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

Based on WAR (Wanking Above Replacement)?

 

Let's change the name to aWARds.

 

WAR is not a predictive stat.

 

You don't think a player has additional value to a team by his or her leadership, influence upon chemistry, selflessness and other things that "don't show up in the boxscore," or is that just stuff that sounds good? Because if your position is as simple as you say it, then there should be no voting. Best stats win.

 

The search for the five-toy player

 

Find me the years someone won the Most Valuable Player award because of "intangibles."

Voters have always based their vote on the numbers. They just use different numbers now.

 

Depends how the person reached that belief. Best as I can tell, the WAR folks have used the scientific method and statistical analysis to reject the importance of "late & close" performances. Has this other person put a similar amount of work into verifying his belief? It's human nature to get fooled by our cognitive biases and heuristics when decisionmaking. I suppose if one doesn't accept the scientific method it's difficult to prove they're wrong, but it's also much more difficult for me to trust their analysis.

Further, even if this person was "right"--or at least not wrong--that "late & close" performances matter, is there any proof that he actually tried to measure the performance of his MVP choice relative to other players in the league?

 

Then why vote, Dick? Set the benchmarks, and the player who hits it -- or exceeds all others who hit it -- wins. Otherwise, the "always" of this voting history is just silly, right? Something for people to do to make them feel important?

 

What benchmarks then? You use objective numbers, but there are still close calls in determining who was most valuable over 162 games.

You really trust someone in San Francisco basing his vote upon the leadership of someone who plays in, say, Philadelphia?

I don't.

 

Dick, I don't trust anybody.

 

Johnny trusted a guy once.

Once.

 

Shhhhhh.