The MVP and the DH Adjustment
No designated hitter has ever won the Most Valuable Player award. Barring a surprise, that will not change this season. Victor Martinez has had a amazing year, but he is not going to be the American League MVP. (I have a feeling he does not have much of a shot at being the National League MVP this year, either.) Who knows where he will end up in the balloting, but does outside of some Twitter arguments the day the winner is announced, will anyone really care about the down-ballot voting?
According the metric everyone loves to hate, Wins Above Replacement, that sounds about right. Martinez is not even close to the top. This might really bother some people. After all, one could argue that Martinez has been the best hitter in the American League this season. The problem with WAR, from the Martinez partisans’ perspective, is the positional adjustment for the DH.
This is not a post about where exactly Victor Martinez should be in the MVP discussion this season. The question is whether anyone would really have a shot at being the most valuable player according to WAR if they DHed all season.
Although this post is not primarily about Victor Martinez, a short digression might head some stuff off at the pass. Namely: just considering offense (no positions or fielding including), Martinez has not been the best in the American League this season. Through Saturday’s games, at least, he was only the fifth-best offensive player in the American League behind Mike Trout, Michael Brantley, Jose Bautista, and Jose Abreu, who all play in the field. Trout is way ahead of Martinez. Even though Martinez is pretty close to the other players on offense, again, they play the field most of the time with varying levels of success. Perhaps some people will object to including baserunning, I’m not sure why they would, but they might. Trout still comes out ahead, while Abreu and Brantley, among others, are right there. And they play the field.
(Note that I am not someone who has a problem with pitchers winning the MVP, I am just leaving them out for the sake of simplicity.)
One could slice it different ways, but I would guess most understand that if a DH is not the best offensive player in the league, he probably should not win the MVP. But we know that other things matter besides offense (for non-pitchers): fielding and the difficulty of the position at which the player mostly plays. WAR attempts to account for those things. One might or might not agree with exactly how current implementations of WAR do so, but most agree that they matter. (This is not to say that having the highest WAR is the only determining factor in deciding which player should be MVP, but the nuances of all that will be left aside here.)
But how much should not playing in the field be held against a player? The positional adjustment for the DH is -17.5 runs for the season. The general reasoning is that a league-average hitter who does not play a position is a replacement-level player. Replacement level is generally thought to be 22.5 runs below average over a full season. However, five runs are “given back” to account for the difficulty of hitting off of the bench. That is a rough account of the reasoning. One might view the DH has being valued like a concrete-gloved first baseman (-12.5 positional adjustment).
Whatever the reasoning, that is a pretty stiff downward positional adjustment. I assume most have no objection, in principle, to a DH winning the MVP. The question here is whether anyone be valuable enough on offense to overcome the positional adjustment and put himself into the mix for being the most valuable player in the league (according to WAR). What does somewhat-recent history tell us?
Probably the most well-known recent example of a primary DH making a legitimate run at being the league’s Most Valuable Player was David Ortiz in 2007. He ended up finishing fourth in the voting (he did better in the voting in other seasons, but 2007 this was his best performance at the plate, objectively) behind Alex Rodriguez, Magglio Ordonez, and Vladimir Guerrero, which was pretty close to how the WAR leaderboard for positon players ended up. If one wanted to make it just about A-Rod and Ortiz, it was not tough to make the call. Is was not as if UZR boosted A-Rod’s WAR that season. Even if one thought A-Rod was a poor third baseman, was he bad enough that he would have been better off DHing? A-Rod also was about eight runs above average on the bases, while Big Papi was about five runs below average. They also had the same wRC+: 175. The choice was between two roughly equal hitters, but one played a tough position and ran the bases well, the other played no position and was a poor baserunner. It does not seem hard to imagine that the gap between Ortiz and Rodriguez was quite large (it was more than three wins according to WAR).
Widening the net, has any recent player at any position overcome such a big deficit in the defense column and been a legitimate contender for the MVP according to WAR? I did a search for players who had a -17.5 or worse for defense (position plus fielding) to see how they stacked up on the WAR leaderboards in those seasons. (National League players were included because the point is simply to see if a player could have enough value just from offense to overcome a -17.5 on defense.) I did not prorate anything here because I was being lazy, er, I just wanted a rough look. I was also not concerned with the issue of how they actually did in the balloting, as the issue is the DH adjustment. Here are a few interesting cases that stood out to me:
In 1998, Mark McGwire’s defensive value was 25 runs below average — he was rated as a terrible first baseman. He still managed to tie Barry Bonds atop the National League’s WAR leaderboard at 8.5 that season. I guess that is what happens when someone hits .299/.470/.752 (205 wRC+). Neither McGwire nor Bonds won the MVP that year, by the way.
On the other side of things, we have Carlos Delgado in 2000. Delgado had an underappreciated career, but he had the season of his life in 2000, hitting .344/.470/.664 (179 wRC+). He ended up with a 7.4 WAR despite being rated about 21 runs below average combined fielding and positional adjustment. Still, he was rated about two wins worse than A-Rod (that guy again!), and a few other players were between the two. So he was not really in contention, according to WAR.
When one thinks of extremely valuable DH-types, Frank Thomas is one of the first names that should spring to mind, even if he played a fair bit of first base (badly) earlier in his career. In 1991 Thomas was a monster, and actually played more at DH than at first base. He hit .318/.453/.553 (179 wRC+) in his first full season in the majors, but despite his lack of value in the field (-18.2), he still managed 7.3 WAR. But he was not even close to Cal Ripken, who was having one of the best seasons of any modern shortstop at 10.6 WAR. In 1992, though, Thomas basically put on a repeat performance in terms of value. He did play first base pretty much all season, but in doing so showed that he might as well DH (-17.9 positional adjustment plus fielding). And according to WAR, he was the most valuable position player in the American League that year, even if he just finished eighth in the voting. That was okay, as he won it the next year (when it probably should have gone to Ken Griffey Jr. or John Olerud) and also in the strike-shortened 1994 (he deserved it, but 1994… blergh).
One could go on. In 1971 Joe Torre was the National League MVP, and was legitimately in the mix despite his horribly-rated performance at third base. On the other side of things, Gary Sheffield’s 1996 was impressive, but Barry Bonds was, well, being Barry Bonds. McGwire’s 1999 is sort of in the same great-but-not-really-a-contender space, is as The Big Hurt’s 2000.
As one can see, though, while it is very difficult, it is possible for players with very harsh “defense” scores, ones on par (or worse) with the DH positional adjustment, to be rated among the very best according to WAR. Originally, I thought this crude method would not be enough, and was going to do a prorated study to come up with WAR figures for players who hit like crazy and were also good at defense (or at least not so bad they were worse than -17.5). This would judge them as if they had DHed instead of playing the field. That was an interesting exercise in itself. As one might imagine, it included a number of Barry Bonds seasons in which he would have been the most valuable (or very close). Albert Pujols’ 2003 season (would have made it except for Barry Bonds… but what if they had both DHed? Uh, in the National League. You get the idea, though) was up there, as was Mike Trout’s 2013… Let’s avoid going down that road again, shall we?
The point is hopefully obvious by now: when a player’s “defense” rating is -17.5 or lower, is very difficult for the player to be on par with the highest-rated position players in the league according to WAR. However, it is possible because it has been actual. It just takes having one of the best offensive seasons recent memory. Maybe one does not think it is fair to hold Victor Martinez to that standard in 2014. No one is saying Martinez has not had a great year. As well as he has hit, though, he has not hit well enough to be the among the league’s most valuable players without substantial contributions in the field. That is as it has been, and as it should continue to be.
Matt Klaassen reads and writes obituaries in the Greater Toronto Area. If you can't get enough of him, follow him on Twitter.
You just saved me several hours of research time on this, thanks! I think the fact that we’re having these discussions shows how much we under-value fielding. Also, holy cow, Frank Thomas.
I’ve always loved that Frank’s 1994 line easily looks like it could’ve occurred in a full season if you don’t look at the number of games. Hitting .353 with 38 HR, 101 RBI, and 106 R over a full season is impressive – doing it in 70% of a season is ridiculous.
Jeff Bagwell had 39 HR, 104 R, 116 RBI, 15 SB (7.8 WAR) … in nearly 40 fewer PAs.
Both of them had a wRC+ of 205, which tie for the highest (non-Barry Bonds division) among qualified hitters since 1980. McGwire’s ’98 is tied with them as well.
I do think it’s funny that Frank Thomas wasn’t even the most famous player in his own organization that year.
Yeah Frank’s accomplishments are legendary. That said, Vmar’s value to the Tigers does not lie in the stats. Detroit would have missed the playoffs if it were not for his leadership on the field and in the clubhouse. He made Miggy a better hitter by hiting behind him and the club knew they could count on Victor down the stretch. Oh yeah, he’s insurance behind the plate and did play first when Miggy had nagging injuries to rest.
VALUE TO THE TEAM!! you can sit on your WAR rating.
Isn’t this argument similar to the argument that a pitcher should also not be the MVP because they contribute only on one dimension?? The question really is, is a DH more valuable than a pitcher?
If Trout wins this year will he be the first MVP to also lead the league in strikeouts?? (Babe Ruth maybe??)
Eyeballing it since 1980, Sosa won in ’98 leading the NL in Ks, and Mo Vaughn led the AL in Ks in his 1995 MVP-winning year. I first thought Reggie Jackson in his MVP year but he only had 111 K that year.
Not the first, but he will break Howard’s record for most Ks by a MVP (not including pitchers, smart alecks).
How many dimensions a player contributes in means far less than the total value of his contributions in terms of runs and wins. The answer to your question is…maybe 🙂
Except pitchers do play defense.
Yes, but how many pitchers hit? In the AL they don’t, and in the NL their ABs are minimized as much as possible.
The pitcher-for-MVP argument centers on their pitching being so valuable to make up for the lack of hitting. The DH-for-MVP argument is essentially the opposite: their hitting is so valuable that it makes up for a lack of defense.
Well there is actually a flaw in your methodology.
You can’t set the bar for players who did not DH at -17.5 DEF becuase they had the benefit of not sitting on the bench and be exposed to the DH penalty. As you mentioned in the article the pos. adj. for DHs has this already incorporated. So you would have to look at position players with a DEF of -22.5.
This wouldn’t change the conclusion obv. just wanted to throw it out there.
There is a noticeable decrease in offensive performance for players who move from the field to DH, so coming off of the bench every half inning does seem to take a toll
Did you even read what I wrote?
I agree, for position players, you have to look at DEF = -22.5 (or more accurately -22.5/700 x PA).
Any statistic that concludes that David Ortiz contributed less than Daniel Nava to the Red Sox this year is deeply flawed. “Replacement level” isn’t something that exists separately for fielding. Or to put ir another way: Jackie Bradley Jr. is the Frank Thomas of fielding.
David Ortiz contributing less on the basepaths than Daniel Nava is deeply flawed, got it!
Do you have some way to verify this, or are you just appealing to name value?
Edgar Martinez did lead the AL in offensive WAR and wRC+ in 1995. He had as good a case as any DH ever. The annual DH award is named for him for a good reason.
Hilarious that I’m pretty sure Juan Gonzalez won the AL MVP in ’98 solely because of his RBI total and the fact he was on a winning team. And Sammy Sosa for basically the same reason.
Sammy Sosa hit 66 home runs.
If that were the deciding criteria, you’d think it would go to the guy who hit 70.
Or if the deciding criterion was best hitter on a playoff team. And he was also a guy that was viewed as an all-around player at the time. He has 18 stolen bases, which at the time was justification enough for good base runner/good fielder status. In the history of dumb MVP choices, Sosa is not in the conversation. There are just too many Juan Gonzalezes.
I think the argument is that -17.5 is still too steep for a DH. Especially if you think that the DH (Victor) could manage 1B.
His WAR is marked down because he’s been, according to our small 284 inning sample size, awful. Total def value is -21.2. Change that to -12.5… give him some bonus points because of flexibility to play him at 1B and emergency catcher.. throw in he’s a switch hitter so he’s got a favorable handedness matchup at any point in the game and the opposing managers can’t pull out their 1 lefty/righty killer to run through DET’s 3-4-5.. toss in some credit for him not striking out since a ball in play is better and that he’s outhit last year’s MVP on the same team.. = 2nd place MVP. Remove Trout and I’d vote for VM given his team’s position on the win curve.
Nadia Comaneci thinks it took a LOT of gymnastics to build that case.
Are you giving every other player this same benefit? Are you crediting Josh Donaldson because he could probably play a passable left field and a good first base?
Martinez can play first base, but if he was good at it, or at any other position for that matter, would be be the primary DH? It’s not like the Tigers are so good defensively that he’s an asset on the field they don’t have room for. He’s the DH for a reason, and because he is, he’s taking up a very valuable lineup spot. Imagine if he could play in the outfield. He would be taking the spot of one of the Tigers’ underperforming outfielders, while opening the DH spot for literally anyone, likely someone who could hit better than Jackson or Davis. Or, they could move Cabrera to DH and Castellanos to 1B, get a defensive 3B and improve their infield defense by a good margin. Versatility is nice, but primarily so when the player is actually good at those positions.
Just a nitpick about why bsr stats are imperfect: Dan Szym makes the best argument against their accuracy that I have heard. Players with slower bsr numbers presumably hit extra base hits further (and some singles too) thus providing a greater baserunner advancement rate than players with high bsr numbers on those same base hit measurements.
Why would we presume that slower players hit the ball farther than faster players? Trout and Cutch would disagree.
It’s not that they hit the ball further, it’s that they have to hit the ball further to get to the same base. That means that the average VMart single should be better at advancing base runners than the average McCutchen single, because the best-hit VMart singles would turn into doubles for McCutchen. wOBA and its derivatives, though, treat all singles as equal, so they slightly underrate slow players and overrate fast ones.
Exactly. Two hitters might hit the ball in the same place, but the good runner will get a hustle double while the slow runner will get a single. If there was a preceding runner on 1st, he’d be rewarded when the slow guy hits (he went 1st-to-3rd on a single!) but punished when the fast guy hits (he failed to score from 1st on a double…)
I’m not sure if this significantly overrates slow hitters and overrates fast ones though – it does very slightly, but the big problem is that it conflates hitting skill with running skill and messes with preceding runners’ running skill
But two guys don’t hit the ball in the same place.
To pull in the stats from the Adrian Gonzalez RBI post this morning, if we’re going to try to say how valuable a guy is on the grounds of his offense alone, shouldn’t we try to measure the degree to which his hitting was actually valuable? Look at the situational hitting leaderboards – Martinez didn’t fare badly, but there’s nothing that screams ‘most valuable’ about it.
Certainly if the topic is “most valuable” then situational hitting would seem to be important.
At some point, some DH is going to be close enough in value AND they will be playing DH not because they are terrible in the field but because the team has above average fielders at their position.
At that point, I’m curious what value people would assign. Do you punish the player for contextual issues (he would have likely player a league average 1B but DH’d because of a gold glover there, for example) or do you give them credit for playing a league average first base that never actually happened (defense is not so consistent to assume performance)?
Neither seems all that great.
Mike Napoli, and Adrian Gonzales, and Kevin Youkilis, played GG-caliber defense for Boston. For much of Ortiz’s career in Boston, he’s been penalized like someone who would be a butcher at 1B, despite being solidly average when he’s had the opportunity to play there for Boston.
The positional adjustment represents the position, not the player; and is relevant only to the extent that a player is optimally deployed at that position given replacements at other positions. Ben Zobrist provides a great amount of value to the Rays by being deployable in many positions, but if he’s deployed in a lesser position the positional adjustment assumes he’s deplorable, not deployable, in the others, and having burned value simply by showing up.
A “DH” will win the MVP award when Mike Trout gets to an age where that is all he can do, but he can still do it like the Mike Trout of today.
I don’t think a DH will ever win MVP, because they will never fit the mold of the good all-around player that we (and the voters) tend to look at as a valuable player, let alone the one who’s MOST valuable. As good as V-Mart was at the plate (and he definitely helped others in the line-up get better pitches; JD Martinez ought to take V-Mart out for a fancy dinner), it’s not as if he was indispensable as a DH, because the position itself is not indispensable; anyone on the team can DH (albeit to varying degrees of success). If you brought Andrew McCutchen over to the American League and slotted him at DH, he would be terrific at it, but he is simply less valuable that way because of his ability as an elite outfielder. This is why I’m comfortable with Edgar Martinez simply being thought of as “Hall of Very Good”-worthy rather than as Hall-of-Fame-worthy.
But as the piece says, it’s not that DH’s are always less valuable, it’s just that they have to hit better to compensate for lack of defensive value in order equal players in other positions. Edger certainly deserves some penalty for adding little to no defensive value. However, it’s hard to look at his career hitting numbers and come away with any conclusion other than that he is in elite company.
Offensively speaking, yes, DH’s are extremely valuable, but they universally always have “old guy” skills. Make of this what you will, but often the same liabilities that keep a player out of the field (too slow, aging) often limit the player as hitter and baserunner, thus curtailing his value. It is the TYPE of player that DH’s most often, that prevent a known full-time DH (V-Mart, Ortiz, etc.) from winning an MVP. I simply think that voters would always rather vote for an athlete that contributes in multiple ways.
Mike Trout is making all of this moot anyhow.
Miguel Cabrera is an all-around player?
Shouldn’t it be possible to figure out replacement level for DH without using a positional adjustment, by estimating how good the best freely-available hitters are? If nothing else it would be a useful sanity-check for the DH adjustment.
I have no problem with positional adjustments, but I’m really bothered by the fact that they seem to pretty much be made up. Isn’t there some method we can use to actually measure the positional adjustments?
“The general reasoning is that a league-average hitter who does not play a position is a replacement-level player.”
Do we know this? If this is true, then the worst DHs in the AL should always be league-average hitters, correct? If not, if a significant number of DHs are worse than league-average every year, doesn’t that tell us that it’s harder to find a decent DH than we currently think?
Say one team has a lot of RH pitchers. The 3B/LF will see a lot of balls. Say another team is stacked with lefties, so their 3B/LF sees a ton more balls in play. Yet both are 3B/LF guys in there so both will get a positional adjustment knocking them down for playing LF/3B, nothing to do with how good they are or team value. Garbage stat.
Right. Positional scarcity is an issue that needs to be teased out. In the AL you have added another regular position with the DH, but it may be hard to find decent hitters to add to that position. Some years the DH position is 1st in offense vs. the other AL positions, but sometimes it is lower (I’ve seen it as low as 5th IIRC).
Then there is the fact that quite a few good position players have seen a big hit in their offense when moved to DH. Big Hurt was used above as an illustrative example, but over his career he hit much better when at 1B then as a DH (OPS: 1.078 vs. .899, which is pretty huge, even if you adjust for the fact that he DHed more in his decline phase). VMart by contrast has hit his best as a DH, an advantage that needs to be reflected somewhere.
In all, yes these positional adjustments need to factor all of that in, or I’m definitely not going to put much weight on them. I’ve argued along these same lines when talking about David Ortiz and his MVP/HoF worthiness, but his ability to rake when DHing, when other teams are scrambling to fill that batting slot with someone who can also hit when DHing, needs to be reflected somewhere. It likely isn’t a huge edge, in the end analysis, but any time his name is dropped in a HoF discussion someone inevitably trots out how his WAR is “only” 47.7 (or 43.3), even tho said calculations completely ignore these factors.
Yeah, the reasoning for the adjustment is quite valid, but I feel the adjustments themselves are quite a bit more static than they perhaps should be. In particular, I also feel the corner outfield spots may get a bit more of a penalty than they should. It seems the typical LF/RF has gotten better at defense, somewhat at the cost of some hitting, meaning that bar to be a good LF/RF defender is higher and the positional adjustment should be less severe.
I have no problem with a DH winning the MVP, but they’d have to put up the best offensive season of any player ever for it to happen.
WAR is useless. WAR is biased against power hitters, supportive of speed. Got a great arm and good glove? You’re WAR goes down. Got a noodle arm and good glove? Surprisingly, your WAR goes up.
So basically, since a DH is starting at -17.5 runs, any AL team should know not to use the DH and have only 8 batters. Better yet, don’t start a RF or LF either, owing to how WAR discounts their value.
I can’t believe I never realized before that home runs are useless. After all, they’re biased against slap hitters, and supportive of power. These things are different and therefore this makes me upset!
The amazing thing about your post is that you actually think you are making good points.
“Got a great arm and good glove? You’re WAR goes down. Got a noodle arm and good glove? Surprisingly, your WAR goes up.”
What in the world are you talking about?
I apologize. He was huffing benzene out in the garage all afternoon, and this post was the result. His father works a lot and is never around, and when he is, they never talk…like, really TALK. Father just grabs a Pabst and watches the military channel all night, while I fret and play Candy Crush and watch those Investigate Reports shows and dream of a better life.
At any rate, we revoked his X-box privileges for three days and promise that he will be more coherent tomorrow.
Bonds in his freak years probably could have thrown random objects in the way of his own teammates as they batted (bats, balls, raccoons) and still been so good as to win MVP.
How does WAR treat National League players when they come to an American League ballpark? Lots of times, a talented fielder would take the place of regular fielder who would then DH. Would that DH for 3 games get a slight positional penalty because they didn’t play the field?
It would make some sense to not penalize them at all. You can’t really “replace” a guy for 9 games a year, so the level of hitter you’d get instead would be that of a guy that can actually play the field, but isn’t good enough to stick in MLB.