The Other NL MVP Candidates
The field for the National League Most Valuable Player Award is wide open, and in a good way. There are a bevy of well qualified candidates, and even if voters may now be uncertain as to what do with Giancarlo Stanton now given his injury, there are still three no-doubt top-of-the-ballot candidates: Andrew McCutchen, Clayton Kershaw and Jonathan Lucroy. These three have been in the spotlight all season, and with Stanton, figure to be the ones who take home the hardware. But that doesn’t mean they’re the only ones for whom there is a case worth making. There as many as six other players who deserve recognition, and with white-hot finishing kicks could put themselves into the mix with the top dogs.
Anthony Rendon
I’ve been getting asked in chat for a few weeks about Rendon, and deservedly so. Rendon pretty much does everything at an average or better level. When I scroll down his player page to try to poke holes in his performance this year, I’m essentially left with the fact that he hasn’t hit cutters well. A right-handed hitter who can’t hit cutters? You don’t say! But given the fact that he sees them just 5.2 percent of the time makes me think that this really isn’t an issue.
Rendon doesn’t chase pitches, doesn’t swing and miss hardly at all — his 5.2% swinging strike percentage ranks 21st in the game — he takes his walks, he doesn’t strike out a lot, he hits plenty of line drives, he’s played scratch/good defense at two infield positions, he’s even cut his infield fly ball percentage. But aside from being the best baserunner on his team, and fourth-best in baseball, there really isn’t anything that you would say Rendon does tremendously well. His season looks a lot like Ian Kinsler’s 2008 season, but with better defense.
All of which is fantastic — he’s clearly been the best player on the Nationals this year — but this sort of all-around game is not generally the kind of game that gets you noticed by MVP voters (for reference Kinsler finished in a tie for 20th and last place in the ’08 AL MVP voting). Especially when you play on a team with more established stars/headliners like Jayson Werth, Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg.
Buster Posey
While Rendon may be destined to finish down ballot, Posey may have a legit chance at taking the crown. For one thing, the narrative flows pretty easily. Posey caught fire just in time to resurrect the Giants’ season, or so the story will likely go, assuming the Giants make it to October that is.
Whether voters attribute that to him regressing back to form, or want to fit a more hyperbolic explanation to it, one thing is clear — Posey has been the best player in the NL in the second half, and it’s not really that close. His 186 wRC+ is 20 percent better than the next hitter, and his WAR nearly a half-win higher. Furthermore, his WAR doesn’t even take pitch framing into account. As you can see if you click that link to StatCorner, Posey is not the champion of pitch framing that Lucroy is, but being seventh-best in the game overall and 16th-best on a per game basis is pretty strong. This is an important notion, as given Posey’s uptick in first-base games, there is a tendency to think that perhaps he can’t hack it at catcher anymore. Not only can he hack it, but only two other NL catchers — Lucroy and Miguel Montero — have started more games at catcher than has Posey. Posey isn’t playing first base in place of some games caught, he’s playing first base in place of taking days off.
Overall, this season doesn’t really match up with his 2012 MVP season, but it is an improvement on last year. Essentially, Posey has traded a little patience for a bunch of power, and the result has been his second-best offensive season. Still, voters already know and love him — he also has that 2010 Rookie of the Year Award in his trophy case — and given that he has is so hot at the time when voters are considering who to vote for, he may not only creep into the top five, but actually win the hardware outright.
Hunter Pence
If there’s a reason to pause any coronation of Posey, it may be Pence. While Posey was lukewarm in the first half and red hot in the second, Pence has been steadily great in both halves — he posted a 136 wRC+ in the first half and has posted a 137 wRC+ thus far in the second half. That kind of steadiness can play big with voters, as we all like to know what we’re going to get from our star players day in and day out. Pence has done that, and has displayed his customarily good fielding and baserunning throughout as well. His flashy totals — the homers and stolen bases — are down a shade, but he has compensated by posting a career-high in triples (10 — tied for second in the majors, with only Dee Gordon in front of him) and having his grounded into double plays count.
Pence never seems to get the credit he deserves — he’s only been an All-Star three times and has never finished higher than 16th in the MVP voting — so if he doesn’t get any sort of recognition this year, it probably won’t be a big surprise for him. Hopefully that changes this year. Pence is now just one of 228 players since 1901 to amass at least 100 homers and 100 stolen bases, and for his career he’s now up to 30 WAR. Not Hall of Fame numbers, but it’s nice to recognize steady players at their peak. And last year and this year likely represent the bulk of Pence’s peak.
Jason Heyward and Jhonny Peralta
I’m grouping these two together because they wouldn’t place so high on the WAR leaderboards if it weren’t for their defensive numbers. If you visit this site or sites like it with any frequency, you know that defensive metrics have been a hot topic lately. A vote for either player will depend on how much credence you give to said metrics, but as Dave pointed out in July, Peralta serves as a good reminder that we can’t solely rely on the eye test when evaluating defense.
Looking at the two offensively, Peralta gets the nod, as he has not only been the better hitter, but he has been so at a more premium defensive position. Peralta’s power is back this year, as he has to date posted the third-best ISO of his career, and best since 2008. But the added power has not come with more strikeouts. Quite to the contrary, Peralta is striking out less than he did last year, and his 18.1% K rate is better than his 20.2% career K rate as well.
Heyward finds some light here as well. After posting a 23.3% K rate in 2012, he cut that way down last year to 16.6%, and has trimmed some more fat off it this year to 15.5%. That has come with a drop in his ISO and SLG, to the point where you wonder if the Braves are asking him to be a specific type of hitter. Either way, the drop in strikeouts doesn’t look like a fluke — as his swinging strike percentage is also at a career-low/best 7.5% this season. Finally, after forgetting how to/choosing not to steal bases last year, Heyward is on track for a second 20-stolen base campaign, which is great news.
It’s unlikely that either player sneaks into the top five in the voting, unless Stanton really gets downgraded for the time missed thanks to his hit by pitch, but certainly Heyward and Peralta belong in the conversation.
Carlos Gomez
It’s been kind of a good news and bad news season for Gomez. The good news is that last year’s breakthrough was no fluke. Gomez has hit just as well this season overall. The bad news is that there were some missed opportunities. Gomez was on fire in April and May, but after May, his season sort of took a turn south, and he is finally just back to hitting well now. It’s likely that his wrist, neck, hamstring and back injuries have taken a toll — his range numbers are way down, and if they hold, will be a career low. He has also been caught stealing 10 or more times for just the second time in his career. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that he has still managed 30 steals, giving him back-to-back 20-30 seasons. That doesn’t happen every day. In fact, there are only 145 such seasons in baseball history.
Where that leaves Gomez on the ballot is hard to figure. He’s probably the hardest guy to figure for me right now, in fact. I am comfortable saying he should finish better than the ninth place finish he had last season, but beyond that I’m not sure.
…
The last time that the third-place finisher in the NL MVP race received more than two votes was 2007, when Prince Fielder received five, behind Matt Holliday (11) in second and Jimmy Rollins (16) in first. We may have a similarly split vote this year, and the landscape may look a little different come the start of the postseason — there is some jockeying to be done in the final weeks. Hopefully, voters will keep an open mind until the season wraps up.
Paul Swydan used to be the managing editor of The Hardball Times, a writer and editor for FanGraphs and a writer for Boston.com and The Boston Globe. Now, he owns The Silver Unicorn Bookstore, an independent bookstore in Acton, Mass. Follow him on Twitter @Swydan. Follow the store @SilUnicornActon.
#RendonMVP
Fine article, Paul. Here’s a fun exercise: let’s give fairly modest WAR upgrades to the players who are headed to the postseason; let’s say one extra win to players on division leaders, and half a win to the players on target for a wildcard slot. This would be the updated WAR leaderboard:
Rendon 6.4 WAR
Peralta 6.3
Cutch 6.2
Pence 5.9
Lucroy 5.9
Stanton 5.8
Posey 5.6
Basically a 7-way dead heat, really. (And, as Paul mentioned, that’s without adding to Posey & Lucroy for their pitch framing.)
Also Kershaw is suspiciously missing
To bring in Kershaw we have 0.3 + 6.3 (batting plus pitching) + 1 (currently leading their division) and Kershaw has 7.6 WAR, well ahead of anyone you mentioned.
Good point, Echo. That was poor self-editing on my part; meant to say “position players on division leaders” but carelessly omitted the word “position.”
I would lean strongly toward Lucroy for MVP thanks to the additional pitch framing value — and, as an aside, he seems to be getting little or no attention for the 50+ doubles, which is a really cool feat for a backstop.
It’s interesting, this year’s N.L. MVP race in the context of the past few years’ award winners. In 2012 & ’13 Molina was a top candidate but (apparently) received no credit for pitch-framing from voters, when he may have had the highest WAR totals with framing included. And in 2011, the award went to Braun over Kemp immediately before the former’s performance was exposed as invalid due to his being a PED cheat.
So if Lucroy doesn’t get the award this year, it could make for the 4th straight season of the wrong guy being selected. (Wrong guy according to fWAR anyway.)
In 2013 McCutchen had 8.2 fWAR and Molina had 5.5. That’s a 2.7 WAR gap, and Molina’s framing stats aren’t enough to make it up.
Similarly, the gap between Posey and Molina was 1.7 WAR in 2012. Molina is probably a better pitch framer than Posey, but I’m going to better he’s not 1.7 wins better, since Posey is above average himself.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArJe7bwAZkuSdElkelNqTDNYckVqdXRzTktxVnprcHc#gid=0
The above links to Harry Pavlidis’ 2009-2013 research published November last. You’ll see that back then he valued Molina’s framing at better than +30 runs per year, and Posey at -6. Thus Molina would have pushed past both Cutch and Buster, in theory.
Of course, since then Harry P. has amended Molina’s numbers to roughly +20 runs per year — and half of that attributable to Yadi’s pitching staff. (Matt Carruth’s research has Molina at 15-20 runs per year, I believe.) In any case, I’d say the framing valuations remain in a state of flux for now.
Factor in pitch framing and you have Lucroy worth 8.4 WAR and Posey worth 6.9
I just can’t get behind the value estimates being that high. Dave wrote a month or so ago about how the location of pitches is not independent of the identity of the catcher, and it may not be entirely fair to credit those pitches as a negative for the pitcher and a positive for the catcher. Additionally, ball/strike calls vary from umpire to umpire and vary based on pitcher, catcher, and reputation of both of those players. Some of the models also normalize for height, weight based on situation, and depend heavily on the pitch classification (Which is very difficult to do consistently, and I think should be relied on less in general as more data becomes available). This is without mentioning that it all depends on PFX being near perfect, despite the fact that it deals with very small differences that are well within the PFX margin of error.
There are so many components that have to be incredibly precise with such small differences. The calculations of strike probability have to be near perfect. The weights have to be near perfect. The derived plate location from PFX has to be near perfect. I don’t think that approximate value is something I can believe in right now when there is significant variance and margin for error, and analyzing the strike zone requires extraordinary precision.
This isn’t to say that framing isn’t value. It has clearly demonstrated value. I just think that it’s better right now for comparing catcher A in this regard to catcher B in this regard. I don’t think it’s ready to compare approximate value to other areas. It will get there, but I can’t get wholly behind 2 extra WAR for Lucroy just yet.
Then you can take away a couple WAR from Kershaw and other pitchers as well because those strikes and balls were obviously not their doing.
Ellis is actually pretty awful at framing…
Ellis has been awful at a lot of things this year, pitch framing aside. 🙁
I guess you could add some then, but then you might have to break down Ellis’ performance on a game by game basis.
I’m willing to accept if it becomes clear that pitch framing is THAT valuable but pitching seems to be ludicrously high to me. I’m open to being proven wrong but judging based on the available stats I have now I would put Kershaw ahead of Lucroy for the NL MVP and it really wouldn’t be close for me.
With so many good defensive players having good offensive seasons in the mix, why would Heyward and Peralta warrant a mention? Because WAR overvalues them?
I’ll address the Peralta portion of your question. He’s having a fine offensive season, with a wRC+ around 120; he’s been very durable; he’s been the best position player on a team that seems headed for a division title; and his defense at SS has been extremely effective.
I say “effective” rather than “excellent” because he just doesn’t look all that good in the field. But as usual, if you check the available metrics here at Fangraphs, you’ll see that Peralta makes a disproportionately high percentage of the routine plays. Now, this doesn’t sound like a big deal of course. But the thing of it is, a HUGE majority of plays at the shortstop position fall into the category of “routine” or “likely” (88-90%). So if you’re well above average at making those types of plays, you’ll be making enormous contributions with your glove despite not having good range.
I hope I’ve made sense. 😉
Thank you Diamondback. I get the metrics, I just don’t quite believe they add up to an MVP candidate. “’Effective’ rather than ‘excellent'” seems like a perfect description of Peralta as a player. I think this where WAR can be misleading somewhat, because in my opinion it overvalues positional defense. And without the high WAR number, I don’t think anyone is mentioning Peralta’s season as MVP-worthy.
Yeah, I don’t think Peralta would quite make my own top 5 (Lucroy, Kershaw, Rendon, Cutch, Posey probably). As for the general public perception of Peralta’s season and attendant MVP viability, Jhonny was still hitting .235-.240 as far into the season as early July and thus evading public consciousness despite the defense/power combo. Then add the fact that his team didn’t get to first place until the children went back to school, and you have an overlooked 5-6 WAR season.
Look at rWAR.
rWAR is like porn. Fun to watch every other Tuesday but it always leaves you feeling hollow inside.
Good article, Paul, Posey and Pence have really snuck up (for different reasons). I know he he hasn’t played enough to warrant consideration, but has anyone noticed else that Devin Mesoraco’s slash line is almost identical to Trout’s, that his WAR/PA is better than that of any other player but the also non-qualified Tulo?
“Pence has done that, and has displayed his customarily good fielding and baserunning throughout as well. His flashy totals — the homers and stolen bases — are down a shade, but he has compensated by posting a career-high in triples (10 — tied for second in the majors, with only Dee Gordon in front of him) and having his grounded into double plays count.”
You don’t want to have your GDP count, but unfortunately they do. You do want to halve your GDP count, and fortunately you can.
anyone else noticed
I else noticed; but I’m not anybody.
He, he, I pray we get an edit function here at some point.
You’re talking to the guy who wrote a whole column whining that Mesoraco wasn’t playing enough last year:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-burying-of-devin-mesoraco/
So yes, I have definitely noticed!
The also non-qualified Russell Martin is ahead of Mesoraco in WAR/PA (in more PA). With 4.8 fWAR and good framing he should really be getting talked about at the back end of this post.
A couple points on Posey:
1. He’s been playing a lot more first base this year because of injuries to Belt and Morse. It also doesn’t hurt that the Giants found a capable backup backstop in Susac. Posey isn’t at first base because of his own shortcomings, it’s because he’s versatile enough to be able to shift positions.
2. He’s not that far off his MVP seasons numbers, basically 15 hits 4 homers and 20 RBIs. There are enough games left that he could come very close to matching those numbers. He’s also 4th in the league in BA and winning the crown is probably what put him over the top when he won the MVP.
3. The Giants are only 2 games back of the Dodgers and the two teams face off six more times. If Posey hits well and the Giants can pass the Dodgers, Posey’s chances may be the favorite.
he’s not dead, he’s missing. Dave Brockie is dead
If the MVP vote were held today and the only two candidates were Lucroy and Posey, I’ve got to believe that Posey would win. He has significantly better triple crown states, slightly better advanced offensive stats, plays the same position, and is on a play-off team. We can argue on this site whether an advantage of 0.8 WAR that is entirely attributable to defensive stats *should* make Lucroy a “no-doubt top-of-the-ballot” candidate and Posey a second-tier one, but I don’t see how you can think that it *actually does*.
Don’t I even get a mention here?
I know I’m probably out given my relatively low total of games, but on a WAR/gm basis, I’m crushing it. And I can frame with the best of them…
I should learn how to spell my name before writing next time. Oops.
What’d ya say Russ?
Does anyone think MVP should take into career numbers as well, though not as much as season’s performance.
IE a guy who had career 8.0 8.0 , 6 WAR this year, VS a guy 1.0 1.0 6 WAR this year. You would suppose the first guy is more valuable since the 2nd guy is likely luckier and outperforming his real talent, a one year wonder.
I would think MVP should be given to the consensus player who all managers want the most on their teams, and not the one who put up fluky numbers for one season.
Interesting, but I would vote strongly “NO” on that. I’m not really interested in what you did in 2009 or 2006 to inform my thoughts on how good you were in 2014. What happened in 2014 happened in 2014, whether or not it was expected or “fluky” or in line with career norms. If you want to award someone for career contributions, you can vote ’em into the All-Star game (hi Jetes!) or into the Hall of Fame after their career ends (hi Jetes!)
Season awards are for who actually performed the best, not who should be expected to perform the best.
No, not at all. That may be the guy you want on your team next season (or even with the game or season on the line this season), but the MVP award rewards what has happened. That wouldn’t be unlike giving the World Series title not to the team that won, but to the one that had the best regular season record.
If you take that view, Lucroy, Rendon are OUT.
Kershaw, Stanton, Mccutchen obviously has stronger cases being great performers every year.
Ask 30 managers who they would want on their team. Kershaw, McCutchen or Rendon, I bet you no one says Rendon, so how would he be the most “valuable”, to whom?
Who they *would* want and who *was* more valuable are entirely different things.
Who would you want in a home run derby out of Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., Albert Belle, Juan Gonzalez, and Brady Anderson at the end of the 1996 season? Probably not Brady Anderson, but that doesn’t change the fact that he hit the most homers out of the group.
Andrelton Simmons should get a vote, just for his defense.