Miguel Cabrera is leading the league in all 3 Triple Crown categories. Mike Trout is demonstrating mastery of all 5 tools and dominating baseball in WAR.
I don’t know how you can win a triple crown and lead your team into the postseason and not win the MVP.
This seems to be turning into a major war between old school “purists” and stat geeks, with the former insisting that you HAVE to give the MVP award to a guy who wins the Triple Crown, and the latter insisting that advanced numbers prove Trout is better overall.
I think that, while the stat geeks are starting to win these kinds of arguments, and recent awards prove that, THIS time, the Triple Crown will get the award for Cabrera, fairly handily.
That said, I’d probably vote for Trout. Even if Cabrera DID “lead his team into the playoffs,” it’s easy to forget that the Angels have a BETTER record than the Tigers, who are only going to the playoffs because
- The AL Central sucks, and
- The White Sox choked almost as hard as the US Ryder Cup team
Trout’s season is by far more impressive - he’s much more valuable than Cabrera is. Voting for Trout is a no-brainer.
But I absolutely understand those infatuated with the meaningless Triple Crown. It has a lot of gravitas, even though 2/3 of the stats are horrible indicators of performance. If people want to cling to the Triple Crown as some sort of Major Accomplishment, they can knock themselves out. Additionally, if “leading” your team to the playoffs is seen as valuable by them, more power to them. Me - I’ll actually pay attention to the fact that a) the Tigers are the 7th best team in the AL, so Cabrera “leading” them to the AL Central was an incredibly impressive accomplishment as an 11 year old back in 1994, b) Verlander was a more valuable member of the Tigers than Cabrera was and c) oh yeah - “making the playoffs” is a truly shitter indicator of individual success.
I’d vote for Cabrera because the Triple Crown categories are the ones that fans and players see every day. Irrespective of just how correlated the TC numbers are to actual wins, MLB players themselves value these 3 metrics more than others. Cabrera won that contest.
No, they value Wins more than any other stat. Trout has contributed to that more than Cabrera has.
Cabrera will win, though anyone who votes for him over Trout is wrong. I’m usually someone who will hedge a lot with “opinions” and “feelings” and “interpretations” in this sort of discussion because it’s hard to say something like this is 100% right… but the answer to “Who was the most valuable player in the American League in 2012?” is Mike Trout, by a lot, enough to take away any hedging. Again, though, Cabrera will win.
Incidentally, the Tigers would be in fourth place in the A.L. West with their current record. Two games worse than the Angels, despite playing an easier schedule because of the unbalanced divisional matchups and having three bad teams in the Central.
Cabrera is going to win, but I’d vote for Trout. Cabrera has had a great year and he’s leading the league in some categories that get a lot of attention, but he’s not actually having a better season than Trout. And despite the possible Triple Crown win this is arguably not Cabrera’s best season, although you don’t lose points for that.
Yup, I’m with Marley et al. right now. Cabrera will win. Trout should. Especially when you consider that Trout’s team will have a better record than Cabrera’s, the notion of “leading your team to the post-season” is obvious bullshit. So it’s really just that BA/HR/RBI is considered more important than OPS/Runs/SB/Defense. Which is kind of ironic since today’s announcers love to preach intangibles and the value of defense and the running game.
ETA: Can we talk about what bullshit it is that an 87-win team is in but an 89-win team is eliminated, especially when you consider that the 87-win team had a markedly easier schedule? Or is that another thread…
You might be surprised to know that Ted Williams won the triple crown twice (1942, 1947) and didn’t win the MVP award in either of those years. In 1947, one writer left Williams completely off his MVP list of 10 players and he lost to Joe DiMaggio by one vote. They didn’t have WAR back then, but apparently the old school writers *didn’t *automatically reward triple crown winners.
Personally, I do think if you win a triple crown, you deserve the MVP award. The feat hasn’t been accomplished since Yaz did it in 1967 (which is really astonishing, if you think about it. There have been a ton of guys who hit for power and average since then, yet nobody has captured the triple crown).
Nobody has won the Triple Crown in my lifetime, so I was under the mistaken impression that historically, a Triple Crown meant an automatic MVP. This is far from the case. About half of the Triple Crown winners haven’t won MVP. Cabrera should become another case of that happening. If not for the mythical sounding Triple Crown, there wouldn’t be any debate. Trout deserves it more.
From posts in the October MLB thread:
This is judging a player’s value based on how his teammates are playing. That doesn’t tell you how valuable the player actually is.
Same.
I’m pretty sure the only way you get to the postseason is winning games in the regular season. Mike Trout did more things to help his team win more games than Cabrera did (it goes without saying that they both had great seasons). The Angels have 89 wins and will miss the playoffs, which tends to happen when you have two 90-plus win teams in your division. The Tigers have 87 wins and that was enough to win their division. In terms of the value of the actual players in discussion, it’s actually not close: Trout was worth three or four wins more than Cabrera.
Right. The Tigers walked all over the two worst teams in the AL (Minnesota and Cleveland) plus Kansas City (tied for fourth-worst) while the Angels played the Rangers and Athletics. The Angels had one really bad team in their division; Detroit had Chicago and three really bad teams. And the Angels still won more games than the Tigers did.
My problem with Happy Lendervedder’s criteria is that it’s unusable. Every playoff team has a player without which they would not have made the playoffs. Hell, every team has many players for whom that is the case.
I guess you could say that your criteria is “best player on a playoff team”, but that seems awfully limiting. And it would make your AL MVP Robinson Cano (at least by bWAR). For the NL it’s either Yadi Molina or Buster Posey (two catchers! love it!).
If you want to say that “Triple Crown = MVP” as a sort of super-rule, that’s fine. But just be aware that your are now basing your MVP vote on what Josh Hamilton does over the next two days HR-wise.
And no one has ever hit 30 HRs, stolen 45+ bases, and scored 125+ runs in the history of the MLB. That’s power, speed and hitting - not to mention being one of the best defensive players in the game. But those are just arbitrary benchmark numbers - albeit in statistics far better than RBI or batting average. Overall, Trout is just better, and has had a more impressive season.
(Okay, SB isn’t necessarily better than RBI or average - but Runs certainly are.)
The goal of every player, every year, is to win the World Series (at least, it should be). In order to win the Series, you must first make the playoffs. The Tigers have done so this year, and the Angels haven’t. By that measure, the Tigers have had a more ‘successful’ season. They still have a chance to achieve the ultimate goal, and the Angel’s don’t.
Now, whether or not the MVP voting should be influenced by the team’s success is another argument, but if you think that it should (and I do), then Cabrera should get the nod, because his team is still in the race. Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
This from a Giants fan who still has a bitter taste in his mouth from 1993.
As I mentioned in the other baseball thread, having a lot of wins and not making the postseason is not why these players play. These guys play 162 games so they can hopefully play for the big prize. Winning 89 games and going home in early October isn’t something players and team management shoot for in early April. So in that sense, the Angels didn’t have a better season than the Tigers.
Obviously the BBWAA doesn’t offer any sort of indication of what “most valuable” means, so that means it’s open to interpretation, and the voters will vote for different things. But I think at some point you have to ask the question: Most valuable to what? MLB’s public image? MLB’s bottom line? Sports writers attracting readers? It’s a team sport, where the division championship is the prize of the regular season. So I’d say the vote should go to the player who is most valuable to his team, in the pursuit of that prize.
You take Trout off of the Angels, they still miss the post season. You take Cabrera off the Tigers, they do too. That, to me, makes Cabrera more valuable to his team. Leading the American League in the Big Three seals it.
Uh - by that criteria Verlander is your AL MVP. Or Cano. Take your pick, but Cabrera isn’t it.
As a Mariners fan, I take exception to saying the Angels had one really bad team in their division. The Astros don’t play there until next season and the Mariners were better than the Royals, Indians, and Twins.
Cabrera has better stats than Cano or Verlander, leading the AL in several. Combine that with the fact that without Cabrera Detroit probably wouldn’t be Division champs, that’s why I am arguing for MC. I guess I figured the part about leading in several stat categories went without saying.
That is not high praise.