Why Is There Even a Pitcher-for-MVP Debate?
This is about Clayton Kershaw, but this isn’t about Clayton Kershaw. This is about all great pitchers and the Most Valuable Player award. We know that, in the voting, pitchers face a severe penalty. That’s the long-established track record of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, and it’s not about to dramatically change. There are writers who think pitchers need to be insanely good to be worth a high vote. There are voters who refuse to vote for pitchers entirely. We know the habits. Why are these the habits?
It’s not just a writer thing, either. Consider this recent Internet poll: Should pitchers should be eligible for the MVP? Here are the responses of a learned audience:
- 59%: Yes
- 30%: Yes, if the pitcher’s way better than the position players
- 11%: No
Even among FanGraphs readers, one-in-nine voters doesn’t think pitchers should be eligible — and another big fraction puts an asterisk on the eligibility. This is a question people argue almost every year, and the more I think about it, the more I don’t get it.
I do understand how, maybe in the past, this was a fascinating and worthwhile conversation. How do you balance 700 plate appearances against 250 innings, or whatever? I get how people would’ve settled on position players being able to make a difference every day. But WAR kind of leads us to a conclusion. Pick your preferred WAR. Doesn’t matter to me. Say the best position player comes in around 8. Say the best pitcher comes in around 8. Say, for simplicity, that all of the different WARs are even in agreement. Doesn’t that function as a conversation-ender? You can always debate a given individual’s WAR, but doesn’t that rather matter-of-factly put pitchers and position players on the same scale? Doesn’t that indicate equal award eligibility?
The numbers tell us that pitchers and position players can be worth the same, at the upper end. The difference, obviously, is position players play all the time, and starting pitchers play less than a fifth of the time. The second player might seem less “involved,” but then this isn’t about value — this is about the distribution of value. And then that’s just a subjective preference.
You’ve read something like this before: Position players and pitchers end up being involved in a similar number of events. Position players have times at bat, and fielding opportunities. Pitchers have all their plate appearances. The numbers don’t come out exactly equal, and then position players tend to have a little more control than pitchers do, but that’s one way of saying they’re about the same. If two guys are involved in 800 plate appearances, who cares how they’re spread out?
We can also look at this a little differently. For the sake of example, let’s use some numbers from Baseball-Reference. This will identify two particular players in 2014, but I’m trying to make a more general point. According to B-R, an otherwise average team in 2014 would have a winning percentage of .533 with Giancarlo Stanton starting. An otherwise average team in 2014 would have a winning percentage of .745 with Clayton Kershaw starting. If you figure Kershaw starts 20% of the time, then that team’s overall winning percentage would be .549. A position player can make a little impact a lot of the time. A starting pitcher can make a big impact some of the time.
Now, that’s just a different way of expressing WAR. That doesn’t make a new point — that’s a different way of making the same point. As anecdotal evidence, you could just consider that, in 2014, the Dodgers are 21-4 when Kershaw’s taken the mound. All people are doing is arguing value distribution. Player 1 generates 10total bases in one game, then none in the next four. Player 2 generates two total bases in each of the five games. A lot of people out there would prefer the consistent impact of Player 2, even though Player 1 did a ton to improve his team’s odds of winning one game.
To use real-world examples, I took all the players worth at least 6 WAR in a season between 2011 and 2013. This left me with fairly small samples, and not everything is properly controlled, but just to make a simple and general point: When those position players started, their teams won 54% of the time. When those pitchers started, their teams won 66% of the time. The best pitchers give an overwhelmingly greater single-game advantage than the best position players. This gets balanced out by the fact that pitchers might top out around 34 starts, but the advantage they begin with is huge.
People argue the MVP because there’s no clear definition of “value.” But, we know what teams value more than anything else: wins. Wins are what get a team to the playoffs. No one disagrees the most valuable player is the player worth the most wins to a team. Where people disagree is the methodology. But then what matters is the end result, the overall sum. Why does it matter if a player is in there almost every game, if his impact isn’t greater than that of a player in there a fraction of the games? A hitter can spread out his contributions in a way a pitcher can’t, but a pitcher can own a game in a way a hitter usually doesn’t. Does your job pay you every two weeks? What if, instead, it paid you every work day? You’d have the same job and the same salary. At the end of the year, you’d have earned the same amount of money.
A very common reason presented for ignoring pitchers is that pitchers have their own award. For one thing, hitters do, too, although no one cares about that award. For another, and more importantly: so what? I’ve read the rules for MVP voting. Most of you have, too. Pitchers are intended to be eligible. Nowhere in the rules does it instruct voters to consider the rest of the MLB award landscape. The MVP award has nothing to do with the Cy Young award. They’re different awards. They’re given out around the same time, but they’re otherwise independent. The point isn’t to make the MVP voting fair for an underrepresented population of position players. The point is, very simply, to give something to the most valuable player in the game. If that’s a pitcher, neat for the pitcher! Neat for his contract bonuses.
I understand that — because I’m on one side of the argument — I can’t fully grasp the other. But it’s just weird to me there’s still an other side of the argument. Pitchers can produce as well as position players. Pitchers can get paid as much as position players. Pitchers can’t make a difference as often as position players, but when they do make a difference, they can make an enormous one. Sometimes a league’s most valuable player is a pitcher. Sometimes it is not. If that’s not how the award should be given, then that’s not what the award should be named.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
If there wasn’t a Cy Young Award, I bet many more people would come around to having a pitcher as MVP.
Yeah, exactly. Jeff sort of brushes by this, but basically, my reasoning is that it’s unfair for pitchers to get double the award eligibility. Pitchers have their own award, and position players don’t. (The Hank Aaron Award is given to the best hitter, not the best position player.) Change the name if you must, but keep the awards separate, with the renamed MVP being explicitly reserved for position players.
And just what kind of snowball’s chance in… does a pitcher have at winning the Hank Aaron Award? Come on, no pitcher is ever going to win that. First of all most of them don’t bat hardly ever. So now that your left with pretty much only NL starting pitchers… only the good ones will even get to bat a 3rd time in a game… so thats 3 PA per start… and not when they start in an AL building… I honestly don’t see a pitcher having a chance at 100 PA. Would you ever give the Hank Aaron award to a batter that hit even say .500 over 100 PA? Of course not. What a ridiculous point.
No, you’ve completely missed the point. The Hank Aaron Award doesn’t take into account a player’s defense or, as best I can tell, his baserunning. It would be like if the considerations for the Cy Young Award were limited to the pitcher with the fewest home runs per batter faced. Both the Hank Aaron Award and this hypothetical “homers only” Cy Young Award leave out too many important aspects of the player’s overall game to be considered an authoritative award.
I don’t think the point you’re attacking is the one he’s making. The Hank Aaron award, as he points out, goes to the best hitter. The best position player may not be the best hitter because of defense.
It seems a lot more sensible and fair to deprive position players of a “best overall position player” award when they already have a “best batter” award than it seems fair to deprive everyone of a “best overall baseball player” award.
If you want an award solely for the best overall position player, then invent that award. Don’t co-opt an award that is explicitly for something else (the most valuable player).
If the consensus is that pitchers aren’t eligible for the MVP, then we should all be pissed that there’s not a “Best (or Most Valuable) Overall Baseball Player” award. It’s the award we should care the most about, and it’s stupid to not have such an award.
Another point of view: Kershaw will pitch to about 1000 batters this year – any one of which could change a game if not cause a L. he will also bat about 100 times and have about 30-50 fielding chances. Remember the double play he started off a pop bunt? If you add up all the at bats, fielding chances, stolen bases, hits, and RBIs of any position player, and forgive their strikeouts and errors, they will not have anywhere near the amount of chances to effect a game as Kershaw, or any starter. Then tweak these results for being particularly outstanding at your position. You still have Kershaw as MVP!
@Anon21
The Cy Young ignores pitcher fielding/offense, so your point doesn’t make sense.
Okay, how about we call it the Bud Selig Award of Position Playing Achievement, as inspired by the San Diego Padres’ Bud Selig Plaza.
Simon: Per below, it does ignore pitcher hitting, which isn’t a big deal because a) NL only and b) it has almost no impact on pitcher value. It doesn’t ignore pitcher defense.
Do we need to give an award for every “best”, doesn’t the best pinch-hitter need recognition as well?
Time for a Lenny Dykstra award.
Lenny Harris Award?
It’s for spitting tobacco and violating bankruptcy trustee rulings.
With all due respect how can you not name it after Matt Stairs.
I think this nails it. It’s in the name, the prestige that has accumulated over decades. I would make the MVP for position players only, then establish a new award for the best overall player. No matter whether a pitcher or PP won it in any given year, the best other type of player would get either the MVP or the Cy Young.
The NFL already does this. They have MVP as well as offensive and defensive player of the yeast awards. Oddly the midst valuable is often neither of the other two. Sometimes it seems like offensive POY is the consolation prize for the second best quarterback
See that’s a fallacy about “pitchers have their own award” as though that should disqualify them from the MVP…hitters have the “Silver Slugger” and there are “Gold Gloves” for fielding so ALL players, position and pitchers have “other” awards besides the MVP…
This would be a point if there was just one Silver Slugger or one Golden Glove given out.
No it wouldn’t.
This is my issue with it. Pitchers get an award in the Cy Young, and the MVP is the position player version of it. If someone created an equivalent position player award (call it the Babe Ruth or whatever), then I would be fine with an MVP award going to a pitcher. At least that way you have a legit position player only award, and a legit pitcher only award, and a top player (MVP) award.
And the Hank Aaron award doesn’t cover this because as Anon said, that’s for the best bat, not best or most valuable position player.
Since Babe Ruth was a great position player and a great pitcher, his name should go on the MVP Award.
Barry Bonds would be the perfect name for the Position Player Only award, but since some baby boomers would freak out about that, we can go with their hero, Willie Mays.
Cy Young can stay, even if Roger Clemens, Walter Johnson, or Greg Maddux would also be good options.
Cy Young isn’t for the most valuable pitcher, though. It’s for the best arm. Ignores fielding/offense.
Which goes into the top overall player award.
Is this true? Is it in the guidelines that you don’t consider a pitcher’s non-pitching contributions?
#SemperFudge
I agree. What MLB could do if they really cared, was announce the Cy Young and the Hank Aaron Awards first, giving the same coverage and prestige to both awards, then announce the MVP a few days later.
They would of course probably have to send new instructions to all the writers out there still sending in ballots with hammers, chisels and stone tablets… but it would be a relatively easy way to start.
I feel like people will stop caring about the MVP if you do it this way. It’s just gonna end up being either the Cy or the Hank winner.
It seems to me that there’s a general misunderstanding of what these awards are supposed to mean. Some argue that a pitcher shouldn’t win the MVP because they already have the Cy Young. However, these two awards aren’t looking at the same things and thus they aren’t equivalents. The fact is that the Cy Young is equal to the Hank Aaron Award, not the MVP.
Of course, some are quick to point out that the Hank Aaron Award is not a “complete” award because it only focuses on one thing (hitting), and they’re right. But, what those same people tend to forget is that the Cy Young Award isn’t a complete Award, either. It only examines a pitcher’s “pitching” without taking into consideration all of the other ways pitchers can contribute, like with fielding and through their bat. (For example, Kershaw has been worth nearly half a win with his bat and glove alone, which can’t be considered during Cy Young voting.) So neither of these awards looks at everything a player does. And yes, while pitching does make up a bigger chunk of a pitcher’s value than hitting does to a a position player, isn’t that the point of the article? Namely, that position players spread their value out over more time and in more ways, while pitchers bunch their value into a much narrower category and time frame?
And with all that said it’s not like winning the Hank Aaron Award or Cy Young is a slight against these others ways these players contribute, because there are other awards that look at these different aspects. Gold gloves honor defense for each position (even if the voting for them is often a joke).
So in the end I think the thing to keep in mind is that almost every award in baseball (including the Cy Young) is intended to honor one specific component, not the whole package. On the other hand, the ONLY award that attempts to capture every aspect a player brings to the table is MVP. An unwillingness to vote for pitchers for the MVP simply ignores the less obvious aspects of a pitcher’s value, which is contrary to what sabermatics is about.
Misunderstanding indeed… Jeff says, “No one disagrees the most valuable player is the player worth the most wins to a team.”
That’s not even true… a lot of people will then further complicate it by arguing that some wins are more important than others.
Or even that some team are more important than others… e.g. no MVP on a non-contender
I guess all this interesting discussion on a topic I don’t really think about leads me to wonder…is there an example of an MVP pitcher that wasn’t also a Cy Young award winner the same year? Perhaps that would help my clarity, as there seems to be many compelling angles…and by the way, nice article Jeff!
“But, what those same people tend to forget is that the Cy Young Award isn’t a complete Award, either. It only examines a pitcher’s “pitching” without taking into consideration all of the other ways pitchers can contribute, like with fielding and through their bat.”
Well, it actually does take their defense into account indirectly. If they’re a good defender, their ERA will be lower as a result. If they’re a bad defender, it will show up in ERA too; most pitcher misplays are of the “play could have been made” type, not the “dropped the ball” type that get assigned errors. ERA is one of the writers’ primary considerations.
It doesn’t take their hitting into account at all–except maybe extremely indirectly in W-L record. I am fine with that because pitcher hitting rarely matters. By analogy, if the Hank Aaron Award included all aspects of a player’s value except how often he gets hit by a pitch, I would be okay with that because it rarely matters. The current version of the Hank Aaron Award is radically incomplete insofar as it’s meant to crown the best position player. The current version of the Cy Young Award is barely incomplete as to pitchers in one league.
My point, though, is that there are still awards that acknowledge the different aspects of a each players game. There’s an award that acknowledges the hitting aspect of position players, as well as an award for defense. So it’s not as if position player defense is ignored — it’s merely split up, the same as with pitcher value.
You can argue that the position player value is more diversified than pitcher value, but, again, isn’t that what this article addresses? So what if a a player gets all their value in one area and another spreads it out over several if in the end the total is the same?
Now if your argument is that there really should be one award that acknowledges everything a position player does then that’s fine. I wouldn’t dispute that. However, you can’t exclude pitchers from the MVP just because you don’t think that there’s a sufficient award for position players. That’s misunderstanding what the MVP is.
“That’s misunderstanding what the MVP is.”
No, it’s disagreeing with your interpretation of what the MVP Award should be.
I’m sorry, but you are simply incorrect on this issue. Unless you feel that pitchers can never be more valuable than position players you are being inconsistent and should argue for a new, distinct position player award. It really pretty simple.
The fact is that the Cy Young is not equal to the Hank Aaron award, because the Hank Aaron award is for the most impressive offensive performance, not the most outstanding position player.
And yet the Cy Young doesn’t take into account all that a pitcher brings to the table, such as his hitting and defense. It only acknowledges his act of throwing the ball. And while that is certainly the most important aspect of his job it by no means gives a 100 percent picture of his value as a player. So if you think my comparison is off I understand, but I think its a closer comparison then trying to make the Cy Young and MVP equivalant.
Again, if you think the Hank Aaron Award is too limited to actually be meaningful then thays fine. But then the logical conclusiom is to advocate a new award that honors all the aspects of a position player, not shoehorn the MVP into the existing void. The MVP asks who the most valuable player is in all of baseball, so unless you think a pitcher can never be more valuable than a position player you cannot logoically exclude them from the award.
Does a pitcher hit 4 times a game for 150 games? Does he play for 9 innings a game for 150 games?
Not accounting for pitcher hitting or defense isn’t remotely the same thing as not accounting for position player position or defense.
How is that relevant though?
I think we’re talking past each other. I fully acknowledge what you just said — namely, that pitchers will add a much larger chunk of their value through pitching than position players will through hitting. I agree with that, and stated as much in my first comment. However, your point doesn’t really address mine.
1)It’s the person who says pitchers shouldn’t win MVP’s who are inconsistent on this issue. Pitchers do more than just throw the ball, just like position players do more than swing a bat. Neither of those actions gives us a 100% look at everything the player brings to the table in terms of value. But your side is the one drawing an arbitrary line in the sand and saying “one award for everything position players do, yet not one award for everything a pitcher does.” Why is that?
2)The logical conclusion for those on the other side is to advocate a new award that encompasses everything a position player does and that can only be won by said position players, not redefine the MVP. Because, unless you believe that a pitcher can never be more valuable than a position player, then we already have an award that seeks to find the single most valuable player in all of baseball, regardless of position, and thus through it we can examine every possible way a player adds to his value.
I agree with point 2. That’s what I’ve been saying all over this thread. I want a real “Willie Mays Award,” or whatever, for the most outstanding performance by a position player.
That way they can give Miggy the MVP (because his team made the playoffs), while recognizing the fact that Trout had a better individual performance that year.
I think that’s perfectly fair. Having an award specifically for position players is a good idea. And that would take out that aspect of the “pitcher for MVP” discussion. Then we can look at the actual numbers and real arguments, which is where we should be anyways.
Yeah, I really think this is actually a simple question. There is no award for best position player, as the Hank Aaron award is for hitting, only. Add a 3rd award for the best overall position player. Then you have 3 awards: best position player, Cy Young, and MVP. That would change this debate from “is it OK to give MVP to a pitcher?” to “Is this particular Cy Young winner more valuable than this particular best position player winner?”
They should have proactively eliminated pitchers from MVP consideration the day the cy young was invented, or at least the day they stayed giving a cy young to each league. The real problem is that MVP predates cy young by 30 years. When there was only one award, it made sense to be inclusive. Once pitchers got their own award those days ended.
No, Luke is right. Your method suggests that we cannot compare pitchers to position players and that is simply false.
I think another major problem is not statistical at all. If you give the pitcher MVP, then he almost surely is winning Cy Young as well. And now the two big awards you hand out go to the same person. If it is at all close between Stanton and Kershaw, I’d rather give MVP to Stanton because Kershaw is already being honored with Cy Young.
So really it just feels *wrong* to me to give the pitcher MVP, although I acknowledge all the points you make. I’d rather it be like this: chose a Cy Young (Most Valuable Pitcher) and a Babe Ruth (Most Valuable Position Player) and do it that way.
Yes, what PWR said (but took 4 less minutes to type lol)
We sort of already have this with the Hank Aaron award.
It’s not an award in the pantheon of BBWAA awards (Cy Young, RotY, MotY, and MVP), but who cares, really? Let the best candidate win every award. If Mike Trout wins the Hank Aaron award and the MVP, I don’t think there is a problem. There should similarly be no problem with CY/MVP overlap.
Just because MVP was traditionally given to position players doesn’t mean it has to be. It was also traditionally given to a “run producer” on a playoff team, and we all seem to be ok moving away from that standard.
Most bizaarely, in the early years, after you won an MVP you weren’t eligible to win another. That’s why Babe Ruth only has one, and Lou Gehrig only has two, one of which he won in 1927 when the ineligible Ruth hit 60 HRs. I would love to see the nerds (myself included) here debating the MVP if that rule still existed.
After the fact, do you really walk away saying “man, Kershaw won two awards, and Stanton won none, so Kershaw must be infinity times better!”
If the best player is a pitcher, then obviously that person will win the best pitcher award too… so I don’t see myself sitting there being blown away at the fact that that guy got two trophies. What matters is whether he’s the MVP.
Plus it’s not even impressive that Kershaw will win the Cy Young award. Any Kershaw could do that.
It’s not about us. It’s about the fact that Giancarlo Stanton (or Lucroy, or Cutch, I’d go with Cutch) get zero official recognition for being the best overall position player in baseball.
These people are human beings with thoughts and feelings, remember.
Are you serious right now? So should we throw a pity party for all of the people who should have won MVP but were screwed out of it? That last sentence is ridiculous, lol.
Also there is no chance in hell that Mccutchen should be the MVP this season. It should be one of 2 players, Kershaw or Stanton. Stanton is having a great season (or had, anyway), Kershaw is having an all-time season. If Kershaw is the best then he deserves the Cy Young and the MVP. Thinking like yours is why players could only win one MVP award and a new player had to win the following year back when it was first introduced.
Is Stanton more deserving that Cutch because he’s been worse offensively, because he plays RF rather than CF, or because he’s a negative on the basepaths rather than a positive?
The only reason the WARs are close is that Cutch missed a couple of weeks before he could start playing through his broken rib.
I think Kershaw should win the MVP (he’s just been that good), but the best hitter in the NL, who plays CF and has literally been the difference between his team being 3rd place in the division and their making the playoffs, should beat the right fielder with more ribbies and homers every day of the week.
But if Kershaw is much better than Stanton (which he is) then he deserves the MVP. I feel bad for any good player that never wins an MVP, but not everyone can get an award.
This about bad writing, but it isn’t about your writing.
Man, Stanford is willing to give Economics degrees to anyone these days.
Standards sure have dropped since I went there.
Just neighing.
I’ll never be able to live up to Jesus’ standard.
I get on one knee and try, though.
If the Hank Aaron(leagues best hitter) award were given the same pomp and circumstance as the Cy Young award then I don’t think anyone would be hesitant to name a pitcher MVP. But no one hears about the Hank Aaron award, heck most people don’t even know their is such an award, and thus treat the MVP as the best hitter award.
Shouldn’t they change the name of the award? After all, I do have the most career home runs and I’m sure that it would get lots of publicity at that point.
because the MVP and Cy Young have been around for like 3 generations longer than the Hank Aaron award
Baseball has a marketing department… they could make a big deal out of it if they wanted to. They simply chose not to.
And pitchers have been winning the MVP award since the very start. A pitcher won the first AL MVP award. A pitcher won an MVP in 5 of the first 10 years the award was issued. There was never more than a 10 year gap between pitcher MVPs until the 90s. The idea that a pitcher can’t win the award is a totally modern creation.
Its a totally modern creation that I like.
It’s true that pitchers have been winning the MVP award since the very start.
However, it’s also true that the MVP has been in existence since 1931, while the Cy Young Award was created in 1956.
This is when the idea that a pitcher should be less likely to win the award really took off. Since 1956, there have been 9 reliever MVPs in 58 years. 2 were in 1968, and another 3 were AL relievers in some weird closer craze from the early 80s to early 90s. There had been 10 pitcher MVPs in the 25 years before 1956.
The decrease in frequency of pitchers winning the MVP is less a function of modern influence than it is a response to the introduction of the Cy Young.
@methuselah
Good post. You’re right.
I’m not sure the same bias wasn’t always in effect, but until recent decades pitchers pitched a lot more. In that first MVP year in 1931, AL MVP Lefty Grove was involved in twice as many plate appearances as NL MVP Frankie Frisch (1160-570). He recorded recorded 866 outs, while Frisch reached base 208 times by H+BB+HBP.
The league leaders pitched more than Grove’s 288.2 innings more often than not from 1931 through the 1970’s, but haven’t since 1982 in the NL (Steve Carlton) and 1985 in the AL (Bert Blyleven).
Because there was no cy young award then for them to win. It is and should be a modern creation that should be maintained if at all possible.
I didn’t know that the Hank Aaron award existed and I’ve been watching baseball for 30 years.
Thanks Jeff.
I don’t think talking about WAR is going to sway those who are against pitchers as MVPS. Maybe a discussion on how the top pitchers face more batters than every day batters have plate appearances
But the position players also play a lot of innings on defense.
But they don’t get a ton of chances and most chances are routine.
Some defensive plays are easier than others.
Much like when facing hitters, some are easier to get out than others.
It seems like it balances out.
For a full productive season, a starting pitcher will face 900-1000 batters, while a position player will have 650-750 plate appearances. A full-time outfielder will get 300-400 fielding opportunities, and a pitcher will get maybe 50 fielding opportunities. An NL pitcher will also get ~80 batting opportunities… The math there is not definitive either way.
I also think that we’d all agree that for the average plate appearance there is a lot more of a question mark about the outcome than the average fielding opportunity. Many fielding plays are routine; there’s no “routine” plate appearance between a batter and pitcher. So it doesn’t seem fair to give a routine flyout the same weight as a plate appearance (which you’d have to do in order to argue that a position player plays more than a starting pitcher).
You can make lots of arguments against pitchers for MVP, but “they don’t play enough baseball” is very weak.
So do pitchers. Buehrle’s defensive prowess is probably the biggest reason he consistently beats his FIP.
I don’t know about that. Most pitchers don’t even get one non-trivial defensive chance per start. How many defensive plays does he make a year that an average pitcher doesn’t?
For Bip or anyone curious, there are probably a few factors for Buerhle beating his FIP, including:
GB tendency -> fielding errors resulting in unearned runs (http://grantland.com/features/mark-buehrle-surprising-success/)
defense, GB -> double plays, base-stealing prevention.
(http://grantland.com/features/mark-buehrle-surprising-success/)
There are quite a few Buerhle-related things to read!
aw poo, that first link about GB tendency and errors was supposed to be:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/trying-to-figure-out-mark-buehrle/
Pitchers already have their own award. If there wasn’t a Cy Young Award then they should be in the discussion for MVP as well.
They are in the discussion for the MVP. There is a Cy Young award. Not sure about your point.
Also, the Hank Aaron award is just for hitting and ignores position and defense, which is a key component of value. We want/need awards distinctly for pitchers and distinctly for position players, and we need them to be of equal value to players and fans. That’s what most people think of the Cy Young and MVP awards as, even though the MVP is worded to include pitchers. It seems like there are really two major awards, and pitchers are elligable for both, while position players are elligable for only one. Doesn’t seem fair.
I was going to make this point, but then I wondered how often defense comes into play with the MVP award. Not knocking your argument, legitimately wondering.
Rollins in 07, or basically any time a shortstop has won
Rollins in 07, or basically any time a shortstop has won
Posey’s win had to do with being a catcher
MAuer, Pedroia
It happens
Rollins didn’t deserve MVP…heck, he wasn’t even the most valuable player on his own team that year, Utley was. No one was even talking about Rollins winning it until Utley went down late in the season. Rollins won MVP because he made a ‘bold prediction’ that the Phillies would win the division, something that hadn’t happened in a long while, and it happened. It was a good story.
He also won the GG that year…another award he didn’t deserve.
Yeah, Rollins sucks. I mean that.
I really hope a new award comes into existence just for the purpose of remedying that issue.
If there was a “Best Position Player” award, all those arguments about RBIs and playing for a contender and whatnot would have a whole lot less sway.
If it had the same cachet as the CYA, it would pretty much solve that problem.
They could give the MVP to the guy who “willed his team into the playoffs” if they wanted to, while giving the best player in the game the Most Outstanding Position Player award.
To be honest, it is more about what position they play than how well they play it. So I’d say positional adjustment comes into play.
I agree with TKDC, I think it’s more about the level of offense they bring to the position that traditionally doesn’t have it, rather than how well they play the position.
The thing that has always bugged me about it is that I feel pitchers are more valuable because they have a much more dominant influence on the games they play then hitters, so its not really a fair fight. If you have an 8 WAR position player and an 8 WAR pitcher then the pitcher should always win the award just based on the much bigger impact he will have in the games he starts. If you had to win one single game to save your life who are you taking, Trout or Kershaw? The answer is pretty obvious to me.
As Jeff points out an avg team with Stanton wins 53% of the time. A team with Kersahaw starting wins 74% of the time. If you give me a choice I’m taking the extra 21% even though it may only happen once every 5 days.
But I’m open to having my mind changed.
Well, there’s a reason you can’t start Kershaw every day, and it’s not sympathy for your opponents. Kershaw has more influence when he’s in the game, but he’s in the game one-fifth as much as Trout. If baseball were like football, played once per week, you’d have a point, but in currently-existing baseball Kershaw loses ground to Trout four days out of every five.
“in currently-existing baseball Kershaw loses ground to Trout four days out of every five”
Thats the question though. Does the position player make up enough ground in the other 4 days to offset the massive impact the starter has on the 5th day? Going by WAR the answer seems to be a mild yes but WAR is not perfect.
Something I don’t ever see mentioned is how pitcher WAR is arbitrarily assigned at 35% of overall WAR.
If, instead, WAR were split evenly, then Kershaw would have a significantly higher number.
Why do we set the WAR value at 35% for pitchers?
Because pitchers have less than 1/9th the responsibility in the field.
This season Trout averages 0.05 fWAR per game played. Kershaw averages 0.27 per game played. If it’s every 5 games, that leaves trout slightly behind Kershaw’s pace. Based on this doesn’t that seem like Kershaw is able to provide as much value once every 5 games, if not a little better, than Trout can playing 5 out of 5 games?
And that’s not including Kershaw’s offensive and defensive contributions, which would push him up slightly.
In a standard start, a pitcher probably pitches to 25-30 hitters.
In a standard 5 game stretch a position player gets 20-30 PAs, and probably 10-25 chances in the field (depending on position).
To me the instances where a pitcher an position player are influencing the game most directly are close enough.
“If you had to win one single game to save your life who are you taking, Trout or Kershaw? The answer is pretty obvious to me.”
The answer is pretty obvious to me too. 80% of the time I’d take Trout, and 20% of the time I’d take Kershaw. Or maybe slightly more in Kershaw’s favor if he’s good at going on short rest.
I certainly wouldn’t pick Kershaw if he pitched yesterday. Or the day before that. Or the day before that.
Yes. This. ^^^
what if you had one inning to play, and you had your pick of Trout or Kershaw? Your choice of one game is just as arbitrary, but hopefully whenever that decision comes up for you, Kershaw is fully rested!
“The answer is pretty obvious to me too. 80% of the time I’d take Trout, and 20% of the time I’d take Kershaw.”
Thats not really the same question though, now is it.
Since the MVP represents the most valuable player over a season, then it gets at the flaw in your reasoning when you say that for an individual game, you’d take Kershaw. If Kershaw started 150+ games, you’d be right that no position player could possibly rival his value, but he doesn’t.
Doubtful that Kershaw would give much value in games 6-150 when his arm fell off after game 5.
It is the same question. Whether or not you’d take Kershaw depends on the amount of rest he’s had. That’s not an issue with Trout.
I’d rather have Kershaw if the game were tomorrow or Friday, but I’d rather have Trout today, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
I hear the opposite of this argument all the time, but never this way. Usually people say, “position player play every day, how could a pitcher be as valuable”. Both this argument and your argument are vast oversimplifications.
Jeff made this calculation. Once you discount for playing time, it becomes a tossup. And for this specific year’s debate you can’t ignore the fact that Kershaw missed 7 starts. Conveniently, according to Zips, Kershaw will finish the year with 27 starts which is exactly 1/6, not 1/5 of his team’s games. Discount Stanton a little bit for playing time too but it’s a tossup. Your extra 21% is a figment of your imagination. It’s the once every five days part you should be paying attention to.
Put another way, (74.5-50%) / 6 = 4.1%. That’s Kershaw’s added value to the team. So an otherwise average team wins 54.1% of the time with Kershaw on their team but missing 7 starts. That makes it a tossup with Stanton.
and he’s put his team in position to win 24 of 25 games this year, the only one he didn’t was his blow up in Arizona. He has allowed 3 ER or less in 24/25 starts this year. If you can do as much as he’s done in less time than other people, that matters quite a bit.
Its the Cy Young thing. nobody gives a crap about the Hank Aaron award. heck. Jeter won it once. nobody takes it seriously, and nobody cares about. pitchers have the Cy Young award, the hitters have the MVP. that’s how it works. you’d have to be 1999-2000 Pedro for me to think about a pitcher as MVP.
So let’s make/promote a Willie Mays award for position players. Problem solved.
Kershaw IS 99-00 Pedro.
According to FG, Pedro ’99-’00 was worth 11.9 and 9.9 WAR. 2014 Kershaw is currently up to a career-high 6.7 WAR. So no.
He IS 99-00 Pedro without making proper adjustments for, and considerations to, the considerable differences in the offensive outputs of their respective eras.
(But WITH those adjustments? No, not overly similar, as you well stated.)
Kershaw gets docked points for being in the NL West. People say it helps him because of all of the weak offenses he faces. Why is it, then, that no one else in the NL West is putting up these numbers? Why isn’t Bumgarner in the MVP discussion? That kind of talk bugs me to no end. There’s no denying Pedro was much better (than everyone, btw) with those years, but that doesn’t make it right to discount what Kershaw has done. He’s got a 2.10 ERA over his last 4 seasons! No one besides Kris Medlen (2.45 in half the innings) and Johnny Cueto (2.52) are anywhere close.
I think i’ve gone off tangent…
Nope!
He isn’t even 99-00 Randy Johnson, let alone Pedro.
Ben Lindbergh wrote this just for you!
http://grantland.com/the-triangle/pedro-martinez-letter-to-clayton-kershaw/
If you admit a certain bar of pitching performance would cause you to consider a pitcher the MVP, then you’ve contradicted yourself. If you want the MVP to just be the “best position player” award, that’s fine, but what is the point of having a “best position player unless there’s a really really good pitcher” award?
This isn’t a “pitchers aren’t as valuable as position players” argument.
This is a “offense continues to decline and let’s reward the outstanding everyday player since pitchers already have their own award” argument.
#voteCutch
Or, “let’s not introduce new voting rules that don’t already exist and reward whoever the single most valuable player is regardless of position”, even!
#voteKershawIfHisOverallValueWarrantsSuch
Could salary be used as a meaningful proxy for “value to a team” that would let us compare hitters to pitchers directly? Top ten yearly salaries for starting pitchers:
http://www.spotrac.com/rankings/mlb/total/starting-pitcher/limit-25/
Range is from $19M (Buehrle) to $26M (Greinke). Top ten salaries for hitters:
http://www.spotrac.com/rankings/mlb/total/limit-25/
Have to subtract out the pitchers since they don’t let you choose “hitter” as a position. Range is from $21M (Ellsbury) to $25M (Howard).
So roughly comparable. If top SPs weren’t as “valuable” to a team as top hitters then wouldn’t we expect them to be paid less?
If Buehrle is a top-10 paid pitcher and Howard is the highest paid hitter, then I’m thinking salary isn’t a meaningful proxy for ‘value to a team’.
Yes. Outliers render all data meaningless.
He listed 4 names. Half of them aren’t top 10. And in case you think they’re the only top-10 salary players who don’t provide top-10 value (or close to it), here are other top-10 paid pitchers:
Cliff Lee: Out for season and untradeable.
CC Sabathia: Out for season, untradeable and ineffective.
Masahiro Tanaka: Injured and untradeable. May miss 2015.
Matt Cain: Out for season, untradeable and sub-replacement this year.
Justin Verlander: Untradeable and quickly declining.
Buehrle: Steady, but nobody’s version of top-10 pitcher.
So you have 6 ‘outliers’ out of the 10 pitchers on the list.
And just for shoots and giggles, here are some names from the hitting side of things:
Howard, Fielder, Teixeira, Mauer, Pujols, Adrian Gonzalez, Kemp. Giving Ellsbury the benefit of the doubt (even though he’s 52nd in WAR), that’s 7 players that are no longer top-10 – and it would’ve been 8 out of 10 if not for Arod’s suspension.
It doesn’t so much matter if there are individual pitchers and hitters being paid more than they’re worth as long as neither group is more “improperly overvalued” (on an aggregate level) than the other. Comparing top 10 vs. top 10 seems like a reasonable approach. Or maybe top 20 vs. top 20.
“I do understand how, maybe in the past, this was a fascinating and worthwhile conversation. How do you balance 700 plate appearances against 250 innings, or whatever?”
in 2013,
-clayton kershaw, total batters faced: 908
-andrew mccutchen, plate appearances: 674
obviously, this doesn’t take into account the value of defense or baserunning. or the fact that pitchers have the cy young and there isn’t a similarly prestigious batters-only award.
just saying that i don’t see why the value of a batter’s season would have been such a nebulous concept to compare to a pitcher’s season.
What if we just change the MVP? Have an MVP and an MVPP (ok we can come up with a better name than that) … I honestly am ok with calling it a MVB (batter) and then you can have a MVD (defender) if you want too… then the position players have one award that pitchers can’t win… and another (MVD) that pitchers don’t stand a chance at.
I’m gonna write a sentence.
“An exercise in futility.”
There. That has as much of an affect on BBWAA voters this year as the wall of text above.
I believe that’s technically a sentence fragment.
So you’re saying I don’t even need to write a full sentence to be as effective at swaying voters for a pointless award?
No, we’re saying both that you’re illiterate and that you’re not contributing to the conversation.
If you think the article is pointless and you waste your time commenting on it, what does that say about you?
But, then he couldn’t showcase his smugness and snark!
lmao@Cass with the personal attacks
sorry I offended your precious article, I didn’t mean to draw your ire
When an award is given out on faulty pretenses, does that not undermine the value of the award itself? Should we even care about an award with a name that could be best described as inaccurate? Should we further care less considering that we have no control over changing the circumstances in which the award gets handed out?
Are you being blinded by the prestige of the award to the point that you don’t see that the award ultimately means nothing to the value of the players? Regardless of the awards they win or the money they get paid, it will not lower or raise their talent level.
An article like this, written about a pointless award, feels even more hollow than the source material.
I’m writing this with the hopes that the author might read this and spend his endeavors on articles more worth our time.
Now that I’ve written something like this out, hopefully I’ve dispelled the notion that my grasp on the English language is tenuous at best.
Seems a bit forced.
dang, that is now 239 words and counting on a totally pointless topic.
There are many years that the Cy Young winning pitcher doesn’t get the most MVP votes for all pitchers that get MVP votes. (2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 1988, 1987) That makes me belive that just because you are the best pitcherthat year, it doesn’t make you the most valuable pitcher in the same year. It is also interesting to note that relivers that have a great year are more likely than starters to get MVP votes. Go figure.
Best pitcher = Cy Young
Best hitter = Hank Aaron
Most Valuable player = MVP
Give those 3 awards top billing in the award show. It’d be rare to see a pitcher win the MVP but not the Cy Young, but if you have all 3 awards as headliners, we still will always get 2 winners from those 3. And it’s fine that the best hitter doesn’t factor in all the other points – it may actually help the argument. Since then some years, you may get 3 different players win the awards, where Cabrera can win the hitter award and Trout can win the MVP. And if the best hitter award is prominent, then maybe some voters will look more to defense, position, baserunning, etc… to vote for their MVP selections, which is also a good thing.
Maybe. But it could just result in the best hitter winning the HAA and the best hitter on a division winner getting the MVP.
“No one disagrees the most valuable player is the player worth the most wins to a team.”
This is not true, necessarily, as we routinely see players who might be worth slightly less wins deemed MVP because they are on playoff contenders. The logic here being what value do all those wins really have if they lead to nothing. I certainly don’t agree with that reasoning, but this is something to remember about the BWAA and MVP voting.
Yeah, the marginal value of a win is greater as you win more games.
That is, going from 80 to 85 wins is nowhere near as valuable as going from 90 to 95 wins.
Jeff, I think you’re brushing past the “pitchers have their own award” thing. As some have said, if the Hank Aaron award was more prestigious and perhaps more general to best position player (side note: even though Hank never led the majors in WAR) we wouldn’t have this problem.
But the simple fact is that we have two big awards, and only pitchers can win one while both can win the other. I think in some cases – when there is no clear position player and/or a pitcher who is just so damn good – then I can live with a pitcher winning MVP. But in most cases I think it should go to the best position player, with a slight emphasis on the one who impacted the playoff run the most.
I see two solutions: either clarify the MVP as position players only, or add an award. Then we can have:
Cy Young – best pitcher
MVP – most impactful player of any kind
Willie Mays – best position player
Or something like that. While it might be a tad illogical, having both an MVP and Willie Mays award could lead to some interesting, conversation and debate inducing, choices like Trout for Willie Mays, Calhoun for MVP. Or we could retroactively look back and say that Alex Rodriguez deserved more Willie Mays awards, but never an MVP. Of course this clearly makes the MVP more of an affective rather than logical choice. Willie Mays would essentially be the highest WAR (or best overall numbers), while MVP would take into account clutch performance, stretch drive stats, etc.
‘I’ve read the rules for MVP voting. Most of you have, too. Pitchers are intended to be eligible. Nowhere in the rules does it instruct voters to consider the rest of the MLB award landscape.’
The rules of MVP voting also don’t say the MVP needs to come from a playoff team or a serious playoff contender…yet we know that is taken into account, big time.
While we’re on the subject, a player’s offense should have no bearing on the Gold Glove voting, since the award is for defense…but, you know…
You are correct in all instances, but just because something does happen doesn’t mean that it should happen.
Or in other words, we all know how frustrating the “but that’s how it’s always been done!” old saw is. There is a lot of inertia to overcome, but we can do this. (See Felix’s Cy Young award from his 13-12 season. Change is coming, and progress, in incremental steps.)
One argument that could be made (although I wouldn’t make it) would be to use Win Probability Added and/or RE24. Even the best pitchers end up worth fewer WPA nearly every year. This obviously takes the strength of a players team into account (which it shouldn’t be, especially around these parts) but it is one ‘value’ measurement that always skews toward position players.
I’ll make the argument (I don’t really buy it, but I’ll make it for completeness’ sake). WPA is much noisier year-to-year than WAR, which makes sense because it’s so context-dependent. But it seems reasonable to believe that it’s a very noisy estimate of “value,” in an MVP-esque sense. Since batter WPA appears to be distributed with a higher standard deviation than pitcher WPA, we should expect the best batters in most seasons to have a higher WPA than the best pitchers.
Intuitively, this makes some sense. We shouldn’t expect the best pitchers to have WPAs as high as those of the best hitters, because the majority of the pitching work goes to the starters but many of the highest-leverage situations come with relievers on the mound. So it’s harder for one pitcher to accumulate as many WPA chances as one hitter. (In other words, because of this high-leverage situation, the best hitters have more big chances and thus have more value than the best pitchers.)
This certainly doesn’t excuse the BBWAA’s longtime penchant for giving MVP votes to closers. Don’t ask me to defend that, because I have no clue how to.
RE24 is a much better stat for measuring value than WPA, which does not measure value.
Position players should not be eligible for the MVP because they only are involved once every 9 plate appearances. It’s impossible to have much impact when you’re only involved 4 or 5 times a game.
Maybe, just maybe, if there is a particularly good shortstop who has a great year defensively and offensively, he should be considered along with the pitchers. But it would take a really special season for such a player to deserve the award.
that’s an argument against DHs, not position players…
at least the first part of your argument is about DHs only…as far as singling out shortstops, not sure why they would get singled out over, say, catchers, who are way more involved in the game.
I singled out shortstops because they have the biggest impact on defense of all the position players. But you’re right, a catcher would be a good example too.
Mostly, I was satirizing the anti-pitcher argument. The “once every five days” thing drives me crazy.
MVP and CY Young are more of as big deal because they have been around a long time and because the BBWAA, seasoned sports writers, vote on it. Of course they are going to hype the award they are voting on.
Hank Aaron Award isn’t taken seriously…heck, Silver Slugger awards are taken more seriously than the Hank Aaron award.
Another reason the Hank Aaron Award isn’t hyped as much is because of who votes for it: Play by play guys, color analysts and fans.
That the rules clearly state that pitchers are eligible means they should win. Anyone who disagrees with that clearly does not understand what the award is supposed to be.
Jamie dropped the mic.
Just how back-of-the-envelope is the runs-to-wins conversion for pitchers that you took from Tango and what validation has it had? You’ll notice, for example, that in spite of Kershaw’s half-win edge on Lucroy, he’s been worth fewer runs above replacement.
The other area of FanGraphs’ methodology that I question is “batting” wins for pitchers. I suspect the positional adjustment is wildly over-generous.
To be clear, I know that people comparing a pitcher’s and a batter’s WAR are, 99 times out of 100, ignoring the “batting” component of the pitcher. But they shouldn’t.
The positional adjustment is basically there to cancel out how bad pitchers are at hitting. Average pitcher wOBA is what, .150? If you just give them credit for that wOBA, then you’re basically giving an average-hitting pitcher -8 or -9 runs because they suck relative to hitters overall. It doesn’t make sense to dock all pitchers basically a win because they suck at hitting. An average-for-a-pitcher hitting pitcher should get 0 runs for non-pitching contribution, so to offset the negative offensive runs, they get a generous positional bonus.
Add my voice to the “there’s already a pitcher-only award” camp. Three awards gets largely redundant — your MVP is going to win MVP and his respective award — and I think it’s appropriate to honor the best pitcher and the best hitter. Value conversations aside, they’re such different skill sets that I think we should take the time to recognize those who did very well at each.
I realize that’s not what the rules say; and if I had a vote, given the rules and the history of pitchers winning the MVP, I would have to consider pitchers as well. But in terms of how it should work, this is my fleeting 2c.
Best pitcher and best *positional player.
This the issue really. A voter may feel that it should be a position player-only award, but they should really be voting according to the criteria. It’s when voters ignore the criteria and basically dock all pitchers because that’s how they think the award should go, it messes everything up.
Yes but you’re not considering the all-mighty intangibles, or fairness (pitchers have the Cy), or the indisputable fact that a hitter could win 162 games for you while a starting pitcher at most 35, and also pitchers are weirdos, and history isn’t on your side, and baseball tradition isn’t on your side, and pitchers don’t even have to hit in the AL, plus it’s Most Valuable *Player* not Most Valuable *Pitcher* (there’s a separate award for that did you know?), and also this is what my father taught me and who are you to say he’s wrong?
/s
” or the indisputable fact that a hitter could win 162 games for you while a starting pitcher at most 35″
I’ve actually heard this one before.
I can win all 162. I should be considered…
Boy Jeff you struck a nerve somewhere. Let’s see if I understand the argument against pitcher’s winning the MVP: There is already a pitcher-only award, called the Cy Young. So pitcher’s shouldn’t get to win the MVP, as they will get double rewarded. One suggestion is to add an award for position players, but we kind of have that with Hank Aaron award (well, at least pitcher’s can’t win that), but its not well known enough, and goes to best HITTER. So we need ANOTHER award, for best position player?
Well if nothing else it seems the MLB MVP award is able to attract a lot of discussion.
Are pitcher’s eligible for the Fangraph’s player of the year award?
This MVP crap is so dumb. Though obviously pitchers can be the most valuable players, and I fully support them winning the MVP, I would still consider supporting a change to the MVP rules that makes it explicitly for position players, unless the BBWAA decides to come up with a Willie Mays award or something.
Basically, an award is totally pointless if the voters cannot even agree on the criteria. Many voters have expressed the views of many commenters: that pitchers have their own award and they’d rather see a position player honored for that reason. That’s fine, but it totally messes with the integrity of the vote if some voters automatically dock a large portion of the field for reasons not related to the criteria of “most valuable”.
Then, on top of that, every year, even writers like Ken Rosenthal who are not total cavemen will toss out the “pitchers play 30 games, hitters play 150” argument. This makes it abundantly clear that the voting population as a whole does not know how to compare the value of pitchers to position players. Until they can, there should be no award for which both are eligible.
Fundamental flaw is that the percentages and numbers are based on 250 innings a season, Kershaw will not even breach 200 this season, 50 innings is a significant margin. If pitchers were consistently throwing 300 innings like they used to I would absolutely agree that MVP is a feasible accomplishment. If a pitcher throws 34 games and goes 7 innings per game that’s only 238 for the season. With the evolution of the bullpen and starters throwing way less, as only the upper echelon reaches 250 innings, I think pitchers have effectively been removed from MVP talks. Remember only at 250 innings did the number begin to even out as far as opportunities to impact the game.
Even with the time he’s missed at the start of the year, Clayton Kershaw has already faced 693 batters in 2014. Trout’s only had 670 plate appearance.
So I have no clue why you are setting 250 IP as a magic number.
And how many defensive chances has he had?
And how many plate appearances has he spent as a baserunner?
Holy f*ck enough with this ‘fairness’ crap, it doesn’t matter if the pitchers have ‘their’ award and that doesn’t leave anything for the players, the most valuable player is the most valuable player, pitcher or not. Fairness doesn’t matter because baseball isn’t fair
It is *because* baseball isn’t fair that award should exist, in my opinion. No one plays for the Cy Young or the MVP, but if a player fails at their ultimate goal (because baseball is unfair), then the award is a nice consolation. We can make the awards fair, so why not?
So I love to argue, even about totally trivial stuff, so of course I’ve gone an debated various members of the not-statistically-inclined portion of the fan population. The highlight of this was, when asked how many wins a guy like Stanton contributes in a season, one guy put the number around 50. This is not to disparage the guy I was talking to or to call him stupid, but it just highlights the way someone who has not actually read the kind of in-depth analysis that they do on sites like this can come away with perceptions so at odds with ours that communication is almost impossible.
One thing I find interesting is that I haven’t read a compelling argument about why distribution is important. It IS important, and this is why I think that a position player should carry more weight. I’m not opposed to a pitcher winning the MVP, but, despite the value provided, loading that value into 20% of the games can be somewhat overkill and diminishing the overall value of the player.
For example. Let’s say that an opponent on average scores 3 runs a game, but when your MVP candidate pitcher is on the hill, they average 2 runs a game. The pitcher is then influencing 1 run on average for his 34 starts.
Now, let’s say your MVP batter has similar influence overall, but over 162 games. That comes out to 34 runs/162 games or 0.21 runs/game roughly. And let’s stick with 3 runs/game average or 3.21 runs of offense due to the influence of this one batter.
Now let’s look at distribution. Your pitcher averages 1 run improvement over 34 starts, but it is distributed this way: 10 games x 0, 8 games x 1, 6 games x 2, 6 games x 3, 4 games x -1
In this instance, the pitcher has actually only helped to win 20 games, and has actually hurt you in 4 games.
Now, let’s say the batter’s 34 extra runs are distributed this way:
135 games x 0, 20 games x 1, 6 games x 2, 1 game x 3
Now the batter has provided benefit of winning in 27 of the games in which he’s played. Just like distribution of hits factors into individual game wins (Cluster Luck), distribution of performance SHOULD factor into MVP voting.
Alas, this is likely much too complicated for writers, and I would think that the most effective methodology to use would be through WPA, but I haven’t gone that far down the thought process.
“Now, let’s say the batter’s 34 extra runs are distributed this way:
135 games x 0, 20 games x 1, 6 games x 2, 1 game x 3”
In those 135 games where he contributes nothing, is he not hurting the team? That’s how an offense hurts the team: by failing to score.
By giving the position player credit for the runs he adds and giving no penalty for the games where he adds nothing, you are basically computing “run value over black hole.” This doesn’t make sense though. If that player left the team, he’d be replaced by a guy who still contributes some runs. It’s like you’re using a 0 run per game team as the baseline.
But that aside even, the hypothetical pitcher here has six +3 games, while the position player has one. Sure, the position player is helping in more games, but the degree of help matters too. Most games are not decided by one run, so in those 20 games where the position player contributes 1 extra run, in most of those, he’s not changing the outcome. On the other hand, in those six games where the pitcher prevents 3 runs, he’s very likely changing the outcome for the better.
Yes, the degree to which he helps matters. I wasn’t assuming productivity over a black hole. I was assuming productivity above average. In the majority of his games, the productivity above average is 0. This was not intended to be perfect analysis of the two fictitional characters, just an illustration about why distribution matters. If you only need one run of additional “help” to turn the L into a W, then giving or preventing 3 runs doesn’t add any wins. That was the point I was trying to make about distribution.
If your team averaged 8 runs a game of offense, doesn’t that make your star starting pitcher who prevents 2 runs of offense every time he pitches less valuable than a team who averages 3 runs a game of offense and has a starting pitcher who prevents 1.8 runs of offense every time he pitches?
Theoretically, distribution matters, as well as the team around the specific pitcher in question.
Conversely, on a team that only allows 2 runs/game defensively, wouldn’t a standout position player be more valuable than their best starting pitcher?
In terms of absolute value, yes, but we want to reward players for individual performance, so we compare players with context removed so that we aren’t crediting a player based on what his teammates do.
If the player adds 1 run above average in 20 games, and that is the deciding run in every game, that’s nice, but unless you’re suggesting that the player has a “clutch” skill and can purposely distribute the same number of runs into the situations that matter most, then it’s still not very meaningful.
I think your point would only hold at the very extreme end of the spectrum. Say a position player is 20 runs above average. If he is average in 148 games and adds 10 runs above average in each of 2 other games, those runs likely become unnecessary and he becomes less valuable than if he was 2 runs above average in 10 games. However, we don’t see nearly that degree of clumping even with starting pitchers. Preventing the third is usually just as valuable as preventing the first and second.
This question is circular. If the team allows 2 runs per game, it is because their pitchers are very good and very valuable. Should the pitchers not get credit for the fact that they are so good that their team requires relatively little offense to win a lot of games?
So if a good starter pitches 250 innings, he’s faced at least 750 batters who have made an out…whereas a good position player gets 700 plate appearances, and is considered successful if he does not make an out in around 300 of them. Sure then – makes perfect sense to leave pitchers out of the MVP discussion. That was sarcastic.
To me, refusing to name a pitcher as MVP ‘because they have their own award’ is as stupid as denying a superstar hitter the MVP because there are Silver Slugger Awards.
Nobody cares about the Silver Slugger award because its not nearly as prestigious as the Cy Young award. 18 of them are awarded vs. 2 for the CYA.
Rosters are 25 large. There are either 12 or 13 pitchers, and 12 or 13 position players usually. Right down the middle. If you view the two awards as being equal in prestige, as many people seem to, then you have to limit the MVP to position players.
Hyperbole – look it up.
Why do we keep throwing out “position player” as if we have to consider all non-pitchers for both offense and defense in their award? The Cy Young award is not awarded for a pitcher’s defense or, in the NL, their offense. Therefore, the Hank Aaron award which already exists and is for position players only, should be given the same level of prestige and made for the best offensive player (it *should* include base-running). Then you have the Gold Glove awards for each position (including pitchers!) to capture defensive performance (since the skills needed at each position are not the same anyway). Please just get rid of the Silver Slugger crap while we’re at it.
Then the MVP which is strictly looking at most valuable overall player and is announced after all other awards to avoid any impact on the drama of the CY and HA awards.
This all already exists, it is just that over time the BBWAA and MLB have made the Cy Young award THE big pitcher award to announce alongside the MVP. This entire debate is due to the lack of proper context for the awards. It has nothing to do with who should and should not be eligible.
Not to mention an offensive player (ignoring order of the lineup) participates in roughly 1/9th of the offensive at bats, which equates to approximately 18 full games as the offensive player (offensive at-bats): 162 * (1/9) = 18
A starting pitcher on the other hand, pitches every 5th game, and for simplicity reasons say pitches an average of 6 innings out of 9 innings games (although we know the better pitchers average more innings). This equates to approximately 21 3/5 total games as a pitcher (defensive at-bats, which should be equivalent to defensive at bats): 162 * (1/5) * (6/9) = 21.6
Based on these assumptions, I’d assume that the average starting pitcher participates in more plate appearances as the pitcher than the average positional player has [offensive] plate appearances.
To use the following from your original post:
“How do you balance 700 plate appearances against 250 innings”
250 * 3 (minimum amount of plate appearances in an inning)= 750 plate appearances as a pitcher
Last time I checked, 750 is greater than 700.
Therefore pitchers participate in more individual, one-on-one matchups than hitters (that ultimately go to deciding the result of any given game). Not to mention that pitchers in the National League also participate as offensive players as well.
The argument could be made that hitters shouldn’t qualify for the MVP award (though I wouldn’t make it).
wow lots of comment, so came down here to this comment and it is paraphrase of point of article…guess it is a topic people got fired up on.
The likelihood that pitchers win the MVP has been inversely proportional to league-wide scoring patterns. As offense went up in the 90s, pitchers and defensive superstars were lauded less, and sluggers reigned. In the last ten years, run scoring has decreased dramatically, and now we’re more likely to see defensive stars and pitchers win. Only problem? THAT MAKES NO SENSE.
An example: Kershaw is replicating the stats from Pedro Martinez’s 2000. Compare the stats and you’ll see a lot of similarity. ERA is basically the same, K/BB is 8 or 9, K-BB% is around 30%. Pedro allowed some extra homers. But Kershaw’s doing this facing pitchers 2 or 3 times a start, in a pitcher’s park, in a league that averages only 3.96 R/G. Pedro got DHs (not even a few interleague starts yet), pitched in a hitter’s park (though not a HR park), and his league averaged 5.30 R/G. Park factors are not needed to know that scoring was 30-40% higher for Pedro than for Kershaw.
WaaWL% and 162WL% say it all. Kershaw’s at (merely) .744 WaaWL% compared to .834 for Pedro. It’s not close. And Kershaw’s 162WL% is .538 compared to .560 for Pedro in 2000.
By the way, I could find only eight position player seasons at .560 or better EVER. Babe did it four times, Bonds twice, Yastremski 1967, and Rogers Hornsby once. A few pitchers have reached that level, but all before 1920. So Pedro’s season was basically a top ten season ever for any player, but he finished 5th in the MVP vote that year behind four sluggers: Giambi, Thomas, ARod, and Delgado.
For context: after scanning about 3-4 dozen WaaWL% for this year and the last few years, it looks like .535+ is generally about right for the MVP winners, .530+ is a superstar season in the MVP conversation, and .520+ is sort of All Star level.
Thus Kershaw should be a candidate at .538 (this actually leads the NL), but we should all be careful about judging offensive and defensive players depending on their era and run scoring environment. There are few exceptional position players this year, so Kershaw probably will win. Keep this in mind however: it takes this kind of sub-2.00 FIP season that he has put together for a pitcher to belong in the NL MVP conversation right now. The next best NL pitchers are Wainwright (.528), Cueto (.526), and Hamels (.526).
Where do you find that stat? I was kinda leaning against Kershaw before I read this.
It’s on B-Ref.
IMO, the MVP vote is worthless tripe. It’s like saying the prom queen is always the prettiest girl in school.Writers can’t even come to an agreement what the definition of the award and the word “valuable” even is much less vote with any sense of objectivity.
Cy Young is best pitcher (most value). MVP is most valuable (not necessarily best player or value to team)m which is which player has contributed the most to a teams success in a given year, which includes context and luck.
Thats my definition and I am sticking with it
WAR for Cy Young is an appropriate metric, if only the saber world could decide on which WAR is most accurate, and they diverge wildly for a number of pitchers.
WAR is most inappropriate for MVP since it does not include context, among other reasons.
WAR is appropriate for best player, if not the ridiculous position adjustments, unregressed SSS fielding stats and crude park factors that render it so inaccurate
It has long been said that Pitcher and Batter WAR were not meant to be compared. I didn’t find any mention of this.
The one erroneous comparison I noted was equating “at bats” with “innings pitched”. A pitcher will affect far more plays in an inning, when he may face, at minimum, 3 batters than a batter in ONE at bat so, to be comparative, one might want to consider innings pitched times THREE, at least to compare for the same number of plays impacted…
My Opinion is that the award will never be looked at fairly until we establish a new system for awards. I suggest:
1. An MVP award that specifies the best player at any position and it doesn’t factor in team success.
2. A Best Position Player award. I recommend calling it the Willie Mays award, so people understand that base-running and fielding count. If a position player wins the MVP, they automatically win this award.
3. A Cy Young award, or better yet a Walter Johnson award for the best Pitcher. I Prefer Johnson, or Paige would be fine too, because they were better than Cy Young, and it would start a new age of best position player awards. Also, if you win the MVP as a pitcher, you automatically win the Cy Young.
4. Add a best Reliever Award. Rivera would be an obvious name choice. And no way should a reliever be even in the MVP discussion for anything but the All Star Game MVP,unless they pitch more than half as many innings as the League innings leader, which nowadays seems unlikely to ever happen.
5. Make the Rookie of the year award only for players in their first professional season.(No Ichiro/Tanaka/Abreau Winners) It’s kind of insulting to their professional leagues, and we know full well they would be in the Majors years earlier if they started in the US.
6. Add an award for the most upstart important player for a player that is most unexpectedly essential for a team making the playoffs. Yes this player can be an MVP, but it can’t be awarded to a player that previously was ever in the top 7 for the MVP any of the previous 3 season. (Great award for players like Nelson Cruz this year or Puig last year, and would be great for honoring players who lost their rookie status, but didn’t play a full year)
I think the MVP should factor in team success, and the Willie Mays (or whatever) award should be for the most outstanding individual performance.
The value of a win is not linear. A 7 WAR guy who boosts his team up to 85 wins hasn’t provided as much value to his organization as a 5 WAR guy who boosts his team up to 95 wins.
Jeff… at a young 6o I can’t believe have been following B ball since 1959. I long ago decided this is a no-brainer. MVP is for a position player who is ah the most valuable player day in and day out to his team. The Cy Young Award, duh, is for the Top pitcher in each league. What is the problem? Pitchers aren’t position players (re: batters, fielders with huge attempted put outs numbers.. Period. Two big, highly respected awards to cover the vast game of baseball.
PS I say this with all due respect. I can’t find anyone I enjoy as much as you in the field of baseball journalism, except maybe Dave Cameron.
We are ignoring the other big problem with the MVP: it has evolved to mean “best (position) player on a playoff team.” So here’s my solution. Keep the Cy Young for best pitcher, keep the Hank Aaron award for best hitter (but market it a whole lot better, and introduce a couple of new awards for best fielder (Ozzie Smith award?) and best base runner (Lou Brock?). Explicitly make those awards individual, without any consideration of team performance. Then redefine the MVP to be for the guy who made the biggest overall contribution (highest WAR if you will), whether by pitching or hitting or defense or base running, to a team that made the playoffs. That would seem to cover all the bases, so to speak.
The WAR for pitchers is calculated differently than the WAR for position players,so using WAR as a basis for comparison does not make sense. You can use a pitcher’s WAR only to compare him to other pitchers.
To Jeff’s point about the rules, yes the guidelines do allow pitchers to be eligible for the award. The debate is whether the rules need changing.
I think they do for a simple reason. An everyday player has many more chances to impact a season than any pitcher simply by the fact of his participating in so many more innings (in some cases nine times as many on defense and offense). The roles are just too different to compare.
In the early 2000’s I asked Tom Verducci a question about this same debate and got that same answer – pitcher’s already have an award (at the time, Randy Johnson was annihilating hitters while Bonds was hitting everything). I brought up that the Hank Aaron Award was given to the best hitter and his exact response was “the baseball writers association doesn’t vote for Hank Aaron.” That was basically the point at which I stopped caring about the awards because Verducci essentially confirmed that the writers are the only ones that matter in these debates. Until the voting process is changed to include fans, coaches, and players as well (this goes for HOF voting too), and the Hank Aaron Award is held at the same level as Cy Young, I will continue to not give a crap about who wins what awards.
Hmm, fans are the last people I want voting for any award. Do you think most fans read Fangraphs or similar sites and engage in thoughtful debate? Most fans have only a surface knowledge of the sport, which is why so many of them spontaneous master cliches. They are unlike most of the participants in this thread, and that’s a compliment to this group. Just quickly survey the results of most mlb polls and polls by news organizations and you’ll quickly see how unenlightened most fans are.
As far as the Aaron award being for hitters only, yes it is but who cares? I can name every MVP in both leagues since the inception of the award without using a reference. How many people can name the last 10 winners of the Aaron award without looking up the results? I can’t. I bet many fans are unaware of its existence. The award receives virtually no recognition.
By the way, the garbled line above should have read, “that’s why so many of them spout broadcasters’ cliches.” I must deactivate auto-spell on my tablet. It took five attempts before it would let me spell MVP. It kept changing it to MOB. Strange.