Nothing gets baseball fans into a frothing, spitting rage like awards votes. I figured it would be fun to see it happen.
So, who do you think should win this year’s MVP votes? Personally, I’d line up my ballot something like this:
American League:
Carlos Delgado, Toronto
Alex Rodriguez, Texas
Jorge Posada, New York
Manny Ramirez, Boston
Bret Boone, Seattle
Carlos Beltran, Kansas City
Jason Giambi, New York
Miguel Tejada, Oakland
Roy Halladay, Toronto
Alfonso Soriano, New York
There is no clear favourite this year in the AL. Statistically A-Rod and Delgado are well ahead of the pack, but to my eyes virtually even, Delgado having a better stick, A-Rod having the glove. I gave Delgado the edge because his team improved this year and actually played pretty well, while A-Rod’s team stank like yesterday’s egg salad. I always PREFER to give the award to a player from a postseason-bound team but this year none really earned it, so I’m happy to give it to a player from a team that made a lot of progress, since that’s got value.
National League:
Barry Bonds, San Francisco
Albert Pujols, St. Louis
Gary Sheffield, Atlanta
Javy Lopez, Atlanta
Jim Thome, Philadelphia
Marcus Giles, Atlanta
Todd Helton, Colorado
Richie Sexson, Milwaukee
Ivan Rodriguez, Florida
Eric Gagne, Los Angeles
Bonds and Pujols, like A-Rod and Delgado, are dead even; Bonds’s rate stats were better but he missed a lot more games than Pujols. In the end, the tiebreaker was that Bonds’s team won and Pujols’s didn’t, but if St. Louis had even been in the race to the last weekend I’d vote for Pujols, it was that close. Lots of Atlanta players there. Yes, I do think Eric Gagne was that valuable. Richie Sexson did have a good year and I feel sorry for Brewers fans.
The problem with Bonds is only this: He missed quite a few games (33), and the Giants still ran away with the division. Ergo, how valuable to his team was he this year?
On the other hand, the Cardinals didn’t make it at all. And although Sheffield had a great year, so did his teammate, Javy Lopez.
So I’d still give the NL MVP to Barry Bonds.
Now, how did the Blue Jays improve? They still finished in third place, same as they have for years. They did win 8 more games than last year, but that’s not a huge improvement.
The guy that Jayson Stark picked isn’t on your ballot, but he might deserve consideration: Boston’s David Ortiz (31 HR, 101 RBI, .288 BA). Not only was he a cheap pickup (a nice intangible), he had quite a huge season for a team that did make the playoffs. Rodriguez wasn’t terribly valuable - he had a huge year, but he was no difference maker.
NL MVP, my first instinct is to give it to Pujols. Though I know you’re not sposta interject personal feelings into the equation, I think he’s shown himself to be a real jerk. Sexson played every inning of every game this season for the Brewers…but they’re the Brewers. (I really shouldn’t smack-talk the Brewers since they played the spoiler for the Astros.)
Wow. That was incomplete. Posted before I meant to. Anyway…
Lopez has had a real breakout season. Bonds has performed in the standard manner for Bonds. Gah. All told, I’d still probably give it to that jerk Pujols.
I would vote for Bonds for NL MVP, but I wouldn’t lose a lot of sleep if Pujols wins either.
The AL MVP seems to me to be a much more contentious debate. I would pick Alex Rodriguez as the MVP this year (but I would have picked him last year as well). None of the players on the “contenders” had a good enough year that they challenge Rodriguez and Delgado. Delgado, although he had a wonderful year, loses out to A-Rod in my mind because SS is a much more demanding defensive position than 1B and A-Rod has become very good defensively.
Of the players from AL contenders, I agree that Posada is probably the most deserving. Frankly, the David Ortiz think baffles me. Ramirez and Garciaparra (and Pedro) are clearly more important to the Red Sox than Ortiz, although Ortiz had a very good year.
I can see arguing against Delgado or A-Rod, but if they actually picked David Ortiz he would be the worst MVP pick in at least fifteen years, and possibly the worst ever. He wasn’t even the third best player on his own team. Maybe not even fourth best - I’d rather have Bill Mueller. His being cheap is nice but hasn’t got anything to do with the award, which is specifically instructed to be awarded to players based on the strength of their play. It’s absurd to suggest Ortiz is somehow more valuable than Garciaparra, Martinez or Ramirez just because those guys played for Boston in 2002.
I guess we’re back into the issue of what defines value, but I strongly disagree that players like Rodriguez didn’t make a difference. Rodriguez made quite a bit of difference in terms of the number of games Texas won. They won 71 games with him; without him, 62-100 would have been a likely possibility. I don’t think it’s true to claim there’s no difference between 62 games and 71; every single game has worth. A 71-91 record is NOT the same as a 62-100 record. It’s better, even fi it still sucks.
The problem with the “it had to make a difference” argument is that you get into ridiculous situations where people say so-and-so shouldn’t win because his team won by TOO much (this argument was trotted out when Albert Belle was denied the 1995 award.) The MVP Award is by definition an individual award; you cannot logically say someone shouldn’t win an individual award because his team was too good. Either it’s an individual award or it isn’t. The award for having a great team isn’t the MVP Award, it’s the World Series. We don’t need another award for that.
Now, I think playing for a winner should have some impact. I think a player who plays for a postseason-bound team (Manny Ramirez) should get a little more credit than a player who played for a team that lost a pennant race (Bret Boone) who should get a little more credit for a team that played well but didn’t seriously threaten (Carlos Delgado) who should get more credit than a player on a crappy team (A-Rod.) But a player on a crappy team can still have a lot of value if he prevented the team from being REALLY crappy. A player on a good but non-contending team has a lot of value if he kept the team from going below .500. Every game counts. Ask a Tigers fan if he wishes they’d gone 73-89 instead of 43-119.
Gadarene, I’m a Blue Jays fan and even I wouldn’t rank Vernon Wells that high. He’s great, but I’d be a little hesitant to say an 86-76 team has two of the five best players in the league and maybe the best pitcher. (Granted, it could just be a three-man team, but they do have some good players elsewhere.) I had Wells maybe 12th.
I think the NL MVP should be Eric Gagne. I don’t think Gagne will win the Cy Young, and given that, a guy who does what he has deserves some kind of recognition.
For the AL, I’m gonna go off the beaten path a little bit. Delgado and A-Rod did, essentially, what they always do (or what they do every three years in Delgado’s case). But neither team was really close, despite having at least a little talent in addition to the superstars. So how about Shannon Stewart? After the trade, Minnesota really took control of the AL Central, and Stewart might have been the best leadoff man in baseball this year.
And I’ll be damned, while looking up Stewart’s stats, what do I see but Jayson Stark agreeing with me? I guess I can’t give myself so much credit for being avant-garde.
RickJay: Yeah, you’re right, but none of the other candidates really blow me away, and I wanted to give a little shout-out to the league leader in hits. I’d be fine with substituting Beltran for Wells on my ballot.
dantheman:
Per your definitions, you seem to be arguing that only players on teams that eked into the playoffs should be eligible for the award. Therefore, only Boston, Minnesota, Florida, and the Cubs have potential MVPs on their team. Seems silly to me.
Do you know, by the way, the record of the Giants in the 33 games Bonds missed? Can you offer a guess as to how many games the Rangers would have won if they’d had, say, Rey Sanchez at short instead of Alex Rodriguez?
He doesn’t have to be the best player on his team. He has to be the most valuable. There’s a huge difference.
Two pretty good indicators of value are runs produced and OPS. Of the four, Garciaparra has the most RP, but he is last in OPS (.870). Ramirez is second in RP and first in OPS. Mueller is third in RP and third in OPS. Ortiz is fourth in RP (barely behind Mueller) and third in OPS.
So, fair enough. Ramirez and Garciaparra had better stats.
I won’t argue that Ortiz is the MVP - I am saying that his name was floated.
It doesn’t have that much worth. So they improved by nine games the first year he was there; so what? This isn’t his first year, so that information isn’t useful. Was he worthy THIS year? Why, because he led the league in home runs?
You make the argument that a team’s success shouldn’t be counted against a player, and that’s fair. Neither, too, should his team’s lack of success. Rodriguez’s numbers look greater because he’s on a crappy team. They were crappy before he got there, and they’ll continue to be crappy unless changes are made - changes, I might add, that have nothing to do with Rodriguez and everything to do with the pitching. He’s not the reason they’re so bad, but he’s also not the reason they won all of 71 games.
Albert Belle was denied mainly because no one liked him, and that’s patently unfair. Not the case here - Rodriguez is immensely popular.
That Tigers fan would shrug and say they didn’t care - who gives a rat’s ass how many games you lose if you’re 50 games behind everyone else? The number of wins doesn’t matter in and of itself; what matters - and what has always mattered - is how well your team is in relation to the other teams in your division. If Team A wins 80 games, an improvement of 10, but Team B wins 82 to win the division, a decline of 10, should Team B be pissed because they lost 10 more games? Of course not. They’re happy, because they won the division.
Now, if Rodriguez had had a monster of a season - say 60 HR, 145 RBI, .350 AVG - then he’d win the MVP by default, in my book. He did not. 47-118-.297 are not MVP-caliber numbers unless that player made his team successful. Last place instead of last place isn’t successful - it’s more of the same.
I kind of see a difference between teams who just make it in and those that won by a huge landslide. I also stand by my statement that if you’ve missed a month of your team’s games and they still run away with a division, you’re not terribly valuable to your team that season. Also, many teams pitched around Bonds - should he get credit for this? Of course not; all he had to do was stand there and let four balls go by. Teams removed him from the equation most nights, rendering him less valuable on those nights.
(And let’s add Oakland to that list, at least, plus the ones that were in the hunt all year, such as the Phillies, Astros, and Dodgers.)
Sure, I can offer a guess: 62-100.
So with Rodriguez, they go from crappy to merely semicrappy. You’re right, that’s very valuable! Go A-Rod!
Javy Lopez. For one, he’s playing arguably the most defense-intensive position. Two, he was hitting after three men (Sheffield and both Joneses) who each got more than 100 RBI … and he managed the same feat himself. Three, he set a new record for HR in a season by a catcher (can you think of anyone who’s going to hit 43 as a catcher in the next ten years?).
His average (.328) was insanely high for someone with his power numbers (43 homers? Insane for a non-outfielder!) but his BB/K ratio was like .4, which is not all that good (but not all that bad for a power hitter who also managed to hit for average).
With Henry Blanco playing instead of Javy, or a good (not bad, but not great) offensive catcher playing instead of him, I think the difference is clear. Look at Blanco’s numbers. Hell, adjust his offensive production for the number of games Javy played and give him 50 points on his average to compensate for those 4 days in a row when he doesn’t face live pitching. Hell, those numbers are still pathetic (rather similar to Javy’s year last year). Let’s do a comparison to Johnny Estrada, who was hitting .350 in AAA.
20 runs scored. 100 hits. Let’s be generous and give him 15 doubles and 10 homers and 25 RBI (he had no doubles or homers and 2 RBI). That’s roughly his numbers if he’d had 350 at-bats instead of 35.
If he doesn’t get NL MVP (and there’s certainly argument for others, though I think he had an outstanding season), he ought to get NL comeback player of the year. He had a better season than he usually does by far, and obliterated last year’s numbers.
He set new personal highs in every offensive category in that cite above except at-bats and walks (excluding the 1.164 OPS he had in his second partial year in MLB). He had a .994 fielding percentage and caught 313% of would-be basestealers. I don’t know if he’ll win a Gold Glove, but behind the plate he had a very good year.
I’ve been wondering why folks who were pushing for Shef for MVP weren’t also pushing for Lopez. He really had a better year.
Everyone familar with the ‘Value Over Replacement Player’ concept (hereafter called VORP)? It measures the value a player produces relative to a generic, slightly below-average replacement player.
Here’s the definition: *The number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances. *
Here’s the count for the NL
Bonds, 114.6
Pujols, 97.3
Sheffield, 78.9
Lopez, 75.9
Giles, M, 64.7
Here’s the count for the AL
ARod, 86.3
Boone, B, 75.8
Delgado, 72.2
Ramirez, M, 69.2
Wells, V, 62.3
So, even with his reduced PA Bonds (contributing 9.0% of his teams PA) had more value in terms of runs scored than anyone else in the game and it’s not even close.
ARod laps the field by 10%+ in the AL as well. I don’t see how there’s much of an argument here.
Anyone else as surprised as I was to see Marcus Giles in the #5 slot there?
Let’s operate from the assumption that Bonds did more to help the Giants in 129 games than anyone else on his team did in 162 - actually, it’s pretty much the straight truth, not just an assumption. You’re now back to the argument that Bonds is less valuable because his team was really good. Since you’ve cited the Phillies as a team from which an MVP can come because they were in the race all year, you’re therefore saying that A Giant has less claim than a Phillie to an individual award because the Giants were MORE successful. That’s, uh… well, it’s silly. A-Rod is less valuable because his team is too bad and Bonds is less valuable because his team is too good?
The reason the Giants blew the West away and the A’s didn’t blow the AL West away isn’t because Barry Bonds is LESS valuable than Sammy Sosa, and it doesn’t make Sosa’s contribution more valuable. It’s because
Bonds was more valuable than Sosa because he did more to help the Giants win than Sosa did to help the Cubs win,
Barry Bonds’s TEAMMATES were more valuable than Sosa’s, and
His intradivisional OPPONENTS were less valuable than Sosa’s. (The A’s had a 93-69 team in their division; the Cubs had no opponents that good in theirs.)
It doesn’t make any sense to hand out an award based on individual achievement on such nebulous, non-individual grounds. It’s abandoning any pretense that the award is an award for individual achievement, and if we’re gonna do that, what’s the point of even having it?
Except that they DIDN’T remove him from the equation. Drawing walks has considerable value. He would be a much better player if he actually just drew a walk every single time up, which is why they don’t just intentionally walk him every time. 0 for 0, 650 walks… the Giants would probably score a hundred more runs.
And of course, you make it sound as if his drawing walks is an accident, which it’s not. Bonds’s ability to draw walks is one of his talents. Nobody else does it. It’s part of his value, and that’s what the Most Valuable Player award is all about.
If it’s the straight truth, please provide statistics that prove that his playing in only 129 games was particularly helpful. (I’m certainly not saying he was worthless, because of course he was quite valuable. The most valuable? Uh-uh. Not possible to be so if you miss 29 games.) The team did perfectly well without him, as evidenced by the fact that they ran away with the title. They didn’t sneak in, buttressed by the 129 games Bonds provided. Because they did not, his value is lessened.
He’s less valuable because he missed a month. I frankly don’t see why this is confusing to you. He missed an entire month and they still were very successful. Does this not illustrate to you that they’re a very well-put-together team, rather than being a one-horse club?
Rodriguez is less valuable because his team wasn’t much better with him than without him (in terms of the standings, not the number of wins), and Bonds is less valuable because he missed a month and they still won handily.
How? In 129 games, perhaps, but you must subtract the 29 games he missed. These don’t count in his favor - they count against him. Or should, if actual logic were employed.
I hope you mean the Giants’ record was 93-69, unless I missed a trade.
Now, why do you think Bonds’ teammates were more valuable than Sosa’s?
Actually, the award is almost always handed out on those nebulous grounds; it is absolutely not an award for the best hitter of the year, i.e., he who put up the best numbers.
And of course it recognizes individual achievement, but this is a team sport. It’s ludicrous to isolate a player and give him an award unless you consider his affect on his teammates (which, by the way, you did in #2 above). What this award does is honor an individual player for helping his team, that is, individual stats in the frame of collective success. This is why the award is very rarely given to last-place-team players, like Dawson. Simply leading your league in home runs isn’t enough, and it never should be.
Considerable value? No. It has some value, that of one base. That’s about it. You’re not seriously suggesting a single is less valuable, are you?
Teams essentially removed Bonds from the equation. They took the bat out of his hands. Any number of cliches will describe his treatment. He doesn’t get credit for what might have happened; he gets credit for what he did in the time he was there. And he wasn’t there for a cumulative of one month!
Oh, good grief. So he can draw walks. The way a lot of the pitchers are nowadays, it’s easier than ever. I agree walks have some value, but let’s not go overboard. They’re only walks, and they’re the least valuable of any offensive move, because they don’t move the runners unless the bases are loaded.
I think the truth doesn’t lie exclusively with any one metric. VORP, in my humblest of opinions, over- and under-values players based on a too much emphasis on positional averages. Win Shares is a little unproven in terms of its defensive calculations and it’s a step further from the raw data than VORP.
I’d be fine with substituting Beltran for Wells on my ballot.