Who Needs September?

Josh Hamilton won the AL MVP on Tuesday despite the fact that he played all of five games after August 31st. Was that honor deserved? Let’s explore this and other issues surrounding the 2010 AL MVP Vote.

Back in early October, I wrote a piece entitled Who is the AL MVP? I chose Miguel Cabrera as the winner of the award, over Hamilton, and here is the most germane point to my belief that Hamilton should not have been the winner. Hamilton became the first player to appear in fewer than 15 games in September to win an MVP award since 1960 (Dick Groat). Think about that. Hamilton played the fewest September games of any MVP in half a century. Given that Cabrera was virtually the same performer over the course of the year, and that he did “it” over 27 more games, it seems obvious to me that he should have been the selection. Apparently, I’m in the minority as people seem to still cling to the belief that the winner of the award should come from a playoff bound team if everything else is basically equal. Apparently “equal” is achieved when a guy plays a full month less of the season than someone else.

Some more facts.

(1) This marked the sixth time a Ranger won the award: Juan Gonzalez (1996, 98), Jeff Burroughs (1974), Ivan Rodriguez (1999) and Alex Rodriguez (2003).

(2) Hamilton was the 10th CF ever to win the award in the American League (a CF has won the award five times in the NL).

Now on to the rest of the voting.

27 first place votes went to Hamilton and Cabrera. Where did the last one go? It went to major league home run leader Jose Bautista who came in 4th overall. The one man to vote for Jose Bautista as the winner was Shi Davidi from Toronto.

Carl Crawford came in 7th in the voting with 98 points as he was left off seven ballots. He could have earned a $700,000 bonus if all seven of those empty ballots had placed him 7th or higher. Another Ray, Evan Longoria, cam in 6th in the voting with 100 points.

Delmon Young finished 10th in the voting. I admit the .298-21-112 line is mighty solid, but do you really think Delmon was the 10th most valuable player in the AL in 2010 when he posted a .333 OBP an a .826 OPS? I certainly don’t, not when the AL average for OBP was .327 or when you realize that his OPS was merely 20th amongst qualifiers.

Twins’ teammate Jim Thome finished with more MVP points (two), than guys like Mark Teixeira (one) and Joakim Soria (one). Thome was terrific this season hitting an impressive .283/.412/.627, but he was limited to only 25 homers because of just 276 at-bats. How he got any AL MVP love is totally beyond me.

As for hurlers, the highest ranking pitcher on the list was another Ray – Rafael Soriano – who finished with 21 points. I think he did a wonderful job, but I still find it odd that he was the top pitcher in the voting. To further build on the voting madness with pitchers, AL Cy Young winner Felix Hernandez received six points, runner up David Price zero, and third place finisher CC Sabathia got 13. If you don’t understand that join the fricken club.

By Ray Flowers

Some People Never Learn

I thought we were past this. I thought after all the analysis we’ve been spewing over the past five years that the mainstream media has finally gotten “it.” I guess we’re not done yet.

I recently was flipping through the pages of my Sporting News Magazine when I came across an article in which they asked a bunch of baseball people to rate who the best players in the game are (Albert Pujols came out on top). While I might disagree with some of the order of their choices, that isn’t germane to my concern here. My concern is that people in the mainstream media, and remember these are the people that vote for the Hall of Fame folks, just don’t understand how the game, and the measurement used to speak to the game, work.

What do I mean. Simply put nothing means anything without context. Think I’m crazy? Here is a series of numbers. Can you tell me what they mean with no supporting context?

13, 60, 73, 511 and 911

My shoe size.
The single season home run record set by Babe Ruth in 1927.
The new single season home run record set by Barry Bonds in 2001.
The career victory total of Cy Young.
The famous model number for Porsche’s.

The point is without some sort of context, the numbers mean nothing at all.

So when I read the Sporting News breakdowns I wasn’t shocked, though I was dismayed, to realize that people that are supposed to be “in the know” still, well, don’t know.

Here is an example. The article talks about how Josh Hamilton hit 32 home runs and had 130 RBI in his first full season in Texas while Juan Gonzalez had only 27 HR and 102 RBI. That would lead you to think that Hamilton is a much better player wouldn’t it?. However, let’s use some context. Hamilton was 27 years old last season while Gonzo was just 21 in his first full season. Oh, and in case you were wondering, by the time Gonzalez was 27 he had four seasons of 40 home runs and 100-RBI.

Another example? There is a note that Victor Martinez has more RBI at the age of 30 than fellow catcher Carlton Fisk. The context that is left out here is that Fisk had 468 RBI through his 30 year old season, but that he then went on to record 866 RBI over the remainder of his career that lasted until he was 45 years of age. Do you honestly think that V-Mart has another 1,700+ games in him as did Fisk? Martinez better keep whacking that ball around the yard at a prodigious pace if wants to surpass the 1,300+ RBI that Fisk had in his career, and let me tell you something – it ain’t gonna happen (Martinez would have to average 85 RBI for the next 10 years to catch him).

And here might be the topper. The article actually says, and I quote, that Carlos Zambrano’s winning percentage of .615 “…is the same as Sandy Koufax when he was 28.” Seriously? Besides the fact that wins and loses are a putrid way to measure the success or failure of a hurler, there is also the context that by every conceivable measure known to mankind shows that Koufax was a vastly superior pitcher to Zambrano making any comparison between the two fallacious. Here are some examples.

In his 29 and 30 year old season’s Koufax went 53-17, to push his winning percentage up to .655 in his career. In addition, he also posted a 1.88 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, 9.55 K/9 and a 4.72 K/BB ratio in those two seasons, numbers Zambrano has never even sniffed in his career. Oh yeah, Koufax also tossed 659 innings in those two seasons, or more than the 619 that Zambrano has tossed in his last three seasons!

But even this isn’t fair because it isn’t putting Koufax’s performance in the context of the era in which he pitched. I mean really, how do you compare a guy who tossed 330-innings in a season to a guy who throws 200? How do you compare a guy who posted an ERA of 2.76 in his career, to a guy who owns a 3.50 mark like Zambrano? Context my friends. By comparing each pitcher to their contemporaries we find that Koufax produced an ERA that was 31% better than the league average when he pitched, whereas Zambrano, pitching in a more “offensive era” has been 27% better than the league average. What this shows is that their performance, when compared to era in which they pitched, were actually similar despite the fact that Zambrano’s raw ERA is three-quarters of a run higher. The answer to all of this comparison business is context.

So next time you read one of these historical articles comparing players, make sure you do something that most of the writers never do – put whatever you are studying under the microscope, sprinkle in some context, and come up with an “answer” that is likely more accurate than that of the man or woman who is being paid to write the piece.

By Ray Flowers