THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

If anything, I’d say it’s easier to argue for the same player’s value on a bad team than on a good team—presumably, on a bad team, that player accounts for a greater percentage of the team’s relative success than he would on a good team. Additionally, certain team-dependent stats like runs and RBI would be harder to accumulate in a lineup made up of poorer teammates, making them less valuable (or, I suppose, less indicative of real value) for the same player on a good team.

If I make 50,000$ in a company that generates 5MM$, or I make 50,000$ in a company that generates 500MM$, am I more or less valuable at one or the other company?

Or, am I 50,000$ valuable?

It depends. Do we have access to the formula for VORS (Value Over Replacement Salesman)?

The MOP acronym would make its winner a MOPer or a MOPper. I dislike MOPer because the pronunciation would be that describing one who mopes. MOPper is better, as in “one who mops up the opposition.”

Value is strictly a relative term, and people are free to define it however they want since there are no guidelines for the award. The problem I have with debates about the MVP is threefold:

1) people don’t define their idea of value clearly
2) they refuse to see that there are other ways to measure value and that their way isn’t authoritative
3)they aren’t consistent in applying their standard (so often the first guy on a persons ballot MUST be on a playoff team, but after that it doesn’t really matter)

I don’t mind people judging a player’s value in terms of the playoff chase, but usually they won’t think things through very far and instead get mad at any differing point of view.

Tango #2

A fan/commentator who argues that “value” must incorporate whether or not a player’s team made it to the playoffs would respond like this:

Your value of $50,000 is relative to a replacement level worker and is simply based on how many hours he worked and how many widgets he produced per hour. It does not take into account the success of the company, which is what really matters. If a small company employing such a worker went out of business, that worker wouldn’t have much value in the Grand Scheme of Things. However, if that worker’s company won a huge contract to produce many more widgets, then that worker’s value is far greater than it otherwise would be.

Basically, the attitude is that a team’s goal is to get to the playoffs, and if that doesn’t happen then the whole season is wasted and all the individual efforts don’t really matter. Does that make sense? It does to some degree.

It would be possible to come up with a formula that takes into account whether or not a team made the playoffs and how significant a particular players impact was in that regard (did his contribution push his team “over the hump"). If that was done, then you could answer Poz’s questions. The big problem (as I said in my previous post) is that the people who make this kind of argument don’t apply their standard in any sort logical or systematic way. It’s entirely by the seat-of-the pants which means they can’t answer questions like “Is a scrub bench player on a playoff team more valuable than ARod on the Texas Rangers?” Everything is just a matter of gut feelings.

Aaron # 6

“Your value of $50,000 is relative to a replacement level worker and is simply based on how many hours he worked and how many widgets he produced per hour. It does not take into account the success of the company, which is what really matters. If a small company employing such a worker went out of business, that worker wouldn’t have much value in the Grand Scheme of Things. However, if that worker’s company won a huge contract to produce many more widgets, then that worker’s value is far greater than it otherwise would be. “

The worker at the bankrupt company (let’s call him Jose) would still have the same value, in fact he would have delayed bankruptcy by $50K worth of time, keeping others employed longer. The fact that management surrounded him with sub par employees is not Jose’s fault. Why should the other employee (let’s call him Adrian) get more credit because management was better at evaluating an acquiring widget makers? There was nothing within Adrian’s control that made the company better, why does he deserve extra credit? He created no more surplus value, its just that the combined value added from all other employees allowed the company to prosper.

I know you weren’t making the point from your perspective, just offering an example of what some may say (or maybe it is your point of view? doesn’t really matter). But still, I don’t think it holds water.

As for pushing over the hump, who knows which player pushed the team over the hump? Was it the last free agent signing that got them over the point required to make the playoffs? Or the best player on a playoff team? Who decides which wins created count the most?

As for your points about people needing to layout their arguments and follow them consistently. I completely agree. Trying to explain this to people generally doesn’t work and leads to bar room exasperation, for me at least.

#6 --

The unstated assumption is that the only thing that matters to a team is whether or not it makes the playoffs.

Is that true?  I don’t think so—isn’t Toronto having a better year than Baltimore (thanks in part to Jose Bautista)?  Won’t the Dodgers try to beat the Rockies this weekend?

Poz is right in the general sense, but I don’t agree with his example. The 2003 production rate stats favor Bonds (.506 wOBA/214 wRC) over Pujols (.462/185).

Value-wise, Bonds led in fWAR 10.5 to 10.1 while Pujols did led in rWAR 10.9 to 10.3. Moreover, Bonds posted those numbers over 130 games, while it took Pujols 157.

You can argue--at best--that Pujols and Bonds were a wash in 2003 in terms of value. In terms of production rates, there’s no question--Bonds was far more productive when he played. After that, it depends on what you do with those extra 27 games, but IMO Bonds’ extra production more than makes up for them.

If I had a vote, I’d be conflicted on the 2003 NL MVP. I’d have no question about the 2003 NL MOP: I’d vote for Bonds. Poz might have a good idea, but he needs a more fitting example to push it.

It has always seemed to me that taking team success into consideration defies the basic purpose for having individual awards at all.
There are specific honors for team success, which are division titles, pennants, WS titles.
Let the individual awards be just that—about individual performance.

One way to look at it is, a playoff team is taking ten $50,000 employees and making a $600,000 company

#9 J-Doug

I believe that you are misunderstanding why Posnanski uses that season. He uses Pujols not because Joe thinks Pujol’s season was more valuable than Bond’s, but rather that Pujols had one of the best seasons at the plate in the history of the game and still his team failed to make the playoffs. Does that disqualify him from the MVP because he couldn’t hit any better than he already had.

I think Joe tries to make this clear when he says, “He was a phenomenon, though it went almost unnoticed because 2003 was right in the middle of the Barry Bonds’ absurtity tour.” I have to say it is a very unfortunate coincidence for Joe since it does messy up his meaning.

#12: Fair enough, but that doesn’t strike me as a good argument for an MOP/MPP award.

That said, it’s good to remind everyone how insane Pujols was in 2003.

One thing I’d like to point out. Pujols won the MVP for a 4th place team in 2008 with a similar year to his 2003.

My main issue with letting team success influence the MVP award is exactly what Bowie said in comment #10. 

But next biggest issue with it though is that this stuff affects HOF votes as well.  Just recently there have been a bunch of people saying that Thome wasn’t a dominant enough player for HOF because he didn’t finish high in MVP votes. Well hello, if you people are letting your MVP vote be influenced by team performance, then how in the hell can you lean on it in any way for the ultimate individual award (making the HOF) and expect it to be a reliable indicator of individual performance?  As a more recent example, prior to this year Adrian Gonzalez only finished in the top-10 in MVP voting one time.  So some of these HOF voters would look at that and say “well he clearly wasn’t one of the best players in his league during the first 6 years of his career.” But somehow they conveniently forget that their MVP vote is highly influenced by team success, and so the fact that he didn’t finish highly in MVP races does not necessarily mean that he wasn’t a dominant player.  Ugh.  I hate those guys.  I’m looking at you, Jon Heyman.

I think this battle has been fought and won for the most part.  For example, in years gone by, Adrian Gonzalez would have been pretty much a shoo-in for this year’s AL MVP.  But I think there’s pretty much zero chance he gets it.

I would prefer it if the MLB did hand out an award like MOP rather than MVP so that it could be solely about how well a player played regardless of his team, but I do believe that a player has given his team more value if he was on a good team.  I’m not saying that a player on a bad team can not have contributed very many wins if his team is bad, but a player on a bad team made almost no difference to the team’s chances of making the playoffs if they were never in the hunt.  There is a significant amount of value in making the playoffs. 

A team’s primary objective is to win the world series.  If a team is 25 games out and have no chance of making the playoffs, each additional win does nothing for them in the sense of trying to win the world series.  If a team is right on the bubble and a player plays great, he has contributed significantly to their playoff chances.  This is a high leverage game and a player played great.  Jose Bautista has playing games with 0 leverage for a while in the sense of world series winning percentage added.

However, there are matters besides winning the world series.  Generally, the more games a team wins, the more money a team makes and this is the basis for teams signing good players when they probably won’t make the playoffs.  We could say Jose Bautista is worth 7.6 wins and $34.3 million dollars while Dustin Pedroia is worth 6.9 wins and $31.1 million dollars, but Jose Bautista made no difference in his team’s chances of making the playoffs which are worth a significant amount of money to the team.  Teams generate huge revenue in the playoffs.  If your play contributes to a team making the playoffs, you have earned the team significantly more money.

I also want to say that I strongly agree with poster #5’s point 3.  The voters don’t apply consistent logic.  I think we could see Jose Bautista get 2nd or 3rd on every ballot and Jacoby Ellsbury, Adrian Gonzalez, Dustin Pedroia, and Curtis Granderson randomly dispersed from 1-5.

@17 - perhaps you would prefer to give the MVP to the leader in WSWPA (World Series Win Probability Added).  That would weight games at the beginning of the season fairly low and those at the end of the season (for those in playoff contention) very high.  I believe that the voters already take this into account as players who play very well in September for teams that squeak into the playoffs (or barely miss) tend to get strong support.  I’m thinking specifically about Miguel Tejada 2002 and Shannon Stewart’s absurd 4th place finish in 2003… Chipper in ‘99 comes to mind too although I believe he deserved to win anyway. (Stewart didn’t even play that wonderfully (.322/.384/.470), but his team got hot after he was acquired).

There are a lot of scenarios such that anything that isn’t clearly defined like “best player that year” (i.e. WAR leader) or “contributed most to team success” (i.e. WPA leader) will produce unsatisfactory results.  For example, teams which are too good don’t play meaningful games in late September either.  Would you penalize a great player because his team won the division by 15 games? 

Where would you rank Bautista?

Yes, giving the award to someone other than the MOP is likely a mistake.  But I think the other extreme is more interesting to consider.  Suppose you have a 1967 Yaz or 1980 Mike Schmidt who just puts a team on his back and carries them to the pennant.  Brett in 1985.  No doubt in anyone’s mind that the team won because of this guy.  Further suppose there was an A-Rod or Griffey or whoever who just plain out-performed Yaz/Schmidt/Brett.  Who gets the award?  If it’s A-Rod, fine, and we can all move on.  But I kinda think it’s gotta be 1967 Yaz.