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| MVP! MVP! Photo Credit: Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images |
Major League Baseball's regular season is over. Miguel Cabrera won the mythical Triple Crown, leading the league in home runs, batting average and runs batted in, for the American League, the first one in either league in 55 years. This is truly historic, and thus it makes him the shoo-in victor for the Most Valuable Player award, right? Well, not exactly. Mike Trout is the guy who SHOULD win MVP, and I'm not sure it's close.
What makes Trout a better candidate than Cabrera? He didn't win the Triple Crown, many might add. What does winning that mythical trio of statistical Championships really entail though? Home runs are indisputable in their importance, obviously. They're the only hit that guarantees a run gets put on the board. Batting average is a nice stat, but it doesn't tell the entire story. RBIs, however, are a statistic wholly dependent on one's teammates, whether they get on base and how well they run when they get on base.
Take three examples of a ball hit to the exact same spot in the outfield with the exact same fielders in the exact same positions. All three results have the hitter scoring a double. The first ball is hit with no one on base. The second is with, say, Ryan Howard at second base. The third one is with, say, Jimmy Rollins at first. On the first one, no one scores because no one is on base, obviously. The second one, Howard only makes it to third because he's slow and not as good a baserunner. The third one, Rollins chugs it all the way around the basepaths and scores. To the perceptive mind, the person who hit the ball did the same exact job in each situation. He hit a double. That's commendable. On his end, each result is the same.
To the "traditional" baseball analyst though, the batter should get far more credit for the third hit because it was a "RBI situation." Forget the fact that the skill of the baserunner was far, far greater in that situation than it was in the second. Everything's on the hitter here. Of course, no one will say that out loud because it's dumb, but that's what people imply, whether they mean to or not, when they put so much importance in RBI. That's why the statistic has started to fall out of favor with people who do advanced statistics.
Oh, advanced statistics, or sabermetrics. These are the numbers that the traditional journalists decry, taking up the mantel of the jocks who wage intellectual war against the "NEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRDS" who are actually trying to better understand baseball through mathematical analysis of stuff that happens on the field. The most controversial and perhaps least understood one of these is the Wins Above Replacement stat, or WAR.
I will be the first to admit that I can sometimes use the WAR stat as a crutch. A lot of people lean on it, sometimes without knowing what exactly goes into it. The thing is that it's not an agreed-upon formula. Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus all have their own metrics for determining player value. However, what is the same across the board is that it tries to account for all facets of the game for positional players - offense, defense and baserunning. So, even though it might be enough for some people to say that Trout was worth far more WAR than Cabrera over the season (while missing a month or so of it), it's still worth breaking the components down and showing why those numbers bear out.
The race would be close if the offensive components of the game were only considered. The two were close enough in batting average, even though Cabrera won the batting title, to be considered a wash. More importantly, their on base percentages were also close enough to be considered equal as well. Where Cabrera pulled ahead of Trout was his slugging percentage was about 40 points higher. That might make sense in that Cabrera bats cleanup while Trout leads off, but when you consider that Cabrera's SLG was .606, an elite number, and Trout's was .564, a number that most teams would want in their "power" positions, it hammers home the kind of season Trout had.
However, as Jonah Keri pointed out at Grantland today, ballparks are not uniform, and different parks can have different effects on hitters. As it turns out, Comerica Park is a much, much easier place to be an offensive producer than Angel Stadium, and the ballpark-and-positionally adjusted stat called OPS+ (on base percentage plus slugging percentage, only adjusted for those things) bears that out. Trout led the American League with 171 OPS+ to Cabrera's 166.
However, once we move past offense and go into defense and baserunning, Trout pulls away considerably. Trout had more stolen bases than Cabrera by far, but even more importantly, he's unilaterally considered to be a far more effective baserunner on batted balls as well, a bigger threat to score on a hit and a far less likely out on other close plays. That's not trivial, especially given that sometimes, games are decided on plays at the plate or by guys being able to score from second on a single in the gap or from third on a short sacrifice fly.
Defense is another laugher of a win for Trout here. I know that people may not trust defensive metrics, which could be at the base of people ignoring said metrics for "the eye test" or even worse, using fielding percentage. Fielding percentage is absolutely useless. The eye test, however, oftentimes yields the best results when it comes to defense.
Before all these advanced metrics came out, there were players valued for their defense who made All-Star teams and the Hall of Fame. The most famous of these were Brooks Robinson and Ozzie Smith. Had we just used offensive metrics, Robinson would have been considered a "nice" player but not Hall of Fame level, and Smith would have been laughed off his first ballot. However, people recognized their defensive skills and they were put in the Hall, Smith on his first ballot. The funny thing is that both guys did end up rating pretty highly on several different advanced defensive metrics, so even if these numbers are a bit hard to swallow for some, they do have a correlation between what happens on the diamond.
That being said, the eye test will tell anyone that Trout was a defensive standout. Playing in the hardest outfield position, center, he covered more ground and robbed so many batters of home runs that he was almost counted upon to save a run or two every game. Cabrera, however, was moved to third "for the good of the team" when they signed Prince Fielder to play at first base, Cabrera's natural defensive position. Third base is also a demanding position, and by all accounts, Cabrera's defense was adequate at best. Regardless of what anyone will believe, defense is important and it can win ballgames. It can lose them too. Just ask Red Sox fans, they'll be glad to ramble on about that.
Looking at the whole picture, it's clear to me at least that Trout is the Most Valuable Player in the American League by a comfortable margin for the things he actually did, not the runs he got credit for because of what the guys on base could or couldn't do. That's not to diminish Cabrera's season. It was astounding and a huge reason why the Tigers were able to win their division. But on individual merit and actual value? He's not Mike Trout. No one in the American League was.
