Ellsbury’s MVP Candidacy: Not That Uncommon
When we think of the prototypical Most Valuable Player, we think of a burly first baseman who slugs forty homers. But that’s not always the case, not in terms of sabremetric thinking, and not for the Baseball Writers Association of America either. Jacoby Ellsbury as MVP candidate isn’t a figment of the interwebs’ imagination — there are several players who won that have a similar profile as Ellsbury.
The first comp that comes to mind is Jimmy Rollins’ 2007 season. In ’07, Rollins put up some gawdy counting statistics as the Phillies’ leadoff hitter — 30 homers, 38 doubles, 20 triples and 41 steals. He was able to put a lot of them up in part because he stayed healthy all season, logging 778 plate appearances, a figure he didn’t top before ’07 and likely never will again. Overall, he had a .378 wOBA.
Ellsbury’s 2011 numbers, in a down offensive season, either compare favorably to or trump those of Rollins. Along with Rollins, Ellsbury has become one of just 10 players with at least 25 homers, 40 doubles and 35 steals in a single season. Oddly, Ellsbury only has four triples, which would represent a full-season low — he rattled 10 triples into Fenway’s nooks and crannies in 2009, and seven the year before. But overall, Ellsbury has Rollins beat — his .397 wOBA and 8.2 WAR easily surpass Rollins’ totals.
They also trump the numbers his teammate Dustin Pedroia put up in his 2008 MVP season. That season, Pedroia lasered his way to a .382 wOBA, led the American League with 54 doubles and tied Ichiro Suzuki for the league-lead with 213 hits. And while second base is noted as a tougher position on the defensive spectrum than is center field, and Pedroia did win a Gold Glove that season, his ’08 season can’t match Ellsbury at the dish. Pedroia hit .326/.376/.493. That is an incredibly similar line to Barry Larkin’s triple-slash output in 1995, when he hit .319/.394/.492. Ellsbury is essentially hitting the same as both of those guys, but with a turbo shot of power — .317/.376/.533. Larkin’s ’95 does have a slight edge over Ellsbury in wOBA — .405 to Ellsbury’s aforementioned .397.
Looking at the triple-slash numbers, an MVP campaign that gets a little closer to Ellsbury is Robin Yount in 1989. That season, Yount hit .318/.384/.511, nearly identical to Ellsbury. That year, Yount hit 21 taters, 46 tater tots (or doubles) and swiped 19 bags, so he didn’t quite have Ellsbury’s speed, but he was efficient, as he was only caught three times. Yount’s ’89 is also a good comparison in that by this point in his career, he had moved off of shortstop and was manning center field for the Brew Crew. Yount never won any plaudits for his fielding in center though, and Total Zone actually has him at -14 that season, which was his tied for his second-worst year in center. Contrast that to Ellsbury, who Total Zone has at +5 this season, and is tops among center fielders in UZR, and third in DRS.
There are other MVP seasons that are kind-of-sort-of similar to Ellsbury — Willie McGee hit for less homers, a higher average and swiped more bags in 1985, but he was a center fielder and his .398 wOBA is just about identical to Ellsbury. Dale Murphy’s 1982 HR and SB totals are nearly the inverse of Ellsbury’s, and Murphy played a fair amount of left field that season, but his .281/.378/.507 line wasn’t that far off, nor was his .389 wOBA.
For comparison’s sake, let’s take a look at how other up-the-middle MVPs in the past 30 years compare with Ellsbury in terms of wRC+. Since wRC+ is park and league adjusted, it makes comparisons across years a little smoother:
| Player | Season | wRC+ |
| Robin Yount | 1982 | 167 |
| Willie McGee | 1985 | 157 |
| Cal Ripken | 1991 | 156 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 2003 | 153 |
| Robin Yount | 1989 | 152 |
| Jacoby Ellsbury | 2011 | 149 |
| Barry Larkin | 1995 | 146 |
| Dale Murphy | 1982 | 145 |
| Cal Ripken | 1983 | 143 |
| Dustin Pedroia | 2008 | 131 |
| Miguel Tejada | 2002 | 130 |
| Jimmy Rollins | 2007 | 123 |
All MVP seasons, and Ellsbury ranks smack dab in the middle. In the interest of completeness, I should point out that the BBWAA doesn’t alway recognize the unique blend of power and speed, like 1986, when Rickey Henderson hit 28 homers, stole 87 bases, finished seventh in baseball with 6.9 WAR, was on a Yankees team that finished second and won 90 games…and got zero MVP votes. But for every snub, there is a Pedroia or a Yount or a McGee that did win.
Ellsbury also isn’t suffering from a lack of hype, which never hurts. In his excellent column earlier this afternoon, Ken Rosenthal deemed him one of his elite eight. But at the end of the day, whether voters focus on the simple or the sabremetric, the point is that we’ve seen a season like Ellsbury’s 2011 season take home the MVP before. Don’t be surprised if it happens again.
Paul Swydan used to be the managing editor of The Hardball Times, a writer and editor for FanGraphs and a writer for Boston.com and The Boston Globe. Now, he owns The Silver Unicorn Bookstore, an independent bookstore in Acton, Mass. Follow him on Twitter @Swydan. Follow the store @SilUnicornActon.
Full disclosure: bitter mets fan alert.
If the Mets blow two fewer games in 2007, Rollins isn’t an MVP. David Wright probably is.
Or more deservedly, Matt Holliday.
The fuck did Holliday deserve it more than Wright?
wright: 9 WAR, holliday 7.7.
I understand there’s some error bars with WAR, but come on.
2007 mets vs 2007 rockies. WAR is not the whole story
Which is just the billionth argument for why team standing shouldn’t factor into an individual award like MVP.
Shouldn’t factor? I dunno about that. It should be a tiebreaker of sorts, it’s just overvalued by most voters.
Definitely would have been Holliday without that Mets meltdown.
Uhh, wright was a 9 win player that year. How does he not win it?
As an opponent of Jacoby, I have no qualms about this.
He would atually be quite a bit more valuable than some of the burly 1st basemen such as a Ryan Howard or a Justin Morneau who’s aggregate value does not exceed that of an obase monster with big defensive skill, while maintaining decent power.
The real question that remains is whether he will be able to take away the award from me.
I am actually putting up the more obscure claim for MVP being a pitcher which is very rare right now. I know that I do not control all factors that go into my wins, but it’s pretty obvious that I am incapable of losing at this point.
Should hopefully be a close race of obscure candidates. If I had a vote (which I should), I would vote for myself.
Realistically, you are not an obstacle. Bautista may be and Granderson sure as hell is, but you’re not. Enjoy your CY.
Ichiro and McGee were the two names that jumped in my head. McGee’s 85 season is very similar to Ichiro’s MVP season. Interesting because both guys have the same plate approach, hit if off the bounce if you have to.
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I’m trying to decide if Ellsbury is good test for me to evaluate how much I value WAR. But, he is also having a much better season that I realized. He’s basically tripled his HR total from past seasons via a HR/FB rate that’s Mauresque (i.e., so out of line with craeer numbers).
He is, literally, very close to the .300-30-100 type seasons that we use to show how good #3 hitters are … AND he’s stolen 36 bases …. AND he’s played great defense.
If this was 10 years ago, PEDs would be the explanation. But, that’s likely not the case now (I’m not saying it is impossible).
For those that watch the Red Sox regularly what is the big difference between Ellsbury 11 and Ellsbury 10, 9, etc?
For me, it’s that he’s squaring more balls up. His nickname amongst my friends who were Red Sox fans used to be “grounder to second.” This year, more of those grounders are line drives. It seems like such a small thing, but sometimes small adjustments like that make a big difference.
“For those that watch the Red Sox regularly what is the big difference between Ellsbury 11 and Ellsbury 10, 9, etc?”
======================================
playing in more than 20 games for starters.
Also people forget that this is only his 3rd full mlb season, so this may be closer to the player he really is than his his ’08 and ’09 seasons
cs3, nobody expected him to have this type of pop. This isn’t a case of someone developing into the player that we thought he’d be – this is a case of him developing beyond any reasonable expectation.
vivalaeter, Ellsbury has always had the ability to drive the ball far and would put on displays in BP. He’s always had power, he’s just now able to utilize it in game.
Without looking at his o-swing %s, it seems like he’s chasing fewer breaking balls in the dirt and really turning on meaty fastballs in the zone. He was more of a slap-hitter in 08-09, and still is to a degree, but really he’s just whacking the crap out of the ball. Tito/Theo have said he always had that HR swing in BP, but never seemed to carry it over into games. I guess he finally has. Also, he’s about to turn 28 on 9/11 (isnt that wierd?) and the last time he was healthy were his 24 and 25 year seasons. Not unreasonable to think he’s developed more strength.
When Ellsbury came up, he had two swings. One that he would use in hitters counts, and one he would use in pitcher’s counts. The pitcher’s count swing was more of a “put the ball in play” sort of swing. The Hitter’s count, a “batting practice swing’.
He’s no longer using the first swing. At all.
As a prospect they thought he’d have good power. He’s finally showing it.
I’m a Sox fan that has followed Ellsbury since he was drafted. I have never, ever seen anywhere that anyone thought he would have good power.
I was mostly curious is he seemed to be buying into the idea that “fast guys need to slap the ball and use their wheels”, and then he figured out that’s pretty much BS and that fast guys can, and do, drive the ball.
PEDs??!?!?! You are so fucking retarded.
I doubt there would be much MVP discussion going on if it weren’t for Granderson’s completely bogus UZR dragging down his WAR.
Baseball-Reference.com uses different defensive metrics in its WAR and Granderson is still sitting at 5.3 WAR (with a -0.3 dWAR) vs. Ellsbury’s 6.8. One defensive metric yeah, but two are showing a down defensive year for the Granderson
Ellsbury has more hits, doubles, steals; better average and K%. I’d say Granderson is better and also more more worthy for the MVP because he’s been carrying NY’s offense all year, but Ellsbury has a strong case.
Better average/better K% means nothing with a worse OBP.
Granderson has more XBH, doubles is irrelevant.
Ellsbury has less runs scored, with less runs created from baserunning while having more steals.
Ellsbury is not leading Granderson in a single useful statistic.
@TomB
Ells OBP – .380, Grandy – .369
Ells Avg – .321, Grandy – .268
So Ells has an 11 point bump in OBP, and a whopping 53 points in AVG. He’s also on the cusp of 30 HR/100RBI/110R/40SB/200H season.
Granderson’s OPS (.932) is only slightly better than Ellsbury’s (.922). Ells with RISP – 1.109 OPS, Grandy with RISP – .840.
Please excuse me if I want my MVP to have a high success rate with RISP. And that’s not to mention that during this final month of the pennant race, Ellsbury is hitting .404/.475/.712. Granderson is hitting .209/.306/.326. Ellsbury does it when it counts. Granderson is folding when it counts.
UZR, DRS, and TZL all give him poor marks this year.
All the defensive metrics show Granderson down.
The simplest explanation is that he just hasn’t been very good this year.
The simplest explanation is that he makes no OOZ plays because he is surrounded by a short right field and the fastest OF in the game.
Also… here’s something I don’t understand. Grandersons UZR breakdown stats were worse last year and he was worth +8 runs. This year better stats are giving him -7 runs.
Something doesn’t smell right.
@TomB – And I guess LF at Fenway is really deep, and Carl Crawford is really slow??
That’s a good argument you got…
A few days later: Ellsbury now has a higher wOBA than Granderson, so your assertion is, well, a little outdated.
For seriouslies, did you really need to link to an article that says the defensive spectrum is C, 1B, 2B, ss, 3B, LF, OF, CF?
He wouldn’t if it was easier to find articles here that are more than a couple of days old.
Umm that isn’t the order of the defensive spectrum so I guess they do need it.
He linked to an article that says the defensive spectrum is “DH–1B–LF–RF–3B–CF–2B–SS.”
bautista still deserves it. And if grandersons UZR wasnt so messed up, he would be right there too.
Why does Bautista deserve it?
There’s pretty much no valid argument anymore that shows Bautista being the most valuable player in baseball.
I remember when people used to discount first half performance and overvalue late season performance. It seems like some people (mostly fangraphs commentors) decided Bautista wrapped up the award in May and stopped watching baseball since. I think a lot of people were trying to lash out at the MSM, deciding Bautista wouldn’t get it solely because of the team he played for, and started bitching real early. Bautista is still right in the conversation, but people act as if he’s the runaway choice which is dead wrong..and it has less to do with him being on the Blue Jays, and more to do with other players like Ellsbury catching up. People can say whatever they want about the defensive metrics, but is anyone trying to argue Bautista has been nearly as valuable as Ellsbury defensively? Bautista has been the better offensive producer, but not by so much that the defensive value is completely void, as a lot of people would claim. It isn’t the offensive player of the year award.
bWAR? (which has a 1.2 win gap between Batista and Ellsbury)
RC – I get that you need to talk up all things Red Soxand you are plugging your guy… but how can you say there is no valid argument?
Given the inherent variability in some of the defensive #’s over 1 year samples… to solely relyon fWAR and there’s no valid argument is a bit absurd.
I don’t think Batista is as clear cut a choice, but if you use more than a 1 year UZR to rate defense, he’s still the leader.
Bautista’s WAR isn’t inflated by a UZR that requires regression?
Sounds like a valid argument to me.
“Bautista’s WAR isn’t inflated by a UZR that requires regression?”
Sure his is.
The thing is, Bautista had about 6 WAR by June. He’s been signficantly worse since.
Earlier in the season, Bautista was clearly the best player in baseball, and the question was if him playing for a shitty team would keep him from getting it. Now hes no longer clearly the best player, and the guy who is in closes competition plays for a team thats in a tight division race, in the best division in baseball.
neither Pedroia or Rollins dereseved it, but thats another point in his favor, he’s a red sox
Using a yearly UZR as part of WAR is ridiculous!
We are always talking about using 3 year averages to get rid of the wild fluctuations in UZR. Why does a single season UZR get used?
We all know UZR isn’t perfect, Ellsbury is the perfect case. His three full major league UZRs: 21.8, -9.7, 15.8. Granderson also has fluctuated between -11.1 and 15.1 in his career.
Career UZR/150: Grandy 3.3 Ellsbury 10.1
Granderson most likely isn’t as good defensively as Ellsbury. He is no slouch though.
Grandy has been ~9 runs better offensively than Ellsbury this year; 4 runs with his stick and 5 runs with his wheels (surprising right?)
Is Ellsbury 9 runs better defensively? This is the question we should be asking. Career and 3 yr avg UZR thinks its close.
Conclusion: WAR is still bogus! It should be examined as its three components, like a slash line. Also, a 3yr avg of UZR should always be used next to the current year’s value.
Runs CR/SV Bat Base Running Fielding 3yr UZR/150
Ellsbury 38.5 0.2 15.8 10.1 (career)
Granderson 42.3 5.1 -5.9 -0.4
Bautista 59.2 3.5 -2.1 -3
To make those numbers a bit clearer:
Slash based on runs created or saved
Bat/Bs Run/Fielding, (3yr UZR/150)
38.5/0.2/15.8 (10.1) Ellsbury (1.7 pos. adj.)
42.3/5.1/-5.9 (-0.4) Granderson (2.0)
59.2/3.5/-2.1 (-3.0) Bautista (-4.8)
First of all, the MVP isn’t an award for future projection, it’s past performance. UZR isn’t perfect, but over a full season it pretty much tells you what happened. For you to list Ellsbury’s first three seasons UZR numbers is ironic…list Ellsbury’s HR & Slugging totals the first three years. If he can improve as a hitter so much (for one year), why couldn’t he also have improved as a fielder (for one season). It’s completely possible he’s played over his head this season and it will be an outlier at the end of his career, but completely dismissing it is stupid.
Folks keep saying UZR tells you what happens.. can we stop with that ridiculousness?
It only tells you what happens if the distribution of balls withing each zone is the same as the baseline it is being compared to. When you start dealing with smaller sample, this is no necessarily the case and it moves into “modelled performance” space… a decent model, but as you can tell by year to year fluctuations an imperfect one. When you determine the probability of catching a ball and don’t consider the starting position of the player and assume everyball in a given zone is roughly the same chance of an out you are no longer measuring actual perfromance… you are estimating it. Again a fairly good estimation (especially over large sample sizes where the distribution of balls fielded will come closer to the baselin it is being compared to), but not a direct measurement like folks think it is.
I don’t think anyone is saying dismiss UZR outright but it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. A high UZR may not e outlier performance it may be an easier slice of chances with a given zone or zones and a function of batted ball distribution. Also mixed in this is the pitching staff tendencies… extreme flyball staffs tend to lead to higher OF UZR’s
Folks keep telling you that wOBA/wRC/etc tell you what happened. Can we put away this nonsense?
It only tells you what happens if the distribution of balls within each hit type are the same as the baseline, and that the distribution of balls hit to fielders falls in the baseline.
See how that works? People bitch about UZR fluctuating 20 runs in a season, and don’t seem to have any problem with Ben Zobrist fluctuating 30 runs as a hitter.
Yearly based stats are not equivalent in terms of random noise (or fluctuation)…
The variability of a statistic is more than just the time period of measurement. The strawman of well offensive stats fluctuate too, so might as well treat everything the same is getting ridiculous.
Are the # of measurements in each data set the same?
Is the accuracy of each measurement the same? (this is really the key factor)
Are people really this ignorant as to how UZR works vs how wOBA (or a similar offensive stat works)… do folks know how each individual event is measured and how they differ. Any clue on how armR, errR, dpR work? Yet alone the variability issues with rngR?
I expect the misuse and mischaracterization and ridiculous strawman on the ESPN boards to back the hometown guy, but I expected a little but more sanity at fangraphs
So I understand the position… a 1 year UZR sample has about the same amount of random variablity in it as wOBA (/etc)? So both should be used with the same degree of certainty? Or do we go back to the other strawman of “it’s the best we got so unless you have something better we use it?”
Why does a single season of batting get used? or in other words why would fielding be looked at over a three year period and batting stats not…..of course then you’d be looking at a 3-year MVP right?
The best part is he can’t understand how a guy can put in a great defensive perfomance after being relatively mediocre before that…but he has no problem with understanding how Bautista and Granderson could improve offensively so dramatically after tweaking their approach. I don’t get how people can’t understand guys have good and bad defensive seasons.
Is your argument for the reliability of one statistic vs another based on the time component?
So the key for variability (/error/noise/etc) vs a shift in actual performance in statistics is simply the time range it covers? interesting… I though it might have something to do with the size data set size and the accuracy of each individual measurement… but hey you learn something new every day.
Since both UZR and batting stats cover the same time period we should assume they both have the same level of accuracy….and fluctuations in either stat have the same likelihood of reflecting an actual performance shift vs noise. I did not know that and now will treat one year of any statistic as I do any other…
Aren’t you being a bit sensitive? The premise of the article was never that Ellsbury is more deserving of the MVP than Granderson. The article could’ve very well been about “Grandy’s MVP-candidacy” and it would’ve read almost the exact same way only changing a few numbers and names. I’m guessing the author simply chose Ellsbury because he happened to be leading in WAR atm. Jeez. Cool off.
This isn’t really true. A centerfielder leading the league (or near the lead) in home runs, RBI and runs scored on a first place team screams MVP. On the other hand, Ellsbury’s numbers scream “player having a nice year”. So if you want the player having a nice year to be MVP over the players with more typical MVP seasons you have to make a case for it.
….ironically, the author made the case by comparing Ellsbury to a bunch of form MVPs that didn’t deserve the award either…
So your argument is that UZR is “bogus” because it varies from year-to-year for some players.
Name me a statistic that doesn’t.
Last year all the redsox slappies/fans were saying how ellsbury’s “pie hurt”, and he didn’t have a pair. Now the writer is comparing the rsox “futurehof’er” to rollins season and with typical ignorance and ignoring a Tigers player Granderson who had the same Quad 20 numbers that same season.
Geezus, really I would like to know how many writers at all the baseball blogs and baseball sites are redsox nuthuggers. It’s already a known fact that 90% of the 4 letter sports place writers have redsox blow up dolls.
I don’t remember citing any quad stats. The stat I did cite included stealing at least 35 bases in a season, something that Granderson has never done. Before you insul me, you might want to actually process what I wrote.
He didn’t mention Granderson’s ’07 season because he’s only talking about up-the-middle players who actually won the MVP award and using them as a comparison for a present MVP candidate who plays up the middle. There’s no reason to insult the writer or any of the other Fangraphs writers simply because you don’t like the premise of the article (which apparently you missed).
did you really just write an article where you wrote about how robin yount and barry larkin had slash-lines similar to ellsbury’s this year?
Quick – which of the 2011 AL, 1995 NL, and 1982 AL had the lowest league OPS?
No, he didn’t write an article about that. However, those are some of the relevant facts that he listed in a well-written and interesting article.
Doug DeCinces got multiple MVP votes in 1986.
Doug. DeCinces.
It’s hilarious how every writer who writes something positive about the Red Sox is a Sox “nuthugger” according to Yankees fans.
I don’t care about that, but I do find it funny how UZR is just peachy when they’re using it to prop up Gardner and Swisher, or even the half-crippled ARod. Then, UZR is great. But use it against Granderson, Teixeira and Cano, and all of a sudden, it sucks in the worst kind of way.
I can’t believe you just cited UZR and multiple Yankees and didn’t even touch on Jeter.
That 778 PA figure from Rollins in 2007 still blows my mind. As best I can tell, it’s the most PAs ever in a single season in MLB history. Of course, he had a lot of factors working in his favor: the 162-game schedule has only been around for 50 years, and those Phillies were a very high-scoring team that gave Rollins almost the entirety of the playing time that year, and all at leadoff. But still, goodness gracious.
It is the all-time record. I actually find it shocking that the record would belong to an NL player and be set while the AL has the DH. I guess it means that no high-octane American League offense has had a lead-off hitter who stayed healthy all season while refusing to take a walk and being really good at dodging inside pitches.
It’s plate appearances, not at-bats.
Then again, he did also break the all-time at-bats record in the same year.
It takes so many different little things: perfect health, leading off all season, a manager who doesn’t insist on routine days off, likely the team getting into a decent number of extra innings games, as well as a high powered offense.
Franklin Gutierrez actually leads all CFs in UZR – even without enough playing time to be a qualified player.
The reason single-season UZR is not as reliable as single-season wOBA is because the sample size is so much smaller. It has been said many times on this site that UZR is best taken in a 3 year average because that is the equivalent to 1 season of plate appearances.
What I’m trying to say is… Shut up Sox fans. Using 1 year of UZR is the same as using two months of hitting data. A much larger sample size is needed for it to be statistically significant.
When you say that “UZR is best taken in a 3 year average,” what are you saying it’s best FOR? What the the purpose of taking that three year average? Are you implying that a fielder’s response to balls in play in May 2009 should have some bearing on this player’s 2011 MVP candidacy?
Or are you implying that UZR shouldn’t be used AT ALL to determine one’s value?
Its been shown a number of times and a number of places that UZR stabalizes much quicker than 3 years. In fact, at most positions, its a couple hundred innings.
The whole UZR needs 3 years is an assumption an author made a couple of years ago, and has been parroted as proven truth for years, without any actual analysis being done to prove whether its actually true.
I thought the guy that said that was the guy that developed UZR.
If so, I would hardly refer to him as “some author”.
Cite source.
How bout this? I’ll go through the trouble of citing my source when someone cites a source that actually does some calculations that show UZR needs 3 years to stabalize.
Go ahead, I’m waiting.
Okay. So you just made some shit up like the opposite side?
Retard on retard violence. BIMO.
“Of course, for some metrics, you need more or less data than for other metrics for an equivalent reliability. It depends on the sampling error and the spread in underlying talent, and other things that are inherent in that metric. Most of you are familiar with OPS, on base percentage plus slugging average. That is a very reliable metric even after one season of performance, or around 600 PA. In fact, the year-to-year correlation of OPS for full-time players, somewhat of a proxy for reliability, is almost .7. UZR, in contrast, depending on the position, has a year-to-year correlation of around .5.”
From the UZR primer on this site….
Not sure why you have such an emotional investment in this. Maybe you should actually show some stats/link/actual info if you are going to continue with your strawman of we consider offesnive stats solid, why not UZR. Here’s another key excerpt (again from the UZR primer on this site):
*****
Another issue that often comes up is the significance of consistent or inconsistent year-to-year UZR’s. It is human nature to look at Player A, who has a UZR of -11, +14, and -3 over the last 3 years, and be confused and unsure of that player’s true defensive skills. At the same time, we see Player B, who is +1, 0, and -1, and we feel confident that he is an average defender. Don’t be fooled by these illusions. There is virtually no difference between the two players’ stats. The fact of the matter is that both players have a 3-year UZR average (albeit non-weighted) of zero, and therefore both players are likely around average defenders. It makes very little difference what those yearly samples look like. They are merely 3 arbitrary sub-sets of a 3-year sample of data. Keep in mind I didn’t say that it makes no difference – only that it makes very little difference. If you are uncomfortable treating both of those players the same, then you can weight those 3 years (which is correct to do anyway) using a weighting scheme such as 3/4/5, and then you can ignore those year-to-year “inconsistencies.”
****
I think this is where many people got the 3 year assumption from… although it doesn’t actually say you need 3 years of data, it shows the variability in the stats when the author is saying if the 3 years sums are the same, it “probably” (yes subjective) means the players are roughly the same.
So about the links/data you have on your point of view….
No, it’s certainly not the same, especially in the context of determining who is the MVP for a given season–not for 2 months or 3 years.
A better criticism of fWAR is that it doesn’t include baserunning, a fact I discovered to my horror yesterday when reviewing the definition of WAR by FanGraphs.
It actually has been included (it’s the “bsr’ column)
Of course a 1 year sample of this is possibly even worse than UZR in terms of variability (though the win impact is a typically a lot smaller, so it’s probably not as big a deal)
There are 2 main issues I see:
– bsr basically doesn’t care where the ball was hit just to what fielder… looking at advancement rates without regard to the position of the ball is noisy and has the same inherent problem as UZR… you will need a large sample size so the distribution of batted balls is similar to the baseline it is being compared to
– Context does matter in baserunning… taking an extra base is impacted by the opposing arm in the OF, the score, the # of out, the inning…. down 2 in the 9th is a guy on 3rd tagging on a medium flyball to LF? Does that decision change down 1? Is the decision the same with 0 out vs 1 out? Does the guy on deck impat the decision? Does that decision change if Carl Crawford and his cannon is out there instead of Josh Hamilton? Over a large enough sample this stuff may tend to even out, but within a 1 year sample how many sac flies, 1st to 3rd opportunities are there? Are there enough where a few extra shallow flyballs or deep ones won’t impact the stat or some of the contextual variable won’t mattter?
Its a fucking shame media hasn’t jumped on Ellsbury about PEDs the way they did for Jose Bautista. What a joke.
lol, really?
Or it could be that it was a shame people jumped on Bautista in the first place, and two wrongs don’t make a right.
C’mon guys…. look at my BB’s (21 IBB’s too).
Pitchers are literally scared of me. Terrified.
I should have 10-30 more HR’s.
PS: I have more BB’s than SO’s.
PPS: I hope this doesn’t make Joey Bats sounds cocky.
And thats all wonderful. You’re just a bad fielder in a position way down the defensive spectrum. That counts too.
I’m a Sox fan and Ellsbury has been fantastic this season. Have to admit though, his defense is avg at best. Doesn’t get good jumps on balls and takes basd routes to them. This was never more evident than in recent series against NY. Granderson justr gets to and catches ballS than EllSbury doeSnot. Bautista though is an abSolute liabiliTy defensively and seems to make horible defensive playS every game I see him play.t
I got a question, I know we are talking about it with a 3 year sample size, but if I may go back to 1 year (this year), how is Nick Swisher the best defensive RFer in all of baseball (And how is Ichiro the worst)? Did the computer mix up these 2 players? lol
I haven’t seen much of Ichiro this year, but allow me to say, Nick Swisher at best, is an average defensive right fielder. He can make a good running play here and there but his diving attempts are absolutely terrible and just lead hitters to get more doubles.
Also, perhaps Swisher being the best in UZR in RF and Gardner being the best in LF in UZR makes it seem why Granderon’s UZR is very low? Is it possible for 3 OFer’s on 1 team to all have great UZR’s?
The Arizona Diamondbacks this year.
The Yankees and Red Sox should just start their own league so their fans can just pay attention to those two teams and leave everyone else alone (note: not a criticism of the writer of this article, which is a good article by the way, just a criticism of multiple asshole commenters).
Joey Bats doesn’t care about defense.
Adrian Gonzalez MVP