Baseball: MVP race

Well the league leaders as of 9/11 are the Twins Mauer with a .350 AVG and the Twins Johan Santana with a 2.75 ERA HR, total bases, & RBI's Philly's Howard with 56 jacks, 354 total bases, and 138 RBI's. It's looking like the MVP could be a rec between these three men.

Except that there is no MVP of all of Major League Baseball. The Twins are in the AL, while the Phillies are in the NL. There are two separate MVP awards for the two leagues. It should be Howard in the NL, but the AL is up for grabs right now. By the way, neither of those Twins players are even in the race right now.

In my non-biased view Ortiz deserves it hand's down. He's been close and who knows how long he can cantend. His recent statements have been taken out of contaxt. You can't blame the guy for wanting what's deseved to him (and has been in the past). I realize the MVP should be on a playoff team but thats nonsense. I mean Mo Vaughn won the MVP one year and so on and so forth.

Does anybody think that Derrick Jeter has a chance, he was mentioned in a couple of papers and sources online? But his numbers don't really add up, i think its more of the contributions he has put in for this team this year. Late game hits, game winning RBI's so on.

Sure Jeter deserves a chance. But ignoring my bias against him for a moment he plays on a stacked team and....

Ok he has every right to win it, but I disagree wholeheartedly with it. He may be a team leader but he not integral annoys me to a heavy biased degree.

Originally posted by Kwyjibo
In my non-biased view Ortiz deserves it hand's down. He's been close and who knows how long he can cantend. His recent statements have been taken out of contaxt. You can't blame the guy for wanting what's deseved to him (and has been in the past). I realize the MVP should be on a playoff team but thats nonsense. I mean Mo Vaughn won the MVP one year and so on and so forth.

Ortiz is a cry baby. He has never been robbed of the MVP. Arod beat him in nearly every important catergory last year. Hafner and Manny have been better then Ortiz this year. Jeter, Dye, Morneau are right there, if not better.

Blasphemy!

Although I do agree that Manny shoud be up there in the MVP voting. Sometimes you gotta look at the intangibles. I don't know what these intangibles are but Ortiz had Arod but a long shot last year. And now Arod is paying the karmic price by being (unfairly) overscrutinized but it's good for him in the long run. The main reason I want Ortiz to get MVP is to keep him motivated. After the Sox surprise everyone and catch the wild card this year we need Big Papi to have his confidence back.

Ortiz had Arod in nothing last year.

OPS
Arod 1.031
Ortiz 1.001

OPS+
Arod 167
Ortiz 161

Runs created
Arod 151
Ortiz 139

RC/27
Arod 9.53
Ortiz 8.51

Win shares
Arod 37
Ortiz 31

BRAA (batting runs above average)
Arod 69
Ortiz 53

EQA (equivalent average)
Arod .340
Ortiz .323

Ortiz is living in a dream world

Originally posted by HOOTIE
He has never been robbed of the MVP. Arod beat him in nearly every important catergory last year.

There's more to an MVP than numbers...

Originally posted by GiantsFan

Originally posted by HOOTIE
He has never been robbed of the MVP. Arod beat him in nearly every important catergory last year.

There's more to an MVP than numbers...

Such as?

Such as how he has played defensively, or how he actually contributed to his team. Just because a guy hits 60 HR's with 200 RBI, doesn't mean he's an MVP if his team finishes dead last.

But then theres the guy who only hit 30 with 100 RBI, yet seemed to carry his team into the playoffs. And without that guy, they go hom at the end of September.

Stats do matter, but it's much more complicated than just that. It's kinda how McGwire didn't win the MVP in 98 after hitting 70 HR's... Sammy won it because along with his HR's, he earned his team a spot in the playoffs.

Now if a MVP type player, can't get his team to the playoffs, but has them in a close battle in getting into the playoffs, and had several plays during the season in which he made his team get closer to the playoffs, does that count?

Baseball is the one sport where a player on a non-playoff team win the MVP. It doesn't happen all that often, but it still does happen. A-Rod won the MVP while on a last place team in 2003, so it's not like in football or basketball where the MVP always seems to come from a playoff team now.

Morneau deserves MVP because of his high average and his high RBI totals, (top 5 in both) he is very valuable to his teams playoff strech for a wild card

I see no fair case for Morneau. He has no defensive value, since he's a first baseman, and with 3 steals in 6 tries, he has no value there, so it's all about his hitting.

Now, hitting's by far the most important thing an everyday player does, except arguably a catcher--no, not a shortstop--so if Morneau were having a tremendous year at the plate, one which shone above all his peers, I'd agree he should win. But he's not, and it isn't close. Yes, he's batting .326, but his career-long aversion to walks has improved only slightly this year, as he has a .381 on-base percentage... a much more important stat than batting average. That's good for only 17th in the league, as opposed to 5th in batting average, and it's hardly the stuff of MVP's.
Being #10 in HR's and tied for #21 in runs scored isn't much of a case, either.

So his case pretty much comes down to two things:

(1) He's #6 in the league in slugging average, at .578; and

(2) He's #2 in the league in RBI's, with 124.

That's it. The OBP isn't worth discussing, and I think you'll all agree the HR's and runs scored don't make any case for him at all. So it's all about slugging and RBI's. But he's not a close 6th in slugging. He is 81 points behind Travis Hafner--even though Hafner has taken the time to draw 100 walks and amass a .439 OBP, to go with his other gaudy, MVP-like stats. He is 59 points behind Dye, 41 behind Ortiz, 34 behind the perenially awesome Manny (CAREER slugging over .600, and if you ignore the inflated stats of Todd Helton, you should see how few are on THAT list--Ruth, Williams, Gehrig, Bonds, Greenberg, Foxx and Manny), and 23 behind Thome.

That leaves his RBI's. The 124 RBI's are impressive. No doubt about it. But Castillo, Cuddyer and Punto are all having good years at the plate, and and Joe Mauer's on-base percentage is a whopping 48 points higher than Morneau's. So let's face it. The dude is getting some serious RBI opportunities.

I just don't see him as an MVP candidate. There's no telling what will happen with a team that makes the playoff, and if he gets hot these last two weeks, who knows? But an objective assessment of the above facts will make it pretty hard to justify giving him the award. There are several who deserve it over him. The days when serious baseball people rate batting average as a big stat are over.

BHN

Ortiz just hit his 52nd homer tonight giving him the AL lead for HR and RBIs, which I hope ties in to this conversation. I understand the excellent achievements of the other contenders but Ortiz just flat out earned it. His lobbying for the award caught me a little off guard though.

Besides Ortiz's obviously great numbers, he missed eight games with heart issues and Boston has had to deal with freak injuries and pitching woes. Just because Boston might not reach the playoffs should have not bearing on the manner. Arod won before on a last place team. I know Ortiz doesn't have the defensive credibility compared to Jeter or Arod, but Boston has the best defense in the AL, so what does Ortiz really have to prove. It's hitting the wins games ((as Ortiz has proven several times) actually it's a lot things that win games but you know what I mean)

For all the credit Jeter gets for holding the Yankees together when they lost some of their stars, he sure didn't handle the Arod situation well. He should've stuck up for his teammate, despite the fact the Arod may possibly have no soul.

Santana actually might really deserve it, but if Pedro didn't win it that one year than no pitcher deserves to win it.

Also thanks from bringing Manny into the conversation BHN, he definetly doesn't get enought consideration.

IF Manny is not on you-know-what (which, in my book, includes HGH), then he is one of the greatest hitters of all time. And I mean Top 10 for sure. The rest of the career .600 slugging percentage club consists of guys who played primarily or entirely before WWII (Gehrig, Foxx, Greenberg and the guy with the blow-out-a-computer slugging stats, Babe Ruth), plus Ted Williams and the two guys with huge asterisks: Barry Bonds and Todd Helton.

Yeah, Helton's asterisk is different, but look at his home/road splits and you'll see his .600 slugging average is phonier than a $3 bill. And Bonds' career slugging average was never within light years of .600 until... well, let's just say, until he became Babe Ruth Jr., from ages 36 to 40, from 2000-2004, with his head size doubled, heart fibrillations, etc., etc., etc., etc.

So....

IF Ramirez is clean--and I'm aware of zero evidence which says he's not--then all that's left is the fact he plays in Fenway. Now, I've seen Jimmie Foxx's career home/road splits--and remember, he played all of his real seasons as a right-handed hitter in Shibe Park and Fenway Park, the same two parks where Lefty Grove spent 100% of his career, as a left-handed pitcher--and you wouldn't believe how laughably inflated Foxx's career numbers are from BOTH of those parks--which just proves how incredible Grove's NINE e.r.a. titles in 17 years were. One year... I'm not making this up... his slugging percentage was 350 points higher at home than on the road.

I've studied the home/road splits of Helton and Walker at Coors Field. Walker should never be allowed near the Hall of Fame, except as a visitor. Helton, in my opinion, is a very low-level Hall of Famer, but probably a legit Hall of Famer, nonetheless. All the same, his stats are obscenely bloated. There have been VERY few seasons in MLB history where someone got 100 extra base hits. He has TWO of them, as did Chuck Klein at the ancient Baker Bowl of the Phillies, which was a far bigger joke than Coors Field, if you were a lefty (272 down the RF line; 300 to RF; about 320 to RCF; 40 ft. high fence). Klein won a Triple Crown one year, then was traded to the Cubs and became their #4 outfielder the next.

Anyway, I've never seen home/road splits on Manny to suggest he's nearly so big a product of his home park. A hitter's two biggest stats, by far, are slugging and on-base percentage. His are astronomical... and I'm talking about CAREER figures. He hits tons of HR's, scares the hell out of pitchers, DOES take walks (take note, please, you other 98% of Carribbean and South American players who think it's unmanly), gets on base all the time, and has stats of historical proportions.

I don't like to rate players until their careers have been over for a few years and the dust has settled. I was comfy rating Schmidt #1 at 3B before he was through, because he was obviously better than Brett, and he reached a point where he had clearly surpassed Eddie Mathews. It's obvious to me that Mike Piazza is the greatest HITTING catcher in MLB history--and second only to Josh Gibson among all catchers, offensively--but there are at least four other catchers you can make a strong, rational case for rating ahead of him on the all-time list: Roy Campanella, Johnny Bench, Yogi Berra and Mickey Cochrane. And maybe just maybe--though I don't buy it--Carlton Fisk. (NO, not Pudge "I'm too manly to walk" Rodriguez.)

Same thing for Clemens and Maddux. Maddux can still pitch complete years, but I don't see his winning Cy Youngs or ERA titles, and I sure don't see his coming close to those mindblowing years he had. (Do y'all know that until Pedro came along, Maddux had the #1 all-time AND the #2 all-time single-season Adusted ERA's ever??!!!!! Kind of like Ruth's single-season slugging records until Bonds met BALCO; Ruth had the Top 3, and SEVEN of the Top 11.) And I don't see Clemens doing TOO much more, but since he basically walks on water....

Anyway, I want to wait until they're both retired before I firmly decide where to rank them among Grove, Walter Johnson, Tom Seaver, Grover Cleveland Alexander and Pedro Martinez (for whom I must also wait).

Well, same story with Manny Ramirez. I want to live long enough to see his final numbers and assess them properly. Sure, I will have no trouble comparing his raw numbers to those Gehrig, Foxx, et al., but I want to see analyses of his era's run productivity vs. the 20's and 30's, so the proper weights are given to the runs produced by each of these players, including the all-important adjustments for ballparks. (It's not just pitchers who need ballpark adjustments, though it's most important with them.) And with a right-handed hitter in Fenway--just as in Grove's case, with a LH Pitcher in Fenway--REALLY careful and intense adjustments must be made.

Ruth and Gehrig were NOT helped by Yankee Stadium, and in fact both did better on the road than at home--a fact which astonishes people. But Foxx just ate up those home parks. To a somewhat lesser degree, so did Greenberg and, believe it or not, Ted Williams had significantly better career home stats than road stats. Then there's Mel Ott. He's the phoniest member of the 500 HR club (other than guys like Palmeiro), since he hit only 188 HR's on the road, and a whopping 323 at the Polo Grounds, where it was 257 down the RF line and 288 or something to straightaway RF. On the other hand, outfielders bunched together at the Polo Grounds, and many of Ott's other numbers suffered.

In other words, assessing the effects of players' home parks on their batting numbers can be pretty easy in an egregiously favorable park, like Coors or the Baker Bowl, but it also can be very tough (like with Ott), or one can fall victim to myth, like the lie that cavernous Yankee Stadium helped Ruth and Gehrig.

What I will say for now is this: Love him or hate him, if Manny Ramirez is not using the same sort of cr@p that certain stars obviously used, and that so many others PROBABLY used, he is one of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball. And not just one of the 20 or 30 greatest. At least one of the 10 greatest.

I happen to like the guy. But I hate Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, and I still give them a world of credit. I rate Cobb as the #3 MLB player of all-time, and Speaker as the #6... despite the fact he took part in what is probably the most egregious single sin in MLB history: the deliberate throwing of Game Six of the 1912 World Series, in order to get back at the owners for something really s---ty the owners had done to them about gate receipts, knowing full good and well this meant they would have to face CHRISTY MATHEWSON in Game 7 of the Series. Unfortunately, they got 2 in the bottom of the 10th and beat him.

Give Manny his due, folks, at least until there's SOME circumstantial evidence of b.s. on his part. His fielding is awful, his attitude seems to go over good with his teammates but stinks from what we can see, and he sure doesn't hustle all the time. But that is EXACTLY what Bill James has repeatedly said--and he's right--about Ted Williams in his playing days. But hitting is by far the most important thing a player does. That's why Ted Williams, despite my multi-faceted loathing for the man, is my #4 player of all-time, and it's why Manny Ramirez is one of the greatest players who ever lived.

BHN