BP Comment Quick Links
March 5, 2013 Out of Left FieldCabrera, Trout, and the Baserunning Portion of WARP
The last thing I want to do is rehash the American League MVP debate. There is a long list of sharp objects I’d fit into my cornea before doing that. So I’m not doing that, I promise. However, the Miguel Cabrera vs. Mike Trout matchup highlights an interesting aspect of player value that's easy to measure but hard to see. In contrast to hitting and fielding, baserunning can go unnoticed if you’re not specifically looking for it. It’s easy to focus on the pitcher and the hitter while ignoring what goes on just beyond the camera’s lens. Fortunately, there are stats that track who was good at running the bases and who wasn’t, and looking at the differences between the two AL MVP candidates is a convenient if untimely way to illustrate them. Here at BP we have a stat we call Baserunning Runs, which measures, as you might have guessed, how many runs a player contributed on the basepaths. According to BRR, Trout was the third-best baserunner in baseball last season (8.7), behind Michael Bourn (11.7) and Ben Revere (10.0). Cabrera finished sixth from last (-5.5), or as Miguel Cabrera’s grandma would put it, 829th best (and look at those ADORABLE cheeks don’t you just want to pinch them!) By BRR, Trout’s baserunning bettered Cabrera’s by 14.2 runs, making Trout worth about a win and a half more than Cabrera on the bases alone. Cabrera’s cheeks, though pinch-able, were worth nothing. But what does that mean, really? There are two basic components to baserunning. The first is what the runner does independent of the batter. This is also called “stealing bases.” Steals are easy to measure. The base was either stolen or it wasn’t. There are also caught-stealings, and those work the same way. Miguel Cabrera stole four bases and was caught once. That’s a good percentage but he didn’t take a lot of chances. Still, he deserves credit for his high stolen base percentage for, if nothing else, not actively hurting his team by getting thrown out trying to steal. Mike Trout stole 49 bases and was caught five times. Trout stole 10 times as many bases and was thrown out less frequently on a percentage basis than Cabrera (91 percent to 80 percent). Even the most ardent Cabrera supporter would have trouble admitting that isn’t a huge advantage for Trout. I checked with Grandma Cabrera and even she agrees. The second part of baserunning is how the runner responded to what the batter did. This one gets more complicated. First let’s look at how the runner responded to a base hit. There are only a limited number of situations so we can examine each to see how Trout and Cabrera fared. On First Base When The Batter Hit A Single Miguel Cabrera was on first base when the batter singled 46 times. Mike Trout was in the same situation 45 times. Following those singles Miguel Cabrera ended up on third base 14 times (30 percent). Mike Trout ended up on third base 28 times (62 percent). So, carrying the one, Trout ended up on third base a little more than twice as frequently as Cabrera. So to you all you fellow English majors, if you could pick between having Cabrera or Trout at first base, you’d take Trout because he was twice as good. On First Base When The Batter Hit A Double On Second Base When The Batter Hit A Single Overall Lastly, it’s worth noting that Trout was very good at avoiding grounding into double plays. Faced with 87 opportunities, he did so seven times (8 percent). Cabrera had 146 opportunities (likely the product of hitting in the middle of the lineup, not leadoff) and grounded into 28 double plays (19 percent). Judgment plays less of a role here than straight-line speed. This is more like saying Trout is fast and Cabrera is slow but since that isn’t wrong... We can see that Mike Trout stole more bases, was less likely to get caught, took more bases after hits, was more likely to advance on a sacrifice attempt, and grounded into fewer double plays. On the whole, when Mike Trout got on base, he scored 44 percent of the time. When Cabrera got on base, he scored 28 percent of the time. Judging by that, having Mike Trout on base rather than Miguel Cabrera last season meant your team was 16 percent more likely to score a run, which puts Trout’s .399 on-base percentage in a very favorable light. I suspect that I, like many fans, undervalue baserunning because it’s not something I can easily pick out while watching a game. The pitcher throws the ball, the batter hits the ball and the fielder fields the ball. The camera follows each of those events in sequence. After the play we probably see the pitcher with his head down kicking dirt on the mound, or the hitter fist-bumping the base coach or calling time out to take off his shin guard. Maybe we see that the runner on second got a good jump on replay if the color commentator is good, but probably not. The runner is in the dugout anyway, high-fiving teammates, putting his helmet away, heading down the tunnel for whatever it is players do after they head down the tunnel. In any case, he’s out of view of the camera. Unless he’s Miguel Cabrera in which case, he’s probably standing on base.
Matthew Kory is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @mattymatty2000
16 comments have been left for this article.
|
Interesting article, agree that baserunning is undervalued.
"The last thing I want to do is rehash the American League MVP debate. There is a long list of sharp objects I’d fit into my cornea before doing that. So I’m not doing that, I promise."
Can we have an article about Verlander being unfairly denied a 2nd consecutive Cy Young. The ratio between Verlander and Price in Warp (4.7 vs 3.1) is higher than that between Trout and Cabrera (9.1 vs 6.1) so he was more "wronged".
If we write that article we'd probably also have to note that there is a good argument against Verlander's MVP two seasons ago.
That's completely fine, just very bored at all the continuing comments about Trout and the MVP this offseason and in contrast no mention if the Cy Young.
This raises another interesting point though, pitchers in the current game just can't be in the games enough to accumulate as much WARP as position players, maybe in the old days with 4 man rotations and 300+ IP they could. This is reflected in the fact that position players are by and large paid more.
So, as it stands, the reason that pitchers should not win the MVP is not because they have the Cy Young but rather just because it's very very hard for them to be as valuable to their teams.
That is an interesting point. It seems kind of counter-intuitive to me as well, though, that starting pitchers should have that much less WARP. If you think about it, a 200 inning starter accounts for an equal or larger percentage of his teams innings (roughly 2/15ths or about 13%) than a 700 plate appearance player does of his team's at bats (a leadoff hitter who played every game and always got one more plate appearance than his teammates would top out at 1/7th, or about 14%).
Is defense that large a contributor to the WARP formula? Or is the difference between great and replacement hitters that much larger than between great and replacement pitchers?
Yes, don't forget that position players accumulate defensive warp as well as offensive, and it's quite often two way players that score highest.
Simple warp is too simplistic, for one reason is the concept of high leverage and low leverage innings, a stopper like Verlander who goes out and almost always gives his team a great chance to win is a valuable player. The fact that a whole team rides the back of a player like that can never be quantified in a stat.