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More Wide-Open and Controversial Than the NCAA College Bowl Rankings Ten players get first-place votes as writers’ ballots are all over the ballpark in a ballot of confusion. 11/18/03 Thomas Ayers The AL MVP award was handed out yesterday, and A-Rod won it. He deserved it this year as he did last year, and hopefully at some point in this article I’ll get down to proving it, but right now I am just going to shoot of my mouth at some of the randomness and strange facts associated with this year’s ballot. Now, this only the second time in history that an MVP winner has come from a last place team (Andre Dawson, 1987), and Rodriguez was picked first on six ballots, the fewest for a winner since Yogi Berra received five first-place votes in 1951. Ten players received first place votes, one short of the record set in the 1947 NL vote, and it tied the AL record set in 1977. Also, twenty-seven different players received votes, which seems like a very high figure. Now to demonstrate how ridiculous this year’s voting was in some aspects, here is what a possible ballot could have been:
That’s correct, Derek Jeter, who appeared on one other ballot where he got a 10th place vote, was second on someone’s ballot. This is the same Derek Jeter that played less than 120 games, due to injury. I doubt if a position player has ever received a second-place vote when he played less than 120 games. I also doubt a player has ever received a second place vote and only appeared on one other ballot? And if they have, I bet it wasn’t as a 10th place vote. Furthermore, I bet that a player has never received a second place vote and finished 21st overall in MVP balloting. I have half a mind to look into those to see if those are new achievements. That Derek Jeter, nobody else has his intangibles though. Luckily one sportswriter saw through that façade of statistics put up by Rodriguez, Carlos Delgado, Jorge Posada, Manny Ramirez, Bret Boone and so forth. I’d really like to find out who that guy voted in first place. Who was the only player in the American League more valuable than Derek Jeter? This brings us to another “Whaaaaaat?” moment in the MVP voting. Roy Halladay, whether you agree with the choice, won this year’s AL Cy Young award. For the record, I’d have him second, behind Hudson, and ahead of Pedro and Loaiza. However, that is not relevant, as the sportswriters, the same ones who voted on the MVP award, thought he was the best pitcher in the American League this season, easily. Yet, he did not make a single MVP ballot while four other pitchers did. Let’s look at those some of those four pitchers, at least. Keith Foulke got a third-place vote, after getting a single third-place vote in the AL Cy Young award race. Now, either the same writer who thought he was only the third-best pitcher in the American League thought he was also the third most valuable player in the league, or one of the 27 BBWAA voters who thought he wasn’t one of the best three pitchers in the American League this year, also decided he was the third-most valuable player in the league. Now, obviously this writer is placing a lot of emphasis on contributing to a playoff team as criteria for an MVP vote, however, even with that taken into account, it’s still a stupid vote. This guy is not only ignoring the fact that Tim Hudson was the best pitcher on the A’s this year, he’s ignoring a superior year from Pedro, too. No matter how he wants to spin it, can Foulke really be the third, or potentially not even the third, best pitcher in the American League, but at the same time be the third most valuable player? I couldn’t defend that position at all. Also, Foulke appeared on 8 ballots, so at least 7 writers decided he was one of the top 10 players in the American League this year, while Roy Halladay was not, and they had also decided Foulke was not even one of the best three pitchers in the American League. I’m not trying to take anything away from Foulke’s very good season, but in light of his 7th place finish in Cy Young balloting, how he could be the top pitcher in the MVP vote, and finish 15th overall is beyond me. Now, Esteban Loaiza picked up an 8th place vote from some writer. This is a reasonably stupid vote, but it’s kind of tough to pick apart as this could be one of the two writers who though Loaiza was better than Halladay to begin with. If it’s not though, than I’m not sure why they were possessed to pick Loaiza on their ballot. They can’t use the playoff criteria, as the White Sox watched the ALDS on their couches this year. In theory, I guess the person might point to the fact that the White Sox only missed the playoffs by four games, while the Jays missed them by 9. However, once playoff teams are removed from the picture, if you are going to use that criteria, isn’t it moot how the teams do, as long as they finish with a winning record? Especially when one considers that both the White Sox and the Jays ended up with 86-76 records. Also, one cannot argue the White Sox had less impact players than the Jays did, as witness the fact that Frank Thomas, Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Lee all got MVP votes in addition to Loaiza, while the Jays just had Delgado and Vernon Wells getting votes. My argument against Mariano Rivera was looking a lot better until I realised that his 2003 season was quite impressive, and one could make an argument that it is his best season ever. I’d say his 1996 on quick analysis looks superior, but saying the 2003 one was is not unreasonable. I still question how a pitcher could not receive a vote for the Cy Young Award but could for the MVP award, but it is only one tenth-place vote. Which brings me back to Halladay, who received 26 of 28 first-place votes and he was placed, however not one of those writers decided he was amongst the top 10 most valuable players in the American League, which is surprising. I figured he’d probably pick up about a half dozen scattered 7th through 10th place votes. However, apparently his outstanding season was not good enough for any of them. Now, back to the possible ballot I outlined above. While nobody’s statistics on that ballot are in any sense bad, they are not normally the sort of statistics associated with people who are contending, or being mentioned, for an MVP award. In fact, I’d have a hard time putting any of those players on my ballot, and I think the best argument could be made for maybe Huff or Soriano, but they still wouldn’t appear on my ballot. The most widely talked about candidate of those ten, in fact is the one who garnered votes at every position on the ballot, appearing on 21 out of 28 ballots with 2 second place votes and 3 first place votes. He is also the only one there with a VORP of less than 20, a RARP of less than 25 and the only position player with less than 20 Win Shares. That is Shannon Stewart, who has become the biggest saviour of the Minnesota Twin franchise since Jack Morris. Stewart, who apparently had a large impact in the Minnesota clubhouse, only hit .322/.384/.470 with Minnesota in 65 games, yet this makes him an MVP to some people? That’s patently ridiculous, at Stewart’s stats are a small portion over his career norms with the Twins, and he obviously wasn’t gaining MVP talk with his play in Toronto, yet he has become a legitimate candidate to many people because of his 65 games in a Twins uniform. I think a lot of Stewart’s case was helped in part by Jason Starks, who does a great Useless Information column, clamouring for him as MVP. Even if you are convinced that the MVP has to come from a winning ballclub, there are plenty of more deserving candidates, and Stewart is not responsible for the Twins turnaround. He helped them, I’m sure, and maybe he was a good influence in the clubhouse, but there are four main reasons for the Twins turnaround: 1. They put Johan Santana in the rotation, 2. Brad Radke pitched much better, 3. Kenny Rogers’ pitching improved, 4. A few of the Twins started hitting better. To quote from Rob Neyer’s September 24 column, “Stewart's been solid, but he addressed a non-existent need. What the Twins needed was to pitch better ... and that's what they've done. Look at what three of their starters have done before and since the All-Star break: Before Since
J. Santana 4-2, 3.00 8-1, 3.32
Brad Radke 5-9, 5.49 9-1, 3.32
K. Rogers 7-5, 4.89 6-3, 4.15
Kenny Rogers has pitched better, Radke's pitched a lot better, and the
Twins finally figured out that Johan Santana belongs in the rotation
rather than the bullpen. The Twins had a 4.74 ERA before the All-Star
break, and they have a 3.89 ERA since.”
Also, Doug Mientkiewicz raised his OPS by 50 points after the ASB, and Cristian Guzman raised his by 137 points. Shannon Stewart turned out to be a good acquisition for the Twins, but anything close to approaching an MVP candidate he’s not. Players with a similar VORP of about 20 include Rocco Baldelli, Travis Lee, John Olerud, and Frank Catalanatto; MVP candidates they’re not either. Other first-place MVP votes that some of the writers used are indefensible, as well. Vernon Wells got some respect from the voters, and I’m glad to see that, but I can’t defend anyone picking him first over some of the other players, let alone Carlos Delgado. Any reasonable person should know that the fact that Wells plays a good CF to Delgado’s 1B does not make up for the 110 point difference between them. This is demonstrated with the 10 point difference between the players in VORP, and the 17.7 point difference in RARP. Delgado was the better Jay this year, although Wells deserved his top-10 finish in MVP balloting. David Ortiz is another player who seems to have benefited from a media snowballing campaign that elected him as a “clutch hitter.” However, do his stats really bear this out? I’m going to take a quick look using Yahoo’s situational stats, to see if Ortiz really was a clutch hitter in 2003.
Now, we have to ignore the small sample sizes, because the argument is that Ortiz is a clutch hitter this year. Now, I think this sample proves that Ortiz was potentially a little bit of a “clutch” hitter this year, but it wasn’t by a sizable margin. While he did improve his OPS by about 100 points in “close and late” situations, his OPS is consistently below his season totals for every other situation except when the bases are empty. In fact, in equal numbers of at-bats he hit almost 3 times as many home runs with the bases empty as he did with runners on, and his OPS dropped 100 points off his season total with RISP. Regardless, aside from the two Boston writers, the other writers
would see Ortiz a maximum of 18 times a year, and many would see him
less, so I find it hard to believe that they can base first place
votes for Ortiz on the face that they think he’s a “clutch
hitter.” Yet, it appears many of them did as Ortiz beat out Manny,
Nomar and Bill Mueller, all Red Sox player, in MVP balloting. However,
all 3 of them had a significantly higher RARP and VORP than Ortiz;
Manny because he had flat-out better stats and the other two because
they had close to equivalent stats while playing reasonably tough
defensive positions and not sitting on the bench for the entire game
but 4 at-bats. Even if Ortiz was a clutch hitter this year by your
criteria, and the other batters weren’t, it still isn’t
enough in my mind to vault him over the likes of A-Rod, Delgado, Ramirez
and Posada, as he doesn’t add any value on defence, and his stats
simply aren’t good enough, even if you give him extra value for
being “clutch.”
Now, which one of those two looks to be a legitimate MVP candidate and which one of those looks to be a borderline MVP candidate? Would, it help if I said that A played DH while B played average, at worst, defensive first base this year? I’d suspect that if you already weren’t leaning heavily in favour of Player B, that this might push you over the top. Unless you’re Joe Cowley of the Daily Southtown in Chicago. Through what must have been some bureaucratic error this clown was allowed to vote for the AL MVP, and he voted for both Frank Thomas and Esteban Loaiza, and he was one of two writers to leave Carlos Delgado off his ballot. This reeks of hometown favouritism worse than rotting fish, which is what I hope somebody mails to him. I guess I’m a bit upset because Delgado got left off some ballots, which he definitely didn’t deserve, but it’s a lot worse when some Chicagoan gives Esteban Loaiza a 7th place vote, and he probably gave Frank Thomas his 4th place vote, too. There is no way anyone can look at the stats and say objectively that Thomas is better than Delgado, and the winning team argument is moot, as both teams missed the playoffs and finished with identical records. This is almost as bad as some Toronto writer leaving A-Rod off the ballot to give a sympathy retirement vote to Mike Bordick. Well, this article is getting pretty long now, and I haven’t even started to talk about who I think should win it yet. Basically, the biggest debate over the MVP award comes down to whether you think it should be awarded to a player on a winning, or playoff team, or whether it should be awarded to the best player in the league. I come down firmly in the latter camp. I don’t believe it’s fair to penalise a player for the play of his teammates, as baseball is a fairly individually-oriented team game, and if my team has the worst pitching staff in the AL next to the Tigers, is it really fair to punish me if I am, for example, the best hitting player in the league? I don’t think it is, and I think the best player will have the most value as he contributes the most wins to his team, regardless if that raises them from a 55-win team to a 70-win team. Now, A-Rod dominates the other main candidates at RARP, VORP and OPS, two good stats for measuring offensive performance: RARP VORP OPS
A-Rod 79.1 86.3 .995
Manny 70.7 69.2 1.014
Delgado 70.1 72.2 1.019
Boone 66.0 75.8 .902
Posada 58.4 56.5 .922
Now, when you consider that by all accounts Alex Rodriguez is a good defensive shortstop, one of the toughest positions in the game to play defensively, it’s clear he should be the MVP winner. He got 6.43 defensive win shares at SS (4th in AL), and he finished 5th and 6th in the AL among shortstops for range factor and zone rating, respectively. It’s not a cakewalk, but I think he’s the clear winner in my mind, and finally won his first MVP award, though it should be at least his second and probably his 3rd. Jorge Posada’s statistics don’t quite compare to everyone else on that leaderboard. I think you have to give him a break because he’s a catcher, and he gave some great offensive power out of the least offensive position on the diamond this year. To give you an idea of how good Posada was on offense, only 3 other catchers with over 300 at-bats topped an .800 OPS in the AL, and one was Matt LeCroy who isn’t really a catcher, and another is Greg Myers who had less than 350 at-bats in what was a stellar year for the 37-year old veteran. So the only other “regular” catcher to top an .800 OPS was Varitek at .875, and the next highest is Ramon Hernandez at .789. Still, I don’t quite think Posada’s offensive totals measure up to the other 3 candidates, and that maybe judging catcher’s a bit harshly, but I’d put him 5th on my ballot.
Delgado had the superior offensive year in my mind, and when you consider his much improved defence, it becomes clear to me that he was the better player this year. He finished first among first baseman for range factor and 6th for zone rating. Manny played a significant number of games at DH, and was last among the 8 AL left fielders for both range factor and zone rating. Neither of them play difficult defensive positions and Carlos plays his much better, so I think he is the superior player. The question is where does Bret Boone fit in. I’ve heard that he’s a good defensive second baseman, although he ranks in the bottom half of the league in both zone rating and range factor, so at best I will assume he’s average defensively, granted at a much tough defensive position that Carlos. While Boone’s raw numbers are not close to as impressive as Delgado’s, he also plays in a pitcher’s park, while Delgado plays in a slight hitter’s park. However, look at the position averages when it comes to their respective positions: AVG OBP SLG EQA
1B .270 .358 .462 .282
2B .271 .334 .403 .259
Delgado led Boone by 25 points in EQA, while 1B led 2B by 23 points of EQA. Also, when you look at the relative OPS by position Delgado leads his by 199 points, while Boone leads his by 165. This is a very close debate, as the question becomes whether Boone’s defence, home ballpark and value over a regular second baseman make up for the raw offence that Delgado provided. I think you could make the argument either way, and I wouldn’t argue if you concluded one way over another. I’m trying to be sure that I’m not blinded by my loyalty to the Jays, and maybe I’ve gone too far in the opposite direction, but I’d give second place to Boone due primarily to the large difference in park factors. Delgado put up a more convincing fight to me for third place than Manny did, so my ballot would have gone A-Rod, Boone, Delgado, Ramirez, Posada. I could keep you here another 15 minutes explaining my 6th-10th choices, but we have both other things we could do. Well, I never expected it, but MLB got all 4 of the awards I covered
“right”, in my opinion. That’s got to be a first. However,
the MVP award was an adventure and the AL ROY generated a huge controversy.
Covering the awards has been fun, there’ll be no article from
me tomorrow barring major news and I hope to have another couple pieces
up this week, although it’s a busy one. |
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©Copyright 2003
Phil Orr
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