Here’s an uplifting baseball story from Rick Reilly at ESPN.
Wow. I wonder just how good she is at discerning the action on the field from the sounds of the umpire and the bat and the crowd. I mean, anybody can hear a home run, or a long fly that people mistake for a home run. I can imagine attentive fans being able to sort out a few other plays purely by sound, at a familiar ballpark. I bet she can distinguish a lot of plays.
I think there are some videos of her on http://www.yesnetwork.com/. You should take a look. Hope week meant a lot of pre-game and even in-game coverage of her and the others.
Damn, that story makes it hard to hate the Yankees.
Nah.
There’s nothing wrong with individual Yankees. It’s just one of those entities that is far worse than the sum of its parts. 
Nope. She’s a cyborg. Don’t trust her uplifting story.
Well, in 48 hours Baltimore will be the first team mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. But that’s ok, because they were spiritually, morally and psychologically eliminated sometime in June.
In Kansas City, Kila Ka’aihue is finally showing some of that Hawaiian Punch with which he has dominated AAA.
COLOSSAL battle between the Reds and SF baseball Gints. Reds, already victims of a 2 game plastering to the tune of 27 runs in two games, stake an 8-1 lead going into the middle innings and almost give it away only to scrape out a win in extras 12-11 in the 12th.
Joey Votto for MVP. The guy is quietly putting together a phenomenal season.
Linky: http://reds.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100825&content_id=13906134&vkey=recap&fext=.jsp&c_id=cin
The Braves/Rockies game was just as raucous, with Colorado coming back from a 9-run deficit to win 12-10.
I’m off to the D-Backs/Padres game tomorrow afternoon. San Diego will be looking for the sweep after a pretty comfortable 9-3 win tonight.
Rangers thus far have taken 3 out of 4 against the Twins. Hopefully, this signals a return to old form.
Isn’t Pujols slightly ahead of him in some vital stats? It is between the two and probably comes down to which team wins the division. Pujols shouldn’t lose votes for being Pujols.
Year Tm Lg G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS OPS+ TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB Pos Awards
2010 STL NL 123 547 467 87 149 29 1 33 92 12 3 75 56 .319 .411 .597 1.009 168 279 19 1 0 4 28 *3 AS
Year Tm Lg G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS OPS+ TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB Pos Awards
2010 CIN NL 118 515 438 90 143 24 2 31 90 11 4 71 99 .326 .423 .603 1.026 171 264 8 4 0 2 4 *3 AS
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 8/26/2010.
I agree, its really close. Both of them have a slugging % that’s off the chain…Votto’s at .603! How ridiculous!
Anyway, I don’t think Pujols loses votes because he’s Pujols, instead he gains them, as he’s far more well-known than Votto. Then again, the writers that vote for this sort of thing surely know whom Votto is, so maybe fan popularity doesn’t mean squat in this case.
In the AL MVP race, it shouldn’t even be close. It’s Miguel Cabrera, the best player in baseball this year.
Cabrera has had an awesome year, although Josh Hamilton is giving him a run for his money. In AVG and SLG, the two players are so close that it really doesn’t matter; the only area where Cabrera has a noticeable advantage over Hamilton is walks, which translates to a higher OBP.
Also, Hamilton’s VORP (73.4) is higher than Cabrera’s (71.4), reflecting the fact that getting big power from a first baseman is pretty much expected, whereas getting it from a left fielder is a bit more unusual.
Of course, a lot of this might be rather irrelevant to how the voting actually goes. How often do you hear MVP voters talking about VORP on TV? One thing that might work against Cabrera with some of the less savvy voters is that the Tigers are looking pretty unlikely to make the playoffs, while the Rangers would have to really fall in a heap to miss the postseason. Plenty of MVP voters have shown a tendency to favor players on playoff teams even when someone from another team has clearly better numbers.
Cabrera will lose many votes from being on a team out of contention. Josh Hamilton is a more likely candidate as of right now and even Robinson Cano might get more votes than Miguel. For those that value WAR, Cano leads AL and is tied for the lead in the Majors. Also second base production and Gold Glove level defense will help him. He’ll lose votes for being a Yankee though. So no, Miguel Cabrera will not win and should not win. I think it will be Josh.
I saw that Baseball Reference has Cano leading the AL in WARP this year, but i just don’t know how they get their numbers.
Every other set of advanced stats i’ve seen has Hamilton leading in VORP and WARP. This table, from Baseball Prospectus, is much more in line with the other sites i’ve been looking at:
Hitter PA AVG OBP SLG TAv HR R RBI VORP WARP3
Josh Hamilton 496 .356 .408 .624 .340 26 82 81 68.3 7.8
Adrian Beltre 487 .328 .366 .568 .313 23 63 83 46.2 7.4
Evan Longoria 530 .293 .375 .504 .312 16 77 80 42.8 7.3
Miguel Cabrera 503 .340 .433 .644 .355 30 83 98 68.1 7.3
Robinson Cano 514 .322 .385 .557 .313 23 79 75 56.0 6.6
Carl Crawford 492 .303 .354 .487 .303 14 86 66 35.4 5.9
Joe Mauer 460 .335 .407 .496 .319 8 71 65 46.1 5.8
Link, for people who have access to Baseball Prospectus.
For those unaware, the apparent discrepancy in ranking between VORP and WARP in this list reflects the fact that WARP takes into account a player’s contribution in the field, while VORP does not. That’s why players at tougher fielding positions like 2B and 3B tend to get a bigger bump from VORP to WARP than players in easier fielding positions like LF and 1B.
FanGraphs also has Hamilton on top in RAR and WAR, and in the latter category he’s just over full Win ahead of Cano, who’s in second place.
Here’s what Christina Kahrl has to say about Cano is that BP article linked above:
Hey, if Greinke can win the Cy young last year…
Hamilton is definitely worthy of getting the MVP, and I wouldn’t be upset if it went to him. He’s had a helluva year. Problem is, though, the Rangers without Hamilton would roll along. Cabrera is the Tigers’ offense. If he were gone, the Tigers would be battling the Royals and possibly the Orioles.
And as you know, Cy Young is an individual’s reward but MVP is almost always tied to team performance. So unless they change the way voting for MVP works, he is not the MVP at all.
mhendo, I know Cano has no more of a chance then Cabrera. Josh would win it if the season was over today. I was surprised by the BR Warp rating to tell the truth. But it is not a stat I normally pay attention to anyway. One question, what is TAv?
What? Are you implying that there was something undeserved about Greinke’s Cy Young? He led all qualified AL starters in ERA, WHIP, RAR, VORP, and WARP, and was 3rd in K/9 and 5th in Innings Pitched. Arguments could be made for a few other pitchers, but anyone who thinks that Greinke didn’t deserve the award is crazy.
First, this is a silly measure of MVP anyway. It’s hardly the individual player’s fault if the rest of his team sucks or is awesome. It doesn’t change the player’s ability or his value to the team in terms of wins.
Second, the Rangers have an 8.5 game lead in the AL West. The BP stats i gave above suggest that Hamilton has, so far this season, been worth almost 8 wins above replacement level for the Rangers. Without Hamilton, things might be a lot tighter for the Rangers in that division, even if they replaced him with someone who was above replacement level.
Unfortunately, you are probably correct and the MVP voters will continue to show stupid judgment on this issue.
From Baseball Prospectus: