Who will win the AL MVP in 2012?

[Marley23]

From posts in the October MLB thread:

@Happy_Lendervedder

Trout’s team isn’t in the postseason. Without Cabrera, it’s likely the Tigers wouldn’t be either. That makes Cabrera more valuable.

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.

@Happy_Lendervedder

You take Trout off the Angels, they still don’t make the playoffs. You take Cabrera off the Tigers, they don’t either. That’s how I’d cast my vote.

Same.

When it comes down to it, lots of regular season wins don’t mean shit if they don’t get you to the postseason.

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.

But it’s not like the Angels, head-to-head, walked all over the Tigers this year.

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.