Let's Talk Hardware
by baseballgirl on Nov 21, 2007 12:55 AM PST
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PrintOkay, so possibly no one cares except for me, but I thought I’d just throw the winners out for discussion if anyone was interested in talking about the much debated two ‘biggie’ awards.
Cy Young (AL) - C.C. Sabathia
The only real surprise to me—and it was a shocker—was Sabathia’s win over Josh Beckett for the Cy. Unlike past years, it really does seem like the voters took more into account than the usual cursory win total, and just in case anyone was still concerned that voting really was completed at the end of the season, this race should put it to rest. Despite clearly being second-best in the playoffs, Sabathia’s stellar season was enough to earn him the award. Although, I wouldn’t have protested a Beckett victory, C.C. was my horse from mid-season on, when it became apparent that Danny Haren was not going to match his first half.
MVP (AL) – Alex Rodriguez
Is anyone surprised? I mean really. Is anyone? I was reasonably sure that A-Rod was in line for a monster year, and he delivered in spades. All you need to know about A-Rod’s season can be summed up by looking at the numbers of his runner up, Magglio Ordonez: BA .363, HR 28, RBI 139. How good do you have to be to be considered a no-brainer pick over that?
Cy Young (NL) – Jake Peavy
What else is there to say? Best pitcher in the league this year, and he won the award. Slam dunk vote.
MVP (AL) – Jimmy Rollins
What? Not big Price Fielder? Or America’s darling Matt Holliday, of the surprising Colorado Rockies? This one was a close race; Rollins barely squeaking out the victory. Should he have?
I don’t feel like there is the usual injustice to write about this year. That actually makes me kind of sad. How can I pick apart the voting choices when they are probably what I would have chosen myself? What is the baseball world coming to?
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Don't feel sad
You could pick apart the Rollins win.
He is overrated. Start with the number of outs he made.
with 714 AB's
you're bound to make lots of outs.
by sf drift king on Nov 21, 2007 12:37 PM PST up reply actions
Lots of ABs is not necessarily good
Rollins' OBP was .344 - hardly stellar
Agreed
I think Granderson is the far superior "20-20-20-20" guy.
How Granderson finished a distant TENTH in the AL voting is beyond me...
by Travis Buck Nuckin on Nov 21, 2007 10:51 PM PST up reply actions
For comparison
Ichiro, 736 PAs, 461 outs. 0.626 outs per PA.
Rollins 778 PA, 527 outs. 0.677 outs per PA.
Maybe its the start of a trend
and you can take off next November off and have Nico ghost write your turns.
While I secretly take November off
and have Cindi ghost write my ghost writes.
"Omigod, Price Fielder totally should have won AL MVP!!! Way better hair!!!"
(This will be less funny when typos are discovered and corrected.)
Pretty hard to not pick apart Rollins winning
You could argue that he wasn't even the most valuable player on his team.
You could definitely argue that he wasn't even the most valuable shortstop in his division.
The usual Holliday detractors that point at Coors Canaveral should look at the bandbox Philly plays in as well, btw.
If I was voting I would have put Holliday, Fielder, Wright, Hanley, and Pujols ahead of Rollins.
Rollins MVP = joke
Obviously, there were a bunch of Joe Morgans voting for MVP. Here's why the guys you listed didn't win.
- Holliday - not gritty enough to overcome playing at Coors.
- Fielder - Team didn't win. Struck out 120 times.
- Wright - MVP can't be a Met after their late season choke job.
- Ramirez - there's a team in Florida?
- Pujols - Team didn't win.
Here are the OPS+ for the top ten (excluding Peavy who was 7th):
Rollins 118
Holliday 150
Fielder 156
Wright 150
Howard 144
Jones 166
Utley 145
Pujols 157
Ramirez 145
Not in the least.
Rollins also played GG caliber defense at a premium position and stole 40 bags with a very high success rate.
According to WARP, he was only .5 wins below Holliday and their system doesn't like his defense that much. If you give him credit for the caliber of defense that the voters apparently do, it's not hard at all to argue that he's more valuable than Holliday. Both guys blew away Fielder in WARP.
Here's the WARP1 for those 9 guys.
Rollins 9.2
Holliday 9.7
Fielder 6.8
Wright 10.6
Jones 9.1
Utley 9.3
Pujols 11.3
Ramirez 8.9
WARP is a flawed system -- but when you factor in position, defense and baserunning, which it does and OPS+ doesn't, Rollins clearly was not simply a Morgan-esque choice. Prince Fielder -- now that would have been Morgan-esque.
So you're saying Pujols and Wright got jobbed?
I had both of them ahead of Rollins anyway, but I was just checking.
Depends ...
Pujols and Wright clearly should have been 1-2 in the best player in the league award voting ... but that's not what the MVP is.
David Wright got robbed all around -- his teammates let him down in September. He had a monster month -- but it wasn't enough. Given what the MVP award has come to mean -- it's hard to imagine giving it to a guy whose team suffered such a monumental collapse. If his team won two more games, he should have won it in a landslide ... they didn't ...
You can complain about what the MVP award means and debate what it should mean all you want -- but it doesn't mean best player and as long as it doesn't, no, I wouldn't say that they got jobbed.
The "What the Award means" dead horse
has been beaten enough already anyways, but what's a few more swings.
I think it's ludicrous to penalize Wright for his team collapsing, or Ramirez for playing in Florida where only like 18 people actually know who he is, or Pujols for being so awesome that when he doesn't have a videogame-numbers-awesome season that still is pretty much the best in the league he doesn't win.
To me it's pretty simple.
Cy Young = Best Pitcher
ROY = Best Rookie
MVP = Best Player
The "valuable to his team" nonsense that gets spewed out by the media is just that, and it's an excuse to give votes to guys like Rollins when they're not as deserving as guys like Pujols, Wright, or even Holliday.
Then again, if it was truly most valuable, wouldn't they just give the award to the guy with the highest VORP or WARP1? It's just a little bit more proof that the voting is, in short, a complete traveshamockery.
"Most Valuable"
See, from a moral standpoint, I agree with everything you say.
From a practical standpoint, I remember not giving a damn about it when Tejada won MVP in 2002 over A-Rod.
You may want it to meant that ...
but the MVP has never meant the best player. I've been frustrated myself ... though not in 2002 ... but the fact remains, the MVP has never meant the best player and it probably never will.
got jobbed...lol
at least there are still a few fellow wrestling fans around these days. TNA Impact is where its at!
Since this is the MVP
wouldn't a comparison to average be better than a comparison to replacement?
By Batting Runs:
Holliday: 48.1 above average
Rollins: 15.0 above average
Batting Runs above average, from BPro:
Holliday: 49
Rollins: 28
BRAA already adjusts for baserunning.
Converted into runs, RZR for Rollins was 4 runs below average, ZR, 2 runs below. Holliday, 5 above by RZR, 13 above by ZR.
Offense + defense, using BRAA, compared to average instead of replacement, Holliday is about 30 runs better than Rollins.
How much credit would you give to Rollins playing SS instead of LF? More than 30 runs?
Some comparisons using BRAA:
Utley: 44
Rollins : 28
Howard: 38
Holliday: 49
Wright: 58
Chipper: 56
Prince: 49
Albert: 55
Using Batting Runs:
Utley: 38.6
Rollins: 15
Howard: 36.9
Holliday: 48.1
Wright: 49.7
Chipper: 53.7
Prince: 49.2
Albert: 53.3
The difference Wright and Rollins is just as large as the difference between Holliday and Rollins, if anything even larger. Is playing SS instead of 3b worth 30 runs?
Both RZR, and ZR had Utley at about (+20) defensively. UZR had him at (+16) best in the NL. The difference between Utley and Rolins is also at least 30 runs. Is playing SS instead of 2b worth 30 runs?
Rollins is a Morneauesque choice.
I'm too lazy to look it up...
...but Rollins's .290 EQA might be lowest of an MVP ever...
Just thinking of guys off the top of my head, the "worst" MVP I could think of was the gritty Kirk Gibson in 1988. Even his EQA was a pretty good .323 that year.
Also Terry Pendleton wasn't that great, and his EQA his MVP year was .306
.290 HAS to be the lowest ever...
by Travis Buck Nuckin on Nov 21, 2007 10:58 PM PST up reply actions
It Nowitzke can get it for choking,
then why not Wright..
by sf drift king on Nov 21, 2007 12:42 PM PST up reply actions
Didn't Nowitzki choke in the playoffs?
I mean, CC Sabathia choked (if you want to use that terminology) in the playoffs too... it's a regular season award.
because Nowitzki choked after the voting
had taken place. Wright's teammates (though not Wright himself) choked during the regular season.
A-Rod and Peavey were no brainers ...
and if there's anything the BBWA can be counted on, it's no brainers.
It's hard to imagine that anyone would think that the extra win was actually more valuable than the 40 additional innings CC pitched, so the AL Cy should be considered a pretty easy pick too.
Pujols was clearly the NL's best player ... but he's always the NL's best player ... so it's boring to choose him ... plus, by traditional measures he had something of a down year and his team sucked, so it's easy to see why the voters would look elsewhere.
I also think that it's reality if not altogether reasonable that the MVP award involves significant bonus points for playing for a winning team and perceived clutch play. You don't have to like it -- but that's the way it is. Deal with it.
In that way, it just wouldn't feel right to give it to Wright. Their collapse was in no way his fault -- he had a monster September -- but, there's that whole clutch thing -- if he was that valuable, he'd have figured out how to get his team to win one more game -- it's not really true, but that's the reality of the award.
Personally, I would have voted for Holliday. He had a great season and it'd be great for feel good stories ... I'm also writing this from Colorado, where I'm visiting my family ... but he'd have been my choice.
Rollins, according to Win Shares or WARP is just behind Holliday -- but neither system likes his defense anywhere near as much as the voters apparently do. They may be overrating his defense -- but if you think it's as good as they apparently do, that would be more than enough to overcome the difference in their offensive contributions.
Win Probability Added includes clutchness factors
WPA standings (NL):
Fielder
Holliday
Helton
Pujols
Cabrera
Aramis Ramirez
Chipper
Hawpe
Wright
Adrian Gonzalez
Utley
Berkman
Howard
Lee
Rollins
Even eliminating some of the obvious defensive liabilities here, there's no way he's even close to the top. Wright and Utley both outproduced Rollins while playing standout defense at 3rd and 2nd (which is at least equivalent to good-but-not-great defense at shortstop).
My thoughts....
AL Cy Young - I suppose Sabathia. Haren was the 1sy half Cy and Sabathia was the 2nd. Based on team performance I'd give it to Sabathia.
NL Cy Young - I'm not a huge Jake Peavy fan. The guy has nevr wo na big game, just liek his teammate Trevor hoffman has never saved a meaningful game. With that said....I would have given it to Brandon Webb.
AL MVP - Arod. It hould have been unamious. How the hell did David Ortiz finish 4th?
NL MVP - Matt Holliday with Rollins a close 2nd.
RE: NL Cy Young
Are you somehow implying that because Peavy had two horrible post season starts in 2005 and 2006, that he was undeserving of winning the Cy Young Award (a REGULAR season award) in 2007?
And what on Earth does Trevor Hoffman have to do with anything?
And for the record, Hoffman isn't a bad postseason pitcher anyway. He's barely pitched there, but he has 14 strikeouts in 13 innings. 5 walks, and a respectful 3.46 ERA.
Jake Peavy was the easiest winner to pick besides A-Rod. There's a reason Peavy was the unanimous selection...
by Travis Buck Nuckin on Nov 21, 2007 11:42 PM PST up reply actions
Huh????????
If Jack Peavy was a "unanimous selection," then how come we know his name?
-Cindi
Do not be frustrated.
http://www.globalgmail.com/upload/BFridayList.pdf
This is a dead Friday better than these players.
by vandoppli on Nov 21, 2007 7:17 PM PST reply actions
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