Examining WAR and MVP Voting

WAR and a lot of in dept SABR stats confuses me, so this is helpful.

My vote goes to Miguel Cabrera, for most valuable.

The Red Sox or Yankees would still win the Al East or Wild Card without one of Pedroia/Ellsbury/A-Gon and the Yankees would still win it without Granderson.

Miggy means the most to the Tigers, who are currently a playoff team.

For me, I vote for the guy who has the biggest impact on getting his team to the playoffs. The guy that was most valuable to his team.

And I don’t like looking at year-to-year WAR values. They’re too dependent on UZR or whatever fielding metric the system is using, and those can fluctuate too much from season-to-season.

Just goes to show that Jeter should of won in 2006. Pedroia or Sizemore deserved the MVP that year when even I doubted he deserved it. (Before I looked at WAR and stuff)

Also I don’t think they’ll pick Pedroia. I think they’ll pick Gonzalez.. We talked about this on twitter though. You know I’m with you on Bautista.

I’m not sure, I’ve never looked into it, but with 3 people on the Red Sox who could be in contention for the MVP, could that keep all 3 from getting enough of the vote to win? Is it better to be the 1 great player on your team in that case?

Sizemore was a great overall OF those two seasons, Zobrist was excellent wherever he played and of course Hamilton is an all around beast, but aside from Hamilton I’m not sure any of those seasons deserve to be placed, by WAR, ahead of many of those they were ahead of. Not to say the MVP was correct that year, but neither was the WAR ranking.

Most Valuable vs. Most Outstanding. That always seems to be the argument that gets trotted out when someone like Morneau comes out of left field (or first base, whatever) and wins.

Granted, the whole point of WAR is to represent value to the team. But there is objective, statistical value, and then there are the dreaded intangibles, which close the door on logical arguments with a bunch of hand-waving, in my opinion.

Nice article, by the way…

even if he deserves. I almost care about RC v. Pedroia more than NYY v. BOS.

It’s bad enough this season I’ve had to admit Pedroia is simply better, but if he wins TWO MVP’s…the horror.

So I’m hoping Curtis hits even more HR, or Baustista breaks out his spell and starts hitting like 12 HR a month again.

I always hate getting into these types of discussions because MVP is so vaguely and often arbitrarily defined. The overwhelming feeling seems to be that MVP players must be on teams that are good, but not too good.

If you’re Jose Bautista: You’re an absolute force, but you get points knocked off of you because the Blue Jays suck.

If you’re Dustin Pedroia: You’re in the middle of an absolutely tremendous season, but you get points knocked off of you because the Red Sox are a great team. They would (likely) still be a playoff team without him and he gets plenty of support in the lineup.

So, to be a proper MVP candidate, your team has to win enough to at least be in the hunt for the playoffs, but you don’t want to be on a juggernaut team either.

This is just plain stupid.

First of all, I hate the methodology of “how would [Team X] be doing without [Player Y].” For example: How would the Yankees be doing without MVP candidate Curtis Granderson?

The likely answer that most people would give is: Not nearly as well as they’ve been doing, but possibly still in the playoff hunt. The real answer is: No one has any clue. If Curtis Granderson retired from baseball before the 2011 season to breed llamas, who is to say that the Yankees don’t swing a deal for Matt Kemp, or move Brett Gardner to center field and shave a run off of every pitcher’s ERA, or get 40 home runs out of every day starter Andruw Jones?

None of those things are guaranteed (or even likely) to happen, but can you tell me definitely how the Yankees would be doing without Granderson? No, you can’t, and that’s where I draw issue with the entire thing. The whole MVP process is fraught with assigning the success and/or failure of teams to individual players, and that has always been bottom of the barrel, pointless analysis.

I don’t know if I have a better solution. I definitely wouldn’t say that single season WAR is the way to go. But, at the very least, these awards should be recognized for what they are: completely arbitrary and a way for sportswriters to further narratives.

its based on defense (as it should be) but we have no good defensive stats. UZR sucks, especially for infielders, at best, most of the defensive stats we have now are only valid over several years, theres just too much fluctuation form year to year. fangraphs has curtis granderson at something like 4.5 WAR because they hate his defense, while BR has him a full win higher because they like it. and this should be deciding our MVP?

really, i dont like WAR because i dont like stats that try to tell you too much. BA tells you something; how often a guy goes up to the play and gets a hit, not including walks, and other factors. it does not tell you how good of a hitter a player is. on base % tells you how often a guys gets on base. it alone does not tell you how good of a hitter someone is. RBIs are a counter, how often a guy drove in a run. it alone does not tell you how good of a batter someone is. fielding % again, just tells you something; how often a guy gives up an error. THATS IT. it will not tell you how good of a fielder someone is. i dont think such a thing is possible to quantify. great example is the good ol’ cano vs pedroia debate. who is the better hitter. there is no answer because they are different types of hitter. getting a hit helps drive in runs, while drawing a walk wont help as much.

moral of the story, i like stats that dont try to do too much. i dont like stats that say how good an entire player is, because thats trying to do way too much. there, rant over.

and I think the majority of baseball fans do, too. You need a freaking mathematics degree to figure it out and a lot of them use numbers that are subjective. Kind of like calculus. I hate calculus. Now batting average, OBP, SLG and ERA are numbers the average fan can figure out AND understand that don’t require some Einsteinian formula. I realize that stats like WAR park adjusted stats are here to stay, but I don’t have to like it.

1. Bautista
2. Cabrera
3. Granderson
4. A-Gon
5. Konerko

-Because seriously, are we going to continue to ignore Bautista’s still having an incredible season even with a slower second half?
-Cabrera has come out of nowhere and he’s the reason Detroit’s going to win the Central.
-Granderson > A-Gon because Gonzalez has slipped a little recently, but they’re interchangeable.
-Yeah, the White Sox suck. Really bad. But Konerko’s the only reason to watch them.