A Question About Value in a Losing Effort
Mike Trout isn’t going to win the AL MVP this year either. The Angels are 67-76 and haven’t been in the playoff race for months, and while it’s an individual award, it almost always goes to a player on a playoff team. The argument essentially goes something like this:
It’s not the best player award, it’s the most VALUABLE player award. And the (insert bad team here) would have finished out of the playoffs without him too. Those numbers he put up didn’t actually lead to a winning season, so he can’t be as valuable as (insert other good player on a playoff team), who helped carry his team to the postseason.
Essentially, this argument suggests that there is little or no value to be gained from wins that do not result in postseason berth, or at least playoff contention. The Angels would be the Marlins without Mike Trout, but when discussing MVPs, both teams are just seen as equally lousy, and there is little credit given for the separation created between bad teams. Losing is losing, and it doesn’t really matter what you do if your team doesn’t win.
Here’s my question, though: when using this criteria to determine the MVP, why is this point only valid at the seasonal level? If performance in a losing season has no value, then surely that same theory holds at the game level, right? If a player has a huge game but his team loses, well, they would have lost even if he hadn’t played. At the end of the day, his performance did not change the standings one bit. He might have played well individually, but the value of those contributions was negligible because his team lost.
Carried to its logical conclusion, this theory suggests that MVP candidates should only be considered based on their performance in the games that their teams won. After all, performance in losses didn’t affect their teams overall result, and those hits and runs all turned out to meaningless in the end, so, why would we consider the stats piled up in a losing effort?
Thankfully, Baseball-Reference has this split available in their play index, so we can look at the leaderboard of performances in team wins. Since it’s B-R, we’ll sort by OPS+, so just remember to adjust high OBP guys up a bit and low OBP guys down a bit, since OPS overrates SLG in relation to OBP. Here’s the list of the best AL hitters in winning efforts:
| Player | G | PA | H | 2B | 3B | HR | BB | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | sOPS+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miguel Cabrera | 73 | 326 | 102 | 15 | 1 | 26 | 54 | 0.381 | 0.485 | 0.735 | 1.220 | 193 |
| Chris Davis | 76 | 325 | 96 | 26 | 0 | 32 | 37 | 0.343 | 0.418 | 0.779 | 1.197 | 183 |
| Robinson Cano | 76 | 328 | 99 | 22 | 0 | 20 | 69 | 0.352 | 0.436 | 0.644 | 1.080 | 181 |
| Adrian Beltre | 80 | 353 | 123 | 20 | 0 | 25 | 31 | 0.388 | 0.448 | 0.688 | 1.135 | 172 |
| David Ortiz | 72 | 327 | 97 | 25 | 2 | 16 | 54 | 0.362 | 0.462 | 0.649 | 1.111 | 168 |
| Mike Trout | 66 | 309 | 89 | 15 | 4 | 14 | 48 | 0.352 | 0.456 | 0.609 | 1.065 | 154 |
While Cabrera is trouncing Chris Davis in overall offensive numbers, their numbers in games that resulted in a win are actually very close. Davis has played in three more O’s wins than Cabrera has Tigers wins, and while he has six fewer hits, his distribution of hits have skewed far more towards the impactful side, as he has 11 more doubles and six more home runs. He’s slugging .779 in games the Orioles have won, compared to .735 for Cabrera in Tigers wins. Once you factor in Cabrera’s advantages in singles and walks, he still comes out as the better hitter, but it’s really close, at least in terms of hitting.
If you wanted to do a complete comparison, you’d also want to include defense and baserunning, and Davis probably comes out slightly ahead in both of those. At the very least, the relative performances of Davis and Cabrera in their own team wins would make it a coin flip between the two, since performance in a team’s losses don’t matter, and that’s where the real gap between them comes in. In losses, Cabrera has a .985 OPS, while Davis is just at .816, but since the argument is that there is no value in production that does not result in a win, those numbers should theoretically all be ignored.
As you can probably imagine, I don’t really buy into this line of thinking. I think wins and losses are measures of a team’s overall performance, and the MVP award is a measure of individual value. I do not think that we should give a player MVP credit for the performance of his teammates, which is something he has no control over. And I do not think that performance in losses is worthless, nor do I think that a player on a losing team had minimal value.
But a lot of people believe that argument. Most of the people who have MVP votes believe that argument. That argument is going to be the reason Miguel Cabrera runs away with his second straight MVP award, and Mike Trout probably won’t even finish in the top two. But, I would challenge people who believe that performance in a losing season does not matter to also not consider performance in losing games. If you can’t be valuable on a losing team over 162 games, how can you be valuable on a losing team in a single game? Let’s be consistent. Either performance in wins is the only thing that matters, or overall individual performance matters. Pick one and run with it.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
As an extension of this idea, wouldn’t you still say Cabrera’s contributing less overall to his teams’ wins, given there’s a better team around him in Detroit? Davis is doing far more to keep his team in contention, relatively, than Cabrera is. The Tigers might still be winning the central if Cabrera hadn’t played an inning this year, while the Orioles most certainly wouldn’t be, given their division.
Couldn’t, rather than wouldn’t in first sentence above.
The answer is no, and this is the fundamental point of the development of context-neutral statistics. Win or lose for the Tigs, Cabrera has contributed what he’s contributed. Cabrera (or any player) can only control (some of) what happens when he’s at the plate or when a ball is hit to his side of the IF/shallow OF/foul territory. It doesn’t make sense to judge any player’s overall value based on the circumstances that he doesn’t control.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t good reasons to use context-dependent stats. Quite the opposite. Numbers that rely on context may be helpful to making in-game decisions or off-season signings if a player is truly found to excel in certain situations that a baseball club knows they can repeatedly put that player in. This can help a team find the right player that fits their price range and can have his value maximized if his strengths fit the club’s specific deficiencies.
“It doesn’t make sense to judge any player’s overall value based on the circumstances that he doesn’t control.”
Taken to that logical extreme, it would not make sense to gauge a player on their natural genetic talents (which is clearly out of their control). Obviously, this is a continuum rather than a black and white issue.
For my part, I would be somewhat interested in seeing how well a player hit against good pitching in considering their MVP stats. While it is context, there is a significant difference between piling extra runs onto a bad pitcher compared to scoring a single run against an ace. While we treat “run environment” as being season long, it is actually game-long.
So, while Dave was trying to beat up on a straw man, there is something to be said for examining individual games rather than the season stats. However, the way I would do it would be to adjust the “replacement level” for each game based on the opposition (e.g., aggregate run prevention for those pitchers with that defense). So, basically, you get extra credit for hitting a home run off of 1999 Pedro but reduced credit for hitting one off of 2013 Ryan Dempster.
“, I would be somewhat interested in seeing how well a player hit against good pitching”
Why? Is killing bad pitching and struggling against good pitching somehow less valuable than performing more evenly? I could see some arguments that it might be, but I don’t think its an obvious fact by any means.
could, yes, but the author’s analysis is based on numbers. your conclusion is based on the eye test and how you feel about Cabrera/Davis after watching them play.
I tend to believe the writers are trying to answer the question “Who was the most valuable player in games that mattered?” Obviously not all MVPs have come from pennant winners, but being out of contention does seem to be a disqualifier.
If this is true, then the analogy for any individual game is WPA, which weights performance by “does this plate appearance matter” (aka leverage). Perhaps a “playoff probability added” metric would better capture what the voters appear to be rewarding.
I do agree your philosophical point needs to be brought out. Nothing in the MVP voting instructions requires candidates to play on “successful” teams.
To be even more precise, the MVP would be the player on a team that made the playoffs whose total WPA in winning games was the highest.
Of course, even that wouldn’t be enough. To be really precise, you would need to take the difference between that player and the player who would have taken his place in the number of wins required to reach the playoffs only or something equally ridiculous.
I say, just vote for the best player.
Right. If the measure of value only occurs as it results in teams’ wins, then WPA is the singular stat that should be used to determine the MVP. With WPA, Davis is the winner.
WBT: Wins Below Trout.
being out of contention has no bearing on how well an individual performance is in a win (loss). if the performance contributes to the win, then the win contributes to the total wins approaching “in contention.”
I think you have a very good point. Don’t count losing PERIOD.
and it would have been interesting to run this better MPV selection for last year, just to see if Miggy was #1 then too. This year, it seems Miggys advantage over Davis is due to a lower strikeout rate. I’m also surprised at the missing players that have been mentioned several times for MVP, perhaps a longer list too.
Last year:
Cabrera in Tigers’ wins:
34 HR, .365/.425/.719, 169 sOPS+
Trout in Angels’ wins:
21 HR, .366/.433/.653, 158 sOPS+
Add in the fact that Trout was 29/31 in stolen bases and a plus fielder, and he was still the more valuable player.
I hope Trout & Cabrera finish tied in WAR just for everyones heads to explode.
The logic of this is brilliant and something I had never really thought about because winning and losing doesn’t factor into my MVP thinking. It would be more compelling if Cabrera wasn’t also leading the league in OPS+ in wins, but that doesn’t take away from the idea.
There are several counter-arguments that point out pretty clearly how silly it is to say a player isn’t really valuable because his team isn’t making the playoffs anyways.
1. Flip it. If a team wins their division by 10+ games, then they couldn’t possibly have an MVP winner, because they’d have won their division anyways. How valuable is their best player, really? They’d likely be in the same position either way.
2. Play it out further. If a team wins their division by 1 game, then literally every player who helped them win a single game is more valuable than Mike Trout. Because each of them made the difference between making the playoffs and not, whereas Trout did not. Ergo, using this logic, Brandon Inge was more valuable than Mike Trout last season.
Here’s an analogy to consider. We each want to buy something that costs $1. I’ve got a quarter, 8 nickels, and 10 pennies. My “team” of coins is worth 75 cents and falls short of being able to buy the item. You have one dime and 18 nickels. Your “team” is worth $1, and you successfully buy the item.
If your dime more valuable than my quarter simply because it led to a successful item purchase?
This idea has been suggested in the comments over the last several years at least a couple of times, but, though I might be mistaken, I believe no one aggregates player splits just for games their team won (or lost).
Yet, I agree, this is definitely the most logically consistent way to ascertain value. Position players just aren’t very valuable in games their team loses, even if they deserve none of the blame. Pitchers on the other hand, even in losses, take up innings. That has, at the very least, a potential value for future wins.
“This idea has been suggested in the comments over the last several years at least a couple of times, but, though I might be mistaken, I believe no one aggregates player splits just for games their team won (or lost).”
Um, did you stop reading after the first paragraph?
I suppose I did, and negatively voted myself accordingly.
I plussed one THIS comment.
I plussed one tangotiger’s comment for the phrasing “plussed one”.
If I could embiggen the plusses I just gave the above comments, I heartily would.
I fail to understand people’s sanctimony here when they feel as though their favorite player or team didn’t get the respect he deserves in a single post. It was mentioned that Cabrera’s having a better season than he did last year and I think we all know how great he is offensively. As you should know, there’s more to baseball than offense, however, and it’s worthy of mention that Trout is much better defensively (though too many Tigers’ fans dispute that) and much better on the bases which, as you doubtless know, IS NOT factored into wRC+ or wOBA.
Complaints like this get so focused on what they feel is their favorite player or team being slighted that you fail to see the forest for the trees. Read the article as a whole and get a sense of what it says. Is there really any point to nitpicking to the point where you figure out the exact sentence that could have been inserted? If it had been, you’d have found some other source of your indignation.
It isn’t that Tiger fans dispute Trout’s superior defense. It’s that Cabrera’s defense is unduly penalized because he’s filling a team need at third base. Cabrera is a good defensive first baseman and a below average third baseman, and yet he is a quite valuable third baseman because he allows the Tigers to play Prince Fielder at first.
Why stop at games? Why not consider only the hitter’s contribution in innings in which the team scored? Heck, we can go even farther than that. Let’s consider only the hitter’s contribution on plays in which runs scored. Conveniently we already have a stat for that, and it must be the ultimate sabermetric stat for evaluating MVPs, right?
Here’s the leaderboard.
This is what most people already believe.
I strike again!
I can’t decide if this is parody or unintentional self-parody.
Well played. Or not.
first of all, funny comment. I can’t remember where I saw the article, I think it was Joe Posnanski? who did a writeup on the best single game WPA ever and one of them was Art Shamsky’s 3-HR performance back in ’66 or so, where he hit 3 homers all in the 9th inning and after and his team lost. I have no point here, just thought that was awesome.
three homers all after subbing in in the 8th inning. im pretty sure no one has ever hit three home runs in one inning.
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/wpa_discoveries_art_shamsky/
yes, I didn’t say that well, but that’s what I meant.
You said it correctly, Dave, but no matter how well you express yourself, some moron will misinterpret it.
But some of those RBIs were accrued in losses or served only extend their team’s lead, in which case they didn’t matter. That’s why the only true measure of a baseball player is the number of *game-winning* RBIs they have. Further, measuring a team’s success by any metric other than “did they win the World Series?” is meaningless. Who cares about winning one game, or making the playoffs, or winning a pennant? That’s why the only run that matters all season is the one that wins the World Series. Therefore, the MVP should be whoever bats in the winning run in the clinching game of the World Series. Marco Scutaro for 2012 retroactive MVP of both leagues!!!
I think the actual application of the principle would suggest that players only produce value in situations that result in runs, in games their teams win, in seasons where they win the World Series. If you walk and get doubled home, then win the game, then go to the playoffs, then win the World Series, that walk would count. But game-winning runs for non-playoff teams (etc.) would not.
Surely that is enough of a reductio ad absurdum without exaggerating the application of the principle (as Tim and David do)
I propose a new statistic: “World Series victory probability-added.” (WSPA) We’ll do it exactly like WPA, except all probabilities will be based on the probability that their contribution will ultimately culminate in winning the final game of the world series.
To be fair, that would be a pretty cool (if useless) stat.
The problem with this idea is that the people you’re arguing against aren’t using logic to begin with. So using logic to argue against them is a pointless exercise. They’ll just fall back on their beliefs and adjust their argument accordingly.
But yes, as someone who already agrees with you completely anyway, I also agree that this is a sound argument logically.
Yes, it is totally illogical to have a differing opinion on the MVP vote which is by nature undefined in qualifications. Have you looked at the definition of the award? Closed minded much? Let me guess, you believe one political party is always correct too?
The first criterion for voters in the official instructions: “Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.” Combined with the “games played” criterion, that’s 100% WAR, or something like it. So no, the qualifications aren’t “undefined.”
“Essentially, this argument suggests that there is little or no value to be gained from wins that do not result in postseason berth, or at least playoff contention.”
So, could we extend consideration to not only games won, but also close losses? Is losing 2-1 in the 9th, or 3-2 in the 11th analogous to a team remaining in playoff contention long enough to warrant MVP consideration for their top performer?
“Is losing 2-1 in the 9th, or 3-2 in the 11th analogous to a team remaining in playoff contention long enough to warrant MVP consideration for their top performer?”
It wasn’t for Trout last year, whose team narrowly missed the playoffs despite having a better record than the Tigers.
Winning the thing and being a legitimate contender are different things.
Actually, I take that back. There is an easy logical argument against this. A player’s performance in losses matters because if he had performed better his team would have bad a better chance of winning. I guess if you go 4-4 with 4 home runs than it doesn’t apply, but otherwise you can always be better, theoretically.
wut? how is this a logical argument?
Poor performances are the reasons teams lose. It doesn’t make sense to just ignore that a guy went 0-5 and made mistakes in the field just because his team lost…he was a big reason why his team lost and his value should take a hit accordingly.
Look at it this way: Cabrera’s performance is not the determinant in whether the Tigers win or lose, as he performs the same either way.
When Chris Davis performs his best, the Orioles win. When he’s more pedestrian, they lose. Ergo, Davis is more valuable.
@ Alby
I get the logic. My statement wasn’t really meant to apply to Cabrera/Davis more to this method of MVP evaluation in general.
I disagree with Dave’s statement that “performance in a team’s losses don’t matter”. Take James Shields’ last start: 3.2 IP 10 ER 14 H. Since “performance in a team’s losses don’t matter” should we just completely discount that fact that James Shields almost single-handedly cost the Royals the game?
Almost singlehandedley. Almost. The Royals lost the theoretical game 6-2, without the influence of James Shields.
Haha, true point. But that doesn’t account for the fact that the Royals benched half their starting players and brought in one of their worst relievers to pitch 3 innings – all direct results of Shields’ poor outing.
Good job. I’ve tended to think that MVP should incorporate some element of whether or not a team contended or not, but you’ve (largely) convinced me otherwise.
That said, I’ve always like the idea of splitting the award into the Best Player Award and Key Player Award, something more similar to a “coach’s award” for the player that helped their team make the postseason in noteworthy ways. Of course that becomes so subjective, but it does allow for position players to have their own award (Best Player) without a pitcher stealing it with a gaudy win or save total.
Anyhow, what you write makes me think of Andre Dawson, who in 1987 was neither the best player or played for a contender. He was 20th in the NL in WAR that year…among position players only, and his 3.5 fWAR was less than half that of three NL players: Tony Gwynn (7.4), Eric Davis (7.1), and Dale Murphy (7.1).
Dawson was the classic HR-RBI MVP winner (he had 49 and 137 that year, leading the majors in both, I believe). Worst MVP ever? He’s certainly a candidate.
Yes, same year, AL pick was just as bad (George Bell), but at least he played on a 2nd place team.
Dave, you can’t convince some people with logic. Stop it! This award is all about gut feeling.
Not to mention that following Dave’s line of argument would require a lot more thinking and analysis on the part of voters rather than the 30-60 seconds they currently devote to making their decision.
Rob Gordon said it best when he said, “I’ve been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I’ve come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.”
This has nothing to do with logic, the very nature of the award is defined to be open to interpretation. If others choose to have a different interpretation of vague guidelines, it isn’t illogical, its completely valid. No amount of numbers in the world is going to convince someone that the award should be based solely on numbers if they believe the award is not supposed to be decided in that manner.
It’s illogical when you don’t agree with someone’s point of view – welcome to the world of SABRmetrics where there is a growing segment of folks who think there is only one logical way to view things.
Around here, we call them…. FIPsters.
It’s FIP to be sqWARe.
” the very nature of the award is defined to be open to interpretation.”
No, it’s not. It’s very clearly defined.
“Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.”
That’s pretty clear. It’s just that the BWAA has chosen to ignore that, in favor of chosing whoever has the story they deem best.
The Angels won more games than the Tigers last year, so my my objection to the writers’ reasoning is that under that logic Cabrera beat Trout for the MVP because Oakland and Texas were good while the White Sox and Cleveland sucked.
How much of the reason the White Sox and Cleveland sucked is because the Tigers beat the stuffing out of them?
If the O’s do not make the postseason, Mike Trout will be as “valuable” as Chris Davis.
If winning was all that mattered, why not choose as the MVP the WPA leader among the players that made the postseason?
I think this is getting closer. I would say WPA in games that their teams won, for players on playoff teams (WPA/inW/PLA), since all that matters should be your contribution to games won. If you had a great WPA game but your team lost, it didn’t matter, you just padded your own stats. If you were “valuable” you would have saved those hits up for a time when it mattered. So the clutchiness argument goes at least.
The only thing missing to me is some way to incorporate how much cushion the team had. If you are the guy with the highest WPA/inW/PLA, but your team won the division by 15 games, they probably still didn’t need you, so you weren’t that valuable.
But if you were the guy with the second highest WPA/inW/PLA, and your team barely made the playoffs, then you probably had a ton to do with the postseason berth. That guy seems like the real MVP to me, as long as value is defined as contribution to a playoff appearance.
Why the post season? If winning is what matters, we should give it to the guy with the highest WPA on the team that wins the world series.
The thing that frustrates me the most about this argument is that the MVP ballot rules breaks down what they want you to consider, and in particular goes on to define “value.”
“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.”
It says specifically that value is “strength of offense and defense,” and nowhere does it mention anything about contributing to a team’s postseason berth. Any writer who applies such criteria is doing it on their own. Unless of course they want to argue that Trout’s character, disposition, loyalty, and/or effort has been poor.
Huh it also does not mention pitching though you could make the argument that pitching is part of the defense.
I know it’s not your call, Kevin, but what’s the point of rating a player’s value to his team? Why penalize a player who plays on an already good team? Isn’t the goal to find the most valuable player in the league, period?
How can people seriously argue Trout for MVP this year? His season this year is slightly worse then last year while Miggy’s has been slightly better. WAR is a flawed stat that’s always changing how its even formulated. It shouldn’t really even be mentioned in an MVP discussion but stubborn folks around here just like to keep beating their WAR drums and it carries over to mainstream sports media where people take your (fangraph’s) expertise and run with it. Sure Trout is awesome but good god get off his nuts already. Miggy or Davis should win the MVP. Trout will get his just not this year. He wasn’t good enough regardless of what some flawed metric says.
a cursory glance at Trout’s slash line would expose your ignorance in saying that his year is slightly worse, since all three parts of the slash line are better than last year. his BB/K rate is better too.
so get off his nuts.
A cursory glance at his all mighty WAR would say other wise. You WARriors can’t have it both ways….
Have it both ways? You realize Trout leads Miggy in WAR?
You can argue that Trout’s having a worse season if you want, but using WAR to do so sure seems like YOU want to have it both ways.
WAR is cumulative, so since the season’s not over yet, so Trout will almost certainly surpass last year’s 10 WAR.
Even if Trout was “playing worse,” using that to argue that Cabrera should win the MVP is really horrible logic.
WAR is a counting stat you fucking moron..
Have it both ways? I pointed to his slash line not WAR.
You’re the one trying to have it both ways by bring up WAR to begin with just so you can trash it.
I never knew Trout had so many cousins. What snaps inside your brains that makes you want to take a mature adult debate to such a personal level?
Also Trout’s WAR should be higher this year come season’s end. He will have played a month’s worth of additional baseball. Way to latch onto one statement and totally miss the point. That point being these “Trout should be MVP” slappies need to give it a rest. Its old. Its been old. How about give Miguel Cabrera the respect he’s earned instead of simply being argumentative.
I take a simpler approach.
Two outs game on the line who do you want batting when a hit is needed?
Two outs game on the line who do you want in the field when a crucial catch or throw is needed?
Two outs game on the line and your team needs either a stolen base or a runner to go first to third, who do you want on base?
Trout brings more value to more key baseball situations and his hitting isn’t all that behind Miggy though Cabrera is having an awesome offensive season of course.
If you are anti WAR would you not theoretically be pro scout or “fundamentals”? Trout wins with stat heads and Joe Morgan types.
Hs hitting isn’t all that far behind Miggy? As of Aug. 28, it was 20 points in average, 20 points OBP, 200+ points slugging and 20 home runs. I’d say you have to steal a lot of bases and catch a lot of flies to make up for that.
Trout is more than 30 runs better than Cabrera defensively and on the bases. I realize that too many people think defense and base running don’t count, but those people are wrong. Cabrera is 8 runs better than Trout at the plate. 8 vs. 30.
Someone needs to slap me for trying to disagree with you using logic.
No one says defense and base running don’t count. But so do home runs, which I believe are a value underrated by WAR. A home run is at least one run that scores that doesn’t depend on the next player. It’s not just one base better than a triple.
Rhode Scholar right here. Idea, heckova.
A stupid argument to begin with but I’m almost inclined to +1 for WAR drums. Almost.
I’d love to see WAR split based on playoff expectancy. How well a player does when in a playoff hunt (maybe 25-75% of making the playoffs) versus not (75%). That would speak more to the “logic” of counting team wins. A great team can survive without one player, most likely, but a team in the hunt needs all the value it can get.
Y’all, including Dave, are strawmanning it. Players from losing teams HAVE won MVP, including way back in less enlightened days. So a majority of voters have and will vote for a guy despite his team.
If you’re interested in more than intellectually patting yourself on the back, the issue is whether and how much team success should matter. Awhile back Bill James, for one, said it should matter some.
How about RBIs per dollar?
In all due respect, the initial premise is fallacious that the theory about a season applies to a game. Irrational reliance on objective numbers prevents real analysis. What Cabrera does to a lineup over the course of the year, not only when he hits, is not in your equation. As with all newly Lionized Numbers, they fail to take into account that players are humans, not numbers. The notion, for instance, that a walk is a positive for a batter is flawed a great % of the time (in my view it is almost always a negative for a pitcher, except when it is a positive for a pitcher to walk a player in a given situation) and the entire premise of OBP is therefore invalid in my view. BA, RBIs, strikeouts (fewest) to ABs, total bases, ERA, walks to strikeout ratio – the old pre saber numbers, still rule.
Cabrera, Molina, Freeman, Beltre, Cano, McCutcheon, Pedroia, Jay Bruce, Hanley Ramirez, these are your MVP candidates
Are you famaliar with baseball? It appears not.
You really must not watch a lot of baseball, but thanks for opening your statistics textbook to our chapter for the day!
By the way, I’d love to find out which stat measure rates Freddie Freeman more highly than Mike Trout, except maybe height. And I love Freeman.
The stat in question is: Count of the number of D’s, E’s, and F’s in a player’s name.
I’m assuming you’re trolling, as you just said Jay Bruce should be an MVP candidate. But if not, you should probably never comment on baseball ever again.
You think Jay Bruce is better than Votto, Choo, and Latos?
Curiously, all of your MVP candidates play for playoff teams, or at least those (Cano) in the playoff race. It’s bizarre that you don’t include Chris Davis in your list, however.
Wait, the premise of OBP is flawed? Eh? Yeah, I hate having runners on base, too.
Popster, I am with you. Saying that a walk is more valuable than a groundout is fascist!
I think Dave and the Fangraphs community at large, are really overlooking the positive offensive value of outs.
I am not sure why you read Fangraphs
Using the logic you present in this article, only +WPA in wins should be considered (or perhaps positive WS probability added in wins).
performance in losses didn’t affect their teams overall result
A player can make a mistake that turns a near certain win into a loss. (ex. Rasmus on April 9, 2011)
If performance in a losing season has no value
Who argues that a player on a losing team has no value?
Using faulty logic and strawmen is not a good way to debate, and treating people with disagreements like idiots does nothing to prove who is correct.
I agree with you on many things, but the logic in this article is poor. I was surprised last year to see how few people referenced the regular season win totals of the Tigers compared to the Angels in response to the issue of value.
“I was surprised last year to see how few people referenced the regular season win totals of the Tigers compared to the Angels in response to the issue of value.”
Can you explain what this is supposed to mean? The people supporting Trout wouldn’t have tended to reference this, since those people tended to favor context-neutral evaluation. The people favoring Cabrera wouldn’t have tended to mention it because, you know, the Angels actually had more wins. What is the source of your surprise about the lack of references?
The people supporting Trout wouldn’t have tended to reference this, since those people tended to favor context-neutral evaluation.
Maybe so, but I though it was a very effective rebuttle in favor of Trout. It is hard for Cabrera supporters to logically give Cabrera a playoff/context preference over Trout when Trout has no power over the division his team competes against. That point might even get some people to start considering context neutral stats.
Ah, OK, I think I see what you’re saying now. I think in the end the team success thing is actually a pretty minor part of this debate; many fans just don’t think defense/baserunning can make up any gap in hitting value, and either don’t believe in park adjustments or refuse to believe that Comerica is now a hitters’ park – just my two cents.
It’s not a strawman because Dave is not actually saying that there are people who say X. He’s saying if you extend the apparent logic in considering how a team does in MVP voting to its conclusion, this is where you get to. It’s a way of examining the logic, not of arguing with an individual statement.
And even though it was mostly a thought experiment, I actually like it. It seems like a step towards an objective measure of “value,” as that term has come to be used in the MVP vote.
As for your negative WPA in losses, I think that’s actually a decent measure for LVP. But if your team makes the playoffs (and those are the only players we are considering) then what an individual player did in the losses doesn’t matter, because the losses didn’t keep them out of the playoffs.
He’s saying if you extend the apparent logic
When he does this, he misrepresents the base logic (i.e. creates a strawman), and then he uses other (valid) logic to extend that strawman.
It doesn’t look like he misrepresents the basic logic to me.
a) There are people who vote for MVP who consider whether a player was on a playoff team or not.
b) This suggests that to be “valuable” means that, in most cases, you must have contributed to a playoff berth.
That seems straightforward to me. I think a ton of people would agree with that logic (I might be one of them) and that it isn’t a strawman argument.
From there:
c) Only wins contribute to playoff berths.
d) Performance in team losses does not increase “value” as defined by MVP voters.
So I guess I’m missing where the terrible misrepresentation happened or why this turned into old vs. new again.
@jac: I would say he does misrepresent the logic. Basically no one says that a player MUST come from a playoff team, though many people give extra weight to a player whose team was at least in contention. To me, their logic is along the lines of “A player whose contributions bring a team into (or close to) a playoff berth.” Dave greatly exaggerates this to make a point, which is fine.
If you use that logic, which is closer to what people actually use, performance in losses still matters. However, performance in blowouts or games where the WPA was on a fairly steady slope downward would not matter. That’s a vast difference from what Dave presents.
Sorry, WP, not WPA (just raw win probability).
The logic in the article is solid. That you find it absurd (which, to a degree, it is) only helps to illustrate the absurdity of only counting performances on playoff teams as being valuable.
The logic following his assumption is valid. The assumption is not.
If performance in a losing season has no value
This is the base of his logic in the article. Plenty of people might argue that performance in a loss (or at the end of a blowout) has less value than performance in a non-blowout win. I have never seen an argument saying that performance would have no value.
As I said above, using the article’s logic leads to WPA being the preferred stat. (Ideally, WPA would split better between hitting, pitching, fielding, etc. and include opponent quality.)
Lost in this analysis (such as it is) is any reference to the business side, i.e., putting fans in the seats. In the real world, it is the business side that ultimately connects with “value” as opposed to “performance.”
If a business puts some incredibly sexy product on the market, but the product fails to sell and the business goes broke, the value of that product to the business and its stockholders is zero, no matter how many wonderful features it has. No modern MLB team is going to go out of business owing to lack of fans, the way a real-world business will if it lacks customers, although some did in the early days of the game. Still, any decent owner (I except Loria from this by using the “decent” qualifier…) wants the seats filled, and that is generally conceded to be best achieved by winning and making the post season rather than by the individual exploits of even a very great player. This is one of the foundations of the “we could have finished last without you” school of MVP voting, and I think there’s a point to it. It’s testable, though. Rather than simply fill an article with snark to demonstrate how right you are, how about doing that test?
The thing is, the argument is that Trout *did* do more to contribute to winning and making the postseason than Miggy; the difference is that Miggy’s teammates did more to contribute to winning and making the postseason than Trout’s. The Tigers might be drawing tons of fans, but if their team was Miggy and a bunch of shitty players, they probably wouldn’t be.
And Miggy wouldn’t be getting as many MVP votes in that latter case, either, which is the point.
That’s undoubtedly true. It’s also true that Miggy is exactly the same player in either case. To be honest, as long as the people voting Miggy for MVP are willing to admit that part of the reason they’re doing so has nothing at all to do with Miggy or Trout, I wouldn’t really take issue with them; I wouldn’t see the point of doing that, but as long as they acknowledge that’s what they’re doing, whatever.
Shouldn’t any player on a team with large lead also be disqualified? Nobody on the Braves or Dodgers are good enough to eliminate their lead.
Absolutely. If the Tigers are able to stretch out their lead to 8 or 9 games, Cabrera should be eliminated from consideration.
Has anyone run a regression with stats and team win percentaget involved to over the past 25 (or more) MVP winners in both leagues to find out exactly which stats are carrying the most weight in MVP voting. As a starting point, it would be good to know this. -J
Classic strawman argument. I assume that the writers/readers of this website are generally of above-average intelligence (not talking about myself, not that arrogant), and that they should know that this is clearly stretching the argument to its limits because your being pouty over ppl not agreeing with your point of view.
The parenthetical “not talking about myself, not that arrogant” – super arrogant.
I knew there was no way to say that without sounding like a douche, i was trying to lead with a compliment, but since i myself am reading the site it was just gonna make it seem like i was talkign about myself..
why is it so terrible to extent someone else’s logic? People are responding to this post like it was a hit piece, but that’s not how I read it at all. I actually like the idea. The post seems like a decent bridge building exercise actually.
I would go with WPA instead of offensive performance in wins, but I think fangraphs should start tracking something like this next year. An MVP indicator.
“[C]learly stretching the argument to its limits” is not the same as attacking a strawman. In fact, “clearly stretching the argument to its limits” is actually another argument form called a reductio ad absurdum (a reduction to absurdity). This is a valid argument type.
Basically, it goes as follows: You assert A. Someone notes that if A is true, then B must be true. But, they also assert that B is clearly false or is absurd to believe. Thus, we must reject A.
This is what Dave did.
The problem being that the original proposition was basically a strawman before he reduced to absurdity. I have yet to hear a person actually voice that they would NEVER consider a player for MVP unless their team made the playoffs. If they say, “You should downgrade a player by 5% if his team doesn’t make the playoffs” and he bases an argument on what it looks like when you downgrade them by 100%, that’s not reduction, that’s a strawman. That’s the difference between saying that politicians should take a 5% pay cut versus working for free.
It’s not hard to get to absurdity when you start with absurdity in the first place. It’s still an interesting exercise and raises some good discussion, but the devil is in the initial assumptions.
I have yet to hear a person actually voice that they would NEVER consider a player for MVP unless their team made the playoffs.
I believe a beat writer in here in DFW named Evan Grant got in a twitter arguement with Brandon McCarthy over this. Grant said that he would not consider someone on a non-playoff team (not even a losing team, but a NON PLAYOFF team) for his first place vote. I don’t follow beat writers from around the nation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are plenty of others just like him.
Grant, for the record, was the guy that voted Michael Young 2011 AL MVP.
If it’s all about getting to the playoffs, why not consider salary? Surely a young, underpriced player is more valuable than a guy using up $20 million or more of a team’s budget, since the young player’s team can afford to spend more to get them over the top. The MVP should a lot of times be the player providing the most bang for his contending team’s bucks.
Or we could just do our best to figure out who the best player is, disregard the the performance of those around him, and give him the award.
Except that the salary cap isn’t all that relevant today; the Tigers, Yankees, and Red Sox consistently disregard it. Cabrera isn’t eating (at least not figuratively) into what the Tigers can spend on other players, so salary is irrelevant toward the discussion.
You don’t consider salary because, despite the name, the MVP award is not really about “value.” It’s about performance, unless the best performance comes from a team whose other players underperformed.
Well, I meant that to be tongue-in-cheek, but I guess it didn’t work.
I think when you enter the BBWAA you should have to write down your criteria for what “valuable” means. If can be something silly, but you have to be consistent. Last year, Morosi (just an example)said Cabrera was the MVP in part because he played better down the stretch. Trout is leaps and bounds better in the second half, so Morosi should be required to support Trout this year.
Doesn’t bother me that much when someone has a silly method as much as it does when they decide on an answer and then come up with the justification.
I think voters vote for the “story” they like the best. Team success is important only in so much as winning teams (and thus players on winning teams) are featured more prominently in the overall narrative of the season. If Chris Davis hit 62 home runs this season I bet he would win the MVP even if the Orioles don’t make the playoffs, because the story of breaking Maris’ “real” home run record would’ve trumped the his team’s failures.
If you don’t like this, make your own MVP Award and start spreading the word. (Fangraphs has their own end-of-the-season awards, right?) If people like your selections better than MLB’s then they will become the standard. There are a lot of MLB Awards nobody cares about (Quick, who was the NL Silver Slugger at shortstop last season?). Gold Glove Awards, for example, seem to be slowly losing relevance, and more and more people are favoring the Fielding Bible Award.
Exactly. I personally don’t care who baseball writers vote for, but players do, often because they get bonuses based on writers’ awards.
Me!!!
What about pre-season expectations? Should they be used to evaluate MVP candidates?
For example; Team A is predicted to suck before the season starts because they have one above average player, some average players, a bunch of fill ins and a low team payroll while Team B is expected to not only have a winning record but also be a Play Off contender because they have a couple of above average players, a bunch of average players and a higher team payroll. What happens when Team A competes until the end of the season and their above average player performs as well as Team B’s above average player?
What I am referencing is Adrian Gonzalez and the Padres versus Joey Votto and the Reds in 2010.
To restate the argument given above… where the Tigers would be without Cabrera’s 7.3 Wins Above Replacement is a much different place than where the Angels would be without Trout’s 9.8. Therefore, even though Trout has a bigger impact on his team’s overall win%, Cabrera is more valuable.
The problem that sabermetricians refuse to acknowledge is that these advanced metrics are measurements of hypotheticals and are meant to counter the situational advantages that certain players have. That’s all well and good if we’re arguing about BEST player – Trout is clearly the best player. He doesn’t get as many RBIs because of his spot in the lineup, is capable of changing the game with his defense, etc. However, the MVP never has been about who the best player is, it’s about who the most valuable is, and that’s subjective. Sabermetricians, of course, hate ambiguity and keep lying to themselves about the nature of the award, breaking every aspect of the game down until it’s just a bunch of digits; “I can prove my point with these numbers… I can prove you wrong with these other ones.” But there’s a reason the MVP is given by the Baseball WRITERS Association – it’s as much about the story and the narrative as anything else. The subjectivity and ambiguity and all of the emotional components are BUILT RIGHT INTO THE AWARD CRITERIA. Sabermetrics doesn’t “get it” because the whole field is trying to give an award based on their interpretation, which is obviously going to vary from that of writers – who by their nature prefer the story over the numbers.
It’s not consistent. It’s not always logical. It’s not supposed to be cut-and-dried, existing outside the narrative. It’s all ABOUT the narrative. And Cabby’s chase for another triple crown (as reduced in importance as people want to make it out to be), combined with his team’s chase for the playoffs, is a more interesting narrative than Trout hitting well and playing good defense for a lousy, underperforming team. If you don’t like it, then come up with your own award – it’s not like the BBWA has a monopoly on MVP awards.
Oh, oh, oh, now do this for the LVP! Players that contributed the least in their team’s losses. If they stunk it up, but their team won anyway, who cares? If the team loses, then there’s a chance someone else could have taken that player’s place and improved upon his performance thereby driving his team to a win.
By the way, regardless of what the statistics say, the answer to, “who is the LVP?” is always Yuniesky Betancourt.
Interestingly, the two best hitters by OPS in team losses(100 PA min) are…Miguel Cabrera (.985) and Mike Trout (.956). Chris Davis is 8th.
Top MVPS as of right now
1. Josh Donaldson
2. Jed Lowrie
3. Bartolo Colon
4. Coco Crisp
5. Miguel Cabrera
6. Max Scherzer
7. Anibal Sanchez
I’ve never understood how the best player could somehow not be the most valuable.
Because most valuable implies that what that player brings to his team is “worth more” than what any other player brings to his team. The concept of “worth more” is the subjective part, and the part that everyone argues about. At least writers acknowledge that the concept of “most valuable” or “best” should have some subjectivity, otherwise what’s the point? Sabermetricians, on the other hand, can’t seem comprehend why someone else would believe differently. It’s that arrogance that leads to a great deal of backlash.
Although, to be fair, there’s a lot of perceived arrogance on both sides. But if you all want to change the nature of the award, it might help if everyone at least acknowledges that there’s value in both ways of looking at this – otherwise both sides are just going to dig in and the writers are going to win because they’re the ones actually doing most of the talking.
I’m glad you’ve decided to lump every sabermetrician together in one group on this issue. I haven’t seen a logical argument that would force the MVP to be on a playoff team. All of these arguments seem to run into walls when you further their logical line of thinking.
For example, would the MVP be the player whose WAR was higher than the amount of games ahead of the playoff deciding win total? If so, then Miguel Cabrera, Max Scherzer, Anibal Sanchez, Josh Donaldson, Jed Lowrie, Bartolo Colon, andCoco Crisp would be the top MVPs. However, it seems like those advocating the MVP on playoff team argument won’t go this far.
If you wanted to combine arguments and say the best player on a playoff team, what would the reasoning behind it? How would it not lead to the scenario I mentioned above?
If there is arrogance on the part of the sabermetricians, it’s because they are trying to use logic while many (although not all) people on the other side aren’t.
The issue I take with what you’re saying is that you’re acting as if the definition of value (“worth more”) is subjective in this case. Certainly, I think there are subtleties where the statistics we currently measure and analyze can’t tell the whole story, and so some subjectivity is a really good way to decide which player is more deserving of MVP when compared with other contenders for the award.
But the definition of what’s “worth more” in baseball is actually pretty clear-cut — the goal of baseball is to win. The way to win is to create runs (or to reward pitching and defense, to prevent the other team from creating runs). There’s not a lot of subjectivity there. It’s something that can be quantitatively analyzed, and sites like FanGraphs, B-Ref, and writers like Tango have done a great job of showing exactly that.
There’s no doubt there are folks in both the “old school” and “stat-geek” communities with bad attitudes. For every arrogant saber proponent that won’t shut up, there’s a complement in the “old school” camp. This is exactly why MLB Network put together that freakin’ show with Brian Kenny and Harold Reynolds.
Your biases are showing. I said nothing about how value is measured. I simply said that I cannot understand how the best player in baseball would not be the most valuable.
This does make me very curious about what would happen if there was an MVP-type of player on a really bad team.
Would Trout win the MVP if he played for the Astros and they had the worst record in the league yet he had a monster 8 WAR season or so?
See 2003, Texas Rangers, ARod. Not quite Houston bad, but still a last place team. The voting is always a balance of statistical performance and team impact. ARod (8.4 bWAR) won that year by a hair over Delgado and Posada (both around 5-6 bWAR, both on winning teams.
Well, being that he’s on a team that’s pretty awful and he isn’t going to win…..
and he’ll be a 10 win player, instead of 8…
But there is at least some competition this year for Trout in Cabrera.
What if Trout was heads above any competition? Would he win the MVP then?
On a side note, this article raised an issue I’ve thought about some. It’s about OPS+ and specifically this:
“Since it’s B-R, we’ll sort by OPS+, so just remember to adjust high OBP guys up a bit and low OBP guys down a bit, since OPS overrates SLG in relation to OBP.”
The point is clear enough about OPS, but OPS+ is actually a really weird number. It’s calculated as (OBP/lgOBP + SLG/lgSLG – 1)/park factor. Why that’s weird is that you could just do (OPS/lgOPS)/park factor, which is actually what I think most people assume it is. I’m going to call the first one the B-R calculation, and the second one the simple calculation.
By taking the percentage twice, and subtracting 1 rather than dividing by 2, OPS+ actually creates an odd double counted percentage. I’m a Reds fan, so here’s a Reds example (GABP park factor is about 1.06).
Votto has a .430/.494/.924 OBP/SLG/OPS. League is .318/.398/.716. So the simple calculation would be (.924/.716)/1.06 = 124. But Votto’s OPS+ isn’t 124, it’s 151. That’s because the B-R calculation is (.430/.318 + .494/.398 – 1)/1.06. Calculating the percentage twice (for OBP and SLG) artificially inflates the number so that it’s not actually a representation of a player’s OPS scaled to league OPS.
So that’s misleading it seems, because that’s what people usually say OPS+ is. But, here’s the good side. By taking the percentage of both OBP and SLG individually, you cancel out a lot of what Dave is talking about in the quote above. Each percentage is scaled to the stat, so the SLG distortion is attenuated. You can see this in another Reds example.
Bruce’s simple calculation OPS+ would be 110, and his B-R OPS+ is 118. If you divide the actual by the B-R, you see that B-R upped him 10% with their calculation. If you do the same for Votto you see that B-R’s way of calculating OPS+ inflated him by 24%.
Bruce is a high slugging guy and so he gets less of a boost from OPS+. Votto is a high OBP guy, so he gets more of a boost.
That’s a long post.
Yes, this is interesting. I’ve noticed this and thought about it myself. You examples illustrate why B-R does this (I imagine). It gets rid of the adding-two-values-of-different-units problem that bothers a lot of people with OPS, by making unitless percentages and adding them.
However, OPS+ still treats OBP and SLG as being the same when we know that OBP is more important to run creation than SLG. So Dave’s point is still valid.
So, Mike Trout is actually the Least Valuable Player this season. His team has no chance at the playoffs and has been out of contention for some time, so his WAR is not contributing to a playoff race and being able to sell that race to the fans to get more tickets sold. So, his WAR is wasted from a business perspective for generating more ticket sales, plus his Major League leading WAR is keeping the Angels from getting a higher draft pick than they would get with a replacement player. Without Trout, the Angels easily get into the top 10 which would be a protected pick if they go after a Free Agent tied to draft pick compensation and could realistically be looking at a fight with the White Sox for the 3rd overall pick.
Mike Trout is going to accumulate over 10 WAR in 2013 for the Angels, the greatest age 21 season in baseball history and the Angels would have been better off with a replacement player. Trout for LVP.
not true. i tune into angel games to see trout. if he wasn’t playing for them their ratings and attendance would be way lower
Worst OPS+ in losses:
BJ Upton (5)
Martin Maldonaldo (9)
Pete Kozma (10)
Some people have mentioned the straw man in the article, it’s right here:
“Carried to its logical conclusion, this theory suggests that MVP candidates should only be considered based on their performance in the games that their teams won”
Dave, you’re making a mockery of the people who think team performance should be a part of MVP criteria by giving us a weird, context specific stat and implicitly saying “see, look how silly that is”.
If you don’t think team performance should count, just come out and say it. But like it or not, team
context is part of the narrative of baseball.
This whole argument keeps revolving around the same tired proble
of “Most Valuable” being such a nebulous term. Intruigingly, because there is no precise definition there can never be a single correct answer, which means it is impossible for sabermetrics to quantify something like “MVP” points.
In a way, MVP is sort of meaningless. It seems to essentially measure what baseball writers think was the most impactful player that season. This correlates strongly with individual performance (WAR, if you will). Also wPa.
Here’s be a real fun project for someone: take a bevy of stats, both context-neutral and context dependent, and for both team and individual stats, and reverse engineer a model of what stats most closely line up with MVP votes. That will tell you what the award really means.
The history of the MVP award points clearly to “on a winning team” has had influence on who wins. Isn’t there a Hank Aaron award for the best player?
Maybe the MVP should be the best player on a team that wins, and give the best offensive or overall player another type of award?
Illogical constructs assessed by logic. The Cy Young for pitchers, the MVP for position players, both the highest award for the yin and yang of baseball. Both are based upon the inevitably flawed assessments of baseball writers given an imprecise and different set of parameters for each award.
Dave is arguing for a precise definition, actually for his definition or those of like mind. I have no problem with that, except that there should be a different set of awards to reflect the way baseball is assessed these days versus formerly.
The idea for a separate award for each league has eroded with divisional and interleague play and is now suited better to context-neutral comparison. Baseball is not the same as when these awards were instituted.
Earlier someone referred to Bill James believing that impact on the pennant race should be a factor. Cabrera has been about a 7.5 win player the last 2 years. Trout about 10. The Tigers would have finished 4 games back of the White Sox in 2012 and would be trailing the Indians by 3-4 this year. Trout’s team would be 26 out instead of 16. Therefore, It is my belief that there should be some context-specific analysis factored into the debate. After all the game is about winning and who really cares how valuable a player is on a really bad team. The best player award is something completely different in my mind. Sorry if you don’t see it that way.
Would the MVP just be the player whose War, when taken away, puts them the most amount of games behind the next-closest playoff team? Because then, either Longoria, Chris Davis, or Shane Victorino should the MVPs (depending on which team wins the AL East).
The hazard of that would be that if you have a 10 WAR player on a team that finishes 11 games ahead of the next-closest competition, then he doesn’t get considered…
Exactly. That’s why I’m saying that logic is faulty.
Change it from most valuable player to most outstanding player. Problem solved; Trout wins. If we are going by most valuable, and according to everyone wins are the only thing that is valuable, shouldnt the leader in WAR automatically receive the award?
Is the MVP for the best player in the league, or the player who had the best season?
I don’t think either of these is a bad way to think, but let me explain the latter.
Let’s say you’re watching a D-backs game. That day, Paul Goldschmidt goes 1 for 5 with a single. Willie Bloomquist goes 3 for 4 with two homers, a double and a walk. Willie gets player of the game. This makes sense. He’s definitely NOT the best player in the game (in which case, Goldy would just get it every day) but he had a better game THAT day.
We sabr types tend to frown on RBIs and wins because they aren’t great stats for measuring an individual’s abilities. But they are still accomplishments, even if not everyone had the same opportunities for them. We like our sabr stats since indeed, they are better at evaluating a player’s true skill in the present and going forward, but the MVP is about things that already happened.
I suppose I’m arguing for giving players credit for things outside their control, in which case I could extend this further and become a “if they’re not on a playoff team, how valuable can they be?” person. I’m not. But I’m just saying that there is maybe a difference between being the best player and having the best season (which takes into account accomplishments that are somewhat luck-based like RBI). That second one maybe isn’t super crazy as a way to think about MVP.
I’m not convinced. You have to either use context or not. I haven’t seen a logical argument that uses both. Why would you use RBI out of context, but not the team’s record? If you wanted to say the player with the most accomplishments, then I don’t see how value (in terms of value to your team making the playoffs or in terms of the most value in general) fits into that at all.
If you use context, then you would have to consider the player’s value to a team versus their ability to make the playoffs. You couldn’t choose one or the other. This would allow you to use RBI, R, W, etc.
If you don’t use context, then you can’t consider RBI, etc.
“l? If performance in a losing season has no value,”
My issue with the whole “only winners can be MVPs thing” is that if you take it to it’s furthest level, then nobody but the World Series winning team should have a shot, and everyone on that team who has WAR greater than the difference between them and the next best team has equal claim, IE, “if I wasn’t on this team, the other team would have won”.
It essentially trivializes the whole thing.
Also, letting people who tell stories for a living, and care about the narrative more than the facts decide on awards is a terrible idea (Sports journalists aren’t real journalists, they’re story tellers)
Baseball analysts are too obsessed with “true talent” and can’t acknowledge that value is necessarily contextual. If a player, by pure happenstance, ends up in more situations with more leverage (such as runners in scoring position, or trailing slightly late, so on) then they are necessarily providing more value by cashing in on more potential. There is, in a sense, more raw potential value that has been assigned to them by fate. Just as a player might find himself in situations where he has little opportunity to provide value by reasons outside his control.
One ought to give credit to players who are able to perform within those contexts, not because we’re properly weighing the player but because we’re properly weighing the context and its relative importance. These differences in potential value may not be predictable but it is more or less accepted that it occurs. It’s a function of baseball. Knowing that this happens, it’s much more important to have the quality player filling those roles than a marginal player, since a marginal player’s production is comparatively much worse than if he were getting the same production in lower-leverage situations.
Chris Davis may not be the best player in the AL, but if he has made the largest practical difference between himself and a so-called “replacement level” alternative then he has indeed been the most valuable player. In my opinion the term “valuable” should not only consider the context of the team but of contract as well. As good as Cabrera’s production has been it’s understood that any mammoth contract is going to inhibit the ability to improve the team in other ways. A large contract is, it should be understood, a hindrance to a team. In my opinion, the awards ought to be split into simply “Most Valuable” and “Best Individual Performance”
I think there’s actually a logical argument to be made here.
Let’s say your a GM and you’re trying to decide how much to pay for a free agent, and your team is on the cusp of contention, lets say an 85 wins, and 95 wins is a likely playoff spot. The difference between playoff contention and non-contention is huge, financially. Thus, the closer one player gets you to the playoffs, the more valuable he is to your franchise, and the more money you should be willing to pay him. So if Mike Trout and his 10 wins magically becomes available, Trout putting you over that hump to likely playoff contention is more monetarily valuable than if your team would win 65 games without him and now wins 75. That taken into account, I think there’s room for a metric that takes into account the value a player has to his particular team ( a function of %of Team WAR and closeness to 95 wins), which determines not how good Mike Trout is at baseball, but how more valuable the franchise is for his presence.
In other words, we can ask two different questions about a player’s value, which have two different answers. We could ask, what did he contribute to his team, which is basically, how good of a baseball player was he, which leads to WAR and other metrics of the sort. Or we could ask where would his team be without him and then evaluate in the way that I described. The former definition seeks to remove context and evaluate the player as an individual by solely looking at the areas under his direct control, the latter seeks to put the players accomplishments in the context of his team, even though it takes into account factors beyond that one player’s control.
This isn’t about penalizing a player for playing on a good team (or a bad team) but rather recognizing the context of their accomplishments. Most of the time, it makes sense to decontextualize and put everyone on a level playing field, because it isolates individual accomplishment from non-controllable factors. What I’m arguing is that sometimes it also makes sense to place things back into that context, when we’re trying to evaluate what has already happened within that context.
Excerpts from this article were just used on MLB Now. Brian Kenny isn’t on today, so nobody was there to explain that this argument was just an exercise in consistent thinking.
Also, it would be interesting if Miguel Cabrera continues to struggle during the next couple weeks. Then analysts wouldn’t be able to use the argument that he “carried the Tigers to the playoffs when it mattered most.”