Meh. Call me when someone wins the triple crown for all of MLB, not just the AL.
Pujols???
He led all of MLB in HRs and RBIs, and only trailed Buster Posey in BA, who had 90 fewer at-bats (Melky Cabrera doesn’t count).
So I reject your ‘meh’ and say fie on you!
Miguel Cabrera had an amazing year.
Mike Trout was still better. It seems unfair, but it’s true. To my mind it comes down to two issues:
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The difference between Trout and Cabrera in defensive value is absolutely huge. Trout is an AWESOME defensive center fielder, on par with young Andruw Jones, Devon White, or Garry Maddox. He’s in my opinion the best in the game. Cabrera is a bad third baseman; I think he deserve a little credit for taking it over to give Fielder a place to play, but that doesn’t change the fact that he sucks at it. He doesn’t make a lot of errors but he has the range of a sofa. The difference in fielding is 2, 3 wins, easy.
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As impressive as the Triple crown is, Trout and Cabrera are roughly equal offensive players. Trout actually had a BETTER OPS+ than Cabrera; his raw OPS was not much lower, but Anaheim’s a low-hitting park, and of course Trout is a superlative baserunner, the best in the business, the kind of guy who is SO good at it that it actually makes a measurable difference, I’d guess a whole win right there.
Cabrera of course played 22 more games and that has to count for something, but all in all I’d rather have the maybe-slightly-inferior-but-maybe-just-as-good offensive player with a spectacular glove over the hitter who fights his position.
Miggy Cabrera’s a great player; if he wins the award I won’t consider it an awful injustice like Dawson and Bell in 1987, or Juan Gonzalez. But he’s not as valuable as Mike Trout. Cabrera is, basically, a guy who could become Frank Robinson, and that’s amazng. Mike Trout could be Willie Mays, and that’s amazinger.
Rick-I agree with your last point, going the opposite way. (I won’t be iffended if Trout wins)
I can go either way with this. I’m surprised how vehement both sides of the debate are on this issue.
Mike Trout had an amazing rookie season. He had an amazing season period. I wonder how this season matches up to other age 20 seasons for stars in the past; it has to be up there among the best. I knew very little about Trout before he came up this season. Most of the phenom press was dedicated to Bryce Harper. Trout’s path to the big leagues was less flashy, but his first full season made most of us forget about Harper! He led the league in runs, and stolen bases. He was called up late and only played 139 games, yet still led the league in these categories. In addition to this he had an OBP of .397 and a slugging percentage of .561. Both good enough to be in the top 5. This was an amazing entry into the league. With number like these at the plate, and his universally acclaimed defense, it is easy to see why people support his candidacy for the MVP of the American League.
The last time anyone won the triple crown there had never been a man on the moon, astronaut ice cream for the public, or faked moon landing controversies. I guess it would be better if my 1960s calendar had things other than NASA stuff… Huh. Anyway, sure the Triple Crown Stats are not as revered as they once were, still, it’s the freaking TRIPLE CROWN! And he won it. This is fun baseball history. It’s not batting .400, but it’s still pretty awesome that he was able to juggle hitting for power, and hitting for average and mentally willing teammmates to get on base in front of him. (Sorry, RBIs are an easy to mock stat) Cabrera also should get credit for changing positions, as has been mentioned. There’s a reason that the award is called the Most Valuable Player, and not the Player of the year. I don’t know the exact reason, but I say that it means you can inject dirty words like intangibles into the conversation. Cabrera moving across the diamond with no complaint qualifies. And, I think that is an intangible you can actually see, and not one of the invisible clubhouse ones that sportswriters talk about. As does the fact that he played an extra 20 games. Well, that’s not an intangible, but he should get credit for playing a full season.
I wrote this up and it helped make me decide. I am leaning towards Trout. I won’t begrudge others for voting Cabrera. I see the historical reasons. And, his season was terrific by all measures. I’ll be happy when either of them wins. (If neither of them win I say set the award on fire.)
Oh. And as far as the Cabrera wins because he is going to the playoffs argument? I disagree with that entirely. Baseball teams have too many components to laud one player because his entire team played well. Players shouldn’t be penalized because they play for a mismanaged team. And, they shouldn’t be rewarded for playing in an inferior division. You can be an MVP for a last place team as far as I am concerned. In other words, I don’t think the difficulty level of this MVP decision changes had Trout been on the Tigers going to the playoffs and Cabrera winning the triple crown with the Angels.
Oh bother. I walked away from this thread for awhile, came back and hit preview post to see that RickJay pretty much said everything I did, only more eloquently. Oh well, this is a lot of typing to not post it.
Who was the last TC winner who won all 3 categories outright?
I’m giving the nod to Cabrera, though I’d be fine with Trout winning. It’s very close. My thinking is that:
-The Angels were a much better offensive team than the Tigers, though inconsistent. What sunk the Angels was their slow start in April and a lousy August when their pitching collapsed. Ervin Santana and Dan Haren sucked. Pujols didn’t have a great year by his standards. Trumbo slumped bad in the second half. Vernon Wells is dog shit. But Torii Hunter had a bit of a throwback year, and Kendrys Morales came back and played decent. So a stronger lineup overall.
-Near as I can tell, the Tigers’ offense basically consisted of Austin Jackson getting on base, Cabrera knocking Jackson and/or himself in, and Prince Fielder getting the leftovers. Your opinion of Cabrera probably depends on how much pressure you think he’s under to produce in the #3 spot. Fielder obviously provided valuable protection for him. But if neither Cabrera nor Fielder were able to knock in a run, then chances were it wasn’t getting knocked in. Avila, Boesch, Peralta, and Young all had over 100 Ks, and of the 5-9 hitters, Avila had an OPS+ of 100 while no one else was above 90. (Bonus garbage performance: Ryan Raburn - 222 plate appearances, 35 hits, 13 walks, 53 strikeouts, .171 batting average. Ugh.)
-Of course, the corollary to all that is that the Tigers really relied on their pitching, and you could once again make a case for Verlander being MVP.
-Trout was a phenomenal table setter, and a good power hitter in his own right. I think the fact that 16 of his 33 hitless games this season occurred in August and September, when they really needed his production, is a significant negative for his MVP candidacy.
-I guess ultimately, my feeling is that if you replaced Trout with someone like Adam Jones or BJ Upton, the Angels wouldn’t have been much worse (doubly so if Haren and Santana had been even decent this year), but if you replaced Cabrera with someone like Ryan Zimmerman, the Tigers end up losing more low-scoring games. That has to count for something.
I can’t see not voting for Cabrera. The stats geeks trot out the numbers that only other stats geeks understand, but in the performance measures that we all know and understand and that comprise the Triple Crown, Cabrera is the winner. Winning the Triple Crown is a big fucking deal because it hasn’t happened in 45 years. You can belittle Detroit’s record and their division, but the fact remains that Cabrera has a chance to earn a ring and Trout doesn’t. The Tigers don’t get in the postseason without Cabrera, the Angels fell short even with Trout. Is Cabrera a great fielder or runner? Of course not. But he did what he had to do within his role to get the Tigers in the postseason. If Cabrera fell short of either the Triple Crown or the postseason, then I’d consider Trout. But he didn’t.
Defense and baserunning? You don’t understand those? Weird.
So is scoring 125+ runs, 30 HRs and stealing 45+ bases. That’s NEVER happened. Add in the fact that his defense is amazing, and I’m not sure why you think Trout isn’t even in the conversation.
This gets thrown out a lot. The Tigers don’t get in the postseason without about 6 different players on their team.
That’s dandy. It has nothing to do with putting up the best season in the American League.
That would be F Robby, the season before Yaz’s TC.
People who are in favor of Cabrera seem to keep making this about old vs new stats, and it’s not. Runs scored, baserunning, defense, these are not new ideas. The Triple Crown is an amazing achievement, but it rewards players for things which are out of their control. The playoffs argument is insane unless you are also willing to accept team record as important, so take them both out. Everyone on both sides agrees that Cabrera is significantly worse on defense. Similarly everyone also seems to agree that, at best, Cabrera was only marginally better offensively than Trout*, so similar offense plus vastly superior defense… How is the player with the defensive skills NOT the better player?
*I understand some people are arguing Trout was better offensively too, but that’s a side issue and not really important. They were both fantastic on offense.
I actually think this is the easiest part of this.
If you have paid any attention to the sports statistical revolution of the past decade plus, then you probably have at least a passing familiarity with the “new” concepts of baseball analysis (again, “new” as in 15+ years old at this point). By virtually all of these metrics, Trout was not only better than Cabrera, but better by such a large margin that it shouldn’t be close.
If, for whatever reason, you don’t buy into that same sports statistical revolution (and there are a lot of possible reasons for this, some perfectly valid, some less so*), you see a hitter who has done something that hasn’t been done in a very long time. On top of that, this now-rare event is something that has been built up by the media in those intervening years as the pinnacle of baseball achievement. You are confused why anyone could doubt that the guy who finally did this could possibly not win MVP - and to a guy on a non-playoff team, no less!
So not only does each side think they’re right, a lot of the proponents on each side think they’re right by a lot. Much like politics, this makes for a testy debate.
- the least valid reason? “I am a professional sportswriter who is paid to understand and analyze this sport, and trusted by my readers to give them a quality interpretation, but I refuse to consider that there has been any improvement in how we understand this sport in the last fifty years.”
I’m talking about WAR and OPS and the other stats that the geeks love. As I said, he’s not a great fielder nor is he a great runner. That isn’t his role. His role is to help his team win, which he did.
So Trout can run and catch. That’s great. Stealing bases is great, too. Of course Trout had a great year. But to me, Most Valuable means being the guy that most helps his team fulfill its mission, getting into the postseason.
bWAR and fWAR and rWAR. But you knew what he meant.
It’s not his role because he’s incredibly shitty at it. Yet he still has to do it, and because of that, it’s ridiculous to just handwave it away, simply because you know Trout blows him out of the water in those areas.
And so did Trout. And he did it even better - we know that because his team won more games when he was playing than Cabrera did for his team.
So why aren’t you championing Justin Verlander’s MVP candidacy? He had more to do with the Tigers making the playoffs than Cabrera did.
Also: You don’t understand OPS? What could possibly be difficult about adding OBP and SLG together?
The Triple Crown of course depends so much on what everyone else did. Cabrera’s .330 BA was the lowest except for one year in the last 20. If he gets three less hits Trout is the batting champion and we probably don’t even have this debate. If Josh Hamilton doesn’t miss a dozen games, he probably wins the HR title. All this points out is that the Triple Crown is a nifty as an historical achievement, but it is kind of an anomaly, which ihas as much to do with happenstance as actual ability.
Sigh. Look, if someone introduced batting average as a new stat next week, you’d say the same thing about batting average because it’s pretty bizarre. It’s supposed to measure hitting but it includes and excludes a bunch of subcategories pretty much at random (mostly because of the weird way at-bats are defined) and it’s understandable only because people have used it forever regardless of its sensibility. Why does that make Cabrera a better MVP candidate? They had essentially the same batting average anyway. If Trout had hit .330 and Cabrera hit .326, would you be saying it was a major point in Trout’s favor?
Both were huge contributors to their team. The Angels didn’t make the playoffs, but it’s not because Trout didn’t “do what he had to do,” whatever that tautology means in this context. They missed the postseason for reasons that had little or nothing to do with Trout. One reason: the Angels played 41 games against Oakland and Texas, two 90-win teams, while Detroit played 55 games against teams that lost 90 or more games.
As I alluded to earlier in this thread, there is no question that Trout has the higher WAR stat. The MVP award, however, has traditionally not been about WAR. In fact, the writers actually don’t have any kind of definition for “value” on which to base their votes. Simply making it the WAR award would be a drastic change from what the MVP award is now. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to place a higher value on a TC and a postseason berth than on WAR.
All that said, I actually don’t care one way or the other who wins. That’s just my explanation for how my own vote would look.
But what you are missing is everyone who is in favor of Trout saying the argument about WAR is a strawman. For the most part only the Cabrera supporters are talking about WAR.