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November 21, 2006 Prospectus MatchupsMost Valuable
After decades as a baseball fan, I still can't figure out what the hell the Most Valuable Player Award is supposed to be. Maybe that's the charm of the award: every season, it means something a little bit different. In some years, it's for the player who had the best season. In others, it's for a player who is the most inspirational. Some years, it's for a player who flashes a lot of leather. Sometimes, you have to be on a contender, and sometimes you don't. First and second place This year's voting, it would appear, came down to raw counting stats. As Rany Jazayerli suggested in a BP e-mail exchange on the award, it seems that Runs Batted In was especially important in the minds of voters. The one-two-three finishers in voting were also one-two-three in RBI. Ryan Howard drove in 149 runs to Albert Pujols' 137, and Lance Berkman's 136. If voters are going to put all their eggs in one basket, they're going to need to dig further down into that basket. If that basket is going to be RBI--as it too often is--then attention must be paid to how the players arrived at their RBI figures. For instance, Howard batted with more men on base than anybody else in the National League: 509. That's over 80 more than Pujols and Berkman, 99 more than fifth-place vote getter Miguel Cabrera, and 132 more than fourth-place finisher Carlos Beltran. Was Howard especially proficient at getting men home? Not really. He was 15th in the league in the percentage of ROB (Runners on Base) that he drove in. Had Berkman (2nd in percentage of runners driven home) and Pujols (3rd) come to the plate with as many men on base as Howard had, they would have each amassed 154 RBI at their rates of runners driven in. Cabrera, the best in the league at delivering baserunners, would have had 135. Beltran (4th) would have had 143. In terms of VORP and EqA, Pujols finished higher than Howard (85.4 to 81.5 in VORP, .346 to .337 in EqA), but not so much higher that it would make you want to scream about their placement in the voting. What really separates them, though, is their fielding stats. Playing the same position, Pujols logged an FRAR/FRAA of 25/15 to Howard's -5/-15. The massive difference between them as fielders helped put a sizeable gap in their WARP1: 11.9 to 8.6. Third Place Berkman was a surprising third-place finisher, ending up on 21 ballots in that position. I sometimes think the MVP vote reflects how much a player acts as the sole supporter of an otherwise anemic team. Aside from the RBI situation described above, there must be some of that in play as far as Berkman is concerned. While Beltran and Cabrera had better seasons, they did so on clubs with more individual quality company than Berkman had. Only one other Astro had a VORP over 20, that being second-half hero Luke Scott at 29.9. I think that sometimes voters look at that sort of thing and contemplate the team's ill fate without the player. I'm going to assume that was working in Berkman's favor. Of course, to a lesser extent, the same was true of Pujols, and it wasn't enough to carry him to the top. Best seasons not getting any vote recognition Brian McCann, Braves: 54.8 VORP. You can picture a voter rationalizing a down-ballot vote for Paul Lo Duca of the Mets. Fortunately, that didn't happen. At least McCann can comfort himself with the fact that no other catchers got votes. Nick Johnson, Nationals. 51.0 VORP. He had an EqA of .325, or 25 points higher than the sixth-place vote getter, teammate Alfonso Soriano. Nevertheless, he did not appear on a single ballot. Johnson's WARP1 of 8.4 was just a bit below that of winner Howard's 8.6. Hanley Ramirez, Marlins. 54.9 VORP. Let's assume that the two voters who put Aramis Ramirez eighth and ninth thought they were voting for Hanley. At least he got the ROY hardware. Least worthy seasons getting vote recognition Nomar Garciaparra, Dodgers. He appeared on a total of nine ballots, and was placed as high as seventh on two of them. Garciaparra missed 40 games, and played a corner position with no measurable defensive contribution. His WARP1 of 3.6 is easily the lowest of any player getting votes, including Trevor Hoffman, a closer. Carlos Delgado, Mets. Delgado had one of the lowest WARP1s of any vote getter (5.4), and managed to finish 12th in the balloting. Voters will sometimes look at a player coming to a new team and throw him the savior vote. (We all remember the Shannon Stewart voting debacle from 2003.) That's the only possible explanation for Delgado appearing on as many ballots as he did. Jose Reyes, Mets. This is not saying he didn't deserve down-ballot consideration, but among top 10 vote-getters, Reyes was the lowest-rated in terms of WARP, and it wasn't close. He finished seventh in spite of being left off of 10 ballots. This was mostly on the strength of one third- and one fourth-place vote. Other choices of note
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