Archive for MVP

Around this time of year those who write or analyze, be it in the mainstream media or the blogosphere, tend to get involved in posts discussing end of season award-winners. Heck, even Dave and I joined the fray yesterday in discussing the AL Cy Young Award with regards to Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee. In the comments sections of both of our articles, the conversation surrounding who will win the award vs. who should win the award began to surface. Conversations like this seem to sprout up all over the place so I figured a post was in order to attempt to figure out why they exist and where they come from.

For starters, the idea of someone who should win something vs. someone who will win the same thing implies that the eventual winner is not deserving of whatever it is he is winning. In our case, an award like the MVP or Cy Young. Those in the camp of the former are seceding that their guy is not going to win the award but that he should. And, when they say he should, it really means that if they were voting, the results would be much different.

This then implies those voting are wrong in their decisions.

Some of the time they are, but really, do those voting on the awards get it wrong all the time? And who is deciding the criteria with which to gauge their decisions? These awards are voted on by mainstream writers, ones who generally are not well-versed in much other than batting average or win-loss record. Most of the time, us in the sabermetrics community mock their lack of statistical prowess but, for me at least, I don’t truly get bothered unless the author blatantly misuses or quotes numbers out of context.

Saying, for instance, that Adam Dunn lacks value because he has a .230 BA annoys me because the writers are making a definitive claim about his worth while using a metric that does tell us something, but nowhere near enough to make such a claim. On the other hand, if someone says that Player X could win the MVP award because he made the most impact on a good team and has a lot of home runs, RBIs as well as a high batting average, I really do not get that bothered. Sure, I know that there are plenty of other, better metrics out there to truly measure worth, but I don’t really care much about the awards. It isn’t going to effect me if someone “undeserving” wins.

See, for us who analyze stats and base judgments on a series of metrics, awards just aren’t that meaningful other than for posts discussing, for instance, why David Wright or Matt Holliday was more deserving than Jimmy Rollins… or why Johan Santana should have won instead of Bartolo Colon in 2005. Do I wish those making these decisions were a bit more educated with regards to evaluating players? Of course… but I’m not going to let it ruin my day that they vote for the wrong person, unless of course the losing player had planned on splitting his award bonus with me.

I guess my point here is that those of us who understand how to evaluate a player better shouldn’t care so much about the awards and should leave it to the people who care more about impact on the game from what they see rather than what some numbers may suggest. As in, why get involved in something or get bothered by something we should care about very little, if at all? Leave the WPA/LI, VORP, BRAA, and UZR to us analysts to do our jobs and properly gauge the true talent levels of players, but let’s not bring them into MVP or Cy Young discussions when we know that the percentage of voters who utilize and understand these metrics is likely much lower than Adam Dunn’s percentage of hits/at-bats.

The end of each season brings with it a few certainties: eight teams make the playoffs, one team wins the world series, and we are likely to argue or debate about which player’s performance merits the Most Valuable Player award. Some years house less debates than others but the award’s definition is so ambiguous that there are usually a few players that meet the loose “criteria.” By definition, the MVP award was spawned from the idea back in 1922 to honor the player “who is of greatest all-round service to his club and credit to the sport during each season; to recognize and reward uncommon skill and ability when exercised by a player for the best interests of his team, and to perpetuate his memory.”

Now, in 21st century language, this translates to the player who was most valuable to his team; the player who, if removed from his team, would hinder the success of the team the most; the player the team cannot live without. From a statistical standpoint this would seem to refer to which player contributed the most wins to his team. Luckily, we have a statistic for that here, known none other as WPA.

I decided to look at the win probability statistics for all years currently on Fangraphs (1974-2007) in order to see if the definition of MVP has held true, as well as see the average total and rank for a few of these statistics. The stats in question are WPA, WPA/LI, and Clutch. WPA/LI refers to context-neutral wins and so the different game states comprising plate appearances are not taken into account. Clutch, which I will discuss a bit more in-depth later tonight, measures a player’s performance in high leverage situations against his performance in all others.

Using just the National League for now, I recorded the WPA, WPA/LI, and Clutch, as well as the league ranks, for all MVPs from 1974-2007. The only exceptions were Chipper Jones in 1999, since we don’t currently have that year recorded, and Willie Stargell’s co-award in 1979; according to the league leaders page he didn’t even qualify that year. After calculating the average scores and ranks, here are the results:

WPA: 6.10, Rank: 3.88
WPA/LI: 6.11, Rank: 3.48
Clutch: -0.15, Rank: 19.69

A few things initially stand out. First, the average WPA and WPA/LI are virtually identical. Second, the average rank for MVPs in these categories is between 3rd and 4th. Lastly, the average clutch score is negative.

Of the 33 NL MVPs recorded, 14 finished #1 in WPA; 15 were #1 in WPA/LI; and nobody finished #1 in clutch. In fact, just 3 of the 33 finished in the top ten, the highest being Steve Garvey’s second place rank in 1974 (the other two were Kirk Gibson as #8 in 1988 and Bonds as #6 in 2004). So, despite the hoopla surrounding clutch ability prevalent in today’s mainstream media, it has not necessarily translated into MVP success.

Now, of the 17 players who won the award while posting negative clutch scores, 13 finished 1st-4th in WPA while finishing 1st or 2nd in WPA/LI. The only negative clutch scores that did not were the following players, with their WPA and WPA/LI ranks in parenthesis:

1987: Andre Dawson (19,11)
1991: Terry Pendleton (9,7)
2000: Jeff Kent (7,7)
2005: Albert Pujols (5,2)

Of those with positive clutch scores, 7 of 16 finished 5th or lower in WPA, 6 of 16 finished 5th or lower in WPA/LI, and just 3/16 were in the top ten in clutch.

The highest WPA in this span belongs to (guess who?) Barry Bonds, with a 12.63 in 2004. In fact, from 2001-2004, Bonds averaged 10.79 wins contributed. All four of those seasons ranked in the top four, with Ryan Howard’s 8.10 in 2006 being the only other above eight wins. The lowest two WPA scores came with Dawson’s 1987 season (2.84) and Jimmy Rollins last year with a 2.69. The highest WPA/LI totals were Barry Bonds 2001-2004 and fifth place happened to be Bonds in 1993. Again, the lowest belonged to Jimmy Rollins.

It appears that clutch has not factored into NL MVP voting since at least 1974 and that those with great all around numbers/win contributions have been more than capable of winning the award while seeing a decline in their performance during high leverage situations. I tried to see if anyone this year matched up with the average ranks but the results were not too strong. Lance Berkman is currently 1st in WPA, 1st in WPA/LI, and 15th in clutch, which was the closest. When we get closer to the end of the season it should be interesting to see which players come closest to these averages, if not exceeding them.