Why does the Triple Crown seem underhyped?

Mizzou, I would not lump OPS with WAR. OPS is included in every stat line you see for a player now. It is not some "sabergeek" stat anymore.

 

Oh, I agree... I'm not even sure WAR is in that category anymore. I think there's enough of a following at this point, that it doesn't seem as strange as it did several years ago.

 

Robinson is a big part of the reason (along with arguably the greatest pennant race of all-time, which dominated the headlines) that Yaz's Triple Crown was underhyped at the time, but not because he had just done it himself.

It's because Frank Robby — despite a severe concussion in midseason that sidelined him for all but 2 games in July — was far ahead of Yaz in batting average that summer. Killebrew was also neck and neck with Yaz in HR/RBI until he went into a huge slump in August (although he rebounded with a great September.) So Yaz didn't start seriously contending for the Triple Crown until the final two weeks, similar to Cabrera. After September 20 or so, there are plenty of stories in the papers about Yaz vying for the Triple Crown. But that's also when the pennant race was on the line, so it did get a lot more play around the country.

Code:

[u]July 1[/u]
BA                      HR                    RBI
Robinson .337           Killebrew 22          Robinson 59
Yastrzemski .332        Yastrzemski 18        Yastrzemski 53

[u]August 1[/u]
BA                      HR                    RBI
Robinson .333           Killebrew 32          Killebrew 75
Yastrzemski .318        Yastrzemski 27        Yastrzemski 75

[u]September 1[/u]
BA                      HR                    RBI
[b]Robinson .327[/b]           Yastrzemski 35        Yastrzemski 95
[b]Yastrzemski .311[/b]        Killebrew 34          Killebrew 90

[u]September 15[/u]
BA                      HR                    RBI
Robinson .315           Yastrzemski 39        Yastrzemski 103
Yastrzemski .313        Killebrew 39          Killebrew 101

[u]October 1[/u] (end of season)
BA                      HR                    RBI
Yastrzemski .326        Yastrzemski 44        Yastrzemski 121
Robinson .311           Killebrew 44          Killebrew 113

But look at that final stretch: Yaz had 5 HR/18 RBI in the last two weeks, including seven multi-hit games, and Killebrew had 5 HR/12 RBI. Amazing.

 

Also, this.

This "underhyped" angle is getting, you know, way too much hype today.

Hell, the Tigers are even selling "batter's box dirt" with a Triple Crown logo on it: http://shop.mlb.com/product/index.jsp?productId=13143703&cp=16296446. It's hyped, all right.

 

Batter's box dirt? That seems a bit much, even by today's commercialized standards.

 

They really are very different. OPS is an objective measure with no guesswork involved. There is only one way to arrive at OPS.

War attempts to measure things that people can't even agree on how to measure them.

 

That's a hell of a post Buck.

 

Cabrera's was the least impressive Triple crown in history. So says Corcoran:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/cliff_corcoran/10/04/miguel-cabrera-triple-crown-rank/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_wr_a1

 

No offense, but that was a horrible column. Defense has nothing to do with the Triple Crown, so WAR has no place in that discussion. (If you *have* to use WAR, at least use oWAR instead. But even then, that really makes no sense. If you're only judging hitting, who cares what position he plays? That matters for MVP discussion, but not here.)

And that second method of "analysis" was ... I'm at a loss for words. Margin of victory? What is this, the BCS?

 

According to that column, Mickey Mantle was relatively subpar among TC winners because in 1956 he hit .353 but someone else hit .345. No matter that Mantle's BA was the second highest winning BA in the American League for the decade from
1951-1960.

Buck, you should teach a WAR seminar -- not for guys like me who aren't inclined to put much stock in it, but for guys like this writer who want to talk about it but clearly can't.

 

That was a dreadful column...

 

Hey, SI has Jay Jaffe writing for them now, and the Man with the Mustache knows a hell of a lot more about this stuff than I do!

Here's a much better attempt at the same type of analysis, from SABR President Vince Gennaro:

http://sabr.org/latest/gennaro-most-dominant-triple-crown-winner

(If my math is correct — and it usually isn't — Cabrera would rank eighth among TC winners, between Klein and Mantle, using Vince's Triple Crown Index method here.)