DMN's Evan Grant votes for Michael Young as AL MVP

As someone pointed out, other organizations are free to award their own awards and compete for recognition.

 

Since he has more than once been referred to as a "homer" and one post said "he appears to have dropped any hope of making a logical and coherent argument" and another said, "My guess is that if the justification were honest, it would basically read, 'I've gotten to know Michael Young really well. I respect him and like him personally, so I want him to win this award,' " I would say, yes, his integrity has indeed been questioned. And those who have done so are off base, to use a baseball-themed term.

 

Fetch me a beer, newbie.

 

So how you know that what you're touting is "quality" statistical analysis? Or is any kind of statistical analysis always unerring? Is there ever any bias programmed into the formulation of certain stats?

You act like the baseball writers who actually watch the games and the players in person all season don't do their research -- which would include consulting both traditional and sabermetric stats -- as they come to their conclusions. Evan stated that he does, and I'll take him at his word.

You simply don't like his conclusion because it doesn't match yours. And because he didn't come to his decision in the exact same way that you would have. That's your problem, not his. Look, if I had a vote, I would not have given Michael Young a first-place vote. But I can see his obvious value to the Rangers, who made it to the postseason in part due to his significant contributions.

Here's the biggest rub in this: Sabermetricians insist that you reach the same conclusion as them using only their methodology. But that's not how life works. The people who are paid to watch and write about the game for large media outlets do so in a honest way. They're professionals who should also be independent thinkers. I believe Verlander was a credible choice as the winner, but I also believe that a strong case could be made for any of the top eight vote recipients: Verlander, Ellsbury, Bautista, Granderson, Cabrera, Cano, Gonzalez and Young. Each brought great value to their teams.

I simply don't get the vilification of writers who don't happen to fall in line with the people who use nothing but a few very specific stats to reach their conclusions.

 

Yeah, that's pretty dumb. Who cares about his motives, one way or the other?

 

No. They reach a conclusion and support it well. Others are free to do the same.

 

Are you saying that Evan Grant has not?

And I'm not sure that you can make a blanket statement about sabermetricians always supporting their conclusions well. Again, it goes back to many of them believing their research is unerring.

 

He did. But why are sabermetricians bound to agree with him?

It seems a lot of time, the biggest argument against sabermetrics people is, "They think that they're right!"

That's a weird criticism to me.

 

They aren't.

But their arguments - taken in a vacuum - aren't necessarily any better founded than his.

 

So? They made their case. He made his. Pick which one you are more convinced by. But, "They think they're so right all the time!" is not an argument.

 

Dick, that's my point. Evan is the one getting blasted in the sabermetrics community on this issue, which is what made it the premise of this thread. My only point in this is that he did his research and made his choice, one of several acceptable choices that could have been made. Young was named on 23 of 28 ballots (and the only guy who got at least one vote in all 10 slots on the ballot). It's not that much of a reach to put him No. 1. I just find some of the venom reserved for working baseball writers by the SABR crowd over the top.

 

What do you consider "venom"?