FanGraphs Baseball

Without looking at either team too hard, you might think the Astros needed major league pitching and the Yankees needed major league pitching. So of course the Yankees traded catcher Brian McCann (and $5.5m a year) to the Astros for prospect right-handers Albert Abreu and Jorge Guzman. We’ll learn more about the prospects (other than their high velocity fastballs) later, but the major league teams probably both needed this trade, and it might have actually been about pitching for the Astros anyway.

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Back in 2008, after a half-decade of great hitting, David Ortiz slumped a bit, recording “only” a 124 wRC+. At 32, it was fair to expect some decline in performance. An offensive line 24% better than league average — as opposed to the 45-75% he’d been sustaining — seemed like a reasonable indicator of that decline. The next season, Ortiz slumped even more, posting just a 100 wRC+, essentially becoming a replacement-level player in the process. It made sense to wonder if he were finished. He wasn’t, of course. Ortiz proceeded to put up a 148 wRC+ over the next seven years, retiring after this past year following his age-40 season.

At 36, free agent Jose Bautista is a few years older than Ortiz was back in 2008, but similar questions apply. From 2010 to 2015, the former Jays outfielder put up a 156 wRC+, establishing himself as one of the best hitters in the game. He entered spring training this year thinking big in free agency, hoping for a contract well above $100 million. Following his 2016 season, that seems less likely. Bautista produced “only” a 122 wRC+ — and, for the first time during his tenure with the Blue Jays, Bautista was a below average player, putting up just a 1.4 WAR.

Despite a disappointing season at the plate, though — and questions about his arm holding up in the outfield — the projections expect a rebound for Bautista. Our Depth Chart forecast calls for a 128 wRC+ and 2.8 WAR from Baustita, which would still make him a valuable player next season.

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Mike Trout probably isn’t going to win the MVP today. I’ll be honest with you: It’s hard for me to care very much. I know that it would mean something to Trout, and I know we’re all supposed to rail against arguments we disagree with, and I do disagree with the argument that Trout isn’t the league’s most valuable player. I just don’t see how it really matters. All Trout’s missing is a piece of hardware, and a nice moment with his friends and family. As recognition goes, he’s already widely recognized as the best player in the game. Even the people who don’t vote for him say that. And, down the line, Trout’s numbers will speak for themselves. His Hall-of-Fame candidacy won’t come down to the number of awards he picked up. Voters look beyond that, and, even more importantly, Trout’s unlikely to be a borderline case. He’s on track to coast into Cooperstown, and he’s on track to be one of the best players ever. Everybody sees that, and missing an award won’t slow him down.

In a way, Trout might even benefit from not winning. An award, sure, is an excuse to try to appreciate a great player. But when Trout finishes second or third, then people get to argue the voting’s unjust. The conversation revolves around Trout, and it sheds light on how much better he is than the rest of his teammates. In short, when MVP voting comes around, Trout’s greatness is widely broadcast. People hear about it, regardless of who actually wins the damn thing.

I now want to touch on that greatness one more time. One thing that separates great players from good ones is that great players are never satisfied. Every player is to some degree motivated, but the great players make improvements. If you look at Trout, along the line, he improved his power hitting. He improved his contact ability, and he improved his approach. He improved against high fastballs. There’s recently been one more improvement. We’re pretty much out of things that Mike Trout doesn’t do.

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The 2016 season is in the books, and the Hot Stove is already heating up big time. Over the last week or so, we’ve used granular data to evaluate the performance of qualifying starting pitchers in both leagues. Today, we begin to turn our head toward the position players.

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Tonight, the results of the voting for the AL and NL MVPs will be announced. In the NL, Kris Bryant will likely win in a landslide, as he was the league’s best player, played on the league’s best team, and put up big numbers in the categories that get the most attention. Daniel Murphy and Corey Seager also had terrific years, but I’d be surprised if either got more than a handful of first place votes. And when Bryant wins, everyone will mostly nod along in agreement, as the process will have worked to select the right candidate.

In the AL, though, it’s going to be a different story. Mookie Betts is probably going to win, and instead of celebrating the accomplishments of one of the best young players in the game, there is going to be outrage. There is going to be yelling. There is going to be anger and frustration. Twitter is going to be a dumpster fire, even more than usual. Because once again, Mike Trout is going to finish second, and the best (human-sized) player we’ve ever seen is going to say something nice about an inferior player who got rewarded for having better teammates again.

And then there’s going to be the same arguments that got trotted out every year. “It’s the Most Valuable Player Award, not the Best Player Award”, they’ll say. And then people will point out that it’s a distinction without a difference, and back-and-forth things will go until everyone gets distracted by a trade or something. And then we’ll do all this again in another 12 months, since the Angels don’t look like they’re really in any kind of position to put Trout in the playoffs. And round and round we’ll go.

Tonight, we could be celebrating the fact that we’ve had the privilege to watch a guy who has outgrown the Mickey Mantle comparison. We could be talking about the obvious greatness of one of the very best baseball players who has ever lived. We could be collectively thankful that we happen to be alive at a time where everyone gets to watch Mike Trout play, to see what an all-time great in his prime looks like.

But unless things have changed more rapidly than we currently think, we’re going to end up debating the meaning of the word valuable, and congratulating Mookie Betts for having the good fortune to be drafted by a team that has other good players too.

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Mike Berardino of the the St. Paul Pioneer Press had an American League Cy Young Award vote this year. He filled out his ballot as follows:

1. Verlander
2. Britton
3. Miller
4. Kluber
5. Porcello

I respect Berardino’s ballot. As a matter of fact, I applaud it — and not only because he placed the three starters in the same order I would have. That’s a secondary consideration. Far more meaningful is the fact that he included both Zach Britton and Andrew Miller, and not just one of the two.

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In a stunning development, the results of a BBWAA awards vote have generated massive controversy in the baseball world. Who could have seen that coming? A shocker to be sure!

Despite failing to receive the most first-place votes, Rick Porcello has edged out Justin Verlander to win the American League Cy Young Award. The full results of the balloting can be found here. Porcello beat Verlander by just five points, 137 to 132. That’s as tight a race as you’re going to see. It was largely due to the fact that while Verlander got 14 of the 30 possible first-place votes, Porcello received 18 second-place votes, and Verlander was left entirely off of two ballots.

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Every year, a discussion of the definition of “value” inevitably comes up in the context of the MVP awards. That discussion is particularly prominent this year with Mike Trout, who was inarguably the best player in the American League, unlikely to win the award because his team sucked. The anti-Trout side of the argument goes: the MVP is for the most valuable player, and you can’t be that valuable if your team didn’t win anything.

But value goes both ways. If the Angels would have had the same season result – no playoffs – with or without Trout, the same can be said for, say, the Cubs and Kris Bryant. Bryant or no Bryant, the Cubs almost certainly would have won their division and probably would have still held the National League’s best record. Bryant, however, is likely to be announced tonight as the NL MVP, whereas Trout will probably get a fourth (!) consolation prize. Bryant wasn’t really all that crucial to his team’s success; his value is diminished by the fact that his teammates didn’t need him!

Now, that argument might sound silly, but I don’t know that it’s that much sillier than the argument against Trout. Taking the word “value” literally, the question becomes: who was most important to their team’s success? If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of value, isn’t that what you’re really asking?

To that end, I created a way of looking at how many wins each MVP candidate contributed to their specific team. I did this by subtracting each player’s offensive runs created (“Off” on our leaderboards) from their team’s runs scored and adding each player’s defensive runs saved (“Def”) to their team’s runs allowed. I then recalculated the team’s Pythagorean record. The result is a sort of wins-above-average-per-162 statistic, specific to the team, which allows us to assess where on the win curve the team would have been left without the player.

The win curve part is important because it allows for a distinction between a player like Bryant, who makes his team’s Pythagorean record budge from 107 wins to 102, and a player like Corey Seager, whose team goes from 90 to 85 – a much more drastic change in playoff chances.

So here are several top performers from both leagues, sorted entirely unscientifically by what looked to me like the most impressive contribution to their team.

For the record, I would vote for both Trout and Bryant. I don’t agree with this line of thinking. This is just another way to look at it, and if you want to make an argument for Mookie Betts, Josh Donaldson, or Corey Seager, it’s a pretty compelling one.

The obvious caveat is that by using Pythagorean record, this method doesn’t measure exactly what happened, it measures what probably should have happened. That’s a whole ‘nother argument to have in regards to the MVP; we see it pop up as well in the Cy Young race with ERA vs. FIP. Additionally, the exact interactions between team and player are more complicated than just adding and subtracting total runs. This method isn’t perfect. But it’s fun to think about nonetheless.

The Cubs won the World Series. I’m sure enough has been made of that. I’m not sure enough has been made of their defense. Or, if you prefer, their hit suppression. Don’t get me wrong, there have been articles about this very topic. But, you know BABIP. By BABIP allowed, the 2016 Cubs were the all-time best. The all-time best, over more than a century. It’s kind of unbelievable what the Cubs pulled off.

Like many statistics, league BABIP changes with the eras. You don’t want to compare raw BABIPs throughout history, just as you wouldn’t want to compare raw strikeout rates, or slugging percentages. I’ve calculated something very simple — the difference between a team’s BABIP allowed and the league-average BABIP allowed. Here’s a table of the top 10 since 1900, and, well, I told you:

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