No Statistics in MVP Discussions?

The other day on Pardon the Interruption, Michael Wilbon was arguing for Miguel Cabrera as the AL MVP.  (Sorry I can't find a link).  As part of his argument he said he did not want to hear anything about "statistics" in arguing against Cabrera.  Those arguments all pale in comparison when put next to Cabrera winning the Triple Crown. 

Huh?   The Triple Crown argument is a "statistical" argument as home runs, RBIs and batting average are all statistics.  I guess it just depends on what statistic you use.

2011 AL MVP Picks

I wrote this post back in November but never got around to posting it. I will post it now.

My picks for the AL MVP:

Bautista

Ellsbury

Verlander

Pedroia

Kinsler

Granderson

Sabathia

Miguel Cabrera

Adrian Gonzalez

Zobrist

I had the top 3 reversed from the actual voting (Verlander winning). Obviously, I am not afraid of picking a pitcher as MVP, as I had Verlander 3rd and Sabathia 7th, and in the NL I had Halladay 3rd, Kershaw 5th and Cliff Lee 8th. I just didn't have Verlander winning this year.

Among the other players, Kinsler did not get as much support as he probably should have.

2011 NL MVP Picks

I realize the voting results were released yesterday, but I did not get a chance to post my ballot, so I will do it today:

Kemp Braun Halladay Votto Kershaw Tulowitzki Upton Lee Fielder Reyes

I realize that Braun won the vote, but the offensive numbers between Braun and Kemp are really close and Kemp has more defensive value, thought there seems to be some variance of opinion on his offensive value.

2011 MVPs at All-Star Break

Here are my picks for the NL and AL MVP at the All-Star Break. I'm a little behind in posting one of these for this season, but I was having a hard time distinguishing the players when I tried coming up with a list in May and mid-June.

NL
Matt Kemp
Jose Reyes
Andrew McCutchen
Roy Halladay
Ryan Braun
Prince Fielder
Shane Victorino
Joey Votto
Cole Hamels
Troy Tulowitzki

AL
Jose Bautista
Adrian Gonzalez
Jacoby Ellsbury
Curtis Granderson
Ben Zobrist
Jered Weaver
Dustin Pedroia
Justin Verlander
C. C. Sabathia
Ian Kinsler

Voting Method and ROY

I realize I'm a little late on this issue, but there was a minor storm about one writer's ballot for NL Rookie of the Year. One voter from Pittsburgh voted for Buster Posey first and then for two Pittsburgh Pirates second and third. There have been suggestions that this was defensible (see here and here). He has been criticized for homerism.
The voter himself defended himself by saying that he picked Posey (the eventual winner) first. (Since he defended himself on Twitter, it is hard to find the appropriate tweets). He just used his second and third place votes to recognize flying under the radar Pirates, but picked the best player first. However, I think the fact that he picked Posey first makes his other picks even more irresponsible.

The key decision for the award was Posey vs. Heyward. Since 1^st place votes are worth 5 points and 2^nd place votes are worth 3 points, a voter who had Posey first and Heyward second would increase his top choice by 2 points. However, Kovacevic increased Posey by 5 points over Heyward. If his motivation was for Posey to win, this was pretty close to the perfect ballot. I actually would have preferred if he had just chosen three Pirates or three random players. In that case his ballot would have had no influence on the final outcome. Or he could have just picked the two Pirates first and second and then picked Posey third.

Part of the problem is that, according to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, there is not a perfect way to design a ranking method among more than two alternatives. The choice of a Borda count method pretty much opens up the possibility of strategic voting. I do not think his intent was strategic, but his ballot looks exactly like that of a strategic voter trying to help Posey.

2010 AL MVP Picks

Hamilton

Cano

Longoria

Bautista

Beltre

Cabrera

Crawford

Felix Hernandez

Cliff Lee

Mauer

 

For top of the AL there is a distinction between the bats (Hamilton, Bautista and Cabrera) vs. the gloves (Cano, Longoria and Beltre). Now the "gloves" all had good years hitting but they were about 30 points behind the "bats" in OPS+. I think Hamilton is clearly first, but second through sixth could be re-arranged in any order.

Since Hernandez and Lee are both pitchers and next to each other in the rankings that would suggest that I think they were almost equal. However, I think Hernandez was clearly superior to Lee, but there is quite a bit of drop-off after the top 7 hitters.

2010 NL MVP Picks

Since football season ended last Sunday, my thoughts have begun to shift to baseball. Since I got pretty busy last November, I did not get a chance to post my ballots for the internet baseball awards. So I will start with my NL MVP picks:

Votto

Pujols

Zimmerman

Holliday

Tulowitzki

Halladay

Carlos Gonzalez

Huff

Wainwright

Adrian Gonzalez

 

I could see putting Votto and Pujols either way. What is funny is that the last time that Pujols had a close race for top player in the league was 2005, when the other contender was a fellow NL Central First Baseman (Derrek Lee in 2005). The two players had very similar seasons that year, just as Pujols and Votto had very similar seasons this year.

Compared to some voters, I have Adrian Gonzalez lower relative to the other hitters. He had a good year, but he was not the equal at the plate of Votto and Pujols. The other hitters made up ground based on defensive value and position.

Interestingly I had more pitchers in the top 10 most of the year. However, Josh Johnson was hurt the last month and Ubaldo Jiminez had a poor middle of the season and both are just outside the top 10 for my final picks.

My MVP Picks at the All-Star Break

Here are my picks for MVP at the All-Star Break of the baseball season. For the one-third list see here.

NL	AL
Halladay	Morneau
Johnson	Cano
Votto	Crawford
Wright	Longoria
Zimmerman	Hamilton
Holliday	Lee
Jiminez	Liriano
Prado	Beltre
Wainwright	Lester
Utley	Cabrera

 

Obviously, Utley will not be on this list much longer given his current injury, but at this point he is still done enough to hang onto the last spot. Actually, the 9^th and 10^th spot are so close to those who would be 11^th or 12^th such that that spot might change by this weekend.

Comparing to the list from a month and a half ago, each league has five of the same players and 5 different players.

My MVP Picks at the 1/3 Mark

Here are my picks for MVP at the 1/3 Mark of the baseball season. (Actually as of games on Saturday).
NL
Halladay
Utley
Jiminez
Votto
Heyward
Byrd
Johnson
Wainwright
Willingham
Lincecum

AL
Morneau
Cano
Longoria
Rios
Wells
Jackson
Youkilis
Crawford
Hudson
Beltre

The most interesting thing is that “the year of the pitcher” seems to be primarily an NL phenomenon, as the NL ballot has five pitchers to the AL’s zero pitchers. I think this is also a result of there being more really good position players in the AL so far. Also realize that each start could make a big difference for a starter, so the NL ballot actually would have changed some since Saturday as both Wainwright and Jiminez had good starts since then.