Baseball Thread V

Despite the BitterYoungDickhead's rantings about Ortiz and his hatred for A-Rod, there was no "wrong" choice between those two last year...except in the twisted minds of the A-Rod haters.

 

I understand that, casty. My point was that there wasn't really a bad choice between the two. Ortiz had the numbers like A-Rod, who also played the field. And both played on damn good teams.

Two very legit candidates, pick one.

 

Casty, your vote in 1987 wasn't wrong and I hope no one has said so. They'd be wrong. There is no such thing as a wrong MVP vote. Alas that means there's no such thing as a right one, either.
I might well have made the same choice. All teams are different, and the speed-line drives-defense formula the '80s Cards used made them as dependent on Smith's contriibutions as the leading HR-RBI is on a team constructed on the more common model. Being perhaps the all-time best at the most important defensive positioin carries obvious value that is harder to quantify than the "Player A hit a lot of homers" method of assessing a guy's worth.
Maybe the title of the award should be changed from Most Valuable to Most Value-Added Player. That, I think, would at least give voters a more consistent definition to work with. As it stands now, there's still an argument over a quite reasonable, defensible, and proper vote you cast 20 years ago.

 

Thanks AQB, no one would ever have thought of that if you didn't remind us :

 

If people are going to mention Reyes in context of NL MVP - how about Curtis Granderson as AL MVP?

I never would have thought about him in that context but he does lead the AL in Win Shares and he does lead the Tigers in Runs Created (RC). I know that these two stats aren't the favorites of some (hi spnited) but it did open my eyes to perhaps an overlooked major contributor to the team with the best record in MLB.

While thinking of AL MVP - it seems to be pretty wide open at this point. So close that maybe a closer like Jon Papelbon could grab it. Still very early but normally someone sprints ahead of the field by this point in the season.

 

That's why i said it.

 

WTF is a "win share"?

 

Michael, as the award is set up now, with no official rules of voting, it's all a matter of interpretation of the word value. When I first earned a vote I asked that question of some of the BBWAA veterans figuring that they would know better than me what those who originated the award wanted it to mean. You know what I came up with. Each voter has his own meaning for the award, and that's just the way it is until, and unless, they decide to rewrite it.

And when you get right down to it, maybe it's fine the way it is because the debate it creates isn't a bad thing. I just don't like it when I'm called nasty names for voting the way I do (did).

 

I believe it's a new-fangled type of stat. If a starter gets a no-decision but his team was tied when he went out, he gets a win-share.

That may not be the exact wording, but it's something similar to that I think.

 

Bill James invented Win Shares as a simple way to compare baseball players. The idea was to develop a statistic that allows you to compare shortstops and outfielders, starters and relievers, relievers and shortstops, etc. Since the win is the ultimate measure of success, James developed a stat that measures each player's contribution to his team's wins, or Win Shares.

Although the Win Share methodology is extremely complex, the output is simple: one number that represents the number of wins contributed by that player. Actually, Win Shares is the number of wins contributed by that player multiplied by three. Why? To make it simpler. By multiplying the result by three, Win Shares provides enough meaningful distinction between players. It's enough to say that Albert Pujols contributed 41 Win Shares last year. You don't have to say that he contributed 41.1. The extra decimal point doesn't add any accuracy.

There are three types of Win Shares: batting (which includes basestealing), fielding and pitching. Over an entire league, batters receive a little less than half of all Win Shares, and fielding and pitching receive slightly more than half. This will vary quite a bit for separate teams, depending on their relative strengths.

(stolen from some 2004 article from Hardball Times - http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/2004-win-shares-have-arrived)

 

Oh my God!

Read this post about Kevin Youkilis and then click the link at the end of the post.

http://lyflines.blogspot.com/2006/06/this-is-unfortunate.html

Oh my God! This cannot be intentional!