Yoenis Cespedes and the MVP Award
Lately there’s been some talk about Yoenis Cespedes as an MVP candidate. Jon Paul Morosi wrote a piece advocating for Cespedes at Fox yesterday, Richard Justice wrote a similar piece for MLB.com, and those are just the ones I saw in between cleaning up randomly placed pockets of cat vomit and carting my kids around town to their various appointments. So there might be more. Articles, not cat vomit. There is definitely more cat vomit.
To check, I did that thing where you start typing a search into Google then stop and let it suggest what you might want. Here’s what my Google suggested when I typed in “Yoenis Cespedes.”
So this is now a thing, apparently. Yoenis Cespedes: MVP candidate.
Except, it’s not, really, right? Is there an argument for Cespedes as MVP? Yes. There is an argument for Brock Holt as MVP too, if you want to make it. Is there an argument for Cespedes as National League MVP? Not one anyone should take seriously.
The reason there isn’t is pretty simple: Bryce Harper. If you want to get technical about it, also Paul Goldschmidt, Joey Votto, Andrew McCutchen, Buster Posey, Anthony Rizzo, and on and on. Cespedes has had a fantastic season, but as Morosi noted four paragraphs into his piece, Cespedes played the first 102 games of his season for the Detroit Tigers who play in the American League, which means he’s been a much less valuable National League player this season than any of the players listed above and, in fact, many more than that.
If you go to the leaderboards here at FanGraphs, then set minimum plate appearances to 100 in order to allow Cespedes to qualify for the list, you’ll find Cespedes ranked 33rd, tied with DJ LeMahieu and Chris Coghlan. That’s a monster 36 games Cespedes has put together, but in terms of overall impact, there was just no way he was going to be able to compete with the cream of the NL crop in such a short timespan.
This situation has happened before, and not all that far back in history. In 2008 the Red Sox dumped Manny Ramirez on the Dodgers at the trade deadline. Ramirez played 100 games with Boston before going to Los Angeles, whereupon he hit .396/.489/.743 with 17 homers in 53 games. That was good for +3.0 WAR, though the overall number was dragged down by his lovable but inept Mannyness in the outfield, which voters generally don’t weight that heavily come awards time. Cespedes is hitting .312/.357/.675 with 14 home runs through 36 games, which is great, but quite a bit less impressive than Ramirez. Manny finished fourth in the NL MVP balloting that season. Cespedes is facing a different field of players, but the top rung contained Albert Pujols’ +8.7 WAR season, so the competition is similar. In other words, unless things are substantially different now, either through the electorate or some other soft factor, Cespedes won’t win.
So perhaps the question isn’t, “Could Cespedes win?”, but rather “Should Cespedes win?” The argument for Cespedes as NL MVP boils down to saying 50 games of Cespedes is more valuable than about 150 games of Bryce Harper, or if you have to have your MVPs come from playoff teams, Andrew McCutchen. I know people get caught up in the pennant races and the Mets are exciting and fun and all that right now but that’s frankly a silly argument. Even if you really wanted to give the award to a Mets outfielder, there’s Curtis Granderson, who is hitting .276/.389/.530 since Cespedes arrived, plus was one of the primary reasons the team was in position to make a move for Cespedes to begin with.
Yet it should be pointed out that, league distinction aside, Cespedes is having an MVP-caliber season, or at least the kind of year that puts you in the conversation. On the whole, in 138 games played, he’s put up a 140 wRC and +6.8 WAR, which isn’t quite Bryce Harper’s 2015 performance, but is plenty good on its own. Cespedes is having a great year.
So, ask yourself this: what if Cespedes had played those first 102 games for the Padres? Or the Brewers? Or the Phillies? Would he be a good candidate for the NL MVP then? Of course, assuming his production in those places matched what he did for Detroit. He still might not win — Harper is a very strong candidate — but at least he’d be in the discussion, and no one would be dismissing him as a top-tier alternative. So why is he being penalized for spending part of an excellent season in Detroit? Because Detroit is an American League city! That’s a good point except so what?
There are two MVP awards ostensibly because the leagues are so different. And they used to be very different, but now they really aren’t that different. Before free agency players used to be NL or AL players for all or most of their careers. Thus the leagues really were different in that they had different pools of talent. From that perspective it makes sense to pick two different MVPs. Now the leagues have the same pool of players, they use the same ball, they have the same umpires, and with inter-league play the teams even play each other directly.
The only remaining difference — and it’s a rather large one I acknowledge — is the DH, but that doesn’t stop the leagues from playing inter-league games or the World Series on the same ball fields as one another. The leagues aren’t identical, but they are more similar than they used to be. So why not consider Cespedes’ early season performance, even if it occurred in the other league? Are we really okay with great seasons being ignored by history when a guy is traded between leagues, when we don’t make that same distinction as long as he’s traded within the same league?
If the purpose of the separate awards for each league is to honor the best seasons of players in that league, than maybe we should only treat the team a player is on at the end of the year as a qualification for which MVP Award a player is eligible to win, rather than assuming that only a player’s value while in that league can count towards his candidacy. Cespedes has legitimately been one of the most valuable players in baseball this year; why should we prefer a methodology that is incapable of recognizing that?
Of course, as long as we are limiting ourselves to value created within that specific league, there is simply no way to say he’s been more valuable to the Mets than Harper has been to the Nationals, McCutchen has been to the Pirates, or Rizzo has been to the Cubs. But there is a stronger argument to be made that Cespedes’ overall season has been worthy of MVP consideration independent of the current leagues-centric structure of the MVP award. Cespedes hasn’t been the best, but he’s been really good, and if you get past the hyperbole and the recency bias, maybe there is something there worth recognizing, and perhaps the fault lies not in Cespedes’ record but in how we structure the awards themselves.
This is just ridiculous. Cespedes nor anyone else is near Harper. Not close at all. Harper is having one of the greatest seasons of all time. Put this to bed.
Slow down here. Harper’s having a great year, but he’s currently projected to finish with 9.4 WAR… the same as Jacoby Ellsbury in 2011. It doesn’t even crack the top 100 seasons for position players.
So how many votes should 2011 Ellsbury get in THIS year’s NL MVP race?
Well I guess if WAR is the end all be all your argument has merit, but it’s not because UZR still sucks, especially over a single season. Harper is having the greatest batting season of any player not named Bonds this century.
I did a very quick look and Harper has the 29th best single season wRC+ since 1915. Of the 29 better seasons, 19 are from Bonds, Ruth, and Williams. It is the best non-Bonds wRC+ season since McGwire in 1998. I think it is pretty safe to say that Harper is having an all time great offensive season.
Up yours! Babe Ruth also says something to the same effect from beyond the grave.
also that he can’t read and mistook “this century” for the past century, or past 100 years. But Teddy isn’t sorry. He never says that.
Yeah, replace UZR with DRS and he’s already at 9.4 WAR
I usually replace the defense portion of FG’s WAR with an average of UZR and DRS, which puts him at ~9 for the season, and I’d expect ~10 wins by that method, and quite possibly more, if he maintains his usual September tOPS+ of 110 and puts up a 211 wRC+ on the month.
Honest question, does UZR suck at capturing what actually happened on the field or does it just suck because it takes a long time to stabilize?
Yes, haha. BIS data is the best thing available to the public, but it isn’t very good.
He’s having the best non-Bonds offensive season in the past 50 years.
He’s 22 years old.
This is, without a doubt, one of the greatest seasons of all time.
Bagwell and Thomas in 94 and McGwire in 98 had higher wRC+
Also, if you had made this statement a couple days ago, there would be a few other guys in there, too (including Dick Allen!).
I think there is enough time left for Harper to either cement this as a historical offensive season (putting aside age, which if considered makes this truly historic even if he tanks the last 25 games) or tail off and merely be the best offensive season this season, or be somewhere in between where you could call it historically great if you wanted to but you wouldn’t have to.
94 (unfortunately) wasn’t a full season, so I wasn’t counting it, even though they qualified for the batting title. It just doesn’t seem fair to compare the two, when Bagwell and Thomas didn’t have to battle through the dog days of August and September, especially since Thomas usually faded a bit down the stretch (from a .978 career OPS to a .965. Holy shit was Frank Thomas good at hitting).
Good call on McGwire, though (even if he probably belongs in the post-99 Bonds category, haha).
What does the fact that he is 22 have anything to do with the quality of the season he’s having ?
Huh? His age has nothing to do with the quality of THIS season, only that there could be more projection in the FUTURE.
This is, without a doubt, a frivolous post.
Did you miss the part where only Bonds and McGwire have put up a higher wRC+ over 120+ games in the past 50 years?
I know reading is hard, Matt, but don’t worry. You’ll get there someday!
Not so fast, Lester: Matt is pretty clearly replying to and commenting on francis’s post (the system only allows a couple levels of indents). Reading isn’t really that hard.
Sorry, I’ve read further in the comments below, and I take it back. You got it right Lester. Reading is hard.
let’s let the season finish before the whole, “having the best non-Bonds offensive season in the past 50 years stuff.” Cabrera had a 192 wrc+ a couple of years ago. two bad games could drop harper at that level. save the hyperboles once the year’s over…
Please see the first FULL seasons of Trout, Mike; Pujols, Albert; and Cabrera, Miguel. And even Howard, Ryan.
Exactly, Redhaven!
Not a single one of those historic offensive seasons even comes close to Harper’s 2015.
I’m glad you get it!
he’s not “having the greatest” anything, he’s on pace to have the greatest something. There is a difference. He’s one small slump from falling behind Miggy Cabrera’s 2013 season when he hit .348/.442/.636 for a 192 wRC+ amongst others.
Don’t forget that much of the significance of Harper’s season is his age. He’s currently 6th and 5th in WAR for a 22 year old player at FG and BBRef, respectively. He’s already topped Trout’s age 22 season last year.
No. No. No.
A 200+ wRC+ is completely historic at any age. Granted, he might slide back to a mid 190’s wRC+, but he is basically have a season that only Ruth, Wiliams, Bonds, Mantle, Gehrig, Musial, Hornsby and McGuire ever matched in a full season over a century of baseball.
Bryce Harper is on pace to become just the ninth player in the history of baseball to record a wRC+ of 200 in a season. It’s basically on par with becoming the ninth guy to have a six hundred homer career, which Albert Pujols (who never had a a 200 wRC+ season) is on pace to do in the next year or two.
Easy there, commenter. This space is reserved for hyperbole. Know your place!
Also, way to go cherry picking a UZR inflated WAR for comparison’s sake to make it appear Harper’s season isn’t special. If Harper didn’t win the MVP this year it will diminish the award.
My question is how valuable has he been? He carried all this aces, werth, Zimmerman, Desmond etc to a .500 record?
Exactly.
He carried a pitching staff with a 97 ERA-, and a lineup whose next 5 best projected producers have combined for 2.5 WAR to an above .500 recorded, nearly singlehandedly keeping them relevant until September.
He’s been, by a fair amount, the most valuable player in baseball.
Considering Espinosa, Escobar are both 2.4 war and Desmond is 2.2 I have no idea where you are getting your stats from. The nats are major underachievers.
Can you stop spamming the board with you 1/2 or 1/4 truths
Dovif, perhaps you’re forgetting to add the -1.6 WAR from Jason Werth, or the -1.5 WAR from Tyler Moore, or the -0.7 WAR from Dan Uggla.
It’s ok, I’ll give you some time to calibrate your numbers.
What matters more: how much the five highest PROJECTED performers performed, or how much the five ACTUAL best performers performed?
I’d say the latter: I don’t care what Jason Werth or Tyler Moore or Dan Uggla have done, but rather want to know how well the supporting cast performed. The underperformance of those three players speaks more to the failure of the projections than it does to Harper’s ‘singlehanded ability to turn this team of scrubs’ into a .500 team, I’d say.
Here’s how the top six look:
Harper 8.6 WAR
Espinosa 2.3
Escobar 2.2
Taylor 1.7
Span 1.4
Desmond 1.3
As a reference point, here is the production other teams with similar winning percentages have received from their 2-6 WAR leaders this year:
Team WPCT WAR (2-6 ranked position players)
Angels .504 8.8
Nationals .511 8.9
Giants .514 18.0
Twins .518 8.5
Rangers .529 8.2
This of course ignores pitchers. But what it does show is that from an offensive standpoint, Harper’s supporting cast has basically been what you should expect (unless you’re the Giants – wow!).
Wasn’t there a post here on Fangraphs within the last couple of weeks that discussed the percentage of WAR taken up by just top performing guy on each team? And in the post, if I remember correctly, it was the Nationals with the highest percentage of total WAR contributed by a single player.
The way I would interpret that would be to say that removing Harper from the Nationals does more harm to them than removing any player from any other team and that the Nationals have had a weak supporting cast this year.
Does anyone remember that post? I can’t find it.
Harper actually ranks 3rd in WPA in the NL – so while WAR has him far and away as the best player, is he actually helping his team WIN the most? I get that its nice to rack up stats and have a great WAR, but the timing of some of the impactful plays guys make matters too. Harper has been a regular good player against the Mets for the most part (3 HR/6 RBIs in 70 PAs, .250/.357/.450), and has crushed the other garbage teams in the NL East (16 HR/36 RBI in 161 PAs, roughly .354/.488/.811).
If you look at his late/close game stats, and his high leverage situation stats, and his inning 7-9 stats, there’s a significant drop that takes him from otherworldly to just good. Is that enough to take the MVP away from him? Does every other player have similar stats? Right now it looks like Rizzo and Votto both make the right plays at the right time to help their team win. But that’s just one stat (WPA) and Harper wins most others.
WPA doesn’t show who helps their team win the most. RE24 does.
It scales exactly to wRAA, and it measures how much a player has increased their team’s chances of scoring runs in each PA.
Unsurprisingly, Harper leads baseball in RE24. By a lot. He’s got an 8.6 run lead on Votto.
I think you’re incorrectly defining RE24 as a stat that helps show who helps their team WIN the most. RE24 is RUN expectancy, which is independent of the current game score. It doesn’t distinguish between whether you’re making it more likely to score a run in a 10-0 game or a 1-1 game, so it isn’t as relevant to what I’m talking about.
WPA takes the game situation into account, and I was trying to express that it seems like Harper hasn’t cashed in on those opportunities like Rizzo and Votto have. And I do understand that different situations are weighted in RE24, but the score of the game and the inning aren’t.
Yeah…and that’s why RE24 is a much better stat to measure individual performance.
A hitter player can’t do anything but help his team score runs. He can’t make his pitchers pitch better. He can’t make the guys behind him drive him in.
RE24 basically came from Tango saying “Hmmm, WPA’s cool. I want to create something similar, except that it actually measures performance.
But it doesn’t consider, at all, the score of the game. I’m basically trying to see if Harper has been padding his stats with hits/homers in meaningless parts of the game. Anytime you’re in the range that he’s in (and Rizzo, and Votto, and Bryant, etc) that’s not really the case, but getting the big hit at the right time could help determine whether a guy is valuable to his team winning or just a stat accumulator.
I think Ben you are stuck in early August, Harper in early August was having one of the greatest seasons of all time, he has fallen back to earth in the 6 weeks since then so now he is having a very good year, but nothing remotely close to “the greatest seasons of all time”
Still, he should be MVP if your criteria is not meeting pre-season expectations and/or Playoff Position.
To me the Cespedes debate is not really him winning the MVP, unless he hits 15 home runs in the last 23 games that isn’t going to happen, but he is making a bid to be a top 5 candidate and probably has already made himself a top 10 candidate.
He’s a 22 year old with a 201 wRC+. If you use DRS rather than UZR with fWAR, he’s sitting on 9.4 WAR on September 10th.
This absolutely has a shot at being one of the greatest seasons of all time.
Stop saying he’s 22 years old. It doesn’t matter when you’re talking about this season or this season’s stats or this season’s MVP award.
Being 22 does not make the stats any different. A 201 wRC+ isn’t any different whether you’re 17 or 55. If you’re mashing the ball, you’re mashing the ball. Don’t use his age as extra justification for why his season is so great – it doesn’t matter.
This. Thank you. So much focus on a completely irrelevant fact like his age makes it too easy to dismiss the rest of your words. Which we have.
CLS hates the redsox and is a nars fan? maybe rays?
Of course a player being extremely young or old matters when placing a season in its historical context. It’s why we all talk about Trout’s 2012 more than his 2013, even though he put up 15 fewer offensive runs, and 0.2 fewer WAR.
Also…shut up, Matt. We may not need to remember his age to be impressed by the 15th best offensive season in the Integration Era, but the fact that he hadn’t faced a pitcher than him until June is a huge part of why this season has been so cool.
No one who has had to face non-white pitchers has ever put up a wRC+ over 180.
Age is not relevant to MVP voting. It is relevant to estimating future value which is important in itself, but the MVP is very much a here and now award. The only award that considers future value is the Rookie of the Year, sometimes.
Do remember that young players putting up huge seasons have not lived up to those seasons. Cesar Cedeno put up 7.8 and 7.1 fWAR in his age 21 and 22 seasons and then was not remotely as good as those two seasons would project. Al Kaline is another player: fantastic at age 20 and an obvious Hall of Famer, but that season proved to be a ceiling, not a floor. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.
…I never said it was relevant in MVP voting?
I’m saying it’s relevant in placing a season in the proper historical context, i.e. whether it should be considered among “the greatest seasons of all time.”
Age is also not relevant to whether Harper’s season should be considered one of the greatest seasons of all time.
Age is relevant to two things: (1) projecting future value (though as others have pointed out, it is hardly a guarantee), and (2) identifying the greatest season for players of particular ages. Once you expand the question to the greatest overall seasons, or the MVP, or any other unqualified measure of greatness, age does not matter.
I guess if Harper being 22 makes his season more meaningful then the AL MVP should go to Trout over Donaldson since their statistically close and Trout is several years younger. Or maybe even Correa or Lindor, who are so young that their WAR around 3 should actually count for what, like triple in 2015?
…I never said it was relevant in MVP voting?
I’m saying it’s relevant in placing a season in the proper historical context, i.e. whether it should be considered among “the greatest seasons of all time.”
It’s okay, Mike. Reading is hard.
Yes Harper really fell back to Earth in the past six weeks, I mean he’s only been hitting .331/.473/.581 for a 1.054 OPS and 185 wRC+ since the All-Star break, numbers which would still be better than every other player’s entire season if it ended today and itself would rank among the best offensive seasons of the past three decades even including Barry Bonds.
Oh wait I apologize, I misread your post, you were actually saying Harper’s season as a whole is now only very good because of his last six weeks. The season where he has a 201 wRC+ as a 22-year old. Surely that information can only help further your argument.
I’m just looking at wRC+. I’m not adding extra analysis. A wRC+ of 201, which Harper is at right now, is the 29th best since 1915. Excluding Ruth, Williams, and Bonds it is the 10th best. Ruth, Williams, and Bonds are objectively the best hitters of all time and Harper this year is kind of, sort of in their class. That’s something.
I just realized their are two Bens. There is the first Ben with the original comment and then a new Ben (me) in the replies to his comment. But I agree with the first Ben and just a cursory look at the numbers lends some merit to a “one of the greatest seasons” claim.
if and when the Nats miss the Postseason then Harper will have played in exactly 0 “meaningful games”. I don’t agree with this thinking but voters have been using this logic for years so why stop now?
You know, I don’t get this. Of course, Harper should be MVP. But aside from that, if a guy is traded mid-season or at the trade deadline, he can no longer win MVP? What if Bryce Harper had been traded to the Yankees in the middle of this 9+ WAR season? So now Bryce can’t win any MVP award?
Obviously, the league he is playing for at the end of the year should be the one he gets the consideration for MVP in, but we can’t just say Cespedes shouldn’t get MVP consideration because he changed leagues. Honestly, if Harper doesn’t get it, Cespedes has put up the second most WAR and should win it.
Agreed. I think it’s more fair to interpret the award “NL MVP” as given to the player with the best overall season, who happens to be on an NL roster at the time of the award.
Hi. Have we met? Baseball writers don’t like me very much. So, good luck with that.
Exactly. The people open-minded enough to consider Cespedes are the ones who will recognize that Cespedes doesn’t come close to Harper.
I agree. A mid-season trade shouldn’t automatically dismiss you from the MVP race. This year is strange in that the far and away favorites are all on terrible teams. Usually it’s more like the AL this year–there are a few front-runners, but one guy clearly has a better case based on storylines.
This year will be really neat. Just numbers, Harper wins by a landslide. The guy is basically Barry Bonds. But if the voters continue to value a postseason berth, I think Cespedes is really the best combination of success and storylines. If it goes to McCutchen, that would be a shame. There are five or so players in the NL playing better baseball.
Seriously, Votto, Harper, Goldschmidt are all playing like gods and all are on awful teams. In most years any of them win it hands down.
No one can argue Harper hasn’t been valuable. He carried his team for most of the year. How can you blame him for the ineptitude of his manager and his bullpen?
Seriously. He has single handedly kept the Nats relevant.
The team he is carrying includes 7 all stars …… The team should never be close to .500
You keep saying that…while conveniently ignoring that the next 5 best hitters on the team have combined for 2.5 WAR this season.
The only conversation to be had about the NL MVP is who deserves second place.
Cool Lester can you please look before posting rubbish stats
Dovif, in case you weren’t sure, you subtract negative WAR from the overall WAR total.
Hahaha, seriously.
“Dovif, in case you weren’t sure, you subtract negative WAR from the overall WAR total.”
Well, the negative WAR players aren’t among the 5 best hitters on the Nats unless you are using two different definitions of “best” in the same argument. You’re arguing that Harper is the 2015 MVP based on 2015 WAR. By that definition of “best,” it is not the case that the next 5 best hitters on the Nationals total 2.5 WAR.
To be clear, I agree that Harper should be the 2015 NL MVP. Not only is he the best player in the league by any plausible statistical measure, which should be the end of the conversation, the Nationals were contenders for most of the year, which should be enough under traditional criteria. Based on his high value to the team and the fact that the Nationals are around .500, it is necessarily true that he single-handedly kept them from being bad. You don’t need to make misleading claims about the “next 5 best hitters on the team” to prove that point.
He kept referring to the Nats as full of “All-Stars,” so I was using the WAR of the next five best players as projected in the preseason.
Indeed, in the age of interleague play, that argument holds little to no water.
This is a good point. The article struck me as odd for its baseline assumption that NL MVP should only be considerate of performance while in the NL, which is not a limitation present in the language sent to voters.
With that said, the language clearly states that “the MVP need not come from a division winner or other playoff qualifier” — something which many voters, traditionally, have still considered. I appreciate the argument for it (and the language doesn’t say to not consider it), but I can also see Kory’s point uniquely coming into play when an MVP’s candidacy is tied to team performance than to individual performance. Trade 2014 Mike Trout to an NL team that misses the playoffs and he’s still MVP on numbers alone. Trade someone whose numbers aren’t there but who gets consideration for team success and that has to be balanced against the fact that he only contributed to team success for a portion of the year; that doesn’t overcome the Yo/Harper gap.
I don’t think he comes close to McCutchen honestly. Or Rizzo. Or Posey. Or Greinke. Or Votto. Or Familia, without whom the Mets would no way no how be 7 games up. So maybe he’s 7th or 8th, tied with Kershaw or A-Gon.
I know people like to have these “he’s in the conversation for MVP” debates, but if “in the conversation” means 5th at best, it’s not a conversation worth having.
And Goldschmidt.
Major League Baseball is the only sport that has league-specific MVP awards, right? Peyton Manning has never been the AFC MVP.
MLB is also the only sport that has league-specific rules.
There is only one NFL. The conferences are integrated to a degree not seen in MLB. So I suppose in that sense every major award in the NFL is league-specific.
MLB is the only sport with multiple leagues, right?
“his lovable but inept Mannyness in the outfield, which voters generally weight that heavily come awards time.”
I believe this should be “don’t weight that heavily”?
I posed this question to Dave yesterday when he was basically answering nothing but Cespedes questions, but he didn’t answer it:
Why not consider Cespedes’ full season for NL MVP?
I mean, it doesn’t matter this year because Harper is way better, but I’d put Cespedes down on my ballot 4th or 5th. It’s not his fault he was traded to a different league. The whole having two MVPs itself is kind of stupid (no other major sport does this, and while there is less interleague play in MLB than cross conference play in other sports, it’s not that far off).
Just as a matter of justice, it seems wrong to penalize a guy for being traded, something he had absolutely no say in. Unless the instructions for the award were unambiguous in that you can only consider play while a member of an NL team, I’d treat his whole season the same as any other player.
Well if he played as well with the Tigers as he did with the Mets, maybe they would have been in the race and they wouldn’t have traded him or Price and he could have won the AL MVP. So maybe it is his fault that he won’t win it.
I hope this is sarcasm.
Well yeah, I’m being obtuse but there is some truth to it… playing devils advocate… If we’re penalying Harper for having sucky teammates, shouldn’t we penalyze Cespedes for the 100 games of sucky teammates in Detroit, if were awarding him extra points for the better teammates in NYY… but back to what I was saying… you brought up the idea of him not having any control of being traded… I’m just saying there’s a case that if he played better with Detroit, they may have been the contenders they were thought to be.
cornflake, this was part of my argument against Shannon Stewart for MVP in 2004 when he was traded from the Jays to the Twins mid-season. Of course, that was in the same league so it’s a slightly different scenario.
I don’t even know why I’m arguing this… I really don’t care about awards, but I find myself arguing about the CY as well. I’m from Chicago, I’m a Cubs fan, I have season tickets, but whenever a fellow fan says Arrieta is better than Kershaw, I can’t let it go… idk…
Arrieta is nowhere near kershaw lets see he does it more 5 years to say they are remotely similar.
The most amazing thing about Kershaw is that this is his best year by xFIP and the first year his ERA isn’t significantly better than his FIP, and he’s STILL fighting his way into the Cy discussion. Kershaw may be having a down year, and Arrieta may be pitching almost as well as him this year, but in no way is Arrieta a better pitcher.
And to be clear (if it’s not)… I’m saying Arrieta is nowhere near as good as Kershaw.
Zach Grienke says hello
I agree. I feel like Fangraphs readers sometimes ignore that most mainstream writers, if they look at WAR, look at baseball reference’s version of it at least as much as fangraphs. And over there, Greinke is much closer to Harper. Harper should still win, but Greinke is arguably the best player on a playoff team. We’ll see if he’s as much of an afterthought as it seems most of Fangraphs writers think he is.
Clayton Kershaw says hello… Isn’t he leading all pitchers in WAR?
Fangraphs version yes. Greinke leads all pitchers by a wide margin in BR WAR.
Peter Bandwidth says hello.
Cornflake says bye Felicia
…and he’s a half win behind Harper in BR WAR.
The point isn’t that Greinke is better or deserves the award, but the author listed five other players, many of whom are not having better seasons than Greinke (or Kershaw). It’s almost like he forgot pitchers were eligible for this award.
I mean, I’d still vote for Harper #1; but I’d vote Greinke #2 (and Kershaw #3)
Yeah, I’m with you.
Then there is BBPro, where Trout leads Donaldson by > 1 WAR, Cespedes is only 10th among PP, 6th in the NL. And Greinke and Kershaw trail Harper by > 3 WAR.
It’s also possible that everyone recognizes that, generally speaking, a pitcher both must be having ludicrously good season and there has to be a dearth of quality position player candidates for them to get much consideration from the voters.
Aside from the existence of Harper, I’d say these exact conditions exist with Greinke and the NL MVP this season.
Hi Zach.
Fantastic article.
Thanks!
It boils down to how the voters this year define MVP. Just because they didn’t give Manny the MVP in 2008 doesn’t mean Cespedes has no chance. Manny did finish 4th which is within striking distance and it’s been 7 years so there may be some different voters today.
I agree that the flaw is in the structure and the cloudiness of the meaning of the award.
Manny Ramirez finished in 4th with no first place votes and 231 points behind Albert Pujols.
That would be one hell of a spitting distance.
In all fairness, I’m pretty sure none of us have actually measured the spitting distance of the MVP voters
Though I’m willing to bet Statcast will have some data for us next year
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=y&type=6&season=2015&month=0&season1=2015&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=3,d
Honest question: how many players in history have received AL MVP and NL MVP votes in the same season?
I don’t think that’s ever happened – indeed, I suspect the eligibility criteria are such that it can’t happen. Mark McGwire in 1997, for instance, led the Majors in home runs but didn’t lead either league because he was traded from Oakland to St. Louis. He received votes for the NL MVP, but none for the AL MVP.
Imma going to go out on a limb and say 0. Frank Robinson won each in consecutive years, though.
Lets not punish Harper just because Papelbon ruined the Nats team chemistry
>Talks about chemistry on a statistics driven website
ok then
>uses meme arrows outside of 4chan
ishygddt
Why doesnt the team with the most WAR win the WS every year then?
Because 5 and 7 game samples are remarkably variable.
Also, no one here suggests that adding up WAR = record.
To this comment:
“Also, no one here suggests that adding up WAR = record.”
I disagree. I think WAR is designed to correlate perfectly with record – it’s right there in the name.
If you started with 30 WAR 0 teams and then replaced them with the players they had and summed the WAR they produced for that team, the result ( if WAR was accurate ) would be the number of wins for that team.
The fact that it doesn’t equal record speaks more to its flaws as a tool to estimate wins than the fact that is isn’t supposed to estimate wins at all.
If you’re argument is that the sum of player WAR and team WAR differs due to less quantifiable factors like lineup construction, pitcher management, shifting, etc. than maybe you have something, but then that ought to have it’s own measure.
I’m also not talking about a playoff series, just the best record over the full season.
Francis: WAR intentionally ignores sequencing. WAR assigns run values to individual events. For WAR, a home run followed by two walks has the same value as two walks followed by a home run. This is the most significant reason why WAR does not align exactly with win/loss record. It is intentionally designed to assign value to individual players based on their own individual actions. It is not designed to reflect win/loss records.
Yeah, you’d have to swap out wRAA with RE24 to approximate record.
“(WAR) is not designed to reflect win/loss records.”
Then why is a Fangraphs auther using the delta between projected/actual WAR to explain “What went wrong in DC” in an article just today?
The lengths some people will go to excuse away the faults with WAR is decidedly NOT in the interests of a better understanding of baseball.
Uh…because the Nats having several players whose individual, context-neutral performances tanked is a huge part of why this season went to shit?
It’s not hard to understand.
Saying WAR does not correlate perfectly with win/loss record does not mean it cannot be used to explain a team’s win/loss record.
Lets not punish Harper just because Rizzo ruined the Nats team chemistry
Let’s punish harper for how much the Nationals combined sucked this year dropping from 100 likely wins to around 80
We get it, you don’t like Bryce Harper.
Wtf does that have to do with Harper?
Its clear from the general shit leaking out of your mouth throughout this post that you have an axe to grind against the Nationals. Shut up, nobody cares.
Sullivan put up an article explaining their collapse despite Harper doing a Bonds impression. By the vary nature of WAR nobody has been more valuable to their team than Harper this year.
Again… shut up and go back to Fox.
My view is that MOST VALUABLE player should have done something that made the team better…. I am firmly in the camp that a mvp should be on a playoff team, while the nats might not be a .500 team in a better division
The Nationals are not better this year at all … I question how “most valuable” to his team he really has been and I did read Sullivan’s article. And war is but an indicator
As for bobby Bonilla, I at least made a point, you have no point and your posts are perfectly suited to fox
Bryce Harper’s 201 wRC+ didn’t do anything to make the team better? Are you being willfully obtuse or are you just not very smart?
Hey now, That Guy! Let’s not get carried away, here!
It can be two things.
It was comical the other day when Cespedes played that single into a little league home run. (grand slam no less) But seriously, great year for him but 36 games??? The Mets have 78 wins, many without him.
Right now, I’d have him at #4 after Harper, Votto, and Goldschmidt. I could be talked into #3. There are more games to be played though! That and my opinion counts the exact same amount as nothing.
So ahead of Rizzo, who’s had the bigger impact on the better team?
Or McCutchen. Or Posey.
Yep, 36 games of Yoenis Cespedes is more valuable than 140 or so of those bums
Everyone has a different opinion on what criteria matter for the MVP. This has been discussed ad nauseam. By your logic, Matt Carpenter could be argued as the MVP. He is the best everyday player on the best team in the NL. The difference thus far in 2015 between Rizzo and Carpenter is equivalent to the difference between Goldschmidt and Rizzo. Why not take your argument one step further?
Like how Justin Verlander won the award in 2011 with 3 WAR fewer than Jacoby Ellsbury?
It’s really about narrative and Greinke will suffer most from the fact that he is in the same rotation as Kershaw and Kershaw will suffer from the fact that Greinke has the much better W/L and ERA and also that he was better last year when he won it.
But this is Fangraphs, so I don’t think you deserve a pass for ignoring a guy (or two) having amazing years. I mean, Rizzo?
This was not supposed to be here.
For what it’s worth, Manny finished 4th in the balloting when he was traded. Rick Sutcliffe, who won the Cy in the NL after being traded in June from the Indians to the Cubs, also finished 4th in the NL MVP balloting in 1984.
Look, you know and I know Yo won’t win NL MVP. But there is a legit argument that he should get votes and be a top 5 candidate. He has transformed the Mets offense from worst in baseball to best in baseball (along with help from a healthy d’Arnaud, Conforto being called up, Wright coming back). But watching the Mets every day, even with all those things, Cespedes has been THE difference-maker and THE key reason why they have a 7 game lead right now. He has been the most “Valuable” to the Mets. In a year when no other playoff-bound team has a convincing argument, Cespedes should get consideration.
But why, you say, limit the award to playoff-bound teams? I would not. I do give more consideration to playoff bound teams than to teams that miss.
Matthew asks the question “what if Cespedes had played the balance of the season for the Padres?” How about this – what if he’d played the entire season for the Mets? Strangely, all other things being equal, I would say he has less of an argument if that had been the case. But I’m weird like that…
He helped give the Mets a much stronger offense. But the Jays far and away have the best offense in baseball. Right?
season to date of course yes. 5.5 runs per game. Since 8/1 the Mets are 6.1 runs per game.
What if Mike Trout had been traded to the NL on Aug. 1? Should he win the AL MVP, based on the fact that while he was in that league he was far and away the best player?
I have no problem counting someone’s overall performance in both leagues in a single season, but if you do that, Yo really has no case here.
Following your scenario, presumably the Angels gave up on Trout because they were floundering. So he would not have been “valuable” to them making the playoffs the way Cespedes has with the Mets. He clearly wasn’t helping the Tigers compete. Where this breaks down is Cespedes has become a much better hitter for the Mets than he was for Detroit.
But that doesn’t matter if we’re judging based on the entire season, which is my point, and I think most people’s point. There would be no arguing for YC if his season began when he joined the Mets. It’s what he’s done with them plus the rest of the year, even if what he did in Detroit was not as impressive as what he’s done in NY.
Anyway, I take back saying I had no problem giving an MVP for performance in both leagues. If you do that, you might as well give MVPs to the two best players, regardless of which league they play in, and if you do that, you might as well just have only one MVP.
“…gave up on Trout because they were floundering.” Was that just a fluke?
He just threw that out there for the halibut.
The pun is high art, and that was a masterpiece.
If Cespedes was traded to, let’s say, San Diego instead of New York and went on this run, this article never would have been published.
He’s getting 10x more attention than he would be getting in other markets because he’s playing in New York.
Now we have to read hyperbole about the Mets having “the best offense in baseball” …. spare me please
Mets having the best offense is baseball is not hyperbole. For about a month now they have been scoring all the runs, and the change can be linked to very specific personnel changes. If the offensive surge was based on Lucas Duda hitting 10 home runs in 9 games again, I’d agree that the performance is unsustainable. But right now, there’s no reason to conclude that Conforto, d’Arnaud, Wright, and Cespedes are unable to continue to fuel a juggernaut.
Dude, they last article (not cherry picking) is about the Cleveland Indian’s closer.
The Nats are losing the east with Harper. The mets lose the east w/o Cespedes.
There’s your “valuable”
If we had a stupid wall, that Mexican Cespedes wouldn’t even be here. Give him the MVP of the Mexican League!
Of course Cespedes should be considered. But since he spent the majority of the year in the American League, he should be competing for the AL MVP, not the NL MVP. This is obvious, right?
Nothing is obvious when it comes to awards… even if it should be.
The other myth about Cespedes is that he “completely transformed” the Mets offense, taking it from league-worst to league best all by himself. As someone who follows the Mets obssessively, the reality is much more complicated.
Sure, Cespedes provided a massive boost to the offense, as he’s a major offensive upgrade over Juan Lagares in center field. But what many people seem to be forgetting is that Cespedes isn’t the only offensive addition the Mets have made in recent weeks.
On July 24th, the Mets called up Michael Conforto, who has hit for a 150 wRC+ with the Mets.
On July 31st, Travis d’Arnaud returned from injury, and he has a 164 wRC+ since his return.
On August 24th, David Wright returned from a career-threatening injury, and has a 125 wRC+ since his return.
Not to mention acquiring Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe added some much needed depth that vastly improved the Mets’ bench.
Some of the national beat writers have made the mistake of assuming that Cespedes is the primary reason the offense has turned it around since the trade deadline. Truthfully, Cespedes has only been part of the solution, and in no way should be considered a serious MVP candidate.
This is a similar argument to Donaldson should not get the MVP over Trout because the Jays also remade their bullpen, got Price, Tulo, and bench depth. No move exists in a vacuum, but it’s very clear to almost everyone that Cespedes was the most important of all those moves.
…except that Donaldson has been demonstrably better than Trout this year, by both major WAR metrics (+playoff team, etc.).
I’m not so sure about that. They are separated by 4 points of wRC+ and 3 points of wOBA. Trout has 20 points of OBP, Donaldson has 20 points of SLG. Donaldson has the edge on defense, but Trout plays a more valuable position, and defensive valuations are tricky anyway. They seem about even to me.
3B and CF have the same positional adjustment, actually, and it’s a lot harder to find good 3Bs than good CFs.
Otherwise intelligent people are really, really eager to declare the demise of Trout’s defense based on stats. Does nobody watch him? He’s still *Mike Trout* out there in the field
Don’t forget one thing about Manny, while your all clamoring for a MVP Cespedes. Manny did some good things when he went to the Dodgers, but he was also full of steroids. That is what got him that contract with the Dodgers, and a big reason they got to the post season that year. So do be careful who you are so quick to give all your awards and cash to.
We’re not the ones in charge of contracts or awards… we’re not giving anything to anybody…
I really don’t think it’s valid to consider Cespedes’ entire season for the NL MVP. And at the very least, I don’t think it’s consistent with the way most writers vote for the award. MVP has always been an award based at least in large part on what a player means to his team, and while there’s no denying that Cespedes has meant a huge amount to the Mets in his 36 games with them, that can’t possibly compete with what a player playing the entire season for one team contributes. It’s a quirk of the system that he doesn’t get all the credit for his season, but we’re not talking about his contributions in a vacuum — we’re talking about his contributions to his team. That’s the narrative-driven part of the MVP vote (as opposed to the purely statistical one). And even a raging case of recency bias fever can’t obscure the fact that we’re talking about a third of a season.
Cespedes, season total (138 gms): .298/.333/.554 (140 wRC+)
Cespedes, with Mets (36 gms): .312/.357/.675 (181 wRC+)
Harper, season total (132 gms): .336/.467/.657 (201 wRC+)
Yes, but defense is a thing. Cespedes is getting outhit by a bunch of candidates including Rizzo, Votto, Goldschmidt, Posey, and McCutchen. But Cespedes beats all of them in WAR due to his defense. It doesn’t make him better than Harper, but wRC+, defense, and a postseason berth all together might.
Making it to the postseason absolutely does not make an individual player “better.”
And are we sure Cespedes is a good defensive player? I have rarely watched him but everyone knows he has an amazing arm, but I’ve also heard complaints of him taking poor routes to balls and frequent misplays. By the defense on the player pages here he has had one good season (2015), one bad (2012), and two about average (2013, 2014). Harper has been just below average every year besides his rookie year. There probably isn’t much difference in Cespedes and Harper as defensive players.
Harper has a career UZR/150 of 3.7 and a career DRS/yr of 7 (5.35 average)
Cespedes has a career UZR/150 of 8.6 and a career DRS/yr of 3 (5.8 average)
So yeah, they’re pretty similar.
Thanks for looking it up for me. Sarcasm* I love when people want to argue defense matters when the person they are arguing for is clearly less proficient offensively and then fail to quantify how their person is better defensively.*
The only argument Cespedes has over Harper for MVP is the Mets are going to the playoffs. Coincidentally that is the only argument Wilmer Flores has as well. I say we start to make a rally for Flores’ tears for MVP.
Those are what REALLY turned the Mets’ season around!
I thought that Cespedes’s 6.8 fWAR was a typo at first, but wow he’s been really good this year.
Cespedes turned into a pretty good consolation prize for the Mets.
In many other years, you could probably make a case for Cespedes to at least be in the argument, but Harper’s season has rendered any debate pointless. And that’s coming from a huge Met fan.
Exactly. He has as good an argument as anyone else for second place…but Bryce Harper exists.
Saying that Cespedes is a viable candidate for the NL MVP award is like saying the Pittsburgh Pirates are a viable candidate for the NL West’s Division Title.
Think about it.
The Pirates play about 20% of their season against teams from the NL West and will likely finish with a better record than any NL West team. So does that
mean that they deserve to be recognized as the best team in the NL West??
Of course not.
Likewise, the fact that Cespedes spent about a third of a season playing in
the National League doesn’t mean that he is a deserving candidate for the NL
MVP.
Perhaps baseball could institute a new MVP award and call it the Wild Card MVP. The ballots for MVP would include all players from BOTH Leagues and the
voters would vote for 20 players, with their first choice getting 25 pts, their 2nd getting 22, their 3rd 20, their 4th 18, their 5th 16 and their
remaing 15 getting 15-14-13-12 etc down to 1.
Then when the votes are tallied, the League MVP awards would go to top player
point-getter from each league, and the Wild Card MVP going to the best remaining player. Having 3 MVPs for 30 teams is equivilant to having 2 MVPs
for 20 teams as was the case for most of the 1960’s. And it would solve the
problem of how to recognize a great season by a player like Cespedes who spends substantial time in both leagues.
If the Pittsburgh Pirates were traded to the NL West, this post would make sense.
I think Harper won’t win the MVP for the same reason Matt Kemp didn’t win his MVP the year it was given to Braun. The reason being Harper wasn’t able to lead his team into the postseason, just like Kemp. If Harper would be in another team he would win but sadly that’s not the case.
Cespedes won’t win because he was traded mid season, but he most certainly has changed the National League postseason landscape in an enormous manner. Without him, the Mets might not be winning their division. That being said, he does deserve a spot on the conversation.
The MVP award largely depends if the team gets into playoffs. Last several years it has been that way. That’s why I expect Rizzo and Cutch to be front-runners for the award because they are carrying teams that for the longest of times haven’t been expected to be contenders. They’re turning cities into BASEBALL CITIES, and that’s having an impact, not only on a team but on the culture of a city.
You are correct that a lot of MVP voters give a lot of weight to how a candidate’s team did, but it’s a shame that they base their votes that way. Case in point: Harper’s Nats lost again to the Mets
last night, virtually knocking the Nats out of contention. But was this due to any failure on Harper’s part? All he did was hit 2 homers and a double. Cynics will say, so what? The Nats lost so
Cespedes was more valuable last night than Harper was, even though
Harper had the better game.
Judging a player’s value on how well the rest of his team plays is
ridiculous!
Harper did indeed do everything offensively for the Nats yesterday, but that was his first big game against the Mets all season.
I’ve said before – Harper should and almost definitely will win. I do think Cespedes deserves consideration and should finish in the top 5 if he keeps this up.
For comparison, Sutcliffe won the Cy in ’84 and finished 4th in MVP after going 18-1 following his mid-June trade from Cleveland.
Sorry – Sutcliffe went 16-1 for the Cubs in ’84. He had gone 4-5 for the Indians with a 5.15 ERA.
I’m aware it’s ridiculous but unfortunately that’s how voting goes. The voting system is very flawed, maybe too flawed due to human bias and intangibles. Hopefully we won’t be talking about how someone was snubbed of a MVP award.
It pretty much the same way that CY Young awards are decided. Wins are very important for the award but really don’t reflect the quality of the pitcher, just like team wins don’t represent one single player’s value.
on the other hand, what fun would it be if we simply awarded MVP to the player with the highest WAR every year?
Whew…fascinating observations. All perfectly valid reasons to not award Cespedes the MVP award. Perhaps the answer here isn’t “should Cespedes win the MVP award?” is as much “did Bryce Harper lose the MVP award?” I know…a silly thing to question to ask when he’s put up an historic season. But the seasons of both Votto and Goldschmidt are great, and they, like Harper, play for teams currently out of the postseason race. In a vacuum, you take those 3 candidates and take the best season (Harper) and be fine with it. Sometimes, the MVP can’t simply be defined by the criteria of their team making the playoffs…THIS could be that outlier.
But, some of you referred to the MVP of both leagues to further define both leagues as being different. Let’s clarify this: in this current paradigm of baseball, with mass free agency, Interleague play, etc., the leagues and their identity have been completely shredded into oblivion. There’s NO incentive to watch teams from the other league like they are possibly superior to your team’s league.
So, I ask, why have 2 MVP awards?
If you want the MVP awards to matter, hand out 6. One for each division.
“If you want the MVP awards to matter, hand out 6. One for each division.
That smacks a little too much of the ‘everyone gets a medal’ culture. Heck, why not an MVP for every team, in that case? That way no one is left out.
In a way, the Nationals’ failed season helps the perception that Bryce Harper is carrying the team. If they were in a close race with the Mets, that argument would not be as used as it is now. In Cespedes’ case, you could make an argument for him of being the “spark” that propelled the Mets. That could also be valuable, in addition to the very good offensive season he’s having, but we don’t have numbers to measure that.
If voters are biased towards playoff teams, watch out for Greinke. If he ends with a sub-2.00 ERA, and gets close to 20 wins, he could get lots of votes.
The trouble with that is, wins aside, Greinke isn’t even the best pitcher on his own team.
Yeah! It’s not like preventing teams from scoring runs has anything to do with pitching!
If anything, doesn’t this entire conversation argue we should go back to pre-1959 rules and not allow trades between leagues?
I’d love to see somebody take Bryce Harper’s plate appearances against different teams and adjust the percentage to Joey Votto’s. I understand you can’t really do that easily since in interleague play teams have different opponents, but I’d like to see how much Harper’s stats are because he’s played the Phillies/Marlins/Braves for almost 30% of his games thus far in ’15, and how it would look if he were playing the Pirates, Cubs, and Cardinals more often.
If my math is right, his OPS against everyone except the Phillies, Braves, and Marlins has been roughly 1.05, which is still good but isn’t historically top anything. That OPS would actually rank 25th in the NL since 2000. (And I understand that OPS isn’t the cool stat like WAR or wRC+ but I’m just using it as an illustration for how he’s beat up on the bad teams in his division.)
Its insane to think that Harper racking up a 1.300 OPS against 3 of the worst teams in the NL doesn’t skew his overall numbers somewhat – maybe this “historic season” says more about how bad those teams are instead of how great Harper has been.
Every player plays good teams and bad teams every season. They can’t control who they play, they can’t control the pitchers they go up against, and there’s no reasonable way to adjust a given player’s stats depending on how good the opposing pitcher is on that day because even bad pitchers have good days and good pitchers have bad days.
It’s an analytical dead end with our current data set.
I don’t disagree with you, I just think that this is a rather extreme example of a good hitter getting to repeatedly play bad teams. The schedule is what it is: each team plays all the teams within their division 19 times. Thats 57 games where Harper gets the chance to feast on pitching that is generally bad.
I guess other questions from this could be, why aren’t the rest of the Nationals stats inflated? Was Barry Bonds playing against terrible NL West pitching staffs in the early 2000s?
I know its hard to quantify, but that is the kind of stuff Fangraphs does. I think it’d be an interesting exercise even if it doesn’t actually mean that much.
And I think it is more significant than the dismissal you gave it. It isn’t as simple as “every player plays good teams and bad teams.” Sure, they typically do. But if you break the league down into 3rds and rank each team by pitcher WAR, then this is what you find:
1-10
Harper: 40 games
Votto: 66 games
11-20
Harper: 31 games
Votto: 26 games
21-30
Harper: 61 games
Votto: 44 games
And the weighted WAR of the teams they’ve each played this season has Votto batting against pitching that is almost 2 WAR better than Harper so far. Votto has had 15 more games against teams that are over .500 compared to Harper. The weighted ERA+ of the teams Votto has faced is 106 (roughly 10th ranked) while Harper’s is 101 (league average).
Like you said, you never know how a pitcher is pitching that day, but I would think that generally this is telling us at least a little something.
You can look at the B-Ref splits page, and look at their tOPS+ and sOPS+.
Against .500+ teams, Harper has an sOPS+ of 181, meaning that he’s been 81% better than the rest of the league against .500+ teams. He’s also got a 76 tOPS+, meaning that he’s been 24% worse than his own average against .500+ teams.
He has an sOPS+ of 227 and a tOPS+ of 117 against below-.500 teams.
Votto, meanwhile has a sOPS+ of 190 and an tOPS+ of 98 against .500+ teams, with an sOPS+ of 178 and a tOPS+ of 102 against below-.500 teams.
So, relative to the rest of the league, Harper has been 2011 Jose Bautista against .500+ teams, and 2004 Bonds against below-.500 teams, while Votto has been 2013 Miggy against .500+ teams, and 2015 Miggy against below-.500 teams.
List of players who have a 1.300+ OPS against Bad Pitching this year:
Bryce Harper.
List or players who have a 1.050+ OPS this year:
Bryce Harper.
What moon are you on that he’s not easily the best hitter in baseball right now?
You know this for a fact? I don’t think you do, I think you’re just talking out of your you know what.
Looks like he gets to hit against bad pitching more than the average player.
…look a comment up.
I’m pretty sure the above comment says that Harper has absolutely crushed under .500 teams, and the comment above that says he gets to play them more often than some of the other MVP candidates. If you play against crappy teams twice as much as the next guy, your numbers should be better, yes.
I’m talking about my comment, which shows exactly how good Harper is relative to the league against above .500 teams.
Relative to the league, he has been better against .500+ teams. than Donaldson, Votto or Trout have been against everyone this season.
So, even when you handicap him and no one else…he’s still been the best hitter in baseball.
There’s no need to have such a big debate over this. Bryce Harper gets the MVP, while Yoenis Cespedes gets a barbecued pig. Everybody wins!
Cespedes should win the MVP.
Most Valuable Player
The ultimate question is valuable to who?
Are we talking objective value (as in WAR), or value relative to the team the player is on.
The latter interpretation appears more reasonable. How can you give the MVP to a player on a non-playoff team? Surely, Harper is the most Valuable player on the Nats. However, Harper’s performance will probably not sufficient to get them into the postseason. Harper has given the Nats 8 wins so far. So without him, they would be a dreadful 63-76.
However, Cespedes has been worth two wins so far to the Mets. Not really that much “objectively”
However, WAR can be a flawed stat as it fails to take into account the non linear effect of adding a bat to a lineup. You cannot just say TEAM oWAR=Sum(of individual oWArs).
Team WAR is provably something more like
Player WAR +C
————————————- (this is a fraction)=MVP number
TEAM oWAR=Sum(of individual oWArs)
What is this C and how can we calculate it? one possible way is to do something like this. n=Team wins after-team wins before.
Lets assume C= wins before vs minus wins after or if the player is there a whole season the teams wins minus the teams losses
For Harper the values are
8+ (71-68)
————————————- = 11/6= 1.83
6
for Yoenis we need to look at the mets record since Aug 1. which is 25-11
So this results in
2+ (25-11)
————————————- = 16/6= 2.7
6
Of course one might object to the use of win loss totals without taking into account the fact that other players may have contributed to such a win loss total. However, the use of team war in the denomniator adequately corrects for this.
In conclusion, Harper has not been more valuable to the Nats relative to the rest of the team than cespedes has been to the mets thus far.
CORRECTION:
I said this However, WAR can be a flawed stat as it fails to take into account the non linear effect of adding a bat to a lineup. You cannot just say TEAM oWAR=Sum(of individual oWArs).
Team WAR is provably something more like netTeam WAR + Wins-Losses.
Hopefully the above will make more sense.
so the nats netTeam war is 6+(71-68)= 9
for the mets it is 6+ 78-61= 17
I mean 6+ (78-61)=23
use of Pythagorean W-L may be more accurate but i suspect it won’t change the numbers very much.
Also this doesn’t have to be called Net WAR it can be called net team value. It results in a wider bell curve between teams with the bad teams have highly negative scores and the good teams having highly positive ones.
Use of W-L is a fudge factor taking into account all the minor variables that we can’t measure.
If one applies such a model, I bet it would conform to all of the teams’ current places in the standings.
Is this some kind of joke? If it is, well played.
Sort of. I came up with an overly complex model to show why trying to use adv. stats to debate MVP is pointless. A Reductio ad absurdum of sorts.
SABR is a tool not a god
I made up a crazy formula to get the result I wanted lol.
There are two issues here.
#1: Cespedes shouldn’t win NL MVP, because of course Bryce Harper should.
#2: More importantly, there’s a principle at play. The MVP is supposed to, at least in the minds of most people, award the best players in any given season. What happens if the overall best player happened to be traded between leagues in that season? What if, for instance, Harper had been traded this year, or, say, Barry Bonds had been traded in the summer of 2001? It seems ridiculous to say those players should be ineligible or that we should only consider half of their seasons. It’s a case of blindly obeying the letter of the law while ignoring the far more relevant spirit of the law.
So the conclusion I draw is that no, in this case, Cespedes should not win MVP. But if he were in the fact having the best season of anyone currently in the NL, then he should, regardless of where he began the year. I imagine that just such a situation will happen eventually.
If a hypothetical 15-win player got traded mid-season and put up 7.5 wins in each league, should that player win both MVPs? Because that would be pretty awesome, especially if that player were a rookie pitcher who also won both CYs and ROYs.
You would think that to win MVP, you would have at least propelled your team into the playoffs. Bryce Harper is having a really good season, but its totally lost being on what might be the most over rated team ever, if not the most disappointing. I believe that Cespedes should be in the conversation, but I’m not sure he could actually win it because of the short time he was with the Mets. However, it can be said that he has helped to propel the Mets into the NL East Championship, and being the most valuable player for the Mets, certainly puts him in the conversation. I happen to think that Jack Arrieta of the Cubs should also be in the conversation. He doesn’t get the press D.C. or N.Y.C. players get, but the Cubs are having a great year, will be in the playoffs, and Arrieta is in the conversation, not to mention Clayton Kershaw. They’re pitchers, and pitchers don’t usually score an MVP, but we are talking MVP for the league, not the team, and I think that knocks Bryce down a couple pegs. Its not just about stats.
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There’s a major problem with your presumption that an MVP should at least propel his team to the playoffs. The number of teams making the playoffs has changed over the years from 2 to 4 to 8 to it’s present 10.
So a team prior to 1998 that was, say 3rd best in it’s league would miss the playoffs, rendering all of it’s player unworthy of MVP consideration, by your logic. But the same team today would MAKE the playoffs and all of a sudden you would consider the same players as worthy of MVP consideration? Isn’t that kind of absurd?
The problem with having a playoff qualification for MVP is that:
1. You’re taking the biggest individual award a position player can win and making it a team award.
2. You’re basically saying that games in the regular season have no value outside of qualifying for the playoffs.
I don’t think it’s insane to give some consideration to the context of a player’s achievements, but I do think it’s crazy to just ignore everything a player’s done because his team wasn’t good enough.
Yeah, what should be asked is whether they took their team to the next level or not.
That could be from a mediocre team to a playoff team, from a bad team to a mediocre team, or from the Phillies to a bad team.
“He doesn’t get the press D.C. players get”. I find this hilarious. Chicago is a bigger market and even though I agree that he should be in the conversation, especially since the peripherals are great along with the RA9-WAR. I don’t think he, or Greinke, will win ultimately but he’s up there. It probably will be a competition amongst Harper, Greinke, Kershaw, and McCutchen. Although firmly in favor of Harper.
“NL MVP boils down to saying 50 games of Cespedes is more valuable than about 150 games of Bryce Harper”
And yet, in the context of the 2015 baseball season, this is in fact true (for the Mets) …
So you’re saying that the Mets would NOT have a better record right now if they replaced the 50 games of Yoenis Cespedes they’re getting with 150 games of Bryce Harper.
Because that’s exactly what you’re saying, and it is not a smart argument. Not even remotely.
Imagine that back in March you were the GM of an NL baseball team and you had a crystal ball that accurately showed you how every NL player would perform during the 2015 season. Now imagine that you could choose any 10 players to have on your team and they would perform exactly as the crystal ball predicted but only for the plate appearaces or innings that they actually had in the NL during the 2015 season.
I doubt that a single one of you would include Cespedes and his partial season amoung their 10 picks. More likely you’d choose full seasons of Harper, Goldschmdit or Rizzo, Posey, McCutchen, Kershaw, Greinke, Arrietta, Arenado, Crawford, and Pollock long before you’d choose a partial seasons of Cespedes. And if that’s the case, how can anyone argue
that Cespedes is a serious candidate for NL MVP?
The problem with that line of thinking is the one highlighted before. Should Céspedes be punished for being traded? As of right now, Céspedes is 5th in WAR overall. If he gets to 1st (doubtful, but still possible), shouldn’t he win?
Should he win the NL MVP in that case? Not so sure. He should definitely win the Fangraphs Best Player Award (AKA the Mike Trout Award) or whatever they call it.
I would actually be very down for a multi-league “Most Outstanding Player” award.
Nobody is “punishing” Cespedes by not voting for him to be the NL MVP because he was traded. They’re simply recognizing that the MVP is an award for the most valuable NATIONAL League player for the 2015 SEASON. It’s not the, “MVP for August and September” award.
If not voting for Cespedes for the NL MVP because he spent most of the season in the AL is unfair, then what about players like Mike Trout and Josh Donaldson. Is it their fault that their teams don’t play in the National League? Shouldn’t they also be given consideration for the NL MVP
award. Isn’t not voting for them for NL MVP a form of punishment?
And if you’re answer is, no, because they are eligible for the AL MVP, my response is, SO IS CESPEDES!
One thing about the Cespedes Spark Narrative is that Yoenis showed up at around the same time:
1) Conforto was promoted (and raked)
2) d’Arnaud came back healthy (and raking)
3) Uribe and Johnson and Clippard were acquired
4) The Mets captain, David Wright, returned
5) Matt Harvey posted a 0.33 ERA in August
6) The Mets faced a bunch of really weak teams and played in some get-your-offense-healthy bandboxes
7) Flores cried
I’m probably missing some stuff, but so much changed so fast for the Mets. Cespedes may have been the single biggest factor, but he was hardly the only factor, and it would be hard/silly/dumb to say that his addition was more than half of what changed with the team.
So Flores …
PS – Murphy was out from 6/4 to 6/29
PPS – The Mets replacement players were generally AAA guys (Recker, Plawecki, Nieuwenheis, Campbell) , making the loss of their starters even more difficult. They didn’t have a veteran utility “supersub” to deal with those injuries.
If we’re going to count everything between both leagues, I want my 1990 batting title!
Here is my real position. I am a huge stat guy. The MVP should go to a player who has been most valuable to a team making the postseason.
Why? Because if it didn’t you would just give it to the player with the highest WAR total?
There is still *gasp* a largely subjective aspect to baseball. There is a perception that Cespedes is the reason the Mets are making the playoffs. That perception comes from the observation of real people. If you haven’t at least considered Cespedes for MVP, you probably haven’t watched a single Met game.
Also we have an award for best hitter–the silver slugger.
Finally, why should the mvp go to a playoff team? Because why reward a player for being the best player on a losing team?
Here is an analogy. What is more valuable, a fighter jet or a hamburger? Surely the answer is a fighter jet its worth more money right? Well how valuable is the fighter jet to to you? You can’t fly a plane. You can eat the hamburger.
Value is subjective. So Bryce Harper is the Nats fighter jet, worth alot but ultimately valueless to them as a team this year. Cespedes is worth a lot less but he as been far more valuable to the Mets.
That said, Rizzo should win.
For want of a nail, a shoe was lost, for want of a shoe, a horse was lost. For want of a horse, a general was lost. For want of a general, a battle was lost.
For want of a hamburger, a fighter jet landed in a McDonald’s parking lot and Rizzo became the NL MVP.
The End.
Not every non playoff team is a losing team. And if you only want to reward players on playoff teama, why stop there? A wild card slot isonly like half a playoff spot. Why not eliminate players on teams that didn’t win their division? After all, they lost their division. Maybe the MVP should just be the best player on the best team, since that team won the regular season.
I would sell that fighter jet for 50m+ and eat as many hamburgers as I want for the rest of my life.
So basicially, this country should do what soccer does in most parts of the world. No drafts, ever. Only the same biggest, richest teams ever year get every great player. So we can have real MVP debates because all the best players will be on the same group of playoff teams every season. We should definitely punish players who have epic seasons for underperforming or just flat out bad teams.
That guy Ted Williams should only have been considered for one MVP then? In 46′, the only year he made the playoffs?
WAR question: does a player contribute more, less, or the same to WAR for a hit with runners on ?
The average / replacement player hits better with runners on, so perhaps it ought to contribute less.
Of course a hit with runners on is more likely to produce a run, which would mean it ought to contribute more.
[Posted this to SB Sports, where there was a discussion of the various MVP candidates in both leagues]
You know what would be scary good?
A team with both Donaldson and Cespedes – a dual MVP threat, two of the best players in the majors this year on the same team. Some sort of imaginary all-star-like team, both guys on the same lineup.
And with maybe that rookie from the Cubs who’s tearing things up this year, Addison whatshisname, in the infield, and maybe a championship-caliber guy like Zobrist roaming around too. Putting a solid hitter behind the plate would be good, someone like Derek Norris, Stephen Vogt, or John Jaso. Fill out the roster with some other useful players like Josh Reddick and Billy Burns. And not just position players, but also a great rotation, with some solid guys like, oh just to take some names at random, Sonny Grey, Scott Kazmir, and Tommy Milone.
That would be a team that would have a strong chance of marching through the post season, moving right through the division and champion serieses to the world series. Might require a GM who could leave the team well enough alone for a bit, and let it gel and find its rhythm, to get a super-team like that together.
But, hmmm, yeah, probably only a big-market, unlimited budget team could get a roster like that put together. Well, enough day-dreaming about an imaginary super team, with two great MVP candidates hitting back to back – a team that probably could never come together in real life.
Now wait a minute – are you saying Billy Bean is NOT a genius????
Cool Lester Smooth says:
September 10, 2015 at 6:28 pm
No one who has had to face non-white pitchers has ever put up a wRC+ over 180.
Except that prior to this year it’s been accomplished 51 times by 32 Players since integration in 1947.
Here’s a sample:
Season Name wRC+
2002 Barry Bonds 244
1957 Ted Williams 223
1957 Mickey Mantle 217
1998 Mark McGwire 205
1994 Jeff Bagwell 205
1994 Frank Thomas 205
1948 Stan Musial 201
1972 Dick Allen 199
1981 Mike Schmidt 198
1980 George Brett 198
…did you miss the age part of that discussion?
Harper is the only player aged 22 or younger to face non-white pitchers and put up a wRC+ above 180.
I’m a Little dissapointed by that article. Yes it is true that cespedes should not be the NL MVP because he mostly played in the AL but for reading that arguement I don’t Need fangraphs, I can read that in a women’s Magazine while waiting for the Dentist:).
pointing out that cespedes played mostly for the AL is not the in depth Analysis I’m used to from fangraphs.
yes the played in AL arguement is a valid one and should be pointed out but the article should not have stopped there. there is plenty other stuff to deconstruct the cespedes for MVP case apart from the league case. for example his about 100 Points lower OBP. or about 3 less WAR. or his about 50 Points lower rRC+