Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktIt’s Friday, so how about something on the light side?
We’ve discussed some weighty topics here at ATiM and, with the exceptions of Scott and QB, we’ve all managed to be right once or twice. But we have yet to tackle a topic as important or divisive as: Who should win this year’s American League Most Valuable Player award?
Like the Presidential race, there are two candidates: Mike Trout of the Anaheim Angels and Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers.
As in the Presidential race, the sides have dug in and the mud-slinging has begun. There are many other similarities as well, but let’s just get to the arguments.
Mike Trout:
.326 BA, 30 HR, 83 RBI, 49 SB, 10.4 WAR (via Fangraphs)
Pros:He’s one of the best center fielders in baseball and is a rookie! He’s having one of the best rookie seasons in the history of baseball.
Cons: His team didn’t make the playoffs and he faded the last month of the season.
Miguel Cabrera:
.330 BA, 44 HR, 139 RBI, 4 SB, 7.2 WAR (via Fangraphs)
Pros: He just won the Triple Crown, meaning he led the American League in Batting Average, RBIs and Home Runs. He is the first player to do so since 1967. He played his best in August and September with the Tigers trying to make the Playoffs.
Cons: He’s not a good defender and he is not a good runner. His team had a worse record than Mike Trout’s team.
Some of you may be asking…what in the world is WAR? WAR is a “new” statistic that stands for Wins Above Replacement and has become somewhat of a dividing line between the Pro-Cabrera and Pro-Trout camps. From Fangraphs: WAR basically looks at a player and asks the question, “If this player got injured and their team had to replace them with a minor leaguer or someone from their bench, how much value would the team be losing?”
So, according to WAR, if Cabrera was replaced with a minor league player, the Tigers would win 7 fewer games while the Angels would win 10 fewer games. Now I could go on and on about these arguments and am happy to do so in the comments, but the bottom line is I’d be voting for Trout. He’s nearly as good of a hitter as Cabrera and he adds a lot more value with his running ability and defense. Who’s got your vote?
All Things in Moderation 
Duh……………….Trout. He’s the reason I watched the Angels this year…………well not entirely, but it was fun watching a rookie play so well. And it’s Anaheim not Los Angeles.
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I saw Trout play this year a couple of times but I did not see Cabrera, even once. The only justification for voting against a Triple Crown winner would be if he were a liability in the field, and I have no way to judge that, personally.
In 1941 DiMaggio had the 56 game streak, the most total bases, and was a gem of a center fielder on the world champions. I saw Ted play LF later in his career, when I was 8 until I was 17 or so, and he was a smart defensive outfielder. He had neither great range nor a powerful arm, but he was not a liability in LF. Assuming that was true when he was young, in ’41 he should have won the MVP. He also led in OB%, walks, Rs, and slugging %.
EDIT: I just looked it up, Scott. DiMag won the RBI title in ’41, so ’41 is not an apt comparison. Dimag looks better with that addition.
Unless Cabrera is a liability in the field on the order of a Canseco or a Sauer the MVP should be his. I hope someone who has watched him play 3b [I recall him as a first baseman pre-Fielder] comments.
Addendum:
MVP does not mean most valuable to one’s team but most valuable in the league. Who would most managers want most on their roster if they had known the guy was going to play that well that year is a better description of “most valuable” in the league. There was a period of time in the NL when the argument among Mays, Aaron, and Clemente raged, annually. Everyone wanted all three of them ahead of anyone else. In the AL of my single digit years there were TW and JDM. A healthy Mantle was always in the running for MVP. Cabrera has been a consistently fine hitter. I suppose Pujols has been the most consistently fine hitter of this time. Because of Trout’s youth and obvious skills, I suspect he will win an MVP soon. And if Cabrera is a liability in the field, Trout should win this year [if I am a manager, I will take a great CF over a bad fielding great hitting 3B who gives up runs].
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Glad we agree on this, too, limsinca. I also changed the post to reflect the right name for the Anaheim Angels.
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Cabrera. First Triple Crown winner in over 40 years. If he doesn’t win, it will not be quite the travesty of Ted Williams not winning when he hit .400 and won the Triple Crown, but it would be similar.
Surely the Angels could have easily failed to make the playoffs even without Trout, so how valuable could he have been?
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I also changed the post to reflec the right name for the Anaheim Angels.
lol…………………..I’m one of those diehard fans that relishes the past.
Surely the Angels could have easily failed to make the playoffs even without Trout, so how valuable could he have been?
Mean, Scott, mean…………………they still have a better record than Detroit and have you seen Trout play center field……………amazing.
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Scott- Even accepting the premise of your argument, if Trout had played the first 20 games of the year, the Angels would likely have made the playoffs. It seems odd to argue he is somehow less valuable because of the decision of his GM.
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ashot:
if Trout had played the first 20 games of the year, the Angels would likely have made the playoffs.
Angels went 5-15 in the first twenty games. All other things being equal, they would have had to have gone 9-11 in order to make the playoffs. (Actually this would have tied them with the Rangers for the last WC spot.) If Trout’s WAR over 142 games was 10.4, then we could have expected the Angels, with Trout, to have won an extra 1.5 games over 20 games. Which puts their opening 20 game record at (generously) 7-13. And they miss the playoffs by 2 games anyway.
Cabrera.
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I’m with Scott–Cabrera. Triple Crown and better hitter, and he played better later in the season when it’s more important. This WAR thing weighing in for value of a player to the team is just pure supposition.
Besides, Lulu’s Angels did far, far better than the Mariners this year, and I blame her for that. 😀
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Scott:
Except that, while not all credit goes to Trout (obviously), the Angels had an 84-58 record wtih Trout. So even a 9-11 record would have been pretty easy to accomplish. If you look at the 142 game sample with Trout.
It’s an even more bizarre argument given that the Angels still had a better record than the Tigers even without Trout for 20 games. It’s Trout’s fault he is in a better division?
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ashot:
Except that, while not all credit goes to Trout (obviously), the Angels had an 84-58 record wtih Trout. So even a 9-11 record would have been pretty easy to accomplish.
I don’t see how you can say that in light of the WAR statistic you have highlighted. The whole point of the WAR stat is to measure the effect that a single player has on his team’s record. If his presence added 10.4 wins to his team over 142 games, it makes no sense to claim he would have added 4 wins over the course of 20 games. Statistically the claim does not hold up.
It’s Trout’s fault he is in a better division?
No, but it does make him less valuable to his team’s playoff chances.
Believe me, as a Yankee fan, I understand the frustrations of playing in a better division. But that’s life. Yankees have the best record in the AL despite playing in the toughest division, and still end up playing either the O’s or the Rangers in the first round, either of which is better than the Tigers, who the A’s get even though they finished second to the Yanks. Doesn’t seem right, but that’s the vagaries of division play.
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Fangraphs, Baseball Reference, and Baseball Prospectus all use different formulas to calculate WAR. BR’s oWAR for split for Trout/Cabrera is 8.6/7.5 and dWAR is 2.2/-0.2 — adding that up gives you 10.8/7.3. BP’s WARP for Trout/Cabrera is 9.1/6.1.
But every year, the question remains: what is value? I think it is pretty clear that Trout had a better year, his defense and speed making up for the lower power numbers. But MVP doesn’t always go to Most Outstanding Player. So, value. Instead of looking at WAR, what if you just look at the rosters and see where these guys fit? The Angels’ and Tigers’ records are pretty much equivalent (89-73 vs. 88-74), but the Angels played in a tougher division: the AL Central had 3 90-loss teams and no 90-win teams, while the AL West had 2 90-win teams and no 90-loss teams. The Angels have a better overall lineup, but the top three hitters for each team are pretty similar numbers-wise (Trout, Pujols, Hunter vs. Cabrera, Fielder, Jackson). Both teams have a stud pitcher (Weaver or Verlander) then a bunch of nobodies, though the Tigers’ staff is probably better overall. To me, pretty much a wash.
So, then onto the intangibles — how much emphasis to put on the Triple Crown, the Tigers winning their division, and Cabrera playing better down the stretch? IMO, the games in April/May count just as much in the standings as the games in September, so playing better down the stretch doesn’t mean much to me. The Tigers making the playoffs? Meh. The Rays won more games than either the Angels and Tigers and didn’t make the playoffs (what was up with the O’s this year?). But I have a soft spot for the Triple Crown. In this one instance, I would vote for the lesser player because of the history of the Triple Crown, fully understanding that my vote is not logical.
David Price over Jered Weaver and Justin Verlander for Cy Young.
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Mark:
Cabrera’s dWAR score of -0.2 suggests that he isn’t a terrible fielder, but he has below average range at 3B. Both Trout and Cabrera are above league average in terms of Fielding %.
BTW, Buster Posey for NL MVP and RA Dickey for NL Cy Young. I know Kershaw’s ERA is lower, but Dickey is a knuckleballer and has more wins for a worse team.
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Mark:
Williams was SOOO much better as a hitter than DiMaggio in 1941 that no amount of fielding should have been able to make up the difference. On the other hand, the 56 game hitting streak surely played some part in getting JoeD the MVP that year.
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Mike – no amount of fielding that I can imagine Ted suffering would have kept me for voting for him. But if you ever saw Hank Sauer play left or right for the Cubs – I know, you weren’t even born – you would understand what level of incompetence I am referring to. He was worse than Canseco because he not only could not judge a fly, he could not run or throw. In the fifties, the Cubs had a good little CF named Frankie Baumholtz, who was the most valuable player on his team.
“The year is 1953, and the place is wherever the Chicago Cubs are playing. A flyball is hit anywhere in the outfield, as left fielder Ralph Kiner and right fielder Hank Sauer holler in unison, ‘Take it, Frankie!’ The unfortunate soul they were addressing was Frankie Baumholtz, who–according to legend, anyway–had to play all three outfield positions concurrently. In the early 1970s, Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko commented that ‘as late as 1965 he (Baumholtz) was seen lying in the center field grass, gasping for breath.”
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Mark:
I’ve heard about how bad Sauer was. And I had forgotten that Kiner ended up on the Cubs. A couple of other ex-Chicago players that were brutal in the field: Dave Kingman and Greg Luzinski. On a par with Canseco.
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Adventures in fielding are fun to watch when they are happening to someone else. I had trouble with hard liners hit right at me in RF because they faded and because they were harder to judge elevation angle than a fly hit to my right or left. Always went back three steps like JDM instructed on the radio before moving to the ball. Sometimes that gave up a single. Otherwise it would have often been Canseco time. When I played first I hated the throw in the dirt and always marveled at guys like Hodges [and Mattingly and from what I have seen Pujols] who had no trouble with it ever. I truly believe you can lose more runs in the field than you can make at the plate if you are worse than a typical HS fielder, which some big hitters have been. The DH was made for those guys.
Suffered with/giggled at Kingman a few times; never saw Luzinski.
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Scott- You are just as guilty as conveniently using WAR as I am. You have to pretty much ignore it completely to vote for Cabrera or at the very least think that it vastly overvalues defense and/or underrates Cabrera’s defense.
Mike- I’m with you on all your votes except for AL Cy Young. I think Verlander should win it again. The difference in the stats between Verlander, Price and Weaver are miniscule except for the number of innings pitched by Verlander is significantly more than Weaver and, to a lesser extent, Price. Verlander pitched as well as those two pitcher but did it for many more innings.
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ash – did you watch Cabrera play 3B? Mike says he is competent but limited in range. Has he given up runs? Seems to me if his arm is accurate and his positioning decent then not being Brooks Robinson is no problem. Yet you would still go with Trout? That WAR stuff is useful, but, that is all. A 25 game winning P would usually have the highest WAR in the league unless there were a 26 game winner, from what I have read. Can you argue for Verlander as MVP? What is his WAR?
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Cabrera’s fielding percentage at third this year was .966. The league average was .952.
From Elias: Miguel Cabrera knocked in 139 of the 726 runs the Tigers scored during the 2012 season (19.1 percent). That is the highest percentage of a team’s total runs driven in by a single player from a team that appeared in the postseason since RBI became an official statistic in 1920.
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Mark:
Keith Hernandez was better than Mattingly at first, IMO. Pujols has really worked on his footwork and is now one of the best ever defensively.
Luzinski came to the White Sox to play DH because his OF play the last couple of years he was in Philly were just atrocious.
ashot:
Yeah, Price missed a couple of starts. And you are in Tiger country, I’m in Ray country, so our regional biases are showing. My trump card is that Price won 20 and gave up fewer unearned runs than Verlander. Oh, and that whole “AL East being nastier than the AL Central” thing.
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Mark- Yes, I do watch Cabrera play 3B and I do think he has given up runs. He certainly has been better than people expected (myself included) but his range is very limited. I know it’s selection bias, but I can think of a few run scoring hits where a 3B with decent range would have gotten to the ball.
I agree that WAR is useful but not the end all be all. Even just looking at “traditional” statistics, Trout is pretty close to Cabrera in many respects so their values from a hitting perspective is not that far off. What difference there is Trout makes up for with 49 SB, better baserunning outside of SB and his defense. Verlander’s Pitching WAR is 6.8, so not far behind Cabrera. And as you indirectly point out, comparing WARs of pitchers and hitters can be a bit difficult because a pitcher plays in fewer games but has a much greater influence on each of those games. I think there is a case to make that Verlander should be 5th on an MVP ballot with the first 4 being Trout, Cabrera, Cano, Beltre in some order.
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Mike- Pitcher wins are pretty much meaningless. Shields lost a game last week while giving up 2 hits.
I think the AL East compeition is probably the best argument although Boston and Toronto were crap and Price obviously does not have to pitch against the Rays. Verlander had something like a 1.90 ERA agains the AL playoff teams and the White Sox, so he did just fine against tough competition. Not his fault he plays in an easier division.
Scott- That RBI number says as much, if not more, about his teammates as it does about Cabrera. Cabrera doesn’t get RBIs if his teammates don’t get on base in front of him and he doesn’t have such a high % of the RBIs if his teammates got more RBIs themselves. Cabrera’s season has been incredible, although probably not as good as his last two, but Trout’s was just better.
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ashot:
Cabrera’s season has been incredible, although probably not as good as his last two, but Trout’s was just better.
Not based on any of the usual offensive metrics. Cabrera had a higher batting average, more RBIs, more home runs, more hits, a higher slugging percentage, higher on-base plus slugging percentage. more total bases. In quite nearly every offensive category, Cabrera was better. Only in OBP was Trout marginally higher.
So I guess, for you, defense makes up for his deficit in all these other categories. I don’t think Cabrera is any where near bad enough in the field for this to be the case.
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ashot:
I agree about wins as a measuring statistic. I was just using it as a tie-breaker to justify my Rays bias. Cy Young voters use it all the time. Plus, honestly, I think wins are what won the MVP for Verlander last year. Pedro Martinez’s 3 Cy Young seasons were all statistically better than Verlander’s 2011.
It isn’t Verlander’s fault that he plays in an easier division, but it also means that his overall statistics (like ERA, WHIP) are helped by facing inferior competition more frequently. Boston and Toronto might have been crap this year, but they were both still better than Cleveland and Minnesota.
Josh Hamilton and Edwin Encarnacion should get some MVP consideration too. I’d have them in the top 6 or 7 at least.
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Scott- I think defensively and on the base paths he makes up the difference. I put virtually no value on RBIs, especially when you are comparing a leadoff hitter to a guy batting third. If you adjust for the park that each pleayer hits in, Trout catches up to Cabrera in virtually all of those offensive categories.
Mike- I wouldn’t call you much of a homer or really disagree with you too much if you voted for Price. I think Verlander’s stats are actually better against the tougher competition and isn’t a shutout against the Twins just as valuable as one against the Yankees? Obviously one is more impressive than the other, but they are of equal value. And I don’t see the difference in competition to be enough to overcome the fact that Verlander ptiched more.
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ashot:
I actually think that Verlander will win the Cy Young again, for all the reasons you list. And you didn’t even bring up the 6 CGs he had (tops in the AL). One could argue that Price isn’t even the best pitcher on the Rays, with Fernando Rodney being lights out in the ‘pen (0.60 ERA, 0.78 WHIP, 48/50 saves).
Heck, Price lost the Spahn Award (for best lefty) to Gio Gonzalez. No love for Tampa this year.
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Mike: Tampa is the best run organization in my opinon and probably by a fairly wide margin. They are nearly always underestimated because the assumption is that the lack of spending money will eventually catch up with them. I’m not so sure. It’s a shame nobody goes to any of their games.
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