How to Defeat Mike Trout in the AL MVP Voting
So you want to win the MVP award, huh? I hope you play in the National League. There’s a bit more of an open field over there, at least. Sure, the NL feaures Kris Bryant and the only starting pitcher in the game who can seriously demand consideration for the award. But if you play in the American League, you have to deal with one Michael Nelson Trout, who is far and away the best player in the game. And, given the conditioning and training of today’s athletes relative to those from previous generations, Trout may just be the best to ever play. If you want to win the MVP in the AL, you’ll probably have to go through him.
It’s been done before. In fact, it’s happened more often than not. Trout has played five full seasons, and he’s won the MVP twice. Of course, the times he didn’t win, he finished second. It would be a surprise if he didn’t finish among the top two again this year. History dictates that Mike Trout’s default state is “MVP Contender.” The times he’s lost the award, twice to Miguel Cabrera and once to Josh Donaldson, have been close. Miggy and Donaldson never blew him away. They were tight margins. He theoretically deserves to have won the award five times.
What would it take for someone to be the absolute clear favorite over Trout? What could a player possibly do to overtake Trout and emerge as the consensus favorite? In the same vein, what would Trout have to not do?
Let’s get to those questions in a moment. First, a note: when we say MVP here, we don’t mean “best player in the league.” We’re talking about the actual BBWAA-awarded MVP title, and all the voting idiosyncrasies that come with it. That means we’re accounting for the belief, held by some voters, that the winner of the award must belong to a contending team. So that will be factored into our calculus. At the same time, it’s worth noting that Trout received 19 of the 30 first-place votes while playing for the sub-.500 Angels, anyway. Those 30 voters seemed more open to awarding a player from a non-contender, but we’ll have a different group voting for that award this year.
And for that matter, the 2017 Angels project to be a better team. Trout is going to have a better group around him, which means a potential run to the Wild Card may be on the horizon. How can a playoff-bound Trout, with a typical Troutian season, not win the MVP? The easy answer would be for Trout to miss a month or two with injury, of course. This would eat at his counting stats and subtract from his overall value. But that’s boring, and frankly, the more Trout, the better.
So let’s go another route. Let’s see just how crazy someone would have to go to easily walk past Trout in the MVP race. Not just beat him out for the award, since that’s been done, but to blow Trout out of the water.
Mookie Betts came in second last year. He had a phenomenal season, putting up 7.8 WAR by hitting the snot out of the ball, playing a really good right field, and stealing 26 bags. He did everything. Trout still eclipsed him by more than a win and a half.
So let’s start with Betts’s 2016 season as a baseline and see what else he’d have to do in order to overcome Trout. This is already quite an assumption to make: our projections forecast some regression for Betts. But surpassing Trout will require some unreasonable assumptions.
With regard to Betts, we know he fell about 1.5 wins short of Trout last year. So let’s say that, for him to comfortably win the MVP, he’d need to beat Trout by 1.5 wins. Obviously, voters in the BBWAA aren’t merely sorting by WAR and choosing a winner. But a 1.5-win lead should make Betts’s case clear. To account for the additional three wins, Betts would need to produce 30 extra runs. To create that kind of value would require Betts to record an additional 15 homers. Or 45 walks. Or 150 stolen bases (without any caught stealings). Or some combination therein. For Donaldson and Jose Altuve and their AL counterparts, the demands would only be greater.
So that might be difficult. But since we’re already diving headfirst into flights of fancy, let’s get even crazier. Let’s talk about Gary Sanchez. He accumulated 3.2 WAR in just 53 games last year by hitting 20 home runs and throwing out a bunch of runners, among other things. You may have heard about it.
Asking for 145 games from a catcher is a lot, but the Yankees tended to stick him at DH on his days off from crouching behind the plate. Only 36 of those 53 games were as the catcher. Using that ratio, we come up with roughly 99 games as the catcher over those 145 games. That feels low, so using our same magical arbitrary math, we can shove him there for 110 games. Using his 2016 stats, we can prorate his caught-stealing rate out to about 40 runners thrown out over 110 games. Catchers have only thrown out that many runners 17 times since 2000.
Now the Yankees probably aren’t going to make the playoffs, but if we allow Sanchez to continue performing like a maniac, that may not matter very much for voters. In fact, Sanchez putting up those kinds of numbers might shove the Yankees into a Wild Card slot. It would be pretty hard to argue against that sort of showing for Sanchez. Would it be enough to easily surpass a normal Trout season? It’s hard to say.
The fact of the matter is that Mike Trout is performing like a top-10 all-time player right now. This is like trying to bet against Michael Jordan making the All-Star team. It happened, yeah. But Trout on a competent team is as close to a lock as it gets for the MVP award in March. Mookie Betts isn’t going to perform like Willie Mays, and Gary Sanchez isn’t actually Babe Ruth in catcher form. The voters have decided to give the award to someone else when they come close to or match Trout. It’s nearly impossible to create a realistic scenario, barring an injury, where someone blows him away.
It sure would be wild if that happened, though.
Nick is a columnist at FanGraphs, and has written previously for Baseball Prospectus and Beyond the Box Score. Yes, he hates your favorite team, just like Joe Buck. You can follow him on Twitter at @StelliniTweets, and can contact him at stellinin1 at gmail.
“There hasn’t been a single 50-homer season by a catcher since at least 1950.”
I don’t believe any catcher has ever hit 50 hr. Isn’t Javy Lopez the record holder at 42?
This is correct… except Johnny Bench has the record with 45 HR in 1970. I believe Nicolas may just not have looked before 1950 and didn’t want to make a definitive statement.
I don’t believe Bench hit all of those as a Catcher. I’m pretty sure the record is Javy’s and was Hundley’s before him.
That seems a strange way to view the stats given that many players, particularly catchers, may occupy positions other than their primary position throughout the season. Even above, Sanchez’s 50+ homers would undoubtedly contain HR’s hit as a DH or possibly 1B.
But yes, according to baseball almanac, you are correct. Lopez’ 42 HR are most hit when playing as a catcher.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but that’s definitely how they track stats when it comes to records. The record for most HR by a 2B is Jeff Kent, but if you looked on Fangraphs leaderboards by 2B you’d see Soriano….we all know Soriano played a lot of OF. But you have to draw the line somewhere right? Soriano ended up with more games in the OF than at 2B. It seems foolish to count ALL of his HR at either or both positions.
FWIW, Bench’s 45 HRs in 1970 is the record for anyone who caught even one game that year.
Ok sure, but he caught 139 games out of 158. Again, you have to differentiate somehow and allocating by position for the games they actually played starts to make a lot of sense. Bench was great, but maybe if he caught every game that year he doesn’t pop the extra few homers. Who knows. See the Soriano argument for why these numbers are recorded by position for records.
Win the Triple Crown. In both MLB and horse racing. That should do it.
Miguel American Pharaoh Cabrera. Must be Spanish for Trout’s full name.
Just neighing.
you know what would be fun? Create a super player with the league leaders in different categories from last season (except without any Trout stats because it is supposed to beat him). Or you could use the best projected leaders in each category for the coming season and see if it can beat projected Mike Trout!
So best non-Trout walk rate, K rate, BABIP, ISO, defense, baserunning, playing time projection (probably have to be best in AL not all MLB because this is for AL MVP).
Can super AL player beat Mike Trout?
So according to steamer…
Lindor’s defense, Stanton’s slugging (didn’t see ISO projections), Hamilton on the bases, Murphy’s average, and Votto’s walks.
This at least gives an idea.
And Trout is not #1 in any of those, correct? His awesome Troutness consists in being like top-3 across the board. So Mr. Black Ink wins.
What if Mookie had played CF instead of RF?
On the one hand, his positional adjustment would jump from -7.5 to +2.5 for a full ~1 win swing.
But, those positional adjustments exist because we’d expect a corresponding drop in his UZR rating (e.g. Mookie would move from a +17 UZR to a +7 UZR in CF). Part of that is because the position itself is harder, but Mookie’s skillset probably translates well enough that he can handle CF at about the same level. But the other part of that adjustment is that competition is a lot stiffer in CF and UZR is relative to your peers. In CF he’d be competing against The Kevins and co, so even if he makes all the same catches, his UZR will still be lower because other CFers are going to make those same plays, making Mookie’s contributions marginally less valuable at the position. It’s really hard to be elite when everyone else is also pretty good.
In otherwords… if all Mookie did was move to CF, his WAR (in theory) wouldn’t change. In reality it would probably go up 1 or 2 runs, but that’s well within the error bounds of UZR.
If Mookie moved to CF AND kept his same UZR (+17 runs) he’d still be 1/2 a win shy of Mike Trout. Meaning we still need to add 2 whole wins, just by defense.
That translates to a +37 UZR and +2.5 CF positional adjustment for a +39.5 DEF rating, which is almost a full win more than anyone has achieved in the UZR era (gutierrez ’09 had +33).
Incredibly, Andruw Jones peaked with +37 and +38 DEF seasons but defensive data is sketchy at best from that era, and since metrics weren’t great and teams weren’t as informed, the spread was a lot higher (which allows for higher extreme values)
Bryce Harper’s 2015 is better than anything Trout has done so far
You mean harper’s 9.5 war season which is .1 better than fishboy’s THIRD best season of WAR? Yeah, you keep ego maniac harper, I’ll take the guy who plays center field everyday and just produces.
Harper’s an ego maniac?
my wife works with a girl who grew up across the street from Harper (we live in Vegas) said he was a total d-bag as a teenager.
Who wasnt?
just telling a story not looking to debate the vices of young people.
but if A LOT of people say he is a d-bag now and I know someone with first hand experience of his “snotty”-ness as a kid, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say he is a d-bag and I’m personally glad he had a down year.
Who says he s a d-bag? Fans love him. He’s passionate. he doesnt drink, doesnt drink and drive, doesnt fight, isnt violant….isnt a homophobe
Bryce Harper is Morman.
Mormans are d-bags, bc they think they will be God’s of their own universe.
Therefore, Harper is a d-bag.
Ahh the good ole six degrees of this guys a d-bag.
I went to a small country school and a lot of the star athletes were d-bags. I can only imagine what someone with Harper’s talent might have been like.
That said, I live in the DC area, so I’ve seen a lot of National games, and Harper doesn’t really seem especially obnoxious for a professional athlete. He is still immature at times, and he is extremely intense. I think his intensity is what generates a lot of dislike from fans of other teams.
Harper’s 2015 offense might have been better than any of Trout’s offensive seasons (it wasn’t by oWAR). When you throw in defense and baserunning, not so much.
Not to mention, Harper has had one Hall of Fame level season out of five. Trout has had five out of five.
Read the title, immediately thought of Nancy Kerrigan, thought “I should probably read the article”
Me too. Was also impressed that not a single mention was made of Maxwell Edison majoring in medicine.
It appears from the stats mentioned above that a walk is worth 1/2 of a HR. Betts and Trout were very close in most categories, with Betts having a slight edge in most categories except walks where Trout buries him. I value OBP and TA as much as the next man but that seems to over value a walk by more than a wee bit. Just imagine what odds you could have gotten last year on Betts hitting more HR’s than Trout. Betts, however, had a huge edge on defense, 22.6 FRAA against Trout’s -8.2 and also a large advantage in BRR, 8.7 over 4.8. It looks like the best answer to why Trout won the MVP is he walked a lot more. Trout has earned the well-deserved accolades for being the best player in the game over a five year period and that carries weight while it was only Betts second full year in the game. My question is this. How much did Trout’s resume influence the MVP voting?
A 10.3% gap in BB% is massive, but Trout also did more with the ball when he put it in play, as evidenced by the significant advantages over Betts in ISO and SLG%. Those factors created an enormous gap between the two in wOBA and wRC+, all with Trout playing the more demanding defensive position.
“A 10.3% gap in BB% is massive…”
It’s actually a 250% gap (or so), which is even more massive.
So how do you get that a walk is worth 1/2 a HR from that piece? It said that Betts would need to add 15HR or 45BB. That would seem to suggest that the author did not say what you say he said.
Your use of FRAA is an example of a cherry pick. dWAR had Trout at +1, UZR at -0.4. To suggest that Betts is better defensively based on just FRAA – and at that NOT even adjusting for position seems wrong.
Not adjusting for position seems wrong because it is wrong. I’d love to see him argue that Ortiz had an substantial defensive edge over Bogaerts because Bogaerts had a FRAA of -11.5 and Ortiz’s FRAA was league average at 0.
Hey bosoxforlife, look at park adjusted stats. The numbers aren’t even close. It’s a lot easier to hit homeruns in Fenway vs Angel Stadium.
You can’t just wave away the walks, Betts made a lot more outs on offense than Trout did, that’s pretty significant. Trout also played the more demanding outfield position and played in a significantly less-friendly offensive environment.
No idea where you got 1/2 from. HR’s are on average worth about 1.4 runs and alks are worth 0.3. So it’s actually closer to a relative value of 20%. This ratio does shrink a bit when comparing to the alternate of getting out which is worth roughly -.26. So if Mookie turns an out into a HR, the run value of that swap is ~1.65 runs, where for a walk it is roughly .57. This get’s you close to the author’s 1/3 ratio. Which makes because you’d be assuming the Mookie that drew 45 more walks also got out 30 times less than the Mookie that hit 15 more homeruns.
I think the value of the novelty of a great new young player in a high defense position in a major market is being discounted here. If Sanchez hits 40+ HRs and is close in WAR to Trout, those nonsense factors would help put him over the edge. Basically, novelty with power wins the tie.
There’s another possibility, of course. Mike Trout has to suddenly become merely human. Or bad, even. (Relatedly, how bad would Mike Trout have to be over the remainder of his career in order to miss the Hall of Fame?)
Neil, if “bad” can mean naughty, like gambling on baseball or using PEDs … But otherwise, there’s simply no precedent for anyone in Trout’s zip code through 6 seasons (48.5 bWAR) falling off enough to miss the Hall.
Twenty-four retired guys notched at least 34 bWAR through 6 seasons. All but Barry Bonds made the Hall.
The best first-6-years bWAR to miss the Hall *without* PED taint is 33.7 by Barry’s dad. But Bobby never ranked above 4th in league bWAR, nor above 3rd in an MVP vote.
Non-hall of fame Trout is unlikely. César Cedeño is probably the best comp for what needs to happen, and young Trout has been much better than young Cedeño was. A collapse hard and fast enough to keep him out would almost have to be injury or illness related or even if not it would be assumed to be injury or illness related, and then might well get him in on the sympathy vote.
You need a long extension, followed by a very fast decline to something close to replacement level, followed by years of his contract being the albatross that sinks the Angels for it to be likely.
If Trout retired today, expect there to be discussion of creating a special exemption to allow Trout to go into the HoF.
.300 batting average, 60 home runs, playoff team. If a non-1B/DH type can manage that line, even if it’s exceptionally fluky and the advanced stats only value him at 6-7 WAR, I think that gets the job done.
If Betts didn’t regress anywhere (including health), and hit 5 extra home runs with an extra 30 walks, would that do it? It appears here that home runs are worth 2 runs each, while walks are worth 2/3 run each. So 5 home runs (10 runs) + 30 walks (20 runs) = 30 extra runs.
Now that’s a pretty tall task, especially with no regression. That would essentially turn Betts into Trout with slightly worse OBP and better defense. We’d basically have two Trouts (or nearly).
This is a fun article, but in each season Trout lost the MVP, the reason was pretty clear-cut (and the voting margins weren’t close).
2012 (22 first place votes to 6): Miggy won the triple crown on a division-winning team.
2013 (23 to 5): though Trout outstripped easily him in WAR, Miggy had the edge in counting stats by a wide margin while playing on a division winner.
2015 (23-7): Trout and Donaldson were within a half-win by WAR, but Donaldson was a new addition and catalyst to a team that made the playoffs for the first time in more than 20 years.
All it really takes is some combination of narrative, counting stats, and a winning team (though this ties closely with narrative). 2012 Miggy had all three, 2013 had two (stats and team), and 2015 Donaldson had two (three if you count a 30-RBI edge). Mookie didn’t win because while he had the winning team, he didn’t have an edge in counting stats or a particular narrative.
Plus, there’s probably a Trout fatigue effect. Voters want to feel like they have an influence in some grander baseball narrative, and voting for Trout all the time would take away some of that agency.
Also, amazing as he is, he doesn’t have the most compelling personality.
His “personality” is work out like a maniac (which most MLBers do) and be the best player in the world. I’ve also seen him signing autographs and be fairly engaging. What else does he need to do for you?
I think the easiest answer is if Mookie can raise his bb% to his minor league levels, and potentially using the increased selectiveness/getting pitched around to simultaneously boost his batting average.
I think there’s another possibility. Say Gary Sanchez (or even Jonathan Lucroy for the sake of argument) has a great offensive season, leads their team to the playoffs, finishes at maybe 7 WAR. But say that voters decide to start crediting catchers for pitch framing, and one of these guys has an incredible season. Couldn’t it be possible to see them handily defeat Trout, in the unlikely event that scenario unfolded?
The best (and only) way to defeat Trout for AL MVP in 2017 would be for Trout to have an off year allowing other top players a chance to win. Any dream of Sanchez hitting 40 let alone 50 HR’s is crazy. Sanchez ended last season going something like 2 for 29. Not saying he is bad, just saying 3 – 4 WAR is what you should probably expect from him for 2017. And before you scream at me for being negative on Sanchez, that would make him a top 3 catcher in MLB.