texas team as an outstanding player.
I think Ken and some other writers are merely jockeying for position to vote Jeter as MVP because they have desperately wanted to give him the award for years. I think they take it personally that so many people downplay the skills of Jeter and they just don’t understand it. That is why they belittle and talk about stat geeks in their basement. I hate hate HATE the media (mainly ESPN) obsession with Derek Jeter. He is horrible defensively! Horrible!
D0es James’ point about the three eights suggest a reason for thinking that no individual in the Beatles was a genius? The band as a whole, genius. The songwriting team of Lennon and McCartney, genius. But compare any one of them to a bonafide individual genius (Dylan, say), and the case looks weak.
I’ve been mostly ignoring Mr. Rosenthal since he yelled at that damn blogging nerdgeek momma’s boy for accusing Raul Ibanez of doing steroids (which the guy did not do).
This is really not a surprising take on the MVP debate cosidering the source.
According to Ken Rosenthal, “the beauty of the [Most Valuable Player] award, as outlined by the instructions given to voters, is ‘there is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means.’ Which, of course, drives sabermetricians nuts.”
The fact that the instructions state there is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means is frankly absurd. Rosenthal may be right in that it drives sabermetricians nuts and I can see why: Because in order to determine who deserves the Most Valuable Player, obviously each voter would need to determine the clear-cut definition of Most Valuable. Otherwise, a voter could just randomly vote a player as the Most Valuable Player without any regard to if he literally is the most valuable player. Maybe my definition of Most Valuable is a player who can spit the most sunflower seeds per minute, or maybe it’s the player who kicks dirt the most, or maybe it’s the guy who drives in the most runs for a first-place team or maybe it’s the guy who gets the most media attention in September.
If the definition is not clear-cut, a voter can simply come up with any ridiculous definition he or she wants. In that case, the Most Valuable Player Award has nothing to do with which player was actually the most valuable because Most Valuable could mean something different than most valuable. I suppose there may be voters who think capitalizing most and valuable makes the meaning different.
With the help of Dictionary.com, let’s define these terms in a clear-cut, objective way:
Most, for the purposes of MVP voting, means “greatest as in size or extent.”
Valuable means “of considerable use, service or importance.”
From these definitions we can reasonable conclude that Most Valuable means of the greatest use, service or importance. Maybe there are other sources from which to get definitions of these terms. In that sense maybe the definition is not “clear-cut.” But a voter needs to come up with a clear-cut, objective definition of Most Valuable or most and valuable, that makes sense to the world, if he or she wants to be taken seriously and wants the award to mean something.
This still leaves plenty of room for debate because, as far as I know, there is still no absolutely perfect way to measure which player had the greatest use, service or importance (most value) to his team. For example, it’s still difficult to determine exactly how much a player contributes on defense.
But the starting point for any voter should be defining, in a clear-cut way, what Most Valuable means. Otherwise that voter is going to have a difficult time making any kind of meaningful determination and a difficult time defending his or her choice. How can I determine who or what is x if x has no clear-cut meaning? Unless I define x however I want, possibly ignoring any kind of consensus definition of x.
Too often this seems to be what the MVP voters do. They ignore any kind of dictionary or consensus definition of Most Valuable and they come up with their own definition based on mysterious and vague criteria. Maybe one day Most Valuable will mean the same thing to the voters as most valuable.
I thin valuable is a concept linked with the difficult to replace something.
Valuable si you mother and you son because they does not have any possibility of being replaced.
For a baseball team his MVP must be that player with such performance that should be hard or imposible to replace.
Joe Mauer?
Really I can not find any catcher who can replace his overall value for the Twins and still guarantee the same finally results.
Mark Texeira or Derek Jeter?
Yes, they are having great seasons but inclusive in their own division they could be suplanted by this year performances of Carlos Peña and Jason Bartlet and the Yankees still will be winning the East by a wide margin.
Mikey @94:
Quite right, for defensive purposes we should separate Mauer’s at bats as a catcher from his ABs as a DH.
Having started 90 games at catcher, Mauer ranks 15th among ML catchers. He ranks 6th among AL catchers.
And, really, aside from a few horses his games started total isn’t too out of line with other everyday catchers.
Here is the list:
Y. Molina — 127
R. Martin — 121
K. Suzuki — 119
J. Kendall — 119
AJ Pierzynski — 115
B. Molina — 113
B. McCann — 111
G. Laird — 108
Varitek — 101
R. Barajas — 99
I-Rod — 98
D. Navarro — 97
C. Ruiz — 95
J. Baker — 91
Mauer — 90
There is no controversy on who is the MVP. It’s Mauer. He’ll win easily. The debate seems to be among people trying to create the illusion there’s a debate. There is none. Once the award is announced, Mauer will win easily. Stop the nonsense.
This is a tough topic for me. I love stats and I love what Bill James has brought to the baseball community and I think that anyone ignoring those stats is simply a fool.
Yet I also know that there are some of those stats which are not as rock-solid as others (like defense and anything that uses salary as a basis – as in what a player is worth based on what other players have been paid).
I also know that there are extremely snarky and obnoxiously arrogant sabremetricians like Neyer and Law who do try to “bully” and insult anyone who doesn’t accept their views. While they may hold James as an idol, I note that Bill never felt the need to act similarly. Perhaps they need instruction in that regard. Or perhaps they just need to grow up?
Frankly I think there should be some subjective measures involved in an award like the MVP. After all, it is clearly not for the “Best” player (isn’t that what the Hank Aaron award is for?) and so stats which measure “best” are not the be-all and end-all of the argument (though clearly they should be part of the process).
Which means to me that the players being selected must be on a contending team. No more awards to players on last place teams that never was in contention no matter how good the player may have been (talking about you mssrs Dawson and ARod).
Because I believe that, I think the definition SHOULD be changed to require that a player be on a contender. Now “contender” can be (and I think should be) loosely defined enough to allow 3rd place teams who fail badly but who were still in contention in September (and who would not have been there without X or Y playing for them).
just my$.02
“All I’m saying is that you DON’T. And when either side of the quant vs. qual divide completely rejects the other, they are revealing themselves to be narrow-minded and agenda-driven…more interested in a “cause” than “truth.””
Nah, I was playing devils advocate myself.
But truth be told, I feel as those non-quantifiable aspects should be used as more tie breaker then backbone of argument. I think the biggest issue with the opinion side of things is the fact the argument is rarely given on an equal ground. People will say something to the extent of “Jeter should win because he always comes up with the clutch hits” without ever taking into consideration that Mauer may be doing the very same thing, or something extremely similar (ie, setting the table for that clutch hit – cant have one without the other nine out of ten times).
It comes off as though most of the Non-stat guys first form their opinion, and then try to back it up with something they can point to, most of the time ignoring the flip side of the coin. But why would they think of the flip side if their entire point was to prove what they feel inside? Which is why…
“The one thing I do find kind of funny is that the sportswriters that sabermetrics folks despise tend to both (1) look at statistics (just the “wrong” ones, according to sabermetrics community) and (2) consider less quantifiable constructs like leadership, clutch, etc. The sabermetrics community just shoots for #1, with the “right” stats. It’s ironic that at least the “idiot sportswriters” are attempting (in however a misguided way we might think it is) to consider “everything”–no one in their right mind COMPLETELY rejects statistics. *No one* But sabermetrics completely throws out anything *BUT* statistics. Which perspective is more lacking?”
…I think this is completely incorrect. As mentioned above, I see most sportswriters attempting to validity their stance with stats and non-quantifiables while selectively picking and choosing those they choose to focus on. Remember when Bonifacio was one of the trendy picks for most dynamic players in the game? “Every time you see him he is scoring the big run”, “this guy is finally holding the BA to make him a star”, “he can single handedly put runs on the board with his average and speed”. Fact is, he sucked. (.269/.306/.344 with 6 SB through first month) But they wanted to claim he was the guy to watch because he had some high profile moments. What resulted was they attempted to create that argument instead of allowing the argument to create itself.
@shaun
Using websters for this argument is not particularly useful, since the award itself contains the definition that voters are supposed to follow. And it, just as was stated, is not very well defined leaving it so that a group of people can insist on contenders only and others can argue best player.
The definition needs to be fixed for that reason. I just prefer it to include subjectivity as it ought to mean something other than just “best player.” Again the Aaron award covers that distinction.
“D0es James’ point about the three eights suggest a reason for thinking that no individual in the Beatles was a genius? The band as a whole, genius. The songwriting team of Lennon and McCartney, genius. But compare any one of them to a bonafide individual genius (Dylan, say), and the case looks weak.”
Never heard their solo albums? Lennon was pure genius, and Paul is probably best described as a pop-melody genius. Putting the two together doesn’t remove their individual talent at all.
Besides, the “songwriting team” was more formality then actuality, they wrote most of their songs individually. They may have refined them based on input of the others, but only a few songs were truly written by both performers. And of the few that were, it was often two individual songs combined together. The most obvious of those being A Day in the Life.
@brian – I think bonifacio was overrated in much the same way that every fast player is overrated. Almost every single one! Only Henderson came close to deserving the accolades he got.
Way too many fans and sportswriters and announcers just love them some speed!
@ 66: Sorry if I’m being dense but how is the product of a counting stat and a rate stat a counting stat? The product of a whole number and a fraction is a fraction, isn’t it?
Gotta sort out some maths stuff here. First off, yes, the product of a counting stat and a rate stat is a counting stat. If you go to the gym 3 times a week (rate stat) for 4 weeks (counting stat) you have gone to the gym 12 times (counting stat). To use a baseball example, batting average (rate stat) times at bats (counting stat) will get you hits (counting stat). It just is.
And, this is not the case with products of whole numbers and fractions. A product of a whole number and a fraction can be either a whole number or a fraction (see:the product of 4 and 1/2 is 2).
Re: the Aaron award. There are two issues with that.
1. The Aaron award is for the best hitter, which is often not the same as the best player.
2. The Aaron award is a joke of epic proportions. Last year’s NL winner was Aramis Ramirez, who had a nice enough year, and probably wasn’t one of the 15 best hitters in the league.
BigSteve – yes, there absolutely is beauty in watching the perfect double play execution. But you can enjoy that beauty while also trying to quantify who is the best at turning the double play…who makes the quickest catch/transfer/throw.
i am by no means a sabermetrician, but the biggest chink in any argument like Robo’s is that the stats community doesn’t enjoy the beauty of the game, too.
True enough eric but there is absolutely no reason for the aaron award to be so much a joke. Not if it were given the best player title while the MVP went to the player who most helped his team contend.
They really are 2 different things and the MVP award really was an effort (misguided or not) to try and recognize a players contributions to a team’s success. Much as MVp in post season does, although there it is generally easier to award some normally small contributor who had 6-7 good games.
“And of the few that were, it was often two individual songs combined together. The most obvious of those being A Day in the Life.”
Interestingly, the song I consider to be the Beatles’ best. The MVP of their catalogue, if you will.
Cardinal Mike:
re: Hank Aaron award vs. MVP:
“Not if it were given the best player title while the MVP went to the player who most helped his team contend.
They really are 2 different things and the MVP award really was an effort (misguided or not) to try and recognize a players contributions to a team’s success.”
All teams contend; most just fail. And all teams have some success, even the ones with losing records. And every player contributes to that success; every player helps his team contend.
Being the best player and helping your team contend really aren’t different things. The only difference is that some players are surrounded by enough other good players to make the post-season. And why should that be a difference that matters for MVP voters?
I have never understood this argument.
Cardinal Mike: “Which means to me that the players being selected must be on a contending team. No more awards to players on last place teams that never was in contention no matter how good the player may have been (talking about you mssrs Dawson and ARod)…” followed by saying contending can be pretty loosely defined.
Three things:
1) Not saying that Mike would disagree, but I will point out that the Twins are 4 back of the Tigers, with 7(?) against them still. Playoff odds for them sits around 15%. And a massive part of why they are anywhere near that close is Mauer. So, yeah, even if we use the contending argument in a pretty strict sense, Mauer as MVP is a lock.
2) I absolutely find the idea that a player is not “valuable” in baseball if his team is not doing well to be distasteful, disingenuous, and otherwise purely evil. It is an idea constructed by people who are too lazy to follow more than 10 baseball teams during one year. It’s a similar laziness that makes people say “it’s a free country!!!” rather than offer an actual argument for why they believe what they believe.
3) I’m sure this has been answered before, but are good players on bad teams actually hurting their teams’ futures more by playing well (like, lower draft pick?). How does value to a team change in the context of a late season, when for some teams wins don’t necessarily do much good, and perhaps keep them from getting Bryce Harper?
Maybe in a perfect world, the Aaron award could go to the best player and let the MVP voters off the hook for doing whatever goofy stuff they feel like. But we don’t live in that world at the moment. Until the Aaron award reliably goes to someone who’s at least one of the three best players in the league, having it serve as a Best Player award isn’t a legitimate possibility.
All Ken is doing is showing the same fear that has been growing in the…dare I say it…non-sabermetric community. The writers who have never used advanced stats and don’t want it dictated to them that they should learn something about them; well, they’re simply scared that the numbers take away their creativity to make stuff up about what they’ve seen. They think the stats take away from romanticizing about the game, letting it fascinate you, and thus…letting it fool you into being convinced that a certain guy is the most special player in a given year based on miscellaneous stuff they’ve seen during the year.
Nothing is further from the truth…the stats simply are another way to be fascinated by the game. And they are concrete — you can say Jeter’s the best teammate ever and that should help him win MVP, but until you show me something that shows there were 6 home runs Mark Texeira hit that he wouldn’t have if it weren’t for those rumored-but-undocumented pep talks, you cannot put value on it. Do intangibles have value? Sure, but none of us…none…have the slightest clue how much. Therefore, they should only be given the smallest of contribution to these MVP discussions in comparison to the stats, which are again, real and not subject to interpretation.
Rosenthal would love some huge MVP discussion every year because it makes him love his job, and he thinks it’s part of what he’s paid for. Too bad he can’t realize that some years there’s just no discussion to be had.
Joe,
They’re going to have to revoke your geek card… it’s a slide RULE!
(forewarning – off topic conversation below)
“Interestingly, the song I consider to be the Beatles’ best. The MVP of their catalogue, if you will.”
Ok, I will not fault you for your choice of that song as your favorite (personally, I go with “Strawberry Fields” or “Across the Universe” or even shock everyone and say “Day Tripper”, but there are so many amazing tracks that the order would likely vary depending on the personal time I am experiencing, and each is the greatest on many levels)
But, MVP? Sgt. Peppers would likely be one of the all-time staple albums without its inclusion; the rest of the album was just so strong on its own. Its like the Jeter of the album really – fantastic but not necessarily the most important or valuable piece to its whole. In my mind that award goes, without question, to “Yesterday”. Help was a strong album, and had some really strong tracks, but where would it be without that all-time classic? It almost single handedly takes the album from top-thousand to top-200 in my mind. That’s the definition of MVP.
Interestingly enough, “Yesterday” is almost out of place on Help and would fit in much better if it were reversed with the following albums track that just doesn’t fit – that being Rubber Soul’s “Michelle”
Oh, and one more note on the whole Beatles topic.
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
“Here Comes the Sun”
“Something”
“I Me Mine”
“Taxman”
“Within You Without You”
“If I Needed Someone”
“Think For Yourself”
“The Inner Light”
“Piggies”
The entire “All Things Must Pass” album which was basically written as his tracks which the Beatles didn’t include on their records.
People should not discount the brilliance of George in that poll! (which they arent, just saying) Had he not been part of the group, he likely would have been considered one of the greatest singer/songwriters of the time just the same. He gave us a load of examples despite not even writing that many songs.
@Joe R.
Mauer isn’t that far ahead of Jeter in WAR, actually. He’s about 1 win ahead of him, and much less than that over Zobrist.
@ Everyone
Isn’t it unfair to give Mauer phantom defensive value based on anectdotal evidence? I’ve seen a lot of SABR people throwing around the phrase “Gold-Glove Caliber” in between posts mocking Jeter’s and Raffy’s awards.
Furthermore, there’s at least a chance his defense isn’t actually as good as it seems. Isn’t this what we saw with Teixeira?
The metrics we have for catcher defense suggest that Mauer has been excellent throughout his career. Just because it doesn’t show up on fangraphs, that doesn’t make it phantom value.
http://www.baseballprojection.com/war/m/mauej001.htm
psh . Jeter is MVP. He held the team together in April before they picked it up in May. Yes, Mauer is having a great Season. but he IS on Minnesota, a very mediocre team. Jeter is probably the best player to not win the award, because they Yankees never would have had the successthey had without him. 2006 was a fluke in voting when morneau won over Jeter. And I will say that its a crime if another player from the Twins takes the award away from a player who should already have one.
[...] being shouted down by the number Nazis! Also, all sabermetricians live and work in their basement!" Poz summarized: "Not all sabermetricians are computer-crunching dorks sitting in our basements, Ken! We're not [...]
@Cardinal Mike, but open to others: are there any instances where the best player on a team was not also the most valuable player on that team?
“psh . Jeter is MVP. He held the team together in April before they picked it up in May. Yes, Mauer is having a great Season. but he IS on Minnesota, a very mediocre team.”
See, that is the type of argument I don’t understand. It makes no sense and the supposed evidence (“held team together in April”) is just thrown out there to try and make it look like it has backbone.
But when you look at the Yankees April really fast
.312/.430/.714/1.144 (93 PA) – Swisher
.366/.400/.581/.981 (100 PA) – Cano
.327/.400/.571/.971 (55 PA) – Melky
.292/.410/.492/.903 (78 PA) – Matsui
.295/.385/.500/.885 (91 PA) – Damon
then
.287/.350/.457/.807 (94 PA) – Jeter
Yet it was Jeter holding the team together? It was his worst month of the season, a month which saw him produce less then many around him. It sure seems it is just a Myth that cant really be substantiated which is thrown out there to support their feeling.
Remove Jeter from the Yankees and they are almost certainly still a playoff team. Remove Mauer from the Twins and they are no where near contention (and yes, they are currently a contender so people should really stop trying to imply the team has done nothing here!)
Because of that, Mauer is more valuable to the Twins then Jeter is to the Yankees. And how can you be the “Most Valuable Player” if you arent even the difference maker on your team? And really, wouldn’t this mark the biggest difference maker on the Yankees?
13-15 – April to May 7th
81-38 – May 8th to now
May 8th of course being the day Rodriguez returned to the club.
I can’t tell whether Jon’s being sarcastic or not. Shall we take a poll?
“I can’t tell whether Jon’s being sarcastic or not. Shall we take a poll?”
Yeah, I actually considered that. But even if he is being sarcastic, it is the type of argument we hear (Twins not playoffs, Jeter lifts team, etc) so the point still holds weight no matter who it is specifically directed towards.
And just to expand on the whole Rodriguez thing in case anyone wants to question it. The Yankees had lost 5 straight and 9 of their last 12 when Rodriguez returned to the lineup. They then won 11 of their next 13 (outscoring their opponents 74-49, and one of the 2 losses saw the Yankee pitchers give up 12 runs)
A-Rod, as much as I despise him, is probably the single most valuable player the Yankees have. His return completely changed the complexity of the team, and that is the true turning point for their season in many ways. Anyone else could likely be removed without the team missing a beat; it just inst the case when he isnt there though. The team is 12-27 overall this year when he doesn’t start. That is rather mind-boggling. He clearly has to be considered the Yankee MVP. But how then can you vote for someone else on the Yankees to get the reward?
I think the argument goes that an injury can reveal value, but does not provide it. A-Rod may be the most important player for the Yankees (although a lot of that is due to just how bad Cody Ransom is), but Jeter has helped the team more this year.
im not sarcastic…… i think the player with the most unbleviable stats (a catcher with a .370 average) shouldnt get the award unless those numbers got the team into the playoffs (example arod in 2003 with the last place rangers) the player should be going out there and consistenly doing everything he can to get his team to the playoffs and actually getting them there. The only reason minnesota has a shot still because the tigers have been playing shitty lately. great stats are good, but what use are they if the team isint playing in october
BigSteve, this is a strawman argument:
the way players look when they’re dancing through a double play, the visual perfection of a great hitter’s swing or a great pitcher’s wind-up , the back and forth between and pitcher an batter in a long at-bat, the way the energy of momentum goes back and forth between teams in an important game — that cannot be expressed mathematically. Noone is TRYING to reduce them to math. Those are things we all enjoy while watching a game. But when you are looking back at the end of a season, you can’t see all the back and forth’s between pitchers and batters and you can’t feel the momentum swings and the dancing double plays are all relegated to the Web Gem archives. You have to make a decision at that point about how to write the history of the season.
We can write books, and use turns of phrase as you have in your post, nicely I might add, but those don’ t help us evaluate who was GREAT. All we have left are the numbers. And, sure, some video, but you can’t rewatch ALL the video to be fair to all the players.
It is absurd to say statheads can’t enjoy a dancing double play. They ALL do, I guarantee it. And they all AGREE you can’t reduce it to math. That’s why they discard it when making the choice for MVP. And when writing history. Leave the moment in the moment. That was then. Give the award to the best player, regardless of whether you were there for their moments.
Fair enough, Jon. But the MVP voters are directly instructed to consider players from non-playoff teams for the award.
“Yesterday” is the David Eckstein of Beatles songs.
Oh, and Jon — what Eric J said. By excluding players on non-playoff teams, you are ignoring MVP standards.
“”Dear Voter:
“There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means. It is up to the individual voter to decide who was the Most Valuable Player in each league to his team. The MVP need not come from a division winner or other playoff qualifier.
“The rules of the voting remain the same as they were written on the first ballot in 1931:
“1. Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense. 2. Number of games played. 3. General character, disposition, loyalty and effort. 4. Former winners are eligible. 5. Members of the committee may vote for more than one member of a team.
“You are also urged to give serious consideration to all your selections, from one to 10. A 10th-place vote can influence the outcome of an election. You must fill in all 10 places on your ballot.
“Keep in mind that all players are eligible for MVP, and that includes pitchers and designated hitters.
“Only regular-season performances are to be taken into consideration.”"
“A-Rod may be the most important player for the Yankees (although a lot of that is due to just how bad Cody Ransom is), but Jeter has helped the team more this year.”
“A-Rod may be the most important player for the Yankees (although a lot of that is due to just how bad Cody Ransom is), but Jeter has helped the team more this year.”
Yeah, Jeter helped the club go 13-15 while ARod was on the DL. Where would they have been without that impressive run?
And that’s where the problem comes in. If Jeter really helped more, wouldn’t he have been able to carry the team? He didn’t at all though, did he? Jeter had a fantastic season, but has been more a complimentary piece to a potent lineup then a real MVP. The two have similar overall production, but A-Rod was infinitely more valuable to the club.
In fact, Jeter is one of those players who instantly started playing much better as soon as Rodriguez returned to the lineup. Here, have a look
.275/.346/.425/.771 – Jeter pre ARod
.279/.364/.382/.746 – Jeter 15 games pre ARod
.302/.380/.508/.888 – Jeter 15 games after ARod’s return.
Teixeira is another
.198/.339/.396/.772 – Teixeira pre ARod
.194/.333/.323/.656 – Teixeira 15 games pre ARod
.375/.446/.839/1.285 – Teixeira 15 games after ARod returned
Are you so sure Jeter and Tex weren’t as productive as they were this year mainly because Rodriguez was there? Its hard to imagine I know, but there seems like there might be actual evidence pointing to this very thing.
Really, just having a hard time seeing how Rodriguez wasnt the Most Valuable Player on the Yankees this year. And if that is the case, then Jeter can not logically be in the running for the league MVP.
Brian,
My impression is that the evidence for teammate effects on production is highly limited. So I’m gonna go ahead and give the credit for Jeter and Teixeira’s improvement to… Jeter and Teixeira.
Brian @149
Tex is always quite in April. His career line in March/April:
249/349/433
@voice of reason
I am sure there are instances where a player has been deemed most valuable to a given team and he wasn’t their best player. But it really doesn’t matter to the MVP argument I made.
Because the best player in the league is demonstrably not necessarily the most valuable player in the league. I’d make 2 arguments:
1. The MVP being on a last place team – no doubt MVP of THAT team but of the league? On what basis? Couldn’t that team have finished last without him? Yet that player could indeed be the best player in the league as was ARod.
2. The MVP could mean something else as well. For example, Cal Ripken was reputed to have “saved” baseball during the strike years thanks to his unflagging play. If that is even remotely valid, then assigning him the MVP at that time despite clearly not being the best player isn’t an unreasonable approach.
As for who is MVP of the Yankees this year, it seems clear that it is Jeter for his performance and for being there all year etc. Bogus cherry picking of stats (like how well a team did with or without a given player) is nonsensical. There are way too many variables to assign a team’s record during any point of a season to just one player.
Sure it may look like X was the key ingredient when a team goes 1-10 in his absence but what about other players slumps and the loss of a pitcher at the same time or that, say, a key closer wasn’t up to snuff at the time. Or the fact that they may have played the 2 hottest teams at the time?
Too many variables to ever make the argument that X was key because the team did poorly in a short time he was out.
Cardinal Mike,
The voting instructions as quoted in 148 say that only the value of a player to his team is to be considered, which means that looking at auxilliary considerations (along the lines of “saving baseball”) isn’t allowed.
As far as players on last place teams go – yeah, the team could have finished last without him. But last place teams seem to enjoy winning too, and they’d have won fewer games without this hypothetical MVP candidate.
A-rod is my clear, clear choice for MVP. Before you statheads object, I’d like to remind you that this is a FREE COUNTRY so you HAVE to read this and not ARGUE but just ACCEPT it. You stathead bullies.
To me, the MVP should definitely be the best player on the best team, but there’s really no way to measure who the best player is. Stats just complicate things. I prefer an intangible like EFFORT. So my criteria is “who tries the hardest on the best team?” Jeter, Rivera…these guys barely even break a sweat they’re so smooth. Teixeira, he looks like he’s working hard, so maybe…
But, no, the choice is clear: A-Rod defines “effort.”
It takes a lot of effort to roll out of bed in the morning knowing you’re not even the best player on your team, much less in the universe, even though you get paid more than everyone else in baseball and the vast majority of humanoids on this planet. Cashing paychecks with a heavy heart is not easy.
It take similar effort to screen the ENTIRE public relations industry and find the absolute biggest idiots to “brand” you and assist you in “image engineering.” It’s easy to find bad ones, but not easy to find the absolute worst.
It takes effort to first earn a ubiquitous nickname, and then dozens of satiric variations on that nickname.
It takes even more effort to keep PEDs from somehow finding their way into your mouth so that you can once again be Almighty Baseball Zeus. Kind of like it takes effort for all of us not to rob convenient-stores in this crappy economy.
And it takes an insane amount of effort to look as good as A-Rod. C’mon, how many of you look that good? Zero. It takes even more effort to avoid making out with yourself EVERY time you pass a mirror looking that fly. I don’t look nearly as good as A-Rod, but I find myself french kissing my bathroom mirror at least a couple times a day.
Nobody gives us more of himself than A-Rod.
You Mauer-pimping simpletons (yeah, so the guy hits .370 while playing the most important position on the field very well…what’s the BIG DEAL about that? Good god, the Twins are like 20 games out in last place anyways, right?) need to ask yourselves one question:
Wouldn’t YOU trade Mauer for A-Rod?
Of course you would. EVERYONE would.
The choice is clear:
Call him what you’d like (A-Rod, May-Rod, A-Roid, Stray-Rod, A-Fraud, etc.), Alex Rodriguez is MVP.
Yeah, so making fun of A-Rod is fun and all, but this year his OPS+ is 142. Over the last 12 seasons his OPS+ has been: 150, 177, 134, 173, 131, 147, 158, 160, 162, 134, 136, 120 and 160. The last time he OPS+’ed under 130 was in 1997, when he was 21. It was also the only time he OPS+’ed under 130 for a full season. It was also 120, which is a damn fine OPS+. His career OPS+ is 147.
Derek Jeter is OPS+’ing 127 this year. His career OPS+ is 121, which is essentially A-Rod’s worst OPS+.
Other people with a career OPS+ of 147: Willie McCovey, Edgar Martinez, Mike Schmidt, Jim Thome, Willie Stargell and Lance Berkman.
Other people with a career OPS+ of 121: Ron Cey, Dale Murphy, Troy Glaus and Cecil Cooper.
This isn’t about the 2009 MVP (I think Mauer should win), and it isn’t about who is more valuable generally, and it isn’t a discussion of defense/baserunning/etc. This is just to say, hey, A-Rod is a tremendous player, one of the best in baseball right now.
@152 “But it really doesn’t matter to the MVP argument I made.”
The question wasn’t intended to challenge your argument (yet), but rather to ensure that we were working from a common vocabulary.
Guessing here: what you really want to support as a “voting standard” is that MVP candidates should be ranked not by performance, but by performance adjusted for team context.
In other words, we might be roughly trying to model the idea that a players performance was n% of the total value delivered to the team, and the most valuable player is the guy, not with the biggest percentage, but with the biggest net share.
That team context adjustment probably has two terms in it. One is simply a function of wins (10% of an 100-win team is more valuable than 10% of a 90-win team), and another is some sort of bonus for making the playoffs (9% of a 95-win team that makes the playoffs is more valuable than 10% of a 90-win team that doesn’t).
Note that I’m being deliberately vague about the nature of both the function and the bonus. There’s an implication above that the value of total wins is strictly increasing, but it ignores the question of how many wins are necessary before the delivered value ceases to be negative.
For some, their model has the win function completely flat @ zero, and all of the delivered value exists in the second term. The divisional structure puts some questions on you at that point, but it doesn’t create inconsistent answers.
What we’re really looking at here is a method of adjusting the value of the performance for the context in which it was delivered, and total wins is not the only available proxy for this.
@Brian: de gustibus non disputandum est, but I have heard the solo albums and am pretty sure that they are so far below the quality of the Beatles’ albums as to raise serious doubts about their individual genius. Of course, we can disagree about that, or about how good one has to be to be a genius. I just thought it was worth reflecting on the connection between Bill James’ point about the triple eights and Poz’s poll.
Joe, I’d like to give you a sure fire arguement you can use to convince old school MVP voters that Mauer should win. Jeter hasn’t played a meaningful game in a month, since the Yankees have been locked into a playoff spot. Meanwhile, Mauer’s putting up his numbers in pressure of a pennant race. Mauer is the true clutch player!! MVP! MVP! MVP!
I am not a Yankee fan. In fact, I hate the Yankees, and have since Reggie Jackson cheated his way into a Bill Russell throwing error in the (IIRC) 1978 World Series, and the umps didn’t call him on it.
That said, I think Jeter’s having a great year. I own my own house (okay, I’ve got a mortgage), my mother doesn’t have a basement (but she does have two pleasant and airy guest bedrooms) and I choose to spend much of my time in my own basement when I get to be home. And I still think Mauer’s the MVP.
To me, there are 2 positions where if the guy hits like an All Star first baseman, they just deserve the MVP, no matter how good or how bad they field, no matter how good any competition at any other position. Those two are, of course, shortstop and catcher.
Mauer is having that kind of season. Put Mauer at first base on any team in the AL and that team instantly gets better offensively. Put him at first base on any team in baseball except St. Louis and that team gets better offensively. Put him at DH for any team in baseball and that team gets better offensively. And he’s playing catcher.
Jeter is not having that kind of season. Jeter’s raw numbers are not better than many first basemen. I give him total props for playing shortstop, for being the team captain on one of the most successful teams around, for being a smart if not brilliant player. He does all the little things well.
And so, civilly to Mr. Rosenthal, yes, Jeter’s a fine candidate for MVP. He is the best player (by stathead measurements, sOPS+) on the team with the best record in baseball. What’s more, he has never won an MVP and he has been a long and consistent winner for the Yankees, who I believe have the best WL record in the AL since Jeter came up. If Jeter gets a sympathy makeup vote because he’s old and deserves an MVP, I can understand it.
But Joe Mauer plays an ever harder position. Joe Mauer is leading the league in OBP and SP and OPS and OPS+ while playing the most difficult position. Catchers have the shortest shelf life of any defensive position. They have the worst best offensive seasons of any position (although third base, surprisingly, is in that mix). At no other position are you expected to be a tackling dummy, the first chest protector for the home plate umpire, or to even wear so much protective gear. They call that gear the tools of ignorance because, and lets face it, you have to be stupid to want to let all those foul balls bounce off you.
Mauer’s season is very close to the best season ever for a catcher. Sure, he has lots of games at DH. But so did Mike Piazza, the only catcher with (IMO) a better season during the DH era, and Piazza mostly only got to DH during interleague play. When you have a guy hitting this well, a smart AL manager give him lots of DH days off for the bruises, the jammed fingers, the aching knees, to get better.
If Mauer was putting up the numbers of any other year of his career, I’d say give the MVP to Jeter. Hate the Yankees (please!) but you have to admit that Jeter’s a great player having a great season at a time when really only one other player is clearly matching him. It’s a perfect time for the old veteran’s MVP, the Andre Dawson MVP, Robin Yount’s second MVP, Willie Stargell’s MVP. Give the beloved old timer an award for body of work.
In other seasons, I’d agree, even though so many great players never earned a body of work MVP. Mike Piazza, for one. Eddie Murray. Dave Winfield. Mel Ott. Hank Greenberg. But the really important thing to earning a body of work MVP is that nobody has a competing season for the ages. In 1979, when Pops and Hernandez split the MVP, I think the MVP was Dave Winfield. He led the league in OPS+, in TB, in IBB, in RBI. He won a GG playing a great RF, bringing far more defensive value to his team. But he was 12 years younger than Stargell, and wasn’t having a season for the ages, so Stargell and Hernandez split the award. Winfield never got one.
Mauer *is* having a season for the ages. A-Rod has had several of them as Jeter’s team mate, and yes, it sucks when you want an MVP but the guy playing to your right is clearly better than you are. So I say, tough luck, Derek; no MVP for you, or at least not this season. Better luck next year. I’d still vote you into the HOF, if I had a vote. But if this turns out to be the Adrian Beltre season in the panoply of Mauer’s career, and he doesn’t get another shot at MVP, it would be a travesty much bigger than Mattingly over Brett & Rickey or Walker over Piazza. Mauer has earned the MVP playing (roughly) 100 games behind the plate.
I hope this is civil enough for Ken Rosenthal.
I want to thank the fine people who wrote here for removing Butthead’s definition of cornhole from my head, and replacing it with something even more innoccuous than cowpie bingo.