Explaining Our 2014 Player of the Year Votes

Earlier this afternoon, we announced that Clayton Kershaw was the winner of the 2014 FanGraphs Player of the Year Award. In this post, we have asked each of the 10 FanGraphs authors who received a ballot to explain briefly explain the process they used to reach their conclusions. Their full ballots are included below, followed by that explanation.

Tony Blengino

To compile my FanGraphs Player of the Year ballot, I identified the population of players to be considered by their year-end WAR totals. I started with a working list of 13 or so position players and seven starting pitchers. To that group I added a handful of players not treated very kindly by the WAR calculation process – position players like Jose Altuve and Jose Abreu, and pitchers like Johnny Cueto and Stephen Strasburg.

For this group of 24 players, I made a couple of general adjustments. First, I adjusted their defensive statistics, using a three-year average instead of their actual 2014 data. This might seem a little unorthodox to some, but defensive numbers vary wildly and are much more subjective than batting numbers. I also utilized batted ball data to whatever extent possible to adjust for context.

I went into the process assuming that Clayton Kershaw would be my #1 choice. Upon digging into the batted ball data, however, I was surprised to note how close the call was between Kershaw and Felix Hernandez was for the title of best pitcher. The distance between Mike Trout and my next position player – Andrew McCutchen – was quite a bit greater. Trout obviously has the WAR advantage over Kershaw to begin with, so this fact put Trout over the top for me, despite the fact that he had an “off” year, and actually developed some bad habits at the plate along the way. This chain of events also caused me to bump Felix a little higher up the ballot than I initially expected, a bit ahead of Corey Kluber.

A similar scenario unfolded a little ways down the ballot, as closer inspection of batted ball data revealed the offensive distance between Jonathan Lucroy and Buster Posey to be quite a bit less than expected. I found room for both on my ballot, with Lucroy a little bit lower than I initially planned. My last spot went to Jose Bautista – incredible offensive year in which he made adjustments that will extend his career substantially – narrowly over Anthony Rendon. In the end, I had no 3B’s on my ballot, as they kind of canceled each other out. I Really wanted to find room for Carlos Gomez as well, but the ballot was just too crowded.

Carson Cistulli

I’ll begin by stating that I’m hardly dogmatic about either (a) the exact 10 players who appear on my Player of the Year ballot or (b) the order, more or less, in which they appear. Reasonable arguments can be made for other arrangements and, in some cases, I’m sure that I deferred merely to personal biases, as opposed to irrefutable logic.

My decision to vote for Mike Trout first overall — as opposed to Clayton Kershaw, I mean — was informed most immediately, I suppose, by the size of the gap between him and the rest of the eligible batters (Andrew McCutchen, Michael Brantley, Anthony Rendon, etc.) on the WAR leaderboard. He was essentially 15% better than this other, small group of very talented players, whereas Kershaw was rivaled more closely either by Corey Kluber (if one calculates WAR by means of FIP) or Jonny Cueto and Felix Hernandez (if one calculates it with runs allowed).

Kershaw was certainly the most impressive among all pitchers on a per-inning basis, but the month he lost to injury compelled the Dodgers to use a replacement-level starter or slightly worse — which is to say, Paul Maholm. That’s perhaps an indictment of the Dodgers themselves, but few clubs possess an injury replacement like Matt Shoemaker, for example, who himself is capable of providing decidedly positive value.

In certain cases, I was probably (rightly or wrongly) influenced by the promise of a player’s talent, too — as opposed merely to his 2014 performance. Specifically, that Anthony Rendon was able to accomplish what he did as just a 24-year-old in his first full major-league season likely affected my decision to place him sixth on my ballot — which I believe is the highest he appears among any of the lists submitted.

August Fagerstrom

It’s funny. For as much as we’ve argued for Mike Trout to receive recognition as the game’s best player, the top spot for this year’s Player of the Year Award was a relatively easy choice for me – and it wasn’t Trout. Trout was awesome in 2013. But Kershaw was otherworldly.

Most seem to agree that the greatest pitching performance we’ve seen in recent memory was Pedro Martinez at the turn of the millennium. Since then, just three pitchers have posted a lower single-season ERA- than Kershaw’s 2014. Only Pedro and Randy Johnson finished with a lower FIP-. Only Curt Schilling had a lower xFIP-. Kershaw is in rarefied air.

Lucroy was an easy choice for number three. He was a top-20 hitter and he’s a catcher. That alone is worthy of top-10 consideration in my eyes, and that’s before factoring in that Lucroy was the best defensive catcher in baseball. That he caught a National League-leading 136 games was big for me, too.

I went back-and-forth between McCutchen and Brantley, but I gave Cutch the edge because he was better with the bat and I put more stock in that than defense. What made it tough for me was Brantley’s knack for driving in runners. A stat I really like as an alternative to RBI is OBI%, or percentage of batters on base driven in. Brantley drove in 20% of his baserunners, bested only by Miguel Cabrera and Ryan Braun. McCutchen drove in just 15% of his, placing him 70th.

One of the American League Cy Young winners take the next two spots. They had nearly identical seasons, but I think Kluber is a bit more deserving than Felix of both the AL Cy Young and the No. 6 spot on my ballot due to his fielding independent numbers.

The last three spots were tough. I wanted to include the well-rounded Anthony Rendon, but didn’t feel he hit quite well enough, and Buster Posey didn’t provide quite enough defensive value behind the plate for me to include him.

Instead, I went with Giancarlo Stanton, because I’m not going to fault him for catching a fastball to the eye. Jose Bautista was one of the best hitters in baseball while holding his own in right field and on the bases. And Chris Sale was arguably the most dominant pitcher in baseball not named Clayton Kershaw, but the 60-inning gap between him and the other AL pitchers made his season a bit less impressive than the others.

David Laurila

Not counting his seven home runs, Jose Altuve had 50 extra-base hits. Add that to his 56 stolen bases and he put himself into scoring position 106 times. Oh, and he won the American League batting title. Not including him my list was a difficult decision and his poor defensive numbers played a role in his omission.

Victor Martinez is on my list, despite playing only 37 games at a defensive position. Given Altuve’s absence, there is arguably contradiction in his inclusion. V-Mart also didn’t add value with his legs. What he did do is hit 32 home runs and lead both leagues in OPS. Getting on base at a .409 clip and hitting for power equates to a great year.

As for the top of my list, I see parallels with 1978. Ron Guidry went 25-3, 1.74 that year, but the AL MVP went to Jim Rice, who hit .315/.370/.600 with 46 home runs. Rice, who was a decent defender at the time, also had 406 total bases, which dwarfs McCutchen’s and Trout’s 2014 totals. Kershaw had Guidry-like numbers.

Kiley McDaniel

I opted for Trout over Kershaw due to the bulk issue. If Kershaw started 30 games instead of 27, I probably would’ve given him the edge. I think you can argue that a comparable performance from a pitcher should get the edge over the hitter in a backwards-looking situation like MVP voting, given the scarcity of elite pitching performances. I’m open to this argument, but I feel like it was easier logically, though by a small margin, to give the edge to Trout.

There was a glut of hitters with similarly-valued seasons that were tough to separate for the down ballot spots. I believe in the defensive metrics for Jonathan Lucroy a bit more than those of Josh Donaldson or Alex Gordon, but they’re all clearly plus defenders and we’re getting into hair-splitting territory, where decimal points are needed to find a difference. Since his injury was essentially out of his control, I gave Stanton a bump from his actual season stats and could’ve justified an even bigger bump.

I could walk through each spot on the ballot, but I have the same names in the same basic places for the same basic reasons as most of the others voters. You don’t need me to tell you that Jose Bautista and Anthony Rendon are good to a very similar degree, they create their value in different way and their futures may project differently, but they were hard for me to separate for this exercise. I had an impulse to give the edge to younger players or players that I think are more likely to repeat their performance, but this award doesn’t seem to be trying to reward those things, so I did my best to not consider those factors.

Mike Petriello

There were just over 1,300 players in MLB this year, but for me, it was pretty easy to narrow that down to just two for “Player of the Year.” If you’re not the best pitcher in baseball, or the best position player in baseball, you aren’t going to be the Player of the Year. In some years, merely doing that would have been complicated. This year, it’s pretty obvious to say that Clayton Kershaw and Mike Trout are the two front-runners there. I could easily write thousands of words on which one of those two players should have been the choice, because there’s certainly a case to be made that a pitcher who spent more than a month on the disabled list might not have done as much as an everyday player.

But we’re keeping it brief here, so in the end, it came down to this, for me: Trout had a very, very good season that was somewhat less impressive than his first two and doesn’t necessarily register on its own in terms of history. Kershaw, on the other hand, had one of the most historic pitching seasons of all time. As a hitter, he had a better OBP (.235) than he allowed against him as a pitcher (.231). While what he did in previous years shouldn’t necessarily be considered in terms of 2014 performance, it’s fair to point out that he was already the consensus best pitcher in the game, and then managed to raise his performance from that significantly.

When he was injured, the Dodgers learned exactly what a replacement player was, starting Paul Maholm (-0.1 WAR in 2013-14) in his place, and losing five of seven times. Need a definitive moment? Kershaw came a Hanley Ramirez error away from throwing a perfect game in what was already one of the most dominant games ever pitched. I thought it would be difficult to vote against Trout, but no, it wasn’t: Kershaw is the easy choice. There’s simply no one who had a season like he did, in this year or most others.

As for the rest, well, the exact order after the first two isn’t so important. You can make an argument for the Stanton / Lucroy / McCutchen trio in really any order, depending on how you feel about the value of their various attributes. Rendon & Brantley won’t get nearly as much credit for their very good years as they should, and the only knock against Sale is the time he missed. In case you’re wondering, “honorable mentions” for me go to Jose Bautista, Buster Posey, and Josh Donaldson.

Eno Sarris

Picking a player of the year wasn’t an obvious decision, but it was fairly easy for me considering the arguments that players made to me late in the season. It wasn’t obvious because both Clayton Kershaw and Mike Trout were clearly the two best players in baseball, and if you use our wins above replacement metric that rewards the pitcher for his low runs allowed totals, Kershaw’s (7.9 RA9 WAR) and Trout’s (7.8 WAR) seasons were virtually identical. But the players — particularly the pitchers — convinced me that it should be the everyday player that receives the award.

We focus often on the things we can quantify here, and for good reason. It’s hard to talk about the things we can’t quantify in a meaningful way. But, if these two players are nearly tied in the ways that we can quantify, it seems okay to use intangibles to separate them. And to me, the grind of playing every day is the intangible that swings this in Trout’s favor. Yes, Kershaw has a routine. The day after he pitches, he has work to do. He has bullpens to throw. He has to run. But Kershaw heads out on the field every five days.

We’ve accounted for the pitcher’s on-field value, and it’s practically equal to the hitter’s. But there is something to showing up every day that might be tougher to do. It certainly sounds tougher to do. Put it this way: I’d rather be the pitcher, and sometimes people call me lazy. Mike Trout can’t be lazy. He’s the player of the year.

Jeff Sullivan

I knew going into this that I wanted to prioritize performance over playing time. That is, I didn’t want to dock people too much for an injury, and I wanted to leave the door open to relievers. By which I mean, I wanted to leave the door open to Aroldis Chapman, but as much as I wanted to put him on this list somewhere, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. He was a near-miss, coming off a truly exceptional statistical year.

So, anyhow. Given my policy with injuries, it was a super easy call to put Kershaw first. Here’s a fun fact: Kershaw’s ERA- plus his FIP- plus his xFIP- comes out to 157. Since 2002, as far back as we have data, that’s the lowest sum for any starting pitcher with 100+ innings. Kershaw had a year almost out of Pedro’s prime, and while I can envision seasons that would top his, they’re few and far between. Kershaw was my most outstanding player, and it’s astonishing even to me how easy it was to rank him ahead of Mike Trout, even though Trout was differently amazing.

There’s clear separation between the top two and the rest. It should be apparent, and not the least bit surprising, that I wanted to give significant credit for quality pitch-framing. Andrew McCutchen’s up there in large part because of his bat, and while, if I could do it all over again, I’d rank Michael Brantley closer to Giancarlo Stanton, I still prefer Stanton, swinging a better bat and I think playing better defense. The other three starting pitchers are really close. You could argue any order, but I’ll take Corey Kluber just ahead of Felix Hernandez given their different defensive environments, and then I take both of them ahead of Chris Sale because it would appear Sale faced the overall weakest competition. Ultimately, while there’s plenty to debate down the list, it couldn’t have been easier to determine the top. And the top’s all anyone really cares about, you know?

Paul Swydan

I felt Kershaw’s season was borderline historic. His K% was the 13th-highest in the Integration Era and he was just the third qualified starter to crack 30% in the past decade. I felt that his season was so good that he shouldn’t have been punished for missing a month. Trout was Trout, but he was sort of a victim of his own success the past two seasons. That was a very close vote.

I really thought Kluber had an exceptional season, By FIP-, there was a clear separation between him and every other pitcher not named Kershaw and Sale (who I would have had higher if it weren’t for his innings total). McCutchen and Lucroy were neck and neck behind the top three, but I gave McCutchen the edge simply because I’m more comfortable quantifying his contributions than I am Lucroy’s. Or, put another way, I didn’t think Lucroy’s outstanding defense made up ENOUGH ground to vault him over McCutchen.

Wendy Thurm

From the start, I was fairly certain that Kershaw would be my Player of the Year and by a significant margin. Even in a low-offense, high-strikeout environment, Kershaw’s performance in 2014 was one for the ages. He ended the season with the 22nd-lowest ERA (1.77) and the fourth-lowest FIP (1.81) since 1917. And while a pitcher’s win-loss record isn’t terribly meaningful, Kershaw made all the difference for the Dodgers when he was on the mound. Los Angeles was 23-4 in Kershaw starts and 71-68 otherwise. He missed a month at the start of the season and was still the most important factor in propelling the Dodgers to the National League West title.

No one matched Kershaw’s performance or his value on the mound, at the plate or in the field. Trout and McCutchen had very good seasons, but not great ones. Neither approached the kind of season we regularly saw from Barry Bonds or read about from Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb or Ted Williams. Trout’s production declined in nearly every category compared to 2012 and 2013 and his defense was shaky, and he was still the best overall player in the American League. McCutchen followed up his MVP season in 2013 with better numbers in 2014. He walked more, struck out less and hit for more power. Like Trout, McCutchen’s defense didn’t look as sharp and the metrics agreed: UZR, DRS and Inside Edge suggest he’s lost a step in the outfield. Still, McCutchen and Trout were the two most productive hitters in the league this season by wRC+ and propelled their teams into the postseason.

Crowdsourced Readers

Since the readers don’t have a collective voice, I’ll fill in for them.

As it was on most ballots, Trout and Kershaw were virtually tied for the top spot, with Trout just barely edging ahead on the fan’s ballot. McCutchen and Kluber formed a second tier, with again very small differences between the excellent center fielder and starting pitcher. Hernandez, Stanton, Brantley, and Lucroy made up the third tier, with Rendon and Bautista as the best of the rest.

Interestingly, the 10 names here match up perfectly with the 10 names selected by the overall panel. Kiley McDaniel was the only other voter to not have any names outside the top 10 on his own personal ballot. This is likely the result of the crowdsourcing model, as the amalgamation of all of the voters matched the consensus of the readers in forming the top 10.

Additionally, you’ll note that the scores here are much lower than the individual ballots cast by our authors. And, I believe, probably more reflective of historical norms, even though they’re also likely bit too high. I think you guys did a great job of identifying the reality that few players in any given year would be historically deserving of a Player of the Year Award, and the lower numbers reflect that you guys really took the time to try and understand a difficult question. Kudos.

And while Mike Trout may not have won the official FanGraphs Player of the Year Award, he can take solace in the fact that the FanGraphs readership thinks he got jobbed again. He’s probably used to it by now.