THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

My guess on player B was another Canadian, Jason Bay.  Not in the AL, I know, but I was thinking it was a real player Bay’s pretty close to that stat line.

He would be Justin’s competition for MVC.

Oooh, good call.  Bay’s 2005 is pretty close at .306/.402/.559, and he finished 12th in the NL that year.

Another good comp is:

G.. AB. H.. 1B 2B 3B HR SB R RBI BB SO AVG.. OBP.. SLG..
157 592 190 118 37 1 34 3 97 130 53 93 0.321 0.375 0.559
154 587 189 122 32 1 34 8 95 115 55 86 0.321 0.382 0.552 

First guy is Morneau, and second guy is Vladimir Konerko.

Looks like Morneau won it on 15 RBIs.  Guerrero finished 9th and Konerko finished 23rd.

Hell, Konerko (.313/.381/.551), Guerrero (.329/.382/.552) on their own are nearly spot on for Dr. Morneau, and even LaRoche (.285/.354/.561) in the NL is close. Not a lot separates Morneau.

Just those ribbies.

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It’s laughable the way some writers were blasting sabermetricians for not recognizing Jeter’s value when I and many in the sabe community were putting Jeter on a pedestal, and it’s their fellow writers that stuck to RBIs.

Maybe those anti-Jeter writers should watch some baseball, and stop looking at numbers.  They obviously don’t know how to interpret them.

Another consideration is how does we define MVP. Is it the best player of the year? Or is it the the player that has contributed most value to his team?

If the latter, then a player like Jeter who plays for NYY where he is surrounded by other good players is less likely to win the MVP because if you take out his contribution the Yankees still win 94 games (as opposed to 99). Whereas for, say, the Twins, you could argue that without Morneau they wouldn’t have gotten to the playoffs. As we all know if a team makes the playoffs then the economic benefits are substantial. It can be hard to seperate the impact of one player (ie, for the Twins you could argue that any one of Santana, Mauer or Morneau was the critical factor).

I think the majority view is that the MVP should be for the best player, period. But I suspect that a lot of votes go on players who stand out in a particular team because their peers are less good.

Mourneau’s WPA was 4.46
Jeters’s WPA was 5.98
We assume Mouneau was at least an average fielder, Jeter we know was below average fielder.
Twins made the playoffs by 6 games
Yankees made the playoffs by 10 games
Mourneaus’s non-fielding adjusted WPA is 74% of the games the Twins needed to get a playoff spot, while Jeter’s was 60%.
Isnt Mourneau more valuable to his team in this regard. Fair or not, shouldnt we look at MVP debates without eliminating the context / run environment for which they played.

Their fielding either cancels out, or Jeter is probably ahead.  There’s a 15- to 20-run adjustment for the SS.  That is, if you had an average fielding 1B and an average fielding SS, then that SS is about +15 to +20 runs ahead.  If you don’t understand that concept, then you should read more about it by clicking on “Category Links” on this site, and clicking “Fielding”.

Morneau would be say 0 to +5 ahead of the average-fielding 1B, and Jeter would be say 0 to -15 compared to the average-fielding SS.  I think the best you can say is that their fielding is a wash, and at the other end is that Jeter gets an extra boost of +1 to +2 wins on his fielding.

He’s already got a +1.5 win advantage on hitting, as WPA is showing, and you admit.  That advantage is *huge*.

Don’t forget about baserunning, too.

Your “made the playoffs by...” reasoning is irrelevant (to me).  We’ll agree to disagree on that.

I’m a Canadian, and I don’t particularly care much for Jeter.  In the end, it’s not even close.

I’m a Canuck too - so maybe that is why I am trying to rationalize this pick.

I understand postional adjustments, and I guess my point on fielding was that it is a wash.

However, if making the playoffs is the end goal for the regular season, and replacing Jeter with an average shortstop is less of a negative impact to the Yankees making that goal, then to the Twins by replacing Morneau with an average first baseman; why is that irrelevant when it comes to determining “Value to his Team”

By your logic, a team that is one game out of the playoffs, if they lost a player that is +2 wins above average (or even above replacement) would be more valuable to his team than a guy who is +10 on a team that ran away with it.  The top 10 votes should even go to everyone on this team.  Of course, most people will say “ok, I don’t look at ONLY that...” which is an enormous copout.  It’s like a guy is not worth voting #1, but he’s worth voting #2?

Like I said, I don’t subscribe to the premise of “valuable” that way, nor will I be convinced otherwise.  I’m happy to agree to disagree, so no need to belabor this point.

And the reason I’m being curt is that there are a million blogs that go over “valuable”, and no need to make it a million and one.  Also no need to get into a cycle of debate, when both sides are firmly entrenched.

Was your flag not flying for Steve Nash?

Nobody will care about this, but where’s the love for Carlos Guillen? .320/.400/.519 is on the same block as Jeter’s .343/.417/.483 year. Guillen’s a better fielder than Jetes, and he even offers some best-player-on-a-feel-good-team mojo. Despite all this he still finished with just 34 points.

(Typical year for me in that I usually find the bottom of the MVP ballots more interesting than the top.)

Guillen didn’t have the clutchy year Jeter did.  Guillen was +3 wins with the bat, while Jeter was +6.0 (of which +2.5 was clutchy).

Fielding-wise, Pinto’s PMR has Guillen at 2 wins ahead of Jeter, and Tigers Fans have Guillen as a bit below average and Yanks Fans have Jeter as a bit above average.  Fair to give Guillen say +1 win on fielding.

Overall, they are pretty even.  But, the reason Jeter is in the discussion is because of his clutchy play.  2.5 wins is huge, enormous.

Again, if someone wishes to dismiss that, that’s fine.  These are the considerations, and, each side can pick and choose what they look at.

I know that many don’t like giving the award to hurlers but I think that Santana deserved more consideration than he got. He had 5.5 WPA and was as equally as responsible as Morneau as securing the Twins a post season spot.

Tango—I tend to agree with your view on what MVP means but I think you argument is a little facetious as you will never (ok, mostly never) give the MVP to a +2 win player. Not worth rehashing the argument but should probably be used as a tie breaker. However, in this case Jeter, for me, is clearly more deserved than Morneau ...

Likewise on the NL side Pujols should have gotten the award. Had the Philies made the playoffs then perhaps Howard would have been a worthy winner—it has got to be a factor but not the main one.

It doesn’t have to be a factor at all, so I don’t agree about “must”. 

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If you are calling it a “tie-breaker” vote, that a player on a team with a “sweet spot” of making the playoffs or not gets a +0.2 extra wins for being on a team that just happens to gone over the hurdle.  Fine.  But, how much more does he get?  Does he get a +1.0 win boost for being a key player on a sweet-spot team?  A +2.0 win boost?

If the “tie-breakever” vote gets a +0.2 wins, then, you have to really trust your system that one guy is +5.9 wins and another is +5.8 wins, and you need that +0.2 to swing the lower guy ahead.

Just on fielding, I’d have a range of +/-0.5 wins of uncertainty (at least).  A tie-breaker vote is not what I need.

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My personal view is that players play to help their teams win games.  It’s irrelevant to me if the rest of his team is good enough to win 80-85 games without him, or 100-105 games without him.