I don’t think there are too many contentious awards this year - except there appears to be another round Trout v. Cabrera for AL MVP in the making. I’m a little less sympathetic to Trout this year, only because he had a slight regression, but man it’s tough to be so good at the same time a guy that Cabrera is racking up the traditional stats.
I purposefully left out Manager of the Year, because people need to get over the mistaken belief that short of completely mismanaging a bullpen, a manager contributes in a meaningful way to a team’s success.
Slight regression? Trout’s raised his OPS+ by 10 points from last year, hitting for roughly slightly less power but significantly boosting his on base percentage. His fWAR is almost identical (10.2 vs last year’s 10.0). bWAR does rate him slightly less well than last year, but all of that is due to a decrease in defensive value, which we know fluctuates significantly from year to year. His offensive WAR has actually increased by a full win over last year.
Trout has been the best player in baseball for the past two years, and it’s not close. He should’ve been the MVP last year, and he should be this year.
Sorry, I meant specifically in the traditional counting stats, that definitely wasn’t clear. His vastly improved patience at the plate accounted for an excellent step forward. And I’d guess that his leap from 27 doubles last year to 39 this year account for his reduced SBs.
Ah, that makes sense. I’ll admit, I wasn’t even thinking of his stolen bases when I wrote that post (although IIRC Baseball Reference includes baserunning in its oWAR calculation).
I’m not an Angels fan, so I haven’t watched anything close to a significant number of Trout’s games, but I do remember people saying that he’d gained weight during the offseason. Is there any indication that he may have lost a bit of speed this year? That might also account for some of his defensive dropoff as well. Not that either factor matters that much considering how much better his offensive numbers are this year.
I put the poll up as public, but I’ll go ahead and list my votes:
AL MVP: Trout
NL MVP: McCutcheon
AL Cy Young: Scherzer
NL Cy Young: Kershaw
AL ROY: Myers
NL ROY: Fernandez
I think that Kershaw, Myers and Fernandez are locks. Iglesias is fantastic, but voters shy away from glove work. Puig was certainly exciting, but Fernandez was absolutely dominant - but not nearly as dominant as Kershaw (who I’d probably give a 3rd place vote to in MVP).
I’ll just echo Munch’s vote. AL MVP is really the only interesting discussion, IMO. The rest are pretty much locks. Maybe NL MVP, but who would begrudge Cutch?
**Mike Trout **-- Was gonna vote for Cabrera, actually – led the league in AVG, OBP, and SLG, which is a neat trick even if he trails in WAR. But Trout plays in a pretty strong pitcher’s park while Cabrera is in a pretty strong hitter’s park, so I guess I’ll have to make the rational choice.
Andrew McCutcheon
**Yu Darvish **-- I think it’s basically six of one and half a dozen with the top 5 guys in the AL, so I took the guy I’d least want to face. Also, again, hitter’s park.
Clayton Kershaw
**
Wil Myers
Jose Fernandez** – Had over 50% more WAR than Puig. Partly due to playing more of the season, but still.
I voted for Darvish, but my ballot otherwise matched Munch’s. That said, Scherzer’s going to win the Cy Young (and deservedly so - he’s had a fabulous year). Sale is also deserving of consideration.
I am reluctant to base a ROY vote on a pure assessment of value. I think with rookies, you’re voting on what they id this year but also on the impression they’ve made in terms of how you think they will continue doing. I’m going to vote for a 21-year-old with a 3.0 WAR and a brillaint future over a 26-year-old minor league vet who puts up a 4.5 WAR every single time you put that ballot in front of me.
That doesn’t really apply to the NL ROY decision, I’ll grant you, since both Puig and Fernandez are young stars, I’m just making the point.
Giving this a bump, since the awards are going to start coming out soon.
Wil Myers and Jose Fernandez take home the ROY hardware. Well done, SDMB voters!
In the least surprising news of any off-season ever, Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer won their respective Cy Young awards.
I read that someone didn’t include either Francona or Farrell on their MOY ballot. If the person isn’t going to take their privilege seriously, perhaps they should have the vote taken from them.
Yup. Looks like a foreign press member from Japan (assigned to the Mariners) voted for Melvin, Maddon and Showalter. I can understand the Melvin vote, but the other two over both Francona and Farrell are bizarre.
FWIW, not that I agree 100%, but this is her explanation:
“I think Boston had so many premium players like [David] Ortiz, [Dustin] Pedroia. They have enough leadership to manage itself pretty well,” Brown said. “There’s no doubt Farrell is an outstanding manager in a competitive division. However, my first vote went to Bob Melvin. I highly respect those teams that [succeeded] on very limited budgets. So, my first two votes went to those managers — Melvin and Maddon.”
“Also the payroll was the reason I didn’t choose Boston,” Brown added. “I always highly respect those teams with limited budgets. Boston and maybe the New York Yankees, they have I think big payrolls. Probably managers have, if they correctly manage, they have resources, always. That’s why.”
“My first two votes went to those managers from limited-budget teams. Then I thought that third vote should come from the division which is the toughest division in Major League Baseball,” Brown said. “The reason why I didn’t vote for Francona was that a number of their wins came from easier teams to beat, or struggling teams. So, that’s why my third vote went to Showalter, who maintained the same level as last season.”
Back in July, Joe Posnanski and Bill James tried to predict the winners of this year’s awards (alo0ng with a few other things).
Posnanski: MVPs McCutchen and Cabrera; CYs Felix Hernandez and Kershaw; ROYs Iglesias, Puig.
3 for 6, not too bad.
James: MVPs Molina and Pedroia; CYs and ROYs same as Posnanski.
1 out of 6, not so great.
Just goes to show you how difficult it is to make predictions halfway through the season…
(Oh, James also said the Pirates would NOT make the playoffs and that the Indians would win 75 games. He did have a few other miscellaneous predictions turn out to be correct, such as Machado not breaking the doubles record and Puig not hitting .400.)
Sorry, no, I’m never going to get over that belief. Now, if you want to argue that nothing a manager does during the game contributes in a meaningful way to the team’s success, or that the things that make a good or bad manager aren’t necessarily visible to outisders, I’d be more inclined to agree.
McCutcheon certainly isn’t undeserving, but the Cardinals got as far as they did thanks to the success of all their young, inexperienced pitchers, and the question is how much of the credit for that goes to Yadier Molina behind the plate. That’s hard to measure, but it’s what has the potential to tip the scales in favor of Yadi for MVP.