"The only two first-place votes that didn't go to Rodriguez were from Tom Gage of The Detroit News and Jim Hawkins of The Oakland Press in Pontiac, Mich."
Somebody put Abreu seventh? The guy had the worst year of his career, pretty easily. A 114 OPS+ from a right fielder just seems like it's hard to get excited about. And he didn't go nuts with the counting stats either- 16 HRs, 101 RBIs. Strange.
Sorry, but Vlad was not the third most valuable player in the league. I would like to see the logic in putting him ahead of Ortiz/Magglio/Posada.
Pena's line is weird- two third place votes, but wasn't higher than 6th on any other ballots.
Same goes for Putz- a 4th, an 8th, and a 9th. That's less surprising though- it's just someone valuing relievers more than others.
Polanco probably deserved more support- 12th in VORP, and Dewan's system likes his glove (+12 plays). He was definitely better than Jeter (although that hardly makes him unique; Jeter was 11th in VORP, -34 plays)
Sabathia beats Beckett again, this time 11-2. A convincing margin.
Lowest VORPs to receive a vote:
Frank Thomas 31.5 (31st among AL hitters) Justin Morneau 28.8 (39th) Bobby Abreu 27.9 (42nd)
About a month ago, I did a piece for The Hardball Times about a system that tries to predict who will win the MVP. I thought it might be interesting to look back at who the "MVP Tracker" predicts to win in previous years, and compare that with what actually happened. Today, I'll look at the AL voting over the past four years.
(Note: Don't directly compare the "PTS" between MVP Tracker and the actual voting; they use different scales. The thing to look at is the order, and even the size of the gaps.)
2003
This was A-Rod's last year with the Rangers, who finished 71-91, last in the AL West. MVP Tracker gets the top two right, but after that it's kind of a mess. Shannon Stewart, who was traded to the Twins on July 16, somehow conned his way into some votes with a VORP of 21 (This happened because the Twins went 46-23 after the trade; with Stewart hitting .322/.384/.470).
Manny, Nomar, and Ortiz probably split the vote to some extent. Although Manny pretty consistently does worse than expected because, well, he's Manny. Overall, MVP Predictor did horribly in '03, with a 0.23 correlation with the actual results among the top eight vote getters. This is hardly surprising, as the voting was wide open- 10 different guys got first place votes.
2004
MVP Tracker nails the Top 5 and the winner, but shuffles the order somewhat. I tried to incorporate an extra penalty for DHs into the system, but that never worked out; that's probably why Ortiz is too high. Again, Ramirez and Ortiz probably split votes, which allows Sheffield to jump up to 2nd. MVP Tracker did well in '04, with a 0.82 correlation among the top eight vote getters.
2005
This was the year when there was a big debate about whether Ortiz could win the MVP as a DH, and he came up short. MVP Tracker has A-Rod winning, with his advantage in BA making up for the deficit in RBIs.
My system is too high on Manny again. Please do not overlook his astounding UZR. And it really underestimates Vlad, who didn't have big power numbers, but had the "best hitter on a division winner" thing going on for him. Overall, a solid year for MVP Tracker, with a correlation of 0.73.
2006
I would first like to note that Travis Hafner, with a 79.7 VORP, was probably the best player in the AL last year. Just saying.
MVP Tracker had no doubt that Morneau would win, with all those RsBI on a division winner. (Side note: I feel like everybody, including myself, forgets that the Twins actually did win the Central last year, edging out the Tigers on the last day of the season. I guess that's because Detroit was in first all year, obviously went further in October, and who won the division didn't really matter all that much.)
The BBWAA just didn't do very well for themselves last year; Morneau and Thomas really have no place in this discussion. Ortiz and Hafner were probably the two best players, but, as DHs on non-playoff teams, were overlooked. Despite his defensive struggles, Jeter was pretty clearly deserving if you're going to give it to a guy on a playoff team.
2006 was MVP Tracker's best year, correctly predicting the top 3, and having a 0.83 correlation. Overall, I'm pretty happy with these results- it gets the winner right each time, and is right about the top two in three of the four years. And I'm pretty confident it will be right about this year's winner, not that that's particularly impressive.
In the THT article, I write about how my system thinks Holliday will win this year. If the Rockies had missed out on the playoffs, it would have predicted Rollins. I mention this because it's unclear to me when the MVP votes are due in. I've heard that it's the Monday after the regular season ends, even though there was technically one final regular season game on Monday night. If this is true, and the BBWAA doesn't take the 163rd game into account, I think Rollins wins.
There is no such thing as a .400 hitter. Well, at least there never has been. People have hit .400, of course, but that's always been something of a fluke. This is evident in the fact that Ty Cobb has the highest career BA ever, at "just" .366.
In 1994, Tony Gwynn was hitting .394 when the season was cut short by the strike. He hit .358 in '93, and .368 in '95, so in reality he was about a .372 hitter over that three year period. If he had gotten 170 more ABs in '94, there's about a 14% chance he would have bumped his average up to .400.
Since Williams hit .406 in 1941, five guys have had 500+ plate appearances and hit over .375:
It's no coincidence that Brett, Williams and Walker barely had 50o plate appearances- it's a lot easier to hit .375+ over 450 plate appearances than 600. If Carew had had as many ABs in '77 as Brett had in '80, there's a 30% chance he would have gotten lucky and ended up above .400.
The ability to hit .400 is a very different "skill" than the ability to put together a long hit streak. For hitting streaks, you want as many at bats as possible, since going 1/5 is just as good as going 1/2. For this list, it's an advantage to have fewer at bats, as that increases the chances that you can get lucky and hit for a higher average than your actual level of ability would normally indicate (for example, almost anyone can hit .400 over the course of 20 at bats). Because of this, hitting lower in the order, and drawing a lot of walks, increase your chances of hitting for an unusually high average.
Taking these factors into account, as well as age, here are the 10 guys that are most likely to hit .400. 1. Miguel Cabrera (24 years old, .327 BA in 05-07). Career odds: 1 in 429 2008 odds: 1 in 6859
The concerns about his weight have not effected Miggy's batting average, as he's hit at least .323 each of the last three years. A couple weeks ago he became the third fastest to 500 RBIs, reminding the world that he doesn't turn 25 until April of 2008. It's possible that he has room to grow as a hitter, which is a scary thought- he has to be #1 on this list.
2. Albert Pujols (27 years old, .327 BA in 05-07) Career odds: 1 in 473 2008 odds: 1 in 6146
This was the first guy that came to mind for me. Over the last three years he has walked in almost 16% of his plate appearances- that kills him in terms of hit streaks (he wasn't even in the top 10), but really helps him here- he's never had more than 592 ABs in a season.
3. Matt Holliday (27 years old, .323 BA in 05-07) Career odds: 1 in 1167 2008 odds: 1 in 15170
How much of an effect does Coors Field have on this? In his career, he's hit .358 at home, but just .273 on the road. If he were to plan an entire season at home, he'd have about a 2% chance of hitting .400. On the other hand, if he played a full year on the road, he wouldn't be anywhere near this list. 4. Vladimir Guerrero (31 years old, .325 BA in 05-07) Career odds: 1 in 1802 2008 odds: 1 in 16214
Doesn't it seem like a long more than four years ago that Vlad was playing in Montreal? This is completely unrelated, but with the Expos he averaged 17.5 stolen bases per year but was thrown out 37% of the time. In Anaheim, he has averaged just 11.3 SB/yr, but has only been thrown out on 21% of his attempts.
5. Placido Polanco (31 years old, .325 BA in 05-07) Career odds: 1 in 3032 2008 odds: 1 in 27281
After the 2004 season, Polanco's career average stood at .295. How has he hit 30 points higher than that over the last three seasons? Well, for one thing he stopped striking out- his K% has gone from 10.9% in 1999 to 4.9% this year. He's also increased his BABiP by hitting more line drives- his LD% for 02-04 was 22.5%, over the last three years it's 24.6%.
6. Derrek Lee (31 years old, .319 BA in 05-07) Career odds: 1 in 3612 2008 odds: 1 in 32500
Lee is on this list only because he hit .335 in 2005; since then, he's hit .305 in 695 ABs. It has been speculated that this is an effect of injuring his wrist last April. That may have something to do with it, but I would guess 2005 was the exception here- his previous career high was .282. 7. Derek Jeter (33 years old, .322 BA in 05-07) Career odds: 1 in 4216 2008 odds: 1 in 29511 If this were to happen, I think it's entirely reasonable to think he could be on the front page of both the Post and Daily News every day for two months.
8. Magglio Ordonez (33 years old, .322 BA in 05-07) Career odds: 1 in 5165 2008 odds: 1 in 36154
Before this year, Magglio had never hit above .320; right now, he's at .357. If he went 42/45 down the stretch, he'd be at .401; I tried to run the odds on that, but it just says 0.
9. Ichiro Suzuki (33 years old, .324 BA in 05-07) Career odds: 1 in 5287 2008 odds: 1 in 37007
Ichiro averaged 683 ABs over his first six seasons, because he bats leadoff and rarely walks. In 2004 he hit .372 in 704 ABs; if he had had 200 fewer at bats, there's about a 1 in 10 chance that he would have hit .400.
10: Robinson Cano (24 years old, .313 BA in 05-07) Career odds: 1 in 8496 2008 odds: 1 in 135924
Cano was third on the hit streak list because he never walks, and he's only 10th on this list for that same reason. It should be noted that he's at least walking more than he used to- his BB% has doubled from 3.0% in 2005 to 6.0% this season.
I thought it would be an interesting excercise to combine these two statistics and see which American League players have been most valuable to their teams over the first two months of the season. I'll do the NL tomorrow.
First, I took the top 20 AL hitters in WPA from FanGraphs.
Taking these, I then adjusted them based on position. Note that I have changed my adjustments so they are now based on PA, rather than AB. Here is how much each of these players' WPAs changed with this adjustment.
In short, adjusted WPA adjusts a player's WPA based on what an average player at his position would have done in the same number of plate appearances. A more detailed explanation can be found here.
Adding this number to each player's WPA gives us Adjusted WPA. But that is only half the story- fielding must also be taken into consideration.
UZR is given in runs. When adding it to Adjusted WPA, I divided it by 10, since, generally 10 runs is equal to one win.
Vlad has been so much better than everyone else in terms of regular WPA, it would be almost impossible for anyone to make up for it with the positional adjustment and UZR.
Grady Sizemore does makes a valiant effort, as he is first in UZR (+12) to this point in the season. This allows him to move from seventh in WPA to second in value.
The player most adversely effected? Wouldn't have been my first guess- Derek Jeter. The controversy about Jeter's fielding value hasbeenwelldocumented. Since he indisputably plays SS (not even Neyer could argue that point), his bat has some extra value in the posititional adjustment.
Then comes UZR. There are 584 players listed in Lichtman's ratings. Derek Jeter comes in 574th, at -7 runs.
To me, this combination of adjusting WPA and incorporating fielding stats is very interesting. Casey Kotchman, the Angels' first baseman, loses .47 becasue of his position, but gains almost all of it back with his UZR of 4.
I always thought this was one of the most difficult parts when comparing different positions. Not only do you have to compare each player's bat's value based on their position, but how valuable they are defensively at that position.
This is very difficult to do, but I feel this system does that pretty effectively.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please e-mail me at jnwheat@emory.edu, or post something in the comments section below.
Good work by MVP Tracker. If there was ten point deduction for DHs, it would have nailed the top 5.
