Sunday Notes: Tyler Holton Deserved His Down-Ballot MVP Vote
Tyler Holton got a 10th-place vote in American League MVP balloting, and as you might expect, social media reacted like social media is wont to do. Responses to the news leaned negative, with a number of people saying that they had have never even heard of him. Some were disrespectfully profane, offering variations of “Who the [expletive] is Tyler Holton?”
Needless to say, not everyone who posts on social media platforms is an especially-knowledgeable baseball fan. Which is perfectly fine. There are many different levels of fandom, so if you mostly just know the big names — the Judges, the Sotos, the Witts — all well and good. Follow the game as you see fit.
Those things said, it is high time that more people become familiar with Holton. Much for that reason, Toronto Star columnist Mike Wilner doesn’t deserve the brickbats he’s received for his down-ballot nod to the 28-year-old Detroit Tigers southpaw. What he deserves is applause. And not just because he was willing to go outside the box. Holton has quietly been one of MLB’s most effective pitchers.
The numbers tell part of the story.
Since the start of last season, Holton not only has the lowest ERA (2.15) among pitchers to throw at least 160 innings: he also has the highest WPA (5.94). Over the two-year span, he has fanned 151 batters while allowing just 113 hits and 35 walks over 179-and-two-thirds frames.
As for this season’s performance, Holton boasted a 2.19 ERA and a 3.71 WPA to go with a 7-2 record, eight saves, and 14 holds. Moreover, he had a 1.06 ERA and five of his saves over the final two months of the campaign, helping spur the surprising surge that captured the Tigers an unexpected playoff berth.
The distribution of his 94-and-a-third innings over 66 appearances is notable. A Swiss Army Knife on A.J. Hinch’s pitching staff, Holton was deployed in a variety of roles, including starting nine games as an opener. As fans who followed the team are well aware, his contributions to the team’s success went beyond just the raw numbers.
Which brings us an often-asked question: Just what does “Most Valuable” mean? It would be folly to suggest that Holton provided anything close to the value Aaron Judge and his 11.2 WAR provided to the New York Yankees, or Bobby Witt and his 10.4 WAR to the Kansas City Royals. That said, while over 100 American League players outpaced Holton in the WAR category (he had just 1.4), how many of them were actually more valuable to their teams? It very well might have been more than nine, but not by a substantial amount… unless WAR is your be-all and end-all in determining value. While that’s not a wholly unreasonable stance, I’m inclined to think otherwise.
Again, kudos to Wilner for not only recognizing Holton’s value, but also for rewarding him with a down-ballot vote (which in the grand scheme isn’t really all that important; the votes near the top are what truly matter). As the Toronto-based scribe put it in his explanatory column, “Holton was the everyman for a patchwork pitching staff and, in my mind, deserved that tip of the cap.” No argument here. The vote — hat-tip if you will — was far more reasonable than what keyboard warriors on social media want to believe — especially the ones who don’t even know who the [expletive] Tyler Holton is.
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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS
Harry Heilmann went 13 for 18 against Hank Johnson.
Todd Benzinger went 11 for 16 against Derek Lilliquist.
Bo Bichette is 9 for 16 against Nestor Cortes.
Byron Buxton is 9 for 12 against Chris Flexen.
Kevin Bass went 8 for 11 against Goose Gossage.
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Mo Vaughn had a monster season when he was named AL MVP in 1995. The Boston Red Sox slugger slashed .300/.388/.575 with 39 home runs, 126 RBIs, a 139 wRC+, and 5.1 WAR. As for whether he should have won the honor, many will be quick to point out that Cleveland’s Albert Belle slashed .317/.401/.690 with 50 home runs, 126 RBIs, a 173 wRC+, and 7.2 WAR. From a statistical standpoint, Belle was clearly the more deserving of the two.
Rarely brought up in conversations about that year’s AL MVP voting is the player who led the junior circuit with 8.3 WAR. That would be Vaughn’s Red Sox teammate, John Valentin, who slashed .298/.399/.533 with 27 home runs, 102 RBIs, and a 138 wRC+. Despite those stellar numbers, the shortstop finished a distant ninth in the voting.
And then there was that year’s NL winner. Cincinnati Reds shortstop Barry Larkin was voted MVP in the senior circuit after slashing .319/.394/.492 with 15 home runs, 66 RBIs, a 136 wRC+, and 5.3 WAR. Five other players who received votes had more WAR, including Barry Bonds (7.7), who logged 33 home runs. 104 RBIs, and a 163 wRC+.
Larkin likely wouldn’t have captured MVP honors had he played in Valentin’s league, but what about the inverse? Might Valentin have been named NL MVP had be been playing in Larkin’s league? His numbers were better, and if team success were to be factored in, their respective clubs won their divisions by similar margins. Something to ponder.
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A quiz:
Ernie Banks was named to the NL All-Star team in 11 different seasons, the most in Chicago Cubs franchise history. Which Cub had the second-most All-Star berths?
The answer can be found below.
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NEWS NOTES
The Los Angeles Dodgers have hired Chris Woodward as their new first base coach. The 48-year-old former big-league infielder and Texas Rangers manager has spent the last two years as a senior advisor in player development with the Dodgers.
The Miami Marlins have hired Joe Migliaccio as Director of Hitting and Bill Hezel as Director of Pitching. The 33-year-old Joe Migliaccio has spent the last six seasons in the New York Yankees organization, most recently as Minor League Hitting Coordinator. Hezel, a 38-year-old former Driveline employee, has spent the last two seasons with the Los Angeles Angels, most recently as Pitching Integration Strategist.
The Cleveland Guardians are reportedly hiring Alyssa Nakken to serve in a player development role. The 34-year-old Sacramento State University (BA) and University of San Francisco (MA) graduate has been with the San Francisco Giants organization since 2014 and has served as a coach at the big-league level.
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The answer to the quiz is Ryne Sandberg, who represented the Cubs in the All-Star Game 10 times. If you guessed Ron Santo, he had nine All-Star seasons as a Cub.
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The Minnesota Twins collapsed this past season. Seventeen games over .500 and with a 92.4% probability of making the postseason on August 17, they proceeded to lose 26 of their final 38 contests and finish just 82-80. Amid understandable consternation from a loyal fanbase, they were eliminated with a handful of days remaining in the campaign.
In the opinion of Derek Falvey, a lack of effort wasn’t among the reasons behind the precipitous plummet. Nor was it a lack of preparation. The team’s President of Baseball Operations made those feelings clear when speaking to a small group of reporters at the GM Meetings in San Antonio.
“It always gets written about how consistent they were and how they showed up every day,” Falvey said of successful teams. “They didn’t panic. They found a way to stay steady and never show that level of fear, weakness, or concern. On the other side, if you’re doing poorly and don’t make massive shifts during that time it’s, ‘Were you too complacent? Did you not do enough?’ We always try to strike that balance around being consistent, focusing on the things we can control every day, the work we’re doing to get them prepared for the games. And then the games happen. When they don’t go as well, it’s frustrating.”
Falvey went on to say that both the players and staff showed up every day with the same intent to win, that there was never a question about commitment. But while he didn’t state it outright, he did suggest that subconscious fear and concern were factors in the team’s inability to right the ship.
“That pressure, that tension… it manifested,” said Falvey, referring to some of the tough losses down the stretch. “The mental errors and the mistakes. It wasn’t about caring. It was about playing tight. We didn’t find a way to play loose enough to give ourselves some breathing room in games.”
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FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Japan has won 27 consecutive games in major international tournaments following yesterday’s 9-5 win over Chinese Taipei, in Tokyo. The two teams will meet again today in the Premier 12 championship game with Arizona Diamondbacks prospect Yu-Min Lin on the mound for Chinese Taipei.
Chieh-Hsien Chen has gone 12-for-19 with a home run for Chinese Taipei in the Premier 12. The 30-year-old outfielder has slashed .343/.419/.488 over parts of nine seasons with the Chinese Professional Baseball League’s Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions.
UPDATE: Chinese Taipei won today’s championship game, outscoring Japan 4-0. Yu-Min Lin allowed one hit over four scoreless innings. Chieh-Hsien Chen went 3-for-5 with a double and a three-run homer, finishing the tournament 15-for-24 with a pair of home runs.
Steven Moya led the CPBL with 30 home runs this season. The 33-year-old former Detroit Tigers outfielder was in his first year in Taiwan, playing for the TSG Hawks.
Arturo Disla is 12-for-28 with four home runs for the Australian Baseball League’s Melbourne Aces. The 24-year-old first baseman in the Texas Rangers system slashed .274/.349/.458 with 19 home runs and a 135 wRC+ between Low-A Down East and High-A Hickory.
Konsta Kurikka is pitching for the Australian Baseball League’s Adelaide Giants. The first native of Finland to compete in the ABL, the 23-year-old right-hander played pesäpallo prior to switching to baseball three years ago.
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Earlier this month, I put together a piece titled General Managers Address the Highs and Lows of Starter Innings, with five MLB executives weighing in on the subject relative to their respective team’s 2024 seasons, as well as their philosophies and preferences going forward. With one exception, the execs led teams who finished in either the top or bottom two in starter innings this past season.
Not included in the piece was a perspective I received from the President of Baseball Operations of the club that had MLB’s fourth-highest number of starter innings.
“I’d still like to take my chances of having good starting pitching,” Philadelphia’s Dave Dombrowski told me at the GM Meetings. “I still believe in it. We’ll see if what’s been happening will continue, year in year out. There are different ways you can build your ball club. For instance, only having two [conventional] starting pitchers over the course of the season. Is that something that gets you to the postseason?
“I don’t know if that will be something we see on a consistent basis,” added the longtime, and likely future Hall of Fame, executive. “We’ll see if that trend — if it is a trend — continues to work. The more bullpen guys you use in a game… that means that more of them need to pitch well. There is always a chance that at least one of them will pitch poorly.”
The Detroit Tigers and Milwaukee Brewers are examples of teams that consistently got strong performances from relievers — many of whom are anything but household names — this past season. My mentioning that elicited both perspective and praise.
“They have done a good job of identifying specific type guys,” said Dombrowski. “I think that’s one of the interesting things about bullpens. With all of the information that we have in today’s game, you can sometimes identify guys who aren’t as well known to the outside world, or maybe even people on the inside. Identifying something that you think can help a particular pitcher is something we can do much better in today’s world. Those organizations have done a very good job at that.”
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FARM NOTES
Hector Rodriguez is 13-for-36 and has gone deep once for Leones del Escogido in the Dominican Winter League. A native of Santo Domingo, the 20-year-old outfield prospect in the Cincinnati Reds system had a dozen home runs, the same number of steals, and a 106 wRC+ over 541 plate appearances this year for the High-A Dayton Dragons.
Luis Suisbel is 16-for-54 and has gone deep three times for Navegantes del Magallanes in the Venezuelan Winter League. A native of Valencia, the 21-year-old switch-hitting infield prospect in the Seattle Mariners system swatted 15 home runs and had a 108 wRC+ over 552 plate appearances for the Low-A Modesto Nuts.
The Bowie Baysox have rebranded and will now be known as the Chesapeake Baysox. The Bowie, Maryland-based team is the Double-A affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles.
The Carolina Mudcats, the single-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers, will relocate within the state of North Carolina following the 2025 season and be known as the Wilson Warbirds.
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A random obscure former player snapshot:
Guido Knudson fanned the first batter he faced in the majors — this for the Detroit Tigers in 2015 — but it was all downhill from there. The right-hander’s strikeout of Elvis Andrus not only was followed by a Rougned Odor home run, it was a harbinger of things to come. Knudson’s career comprised four relief appearances and he was taken deep at least once in all of them. All told, he surrendered five home runs, as well as 13 hits and 10 runs, in five innings. Making the big leagues is an enviable accomplishment, but not all of those accomplishments are enviable. At least not statistically.
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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE
The Liverpool Echo’s Chris Beesley wrote about three Everton FC players’ taking part in a virtual-reality home run derby at iconic Goodison Park, and how the Chicago White Sox and New York Giants played an exhibition game there in October 1924.
Lewie Pollis’s newsletter addressed how the 2024 playoffs could change modern pitching philosophy.
Purple Row’s Skyler Timmins looked at Troy Tulowitzki’s Hall of Fame case.
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin plans to introduce the Fair Ball Act, a bill that would further protect minor league baseball players from previous legislation that exempted them from wage and hour laws. Jeff Passan has the story at ESPN.
MLB’s free agent class expanded on Friday at the non-tender deadline. MassLive’s Christopher Smith looked at some of the notable players who will now be available to the Red Sox, and to other teams.
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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS
Jonathan India has slashed .423/.531/.692 over 32 career plate appearances against the Kansas City Royals. Brady Singer has allowed one run over 12 innings in two career starts against the Cincinnati Reds.
The MLB record for most career starts without a complete game is held by Jake Odorizzi, with 237. Hall of Famer Addie Joss, who pitched for Cleveland from 1902-1910, had 260 starts and 234 complete games.
Ichiro Suzuki had 3,089 hits, 3,994 total bases, and 1,420 runs scored.
Rod Carew had 3,053 hits, 3,998 total bases, and 1,424 runs scored.
Giancarlo Stanton has 6,896 plate appearances, 745 extra-base hits, and 3,165 totals bases. J.D. Martinez has 6,865 plate appearances, 745 extra-base hits, and 3,172 totals bases.
Jim Thome slashed .237/.314/.296 with no home runs over 213 plate appearances in his first professional season.
On today’s date in 2005, the Florida Marlins traded Carlos Delgado, whom they had signed as a free agent the previous winter, to the New York Mets in exchange for Mike Jacobs, Yusmeiro Petit, and Grant Psomas. Delgado had 33 home runs, 115 RBIs, and a 152 wRC+ in his lone season in Miami.
Ken Boyer was named NL MVP on today’s date in 1964. One of eight players on the 2025 Classic Baseball Era Committee ballot, Boyer had a 130 wRC+ and a senior circuit-best 119 RBIs for the St. Louis Cardinals that year.
Players born on today’s date include Bob Malloy, whose MLB career comprised two games with the Texas Rangers in 1987 and one game with the Montreal Expos in 1990. A right-hander from Arlington, Virginia, Malloy was taken deep six times while surrendering 11 runs over 13 innings.
Also born on today’s date was Jim Northrup, a Breckenridge, Michigan native who played primarily for the Detroit Tigers in a career that spanned the 1964-1975 seasons. An outfielder who went deep 153 times, Northrup hit four grand slams in 1968, one of them in Game 6 of the World Series. He then had a two-run triple off of Bob Gibson that broke a seventh-inning scoreless tie in Game 7, helping to lift Detroit to a 4-1 win.
Teams in the 1906 Northern-Copper Country League included the Calumet Aristocrats, Grand Forks Forkers, Hancock Infants, and Lake Linden Sandy Cities. Jack Lelivelt, a native of the Netherlands who went on to play six MLB seasons, logged the first 105 of his 3,018 professional hits with the Sandy Cities.
David Laurila grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and now writes about baseball from his home in Cambridge, Mass. He authored the Prospectus Q&A series at Baseball Prospectus from December 2006-May 2011 before being claimed off waivers by FanGraphs. He can be followed on Twitter @DavidLaurilaQA.
A little easier trivia today- Only 3 real options, IMO- Sandberg, Santo, Billy Williams.
Sandberg was the defacto “best NL 2B” after his MVP season in 1984, I figured that award made him a star & meant he started most years, so I chose him.
Figured Santo had competition from Ken Boyer & that Williams, who was more a quiet guy, had all kinds of competition for AS nods from Aaron, Clemente, Robinson, Mays, etc.
I picked Santo. Whenever I think of longtime Cubs stars he’s the guy who comes to mind after Banks. But Sandberg is also in that category.
It’s all hard because for most of Banks, Santo’s, and Sandberg’s careers the Cubs were not good. If I am looking at B-Ref correctly they didn’t have a winning season between 1947 and 1966, and then after a brief string of winning records they only had a couple winning records between 1973 and 1992. Santo’s peak is the only one that I think even partially overlaps with that brief 1967-1972 period of success, which made me think maybe he would get more All Star votes.
I eliminated Santo because his career was relatively short, and was (I think) not fully appreciated compared to today.
On the comment of “longtime Cub stars”, I agree Santo is at the top – IMO his years as a broadcaster make him the #1 Cub, from a Chicago fan’s perspective.
My guesses went: Sandberg, Williams, then Stan Hack. Williams’ career also overlapped that period of success, he spent 16 years with the team, and had 2700 hits and 400 home runs. Hack was basically the Mark Grace of thirdbasemen for a twenty year stretch, all with the Cubs. Career .300 hitter, 55 WAR, not a terrible guess, especially considering there were so few teams. But only four All-Star appearances.
I went with Sandberg as well.
My only hangup is that I knew there was a time when they played two All-star games a year. So I thought the quiz might be a bit of a “trick” based on that. Fortunately, it wasn’t.
As a Cubs fan, I thought Sandberg was the obvious choice. It felt too easy.
Sandberg:
* First player in history to, at some point in their career, have a season with 40+ homers (1990) and a season with 50+ steals (1985).
* Third player in history to achieve 25 home runs and 50 steals in the same season
* Third player in history to achieve 40 home runs and 25 steals in the same season
Plus a record errorless-games streak and incredible durability for the first 11 years of his career. Speed, power, defense, durability. Throw in “good looks” and solid enough guy / minimal clubhouse issues to be face of the franchise for over a decade, that’s about as well-rounded a player as you could ask for.
Good stuff. I’ll admit, I had forgotten how good he was for that 10 year run from 1984-1993- 56rWAR, so, 5.6 average per year. 47.1 peak WAR.
As you note, one of those good at everything guys- .290 hitter with OBP around .350, 20-25 HR power, 25-30 SB with a good %, really good fielder who won 9 GG’s. This in an era when a lot of 2B were so-so hitters with little power.
Seems like he’s a little forgotten about today-prob because the Cubs weren’t that good & he didn’t hang on to hit big career #’s- He retired at age 34, then came back after 1 1/2 years away for 2 more years & was done at 37, but, he was a big star for the late 80’s/early 90’s.
As for clubhouse- Always seemed like a good team player, the only thing I remember is the rumors of his wife & Rafael Palmeiro supposedly having an affair. Not Ryne’s fault, unless you want to fault him for a bad marital choice. 🙂
I also was surprised when I went back to assess Ryno’s career. He stacks up pretty well. If he’d put up three WAR in that “retired” season he’d move up to 7th in JAWS (just ahead of Grich, well behind Carew). He wasn’t exactly underrated, but I suspect we have collectively assumed he wasn’t quite the superstar he seemed to be – not so, he was legitimately great! Post-integration I’d take him 4th after Jackie Robinson, Joe Morgan and Rod Carew.
I also got it, but my two other thoughts were Billy Williams, who I really just didn’t know how many he had because he’s before my time, and a guy no one else has mentioned yet, Sammy Sosa, who was named seven times.
I’d thought about Sosa but the possible number of all-star years was limited. His breakout year was 1998, and I figured he had at best one all-star year prior to that (confirmed – 1995). I knew he was on the great 2003 team but felt he was tailing off around then (confirmed – was not an AS in 2003, but was in 2004 – finishing the season with 1.3 WAR, then left as a free agent).
So I probably would have guessed six to eight all-star appearances. Sandberg and Williams were likely higher due to longevity as Cubs. (Same with Stan Hack but I was way wrong about that.) Then Santo and Sosa would have been next on my list.
The biggest surprise in looking back at Sosa’s career is how many years he played as a Cub before exploding. I knew he scuffled with Texas and the White Sox, and took a couple years with the Cubs before he got his feet under him – but he was there in 1992!!!
OK, as I’m writing that paragraph…maybe an even bigger surprise is he put up about 5 WAR a year from 1993-96. I thought of him as a marginal player who roided into a superstar, but the annual value he provided from ‘93-96 is basically the same as what he did from 1998-2000 (and 2002). His “otherworldly” 1998 with 66 homers was 6.5 WAR – but he’d already put up 5.3 and 5.4 seasons in 1995-96. The 10.3 he put up in 2001 is the real outlier.
I’m hoping for a future where the Cubs can reconcile with Sosa, but not sure it will happen.
It’s funny how we can experience the same things and be left with different long-term perceptions. I don’t perceive Sosa’s ‘98 as a breakout. I remember him as a longtime star before then; I remember Harry Caray talking him up. A lot of those Cubs teams also weren’t good and they’d have needed a representative. I don’t remember if they voted for specific outfield positions at the time, but I assume Gwynn was starting in RF most of the early-to-mid 90s.
Literally the only thing I remember about the 1997 season was it was my freshman year of college, and I had a buddy who was trying out being a bookie as a side hustle. (His first major sporting event was the first Masters that Tiger Woods won – no one bet on the fresh face so my buddy made a killing.) Anyway, to “support” him I told him I would place a daily bet on the Cubs until they got their first win. They went, not a joke, 0-14 to start the season. I don’t know if I followed through on my “I’m betting until they win” promise but he got some money from me.
I don’t remember much about the previous seasons either. 1994 strike kind of killed it for me. I was sixteen and headed into junior year of high school – so between the strike, and the Cubs being meh, and the freedom that comes with a drivers license and cash from a first job, I don’t remember much beyond the occasional killing time watching a throwaway game on WGN during the summer afternoons.
1998 though – between Kerry Wood, and Sammy Sosa, and stumbling into a friend group that were split between rabid Cubs and Cardinals fans, and our college being within driving distance of both cities – baseball (with Sosa in the forefront) took on new life. Yeah, I had no idea he’d been decent, beyond his 30-30 necklace, which at the time I thought was “empty”. Looks like his defensive value pushed him from a ~3 WAR player to a ~5 WAR player that year. It’s fun to compare notes about what we remember and then against what the box scores say!
I considered Ferguson Jenkins and Greg Maddux too but I figured it’s an uphill road for pitchers.
I figured the answer was going to have 9-10 AS games & that both of those guys just didn’t play for Chicago long enough.
Maddux was only there 6 years before leaving & then came back at the end, but, 10 AS games would have been too high. Fergie was with them longer, but, still felt like 10 AS games would be too many. He always seemed like an underappreciated star.
Hilton was absolutely not worthy of an MVP vote. Maybe you could argue for a down ballot Cy Young vote, but there were 40+ AL pitchers and 50+ AL hitters who had better seasons.
He wasn’t even a top 5 reliever by ERA, which is the one category where he was best (and which is most based on factors out of his control).
Just because he had a better second half isn’t enough to make him more valuable. Those first half games still happened.
No, it doesn’t really matter, but it’s a sign that the voter isn’t serious.
I went to read the column where he explains it, and my interpretation of this is that he wanted to write about the Tigers’ bullpen after the trade deadline. So he picked Holton as the best reliever on a group of relievers he wanted to write about.
I think trying to rationalize it beyond that is a mistake. And despite my sympathy for using a throwaway vote because he wants to write about the Tigers, it makes a ton of sense to mock him. Everything is behind a paywall now so all most of us see is the vote!
It’s Holton, not Hilton. He’s pretty good. Almost 100 innings out of the pen this season. He seems to be the rare FIP beater, 188 career innings beating his FIP by about a run each season, so his 3.4 b-WAR reflects his value better. Maybe not MVP worthy but easily second most valuable pitcher in Detroit last season.
His .203 BABIP isn’t sustainable, and even with that, he’s still 3rd in reliever ERA since he came into the league. That’s great, but a) he’s a reliever, b) it’s mostly luck with a low K rate, and c) he’s still not even the best.
Again, maybe a downballot Cy vote, but it’s ludicrous to vote him as one of the 10 best players in the AL.
There were several Tigers position players he could have voted for if he was determined to give some recognition to the team.
Due respect to Holton but I would put 16 AL players ahead of him:
Aaron Judge Juan Soto Bobby Witt Jr. Yordan Alvarez José Ramírez Tarik Skubal Brent Rooker Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Gunnar Henderson Seth Lugo Emmanuel Clase Corey Seager Jarren Duran Cole Ragans Framber Valdez Bryce Miller Kirby Yates Cade Smith
Dave L. probably overlooked other pitchers in his analysis because they then to be discounted in MVP voting. i would note that Yates had both more WAR and WPA than Holton and Smith had more WAR, so he’s probably the #4 reliever in the AL
As we discussed as you tried to stump me about Tyler Holton (yeah, good luck getting that past a Tigers fan), he has been a revelation not only of himself, but of the Scott Harris administration’s ability to ferret out talent nobody else out there is seeing or paying much attention to. And not only Holton, but also Jack Flaherty, Matt Vierling, Carson Kelly, and even jack-of-all-trades Zach McKinstry. Hell, even the resurrections of Beau Brieske and Parker Meadows from career-ending purgatory have been nothing short of astounding. Yes, Holton has legitimately been one of the best waiver wire pickups in recent memory, but mad credit goes to the Harris team up and down the system for their ability to develop and deploy the talent they see in front of them.
In retrospect I think the Giants’ success was due much more to Harris than Zaidi. This was very much how the Giants were when they first joined.
Valentin’s 1995 was really underappreciated. He got a lot of value from his defense and led the AL in dRAR with 30.4 and TZ with 23 (those are the only advanced defensive stats fangraphs has for that era). But he didn’t win the Gold Glove. That went to the overappreciated Omar Vizquel who had 8.3 dRAR and a TZ of 1. It used to be that the GG went to the best hitter who wasn’t awful defensively, but Valentin led AL shortstops in just about every offensive category (2nd in AVG), most of them by wide margins.
GG voters loved to give it to someone who already got it. OV had two already at that point. Also Vizquel had a better fielding percentage. In 1995 that mattered.
Amongst the notable players mentioned that the Red Sox might be interested in was Griff Canning. It may take me a while to figure out what the Braves were doing when they shipped Soler to the Angels for Canning who they immediately canned. It isn’t like he was making a ton of money so that the Braves could save a lot by renegotiating and if it was just a salary dump they could have squeezed a couple of million out of the Angels for Soler instead of taking Canning.
Canning and Rojas are the two most notable players who got non-tendered. Canning is probably more interesting because he could turn into a 2-win starter and Rojas is probably more of a backup but both have had some success and a lot of team control.
How would the Braves squeeze money out of the Angels? They sent Soler and all of Soler’s contract to Anaheim. You can’t straight up pay for players. The Braves we’re probably just happy that the Angels took Soler’s whole contract.
Cash or a player to be named later. It is done all the time.
If you read Wilner’s article, he admits to putting Cleveland’s closer ahead of Skubal, who won the Cy, because Skubal pitches in fewer games. I don’t even think Skubal was on Wilner’s list of MVPs. He used the same reason to justify Holton over Skubal, despite nearly identical ERA and a 100 IP difference. He’s arguing that playing more games = more value, but I think it’s pretty clear pitching significantly more innings is more valuable.
Having listened to Wilner for years, it’s him trying to act like the smartest person in the room. Yes, Relievers Pitch in more games, but that doesn’t make them more valuable. Certainly not more valuable than the best pitcher in the league, who is on the same team.
If you want to recognize a player like this, make an Honourable Mention section and highlight his value that way. It’s embarrassing to suggest this reliever was one of the 10 most valuable players in the AL.
I don’t know… roughly speaking, maybe a bit over 100?
Tyler Holton’s inclusion on a ballot speaks to the interpretability of “most valuable”. I don’t think Mike Wilner would seriously argue that Holton was one of the ten “best” players in the American League, but he was an absolutely integral part of a miracle playoff run. When you consider all his contributions, the Tigers likely don’t sniff the playoffs without what he did. I think that’s fair to acknowledge with a tenth-place vote. I don’t like the idea that we should pretend every player’s season existed in a vacuum and that how their contributions actually affected their team has zero bearing.
Then why not put Skubal there instead (or in addition)? The idea that Holton was somehow more valuable, even to the Tigers, is silly. Or Riley Green?
guessed Ron Santo, thought it could have been Billy Williams, totally forgot about Sandberg.
It is nice of Falvey to note that the players showed every day at the end of the season, as though that were unusual or thought of as the problem. Of course they were starting Matthews, Festa and Richardson during a pennant race. Someone didn’t show up preseason, or at the trade deadline. He could blame ownership. He could blame himself. He could blame his manager who performed poorly with insufficient assets. Instead he chooses to defend people who were never really blamed. Clever way to criticize the fans for his own failure. Love that leadership.
I find it a bit confusing that we have what amounts to “WAR is not that important for assessing player value in MVP voting” followed by “John Valentin had the most WAR and therefore should have won MVP”.
While I recognize the differences, these arguments don’t really work together. And while it’s a disrespectful to say “who the f is Holton”, it’s also a little disrespectful by the voter to ignore better performances, especially those by Holton’s teammates, in his voting. And I don’t think it’s good for baseball to pretend like relievers are more important than cy young winning starters, which the voter explicitly claims.
It does seem you are a bit confused. In no way did I state that WAR is “not that important,” I simply opined that I don’t consider it to be the be-all and end-all in determining value, this within the framework of a down-ballot vote. I also didn’t suggest that Valentin should have won the MVP in 1995. What I did is point out that he rarely gets mentioned, then proceed to ask whether he might have won the NL award in front of Larkin (and perhaps Bonds). Did I cite both WAR and wRC+ (things voters weren’t considering in 1995)? Of course. Totally ignoring them wouldn’t make sense in a 2024 FanGraphs article.
Thanks for the response, David. I admit that I was being a bit extreme in my analysis of your two different columns to further prove a point, and I apologize for that.
I also don’t believe that WAR is the only thing that should into the equation of “value”, but to give Tyler Holton credit for the Tigers run, and therefore claim he was the Most Valuable Player on the team, is still pretty disprespectful to the numerous players who contributed inarguably more value than Holton, including the aforementioned Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal and guys like Riley Greene and Matt Vierling.
Obviously this is all small potatoes but, to use another sport, this feels like a writer giving Buddy Hield an MVP vote this year because the Warriors surprised everyone, but leaving Curry, Wiggins, and Green off the ballot entirely. Is Buddy Hield having a good season while experiencing great fortune and contributing to their surprise performance? Yes. Is he more valuable than the other three? Definitely not Curry, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone to make a definitive argument against the other two.
I share your opinion that Holton wasn’t the Tigers’ most valuable player — he certainly wasn’t as valuable as Skubal — but as I opined at the end of the piece, “The vote — hat-tip if you will — was far more reasonable than what keyboard warriors on social media want to believe.” (Especially those who were claiming never to have heard of him.) Moreover, and this is equally pertinent, I opined that down-ballot votes aren’t really all that important in the grand scheme. A voter putting him near the top would have been a different story entirely.
It’s not reasonable! But if you want to make an unreasonable vote on the 10th spot on your MVP ballot to make some sort of point that will be lost on everyone because your explanation is behind a paywall, I am not losing much sleep over it either.
I really struggle with WPA as a metric for award voting. Wpa is higher for RP and end of game hits because there are less innings coming up after, so the probability added by a success is greater than earlier in the game when you have more time to compensate. Does that mean those innings pitched or hits earned are truly more valuable than hits or innings pitched that put you in the situation to win, but happened earlier? I say no, and would love to hear a counter argument
WPA is not a useful stat for individual level performances. It is a game level stat and it is basically only good for gamblers and funsies.
That same BBWAA member left Skubal off his ballot. If you were to ask Scott Harris and A.J. Hinch who was move valuable to the Tigers, Skubal or Holton, it wouldn’t even be close.