The AL MVP Race

Who is the 2016 AL MVP?


  • Total voters
    144

JohntheBaptist

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Value in terms of WAR is linear, but value in terms of "World Series Win Probability Added" is non-linear. If Mike Trout and Mookie Betts both go two for five with a home run and a double, they've added the same WAR, but Mookie increases the chance the Sox win the world series by, let's say, 0.2% whereas Trout adds exactly 0.00% (since the Angels have been eliminated).
...because of the roster the FO surrounded each of them with.

Rewarding/ docking a player for the roster he's on in a discussion of who has been the most valuable individual player still doesn't make sense to me.

The boring answer is Trout, especially because it's been four straight years he's been the "boring" answer. But I can't see any way he hasn't been the most valuable.
 

Hendu for Kutch

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Right...a quarter is more valuable than a dime. Even if you waste the quarter on a gumball vs the guy who puts his dime into his 401k, the quarter's value is unrelated to the investing prowess of the spender.
 

Hagios

New Member
Dec 15, 2007
672
...because of the roster the FO surrounded each of them with.
Sure, and the Red Sox only beat the Indians because of the rest of the roster, but we all remember JD Drew's grand slam. We remember and make note of WPA, so why not remember and make note of "playoff probability added?"
 

soxfan121

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...because of the roster the FO surrounded each of them with.

Rewarding/ docking a player for the roster he's on in a discussion of who has been the most valuable individual player still doesn't make sense to me.

The boring answer is Trout, especially because it's been four straight years he's been the "boring" answer. But I can't see any way he hasn't been the most valuable.
Did you write this (awesome) piece over at Fangraphs? If not, you could have.

So here’s what I would like to add to Ken’s plea to our BBWAA brethren; if you’re going to argue that Trout cannot be more valuable than one of Mookie Betts, Josh Donaldson, or Manny Machado, because his teammates didn’t let him turn his production into value, then extend that belief throughout your ballot. Own the idea of value being exclusively created by team wins and playoff appearances, and apply it to every place on the ballot, not just the top spot.


The results of the last four MVP votes show just how inconsistently this philosophy is applied, as Mike Trout has finished second in all three of the years he didn’t win the award. The year he did win, of course, the Angels won 98 games and advanced to the playoffs, but in the other three years, he finished behind Miguel Cabrera (twice) and Josh Donaldson, who played on playoff teams, and clearly got a voting boost because of it.
 

AB in DC

OG Football Writing
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Jul 10, 2002
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Great piece, I never understood the logic of the second place vote. Either Trout is your MVP or he shouldn't be anywhere on your ballot in a year where he is head and shoulders above the competition.
Not to single you out, but this is probably the dumbest argument I've seen on the board outside of a Farrell thread. Why on earth should this be an all-or-nothing issue?

Imagine if people did this for other metrics. "If fielding ability matters to your MVP vote, then you should never, ever vote for a bad fielder. You should vote for only the best fielders in the league."

Or "If home runs matter to an MVP vote, then you should never vote for player who's not a league leader in home runs. You should only vote for the biggest sluggers in the league".

It makes absolutely no sense.
 

Sir Lancelotti

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Jul 31, 2006
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Value should be considered in an MVP vote, all components that go into producing value (OBP, GIDP, UZR, hell RBI's if that's your thing) need to be evaluated. Games aren't played in a vacuum and context should absolutely be considered, which is why I had no problem with Donaldson winning last year. He produced similar value to Trout and got the bump for his production down the stretch for a competitive playoff team. In 2016 Trout is outperforming all the other candidates pretty handily, but writers are going to penalize him for contextual factors he has no control over like having crappy teammates and a front office that has produced a farm system that probably has the Rally Monkey in the BA top 10. If you don't want to vote for Trout because he is producing on a non-competitive team, that's fine, writers use arbitrary criteria all the time in the voting process. I just think a second place vote is inconsistent logic if your discounting his value based on factors he has no control of in a year where he's conservatively a full win above his competition.

That said I'm hoping Trout goes 0 - rest of the season and Mookie hits 8 bombs in the final week to make the whole discussion moot.
 

Sir Lancelotti

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2002 AL MVP voting was a clear cut example of this, Tejada won the MVP on a 103 win team over a positional contemporary (Arod) that finished 2nd in the voting yet out produced him by 3 WAR on a last place team. Arod picked up a large majority of second place votes by writers that voted for Tejada on the logic his value should be dismissed playing for a last place team.
 

uk_sox_fan

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Nov 11, 2006
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Not to single you out, but this is probably the dumbest argument I've seen on the board outside of a Farrell thread. Why on earth should this be an all-or-nothing issue?

Imagine if people did this for other metrics. "If fielding ability matters to your MVP vote, then you should never, ever vote for a bad fielder. You should vote for only the best fielders in the league."

Or "If home runs matter to an MVP vote, then you should never vote for player who's not a league leader in home runs. You should only vote for the biggest sluggers in the league".

It makes absolutely no sense.
You completely missed the point of the article - made worse by your rant about how dumb it is. The article just argues for consistency in criteria in votes for 1st place, 2nd place, etc. If you have a disqualifying criterion for 1st place votes -- such as it can't be a pitcher, a DH, a lefty or a bottom-dweller -- you should not then ignore that same criterion for 2nd place votes and below. If you have a rating system that docks points for one or more of the above criteria and it causes a player to drop a few places that's fine - just make sure you apply the deduction equally among all candidates instead of it just influencing your 1st place vote.

Your examples don't address this at all and just serve as a weird straw man argument to spur your rant.
 

JohntheBaptist

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Sure, and the Red Sox only beat the Indians because of the rest of the roster, but we all remember JD Drew's grand slam. We remember and make note of WPA, so why not remember and make note of "playoff probability added?"
You didn't say WPA in your first post, you said "World Series Probability Added." WPA tracks an individual player's contribution to a win; value. WSPA tracks a team's likelihood of winning the world series, which is a measure of the team. That Trout's contributions to that ultimately end up falling short is a measure of his entire team, not the value he provides in regular season games. That Trout added the most regular season win probability is a measure of his value. I don't happen to know who's WPA over the season was best, just saying.

It's a little bit like RBI and pitcher wins--they tell you something, but they don't tell you about the individual player, and overvaluing them is a problem in that it purports to measure the player when it really tells a tale of the player in the context of the team he was surrounded with.
 

Hagios

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Dec 15, 2007
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You didn't say WPA in your first post, you said "World Series Probability Added." WPA tracks an individual player's contribution to a win; value. WSPA tracks a team's likelihood of winning the world series, which is a measure of the team. That Trout's contributions to that ultimately end up falling short is a measure of his entire team, not the value he provides in regular season games. That Trout added the most regular season win probability is a measure of his value. I don't happen to know who's WPA over the season was best, just saying.

It's a little bit like RBI and pitcher wins--they tell you something, but they don't tell you about the individual player, and overvaluing them is a problem in that it purports to measure the player when it really tells a tale of the player in the context of the team he was surrounded with.
"World Series Probability Added" is not a team's likelihood of winning the world series (that would World Series Probability), it is an individuals contribution to a team's chance of winning the World Series. It's exactly like WPA in that regard, and that's the analogy I was hoping to draw in my previous post. If you're down 17-0 then hitting a home run only adds a tiny bit of WPA, but if you're tied 2-2 then hitting a home run adds quite a lot. WPA is an individual stat that is dependent on the team. Same idea for WSPA. A 10 WAR player on the Angels can only add a bit to the team's WSPA, but a 9 WAR player on the Red Sox can add a lot.

The reason why RBI's and Wins have fallen out of favor is that they purport to be individual stats but aren't. But no one believes that WPA (or the hypothetical WSPA) are individual stats, they are just more rigorous ways of thinking about who's contributed the most to a contending team's success.
 

uncannymanny

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Jan 12, 2007
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If I misunderstand something basic here please forgive me.

How does one weight Trout's BB? I tend to look at the slash and think he's gotten a lot of "empty" walks because there's no one else on the team that warrants being scared of. I guess the counter to that is his counting stats might be even better if pitchers had to put the ball over the plate?

Just Trout's 12 IBB account for almost 25% of Mookie's TOTAL BB. And his walk total is more than twice that of Betts'. We've all watched Mookie play quite a bit...do we really think that Trout has 2x as good of an eye? O-Swing and Swing % are only marginally higher for Mookie so I'm seeing a lot of pitchers going around Trout because he's on bad team.
 

JohntheBaptist

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@Hagios Ok fair enough, I definitely misunderstood--that is an interesting new way to look at it for me. When you say this though:

A 10 WAR player on the Angels can only add a bit to the team's WSPA, but a 9 WAR player on the Red Sox can add a lot.
I'm still not seeing that as anything but taking the roster around the player into account, which is a step away from "individual award" to me. The 17-0 example is another one--the player hit a HR and provided value, the score of the game isn't the point in the context of determining the value provided by the individual.

Thanks for clearing that up for me though, it is an interesting perspective.
 

finnVT

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Jul 12, 2002
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Ok fair enough, I definitely misunderstood--that is an interesting new way to look at it for me. When you say this though:



I still don't see that as anything but taking the roster around the player into account, which is a step away from "individual award" to me. The 17-0 example is another one--the player hit a HR and provided value, the score of the game isn't the point in the context of determining the value provided by the individual.

Thanks for clearing that up for me though, it is an interesting perspective.
Right, but there's a different award for best hitter-- the Hank Aaron award. It hasn't gained the acclaim that the MVP award has, but in a world where it exists, we're forced to determined what it means to be "most valuable" as distinct from "best". I think reasonable people can disagree on what the best metric for value is (best stats ~ WAR? best stats in game context ~ WPA? best stats in team context ~ WSPA? best stats given financial burden ~ WAR/salary? etc, etc), but at a minimum I'd argue it should not be synonymous with best individual performance. I agree that it makes MVP less of an individual award, but I think the definition of the award almost requires it, and I don't see an inherent flaw in that.

In fact, I think you can even take this further and make the argument that it's easier to put up good stats on a bad team-- if you're constantly down 5-1 in games with fairly minimal playoff implications, you're probably getting a lot of good pitches to hit because teams are trying to avoid walks, you might not be hitting with a lot of guys on base, etc. To ignore context and look only at outcomes would seem to ignore this. And yes, I understand the flip argument can also be made, that playing on a stacked team, with batting order protection, can lead to more pitches to hit as well, and I'm fine with that being considered as well... that's simply another argument for considering context rather than looking only at raw hitting stats when the goal is to determine value.
 

Leather

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Jul 18, 2005
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I argue that, at a minimum, MVP takes into account defensive value and has nothing to do with team success.
 

JohntheBaptist

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Right, but there's a different award for best hitter-- the Hank Aaron award. It hasn't gained the acclaim that the MVP award has, but in a world where it exists, we're forced to determined what it means to be "most valuable" as distinct from "best". I think reasonable people can disagree on what the best metric for value is (best stats ~ WAR? best stats in game context ~ WPA? best stats in team context ~ WSPA? best stats given financial burden ~ WAR/salary? etc, etc), but at a minimum I'd argue it should not be synonymous with best individual performance. I agree that it makes MVP less of an individual award, but I think the definition of the award almost requires it, and I don't see an inherent flaw in that.

In fact, I think you can even take this further and make the argument that it's easier to put up good stats on a bad team-- if you're constantly down 5-1 in games with fairly minimal playoff implications, you're probably getting a lot of good pitches to hit because teams are trying to avoid walks, you might not be hitting with a lot of guys on base, etc. To ignore context and look only at outcomes would seem to ignore this. And yes, I understand the flip argument can also be made, that playing on a stacked team, with batting order protection, can lead to more pitches to hit as well, and I'm fine with that being considered as well... that's simply another argument for considering context rather than looking only at raw hitting stats when the goal is to determine value.
Well to your first sentence, that's great, but the MVP considers defense as well.

To the rest, the "it's easier to produce on a bad team," and your admission that it may also be something you can talk yourself into in the other direction is just muddying the waters. Neither of those statements strike me as true, and the ostensible effect on both hypothetical players would have checks on them anyway.

It absolutely should be synonymous with best individual performance. That is literally what the award is. The basic issue, to me, has always just been the torturing of the word "valuable" like it was supposed to be something other than a more elegant way to say "best." The best player is, ultimately, the most valuable.
 

moondog80

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Sep 20, 2005
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Trout is pretty clearly is the MVP in my mind. I will nonetheless be delighted if Mookie (or Ortiz) wins.
 

tbrep

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Even if he doesn't win, I hope Trout gets enough of the vote to come second. Five consecutive Top-2 MVP finishes to start a career (and still counting) would be awesome.

Really have to remind myself every now and then how special this guy is.
 
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grimshaw

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They obviously won't win, but could Pedroia, Bradley, and Ramirez be in the top 15 or so?
I hope Pedey and Bradley do at least. Pedey went from fringe all-star to all-star worthy in the 2nd half (even though the position is insanely stacked and he still wouldn't make the team). Bradley did little to hurt his case either.

The Hanley love has been a bit on the excessive side to me since he is arguably the 5th most irreplaceable player (not batter) penciled into the lineup. The games he has won them in the second half shouldn't have more of an effect than the games he lost them in the first half when he was mostly a bum who smiled and wasn't awful around the bag. The stretch run weight among voters bugs the shit out of me, since a game in April or May victory contributes to the overall win total that they needed to clinch the damn thing.

And really he's finishing up as maybe the 4th or 5th best 1B in the AL behind Miggy, Encarnacion, and Santana.

Now if he hits within the stratosphere of his second half this year next year, it's a different story, but he just hasn't been one of the top 15 players this year in the big picture.
 
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ifmanis5

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Did I miss something or are you just referring to an 0-5 when the division is essentially wrapped up?
I think he's referring to NY voters who vote merely on the last thing they see and like to be told a good bedtime story like Papi clinching the division against their storied rivals in the House That Ruth Built, etc.
 

DJnVa

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Dec 16, 2010
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I think he's referring to NY voters who vote merely on the last thing they see and like to be told a good bedtime story like Papi clinching the division against their storied rivals in the House That Ruth Built, etc.
Well good thing it's not a one game series then.
 

Max Power

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At this point, I'd vote for Ortiz. He's been the best hitter in the game this year and by far the best when it's counted. He has a nearly 1.200 OPS with runners on, whereas Trout is slightly worse than his overall numbers in those situations. Ortiz has come to the plate with 424 runners on base and scored 22% of them. Trout has had nearly as many opportunities, but only scored 17%. That means that Trout's .440 OBP is mostly a function of pitchers' working around him because of how terrible his team is rather than some otherworldly skill at controlling the zone.

No, situational hitting numbers aren't predictive, but they tell you what actually happened. I feel like that's what MVP is about, rather than who would have been the best if you remove all context.
 

Savin Hillbilly

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Jul 10, 2007
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The wrong side of the bridge....
It's gotta be Trout. If Betts had had a blazing-hot, "climb on my back" kind of September, I think he'd be the guy. But instead he's had his second-weakest offensive month of the season, with his power essentially disappearing (.076 ISO). That makes the gap between Trout and Betts in overall production harder to ignore, I think. Ortiz may get some votes, but he's not really the MVP, just the best hitter in the league. The writers aren't that sentimental.
 

E5 Yaz

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Cafardo hath spoken ... He says it's Betts, because of intangibles and the Angels not being in the playoffs
 

Mueller's Twin Grannies

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I think it goes to Ortiz because baseball loves history and glory and great theater. It will be too tempting, especially after last night. If he hits another homerun or drives in another game-winning run in the next two days, he's a lock.
 

YTF

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I think it goes to Ortiz because baseball loves history and glory and great theater. It will be too tempting, especially after last night. If he hits another homerun or drives in another game-winning run in the next two days, he's a lock.
I doubt he gets it, I'm not even sure he's MVP of his team and there's that whole doesn't play defense thing that will likely work against him as well. As for the last sentence, I don't know if that has that big of an impact nationally. I'm also curious as to how many voters may have already submitted their ballots. I think he'll get some votes, but not sure he gets many 1st place votes and perhaps not many 2nd place either.
 

Marciano490

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Nov 4, 2007
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I imagine, for those who haven't voted, that Trout can help himself a bit by getting to round numbers - 30 homers and steals and 100 rbis. He had a couple steals last night to get up to 29.
 

barbed wire Bob

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Trout's 2016 stats: .315/.441/.550, with 29 home runs, 100 RBIs, 123 runs, 116 walks and 30 stolen bases. OPS+ was 174.

Mookie Betts' 2016 stats: .304/.355/.500 with 31 home runs, 113 RBIs, 122 runs, 49 walks and 80 stolen bases. OPS+ was 131.

If I had a vote I would have to give it to Trout.
 

Hendu for Kutch

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I think Trout wins it, not because of some increased wisdom by the voters, but because the other candidates split the "must make the playoffs" vote while Trout sweeps those who don't make the playoffs a primary factor.

So I think Trout wins, but doesn't get half the first place votes.
 

Al Zarilla

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Ellsbury got screwed out of the MVP in 2011 because the Red Sox choked the playoffs. I hope Betts wins to, in part, make up for that. Nothing against Trout of course.
 

santadevil

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I think you have to give it to Betts with 80 SB.
Huh?

Are you thinking Extra Base Hits here of 78?
Ortiz had 87, but doesn't play D.
Trout had 66 of them.

I prematurely voted with Altuve about a month ago.
Ultimately I think Trout will win it as voters are becoming more knowledgeable about advanced stats.

I hope I'm wrong though, I'd love for Betts to win it.
 

ookami7m

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Ellsbury got screwed out of the MVP in 2011 because the Red Sox choked the playoffs. I hope Betts wins to, in part, make up for that. Nothing against Trout of course.
MVP (and other awards) are voted on before the playoffs start
 

Marbleheader

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The Sox famously didn't make the playoffs in 2011, which I think is his point.
 

grimshaw

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I still don't think it's Trout unless writers change their lines of thinking.

2012 - Led Miguel Cabrera by 3.5 WAR and got 6 first place votes

2013 -Led Cabrera by 2 WAR and got 5 first place votes.

2014 - He had the best year (his worst year incidentally), made the post season, and lo and behold won.

2015 -It was neck and neck between Trout and Donaldson, so not really a surprise that Trout got only 7 first place votes.

Cabrera's traditional stats of BA, HR, and RBI blew Trout's away in 2012-13 IMO, the trend is that the MVP still goes to the best hitter on a playoff team regardless of where they play in the field. This is shitty, but that's what you get when no one knows how to interpret what an award represents or what positional adjustments are.
 
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Ale Xander

Hamilton
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Oct 31, 2013
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AX ballot

1. Betts (slight edge due to moving to the cleanup role, successful both as setter and cleaner, and defense)
2. Ortiz (87 XBH at 40 years old, led league in RBI and OPS)
3. Trout
4. Altuve
5. Cano
6. Donaldson
7. Beltre
8. Britton
9. Miguel Cabrera
10. Dozier