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

[MrHavercamp]

Cabrera got a combined two first and second-place votes, the same as Young. Both were behind Verlander (16), Ellsbury (17), Bautista (12) and Granderson (7) in number of first and second-place votes. Again, they're all credible choices.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Young late & close: .406/.488/.580
Ellsbury late & close: .289/.373/.444

I want to know who those jackholes were who threw away their votes on Ellsbury and I want them fired.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Young late & close: .406/.488/.580
Ellsbury late & close: .289/.373/.444

I want to know who those jackholes were who threw away their votes on Ellsbury and I want them fired.

Who says he should be fired?

 

[Azrael]

So, lots of sports writers put lots of other players ahead of Miguel Cabrera. Huh.

 

[lono]

Lone nut.

 

[lcjjdnh]

If deck and lcjjdnh agree, there is only one right answer. If they disagree, she may not be able to take warp speed much longer.

I don't particularly care about this MVP vote. I only sought to address the larger issues of journalism that are implicated by it. My arguments assumed a meritless vote regardless of whether Mr. Grant's actually was meritless.

As for my preference for statistical analysis, call me a heretic, but I trust the scientific method. Must I respect someone's disbelief in global warming because they "saw it with their eyes, in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary.

 

[lono]

Was his integrity actually questioned?

"I never said Ed Muskie was taking ibogaine. I said there was a rumor in Milwaukeee that he was. Which was true, and I started the rumor in Milwaukee. If you read that carefully, I'm a very accurate journalist."

 

[MrHavercamp]

If deck and lcjjdnh agree, there is only one right answer. If they disagree, she may not be able to take warp speed much longer.

I don't particularly care about this MVP vote. I only sought to address the larger issues of journalism that are implicated by it. My arguments assumed a meritless vote regardless of whether Mr. Grant's actually was meritless.

As for my preference for statistical analysis, call me a heretic, but I trust the scientific method. Must I respect someone's disbelief in global warming because they "saw it with their eyes, in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary.

Yet another bogus argument: People who don't agree with every judgment of sabermetricians on baseball also must not agree with climate change. Try again.

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

Man, it's getting warm in here. Globally? Perhaps!

 

[Guy_Incognito]

Of course it is. It depends entirely upon your definition of "valuable."

I guess if your definition is "not as valuable," then Young could be credibly placed ahead of Cabrera.

Otherwise no.

Does position matter?

 

[dooley_womack1]

This all reminds me of when "Mark McGwire" could be envisioned bursting a blood vessel at the very thought that anyone could think Pujols would be the MVP over Votto, over one little stat line.

FWIW, I think that when it comes to a season MVP, I think things like situational/clutch hitting should come into play. Regardless of whether it was just good fortune, if you hit, say, a bunch of walk-off home runs, that is value added that season to your team. Doesn't matter if it was luck. All that matters is what happened.

Young led the league in late & close hitting with .406/.488/.580, and his OPS was .901 with the game within four runs and .642 with a margin of more than four runs.

But now we're getting into parsing the individual statistics and making arguments. The point that is being discussed is whether Grant can justify his vote, which I believe he can (and has).

And I use Garcia as an example because Azrael says there are no "wrong" votes, by definition.

Mmmmmm not what I said, in essence or in fact.

And still waiting for some sort of empirical indication of how a vote for Michael Young is not "credible."

Miguel Cabrera RISP: .388/.518/.673
Miguel Cabrera Late & Close: .341/.440/.576
Miguel Cabrera, w/in four runs OPS: 1.008 (.107 higher than Young)

Repeating: Miguel Cabrera, w/in four runs OPS: 1.008 (.107 higher than Young)....What in the fork makes this some kind of magic bullet that settles all arguments and renders all objectors as goobers?

For the record, I thought Verlander was a darn good choice. And picking Young for first place seemed out of place, but the defense of it shows this wasn't the equivalent of a Jim Deshaies for the Hall vote, and was a credible vote, even if, again, it wasn't one I would have made.

And sabermetrics is not scientific method, unless there is a scientific standard to "this will always lead to one team scoring more runs in a game than the other" that is as ironclad as one about an explosion occurring if two certain substances interact. Waaay too many variables to be able to say that, no matter how much a well-meaning mathematician formulizes away.

 

[lcjjdnh]

If deck and lcjjdnh agree, there is only one right answer. If they disagree, she may not be able to take warp speed much longer.

I don't particularly care about this MVP vote. I only sought to address the larger issues of journalism that are implicated by it. My arguments assumed a meritless vote regardless of whether Mr. Grant's actually was meritless.

As for my preference for statistical analysis, call me a heretic, but I trust the scientific method. Must I respect someone's disbelief in global warming because they "saw it with their eyes, in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary.

Yet another bogus argument: People who don't agree with every judgment of sabermetricians on baseball also must not agree with climate change. Try again.

Bogus argument? You must be familiar with a very different type of argumentative reasoning than I am. As I understand it, it is generally considered acceptable to illuminate a point by comparing one set of relationships to another. To say that sabermetric skeptics are to sabermetrics as climate change deniers are to climate change is not to say sabe sabermetric metrics skeptics are also climate change deniers.