I know many people are sick of all the MVP talk and what not, and frankly, I am too, but the countless articles that are being penned complaining about how the wrong player won the National League MVP awards are grinding my brain to shreds, and I'm bored, so I need to let off some steam here.
Today's fisking comes courtesy of Murray Chass, who's really old and the stereotypical "Get off my lawn you newfangled nerds" baseball writer. All quoted sections below are from the article. My "responses" will echo some comments from the Baseball Think Factory thread, because those people are pretty smart.
This sentence like unraveled my brain and twisted it into a spiral. I can't even begin to comprehend what this means. But, at any rate, it's not about overcoming teammate performance. It's about providing value to your team.If a player should be rewarded in the most valuable player voting for enabling his team to overcome his teammates’ performances, should a player be penalized for not enabling his team to overcome his teammates’ performance?
I hate this argument. So much. Replace "Howard" with any of the numerous good players on the Phillies, and it's still perfectly true, and it's still not an argument for the MVP award.If not for Howard, the Mets would have won the N.L. East title.
Since the MVP award is technically a contest between players, wouldn't the logical thing be to compare the players in question? So, the players in question here are Ryan Howard and Albert Pujols. Chass is correct in that, without Howard, the Mets would likely have won the N.L. East. Of course, that ignores whose replacing Howard.
How about if instead of Howard, they had the guy he's up against in the MVP discussion, Mr. Albert Pujols? Would the Phillies have lost the division? Anybody with a half-functioning brain would know the answer to that question is "No." Anybody with a half-functioning brain would know that if the Phillies had Albert Pujols instead of Ryan Howard, they would've pounded the Mets silly and had a sizable lead in the division. That exercise pretty much proves that Pujols is more valuable than Howard.
The Cardinals weren't good enough. Not Albert Pujols.As for Pujols, the Cardinals didn’t win the World Series, or even play in it, because they weren’t good enough to make the playoffs
What? No! That makes no sense. Pujols wasn't "valuable enough" because his teammates were worse than Howard's? Ugh.and Pujols wasn’t valuable enough to carry them there the way Howard carried the Phillies.
Ray DiPerna at BTF said:Many non-voters mistake the m.v.p. for player of the year. There’s a difference in the two distinctions.
"What is with this nonsense of asserting that "most valuable" and "best player" are different concepts? Why are we looking at the quality of Howard's teammates (playoff team) rather than the quality of Howard? Put Albert Pujols on the Phillies instead of Howard,..., and the Phillies will beat the Mets by more than 3 games. Put your most "valuable" player Ryan Howard on the Cardinals instead of Pujols,..., and the Cardinals finish even more than 4 games out of a playoff spot.
And kubiwan said:
Does anyone else get tired of this argument? It seems pretty clear that the entire point of the award is to the honor the best player in the league, with the name "Most Valuable Player" just being choosen for being snappy. Is it really an honor to win a "Most [Insert Definition Here] Award"?
I feel the same about the Hall of Fame. The intent was the honor the best players, with the name just being snappier than "Hall of Great Baseballers", but people still pull out the "Well, we are looking for the most "famous" players" argument?
No, they wouldn't, and that'd be silly, because way more should go into than that, such as position, baserunning, defense, park adjustments, etc.If the award were for player of the year, the voters would simply look at the statistics and see which player drove in the most runs and hit for the highest average or had the highest OPS.
1) It's not "relatively recent". Well, okay, if you're 448 years old like Chass, then yes, it's relatively recent, but really, OPS has been around for well over 25 years now.Oops, there I’ve said it. OPS. It’s a relatively recent term that still has to be explained because most fans over 35 probably don’t know what it means. It happens to be one of the acceptable new statistics because it easily demonstrates a player’s offensive value.
But it’s not really a new statistic. It’s just a new name. Some of us have been adding on-base percentage and slugging percentage for years; we just didn’t call it by a particular name. Now we have one: OPS.
2) Most fans over the age of 35 that follow baseball on a regular basis probably do know what it means. It's not a difficult concept to understand.
He's right. They don't automatically give the award to the player with the highest four-digit, one-decimal-point number, nor should they. But if Chass had his way, they'd give it to the player on a playoff team that played good in September with the highest three-digit, zero-decimal-point number. Which, of course, makes less sense, but there's no room for logic here!But I digress. Writers voting for m.v.p. consider a player’s OPS, but they don’t automatically give the award to the player with the highest four-digit, one-decimal-point number. That’s because the award goes to the player who was most valuable, not the player with the best statistics.
Oh. My. God. The contributions of one Jose Alberto Pujols weren't critical to his team's success? Maybe they've changed the definition of "critical", but without that guy, they wouldn't have been contending for the entire year. They would've likely been sub-.500. If there's any player whose contributions were critical to his team's success, it was Albert Pujols. The Cardinals didn't make the playoffs, true, but how can their season be called anything but a "success"? Nobody considered them to be contenders, and yet they battled hard all year long....in large part due to Albert Pujols and his historically great season. Without Albert Pujols, the Cardinals could not have contended all year (ie. what they did). That fits your definition in the first sentence, pal.My own definition over the years has been to designate the player without whom his team could not have done what it did. That doesn’t mean a key player who suffers a disabling injury and misses half the season. It’s a player whose contributions are critical to the team’s success.
Also, smart readers will catch that I'm saying the same thing I deconstructed above with the whole "Without him, they couldn't have done it" thing. But, here's the catch...replace Albert Pujols on the Cardinals with any other first basemen in the game, and the Cardinals would have been worse. That's why the argument works for Pujols.
This argument shoots the one you're making in the foot. It's 100% utterly obvious that the Phillies had more contributing players than the Cardinals. Hence, by your belief, each Phillie is "less valuable" than each Cardinal. So, how exactly is Ryan Howard more valuable than Albert Pujols?The more contributing players on a team, I have always felt, the less valuable each one is.
Ryan Howard's OPS was actually .882.In this instance, Pujols vs. Howard, I suspect many of the voters were attracted by the gaudy OPS numbers Pujols registered - 1.115 to Howard’s .970.
This does not mean that the rest of the season didn't happen and was meaningless.In September, when the Phillies won the division title...
Cole Hamels had a 2.84 ERA in September. Jamie Moyer had a 3.26 ERA and was 4-0. Brad Lidge allowed 1 run in 12.2 innings and saved 8 games without blowing any leads. But, of course, Triple Crown stats are all that matters.With monthly season highs of .352, 11 homers and 32 r.b.i., Howard powered the Phillies to a 17-8 September record that brought them from one game behind the Mets to three games ahead.
Also, once again, there are 5 other months to the season, all of which count. As Ray DiPerna at BTF said, "It's not the Most Valuable Triple Crown Hitter In September For A Team That Jumped Into First Place In September And Made The Playoffs By The Least Amount award."
Also from Ray DiPerna:
"What is with this lunacy of focusing on September stats, while ignoring that Howard had a freaking .287 on base percentage in June, which helped his team to a 12-14 record for that month?"
From El Hijo del Ron Santo (Alan Keiper):
"His September was nice. Thank goodness the Phillies were in a position to make a run and not too far back. Who put them in position to win in the first place? Largely Chase Utley, who had better hitting statistics, better fielding at a premium position, and who ran the bases. One month does not make an MVP, and while it was good it was hardly historic."
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Originally Posted by HoustonGM
