MLB 2011 Part Two

Off Topic
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[quote]strungoutboy21 wrote:
The AL MVP will go to someone from the Red Sox or Yankees. A-Gon just got hot again so I think he is the front runner right now. I would say Granderson at the moment, but A-Gons average is a lot higher than his. I also think he is more valuable to his team than Granderson is.[/quote]

The only way Bautista loses the AL MVP is if the writers feel the players team must be in contention to be considered. Any properly done statistical analysis shows Bautista is by far the most productive hitter in the Major Leagues hands down.

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Speaking of Bautista he was just ejected for screaming at home plate ump Bill Welke to “pay attention” from dugout. lol

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MVP doesn’t stand for player with best stats. It’s for the Most Valuable Player. It typically goes to a guy on a playoff team. Of the past 10 MVP winners in MLB, only two were on teams that didn’t make the playoffs. One of them was Albert Pujols who was crazy good that year and nobody even came close.

I guarantee you it won’t go to Bautista unless everybody else in the face either gets hurt or goes on a huge slump. My money is on A-Gon who will also win the gold glove.

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[quote]strungoutboy21 wrote:
MVP doesn’t stand for player with best stats. It’s for the Most Valuable Player. It typically goes to a guy on a playoff team. Of the past 10 MVP winners in MLB, only two were on teams that didn’t make the playoffs. One of them was Albert Pujols who was crazy good that year and nobody even came close.

I guarantee you it won’t go to Bautista unless everybody else in the face either gets hurt or goes on a huge slump. My money is on A-Gon who will also win the gold glove.[/quote]

And how do you define Most Valuable Player? Does being on a talented team make you more valuable?

I’d love to know how you separate a players value to his team from his production. Please explain.

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For example. Without A-Gon, I think the Red Sox could be behind the Rays in the wildcard race. He is valuable to his team. In the beginning of the year he was one of the few hitters on the team actually doing something. I’ve heard other baseball writers also saying if the season ended today, they would pick A-Gon. I don’t think i’m in the minority here. I have nothing against Bautista, I just don’t think he will win it. Don’t get so butt hurt about it.

Even if you went purely by stats, Bautista doesn’t have the best stats out of the players DBcooper listed.

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[quote]strungoutboy21 wrote:
For example. Without A-Gon, I think the Red Sox could be behind the Rays in the wildcard race. He is valuable to his team. In the beginning of the year he was one of the few hitters on the team actually doing something. I’ve heard other baseball writers also saying if the season ended today, they would pick A-Gon. I don’t think i’m in the minority here. I have nothing against Bautista, I just don’t think he will win it. Don’t get so butt hurt about it.

Even if you went purely by stats, Bautista doesn’t have the best stats out of the players DBcooper listed. [/quote]

First of all, I’m not butthurt, I like discussing this.

Since what baseball writers say matters to you, go look at any analysis discussing each player’s stats. Here one I just pulled up from Sports Illustrated:

“Jose Bautista, RF, Blue Jays (2)
Season Stats: .318/.459/.652, 36 HRs, 80 RBIs
Last Three Weeks: .286/.461/.625, 5 HRs, 9 RBIs
By any purely objective analysis, Bautista has still been the best player in baseball, never mind the American League, this season. But because his team is not in contention, and because he has cooled off a bit since his white-hot first two months (.363/.505/.786, 20 HRs), his candidacy isn’t being taken as seriously as it deserves to be. According to Baseball Prospectus’s WARP, Bautista has been worth more than 2 Ã?½ wins more than the next-most-valuable player in the game this season (Ellsbury). FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference’s WAR have the race much tighter, but Bautista is still in the lead with a solid half-win lead over Ellsbury’s Red Sox teammate Dustin Pedroia and the Dodgers’ Matt Kemp, respectively.
Of course, one doesn’t need advanced stats to see how good Bautista has been. He’s leading the majors in the two most important things a hitter can do: getting on base (or, alternatively, not making outs) and hitting for extra-bases (that’s on-base and slugging percentage); he’s been a good and versatile defender, filling in at third-base when the Blue Jays needed him to and playing a strong rightfield; and he displays a similar athleticism on the bases. I expect that, if Bautista can avoid a major slump, he’ll get far more consideration once the final numbers are in. Then again, I worry that the recent sign-stealing controversy surrounding the Blue Jays could serve as an excuse for many disregard Bautista in this race. Those tempted to do so should note that Bautista has hit .311/.452/.631 with 19 of his 36 home runs on the road this season.”

So I would argue that DB’s analysis is off. You’ll be hard pressed to find any competent sports writer who will say statistically speaking, Bautista hasn’t had the best offensive season of all candidates. Check ESPN, check SI, check Foxsports it doesn’t matter. They may not pick Bautista as their MVP, but they all acknowledge he has the best statistics.

Sure A-Gon played well in the first 2 weeks of the season while the Red Sox went 0-10. But to say he is worth more to his team than Bautista because of that is ridiculous. A-Gon is on a team with 2 other MVP candidates and several other all-stars which he has largely benefited from. Even if he carried the team in the first 2 weeks, he is surrounded by all stars and suggesting they would be trailing the Rays without him is unlikely IMO. The Red Sox are too good even without him.

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The only way I would give the award to someone else is if Bautista slumps hard in these last 30+ games and one of the other candidates gets hot.

Edit: also what’s more impressive to you, A-Gon hitting well while his team slumped at the beginning the season or Bautista hitting:

(.363/.505/.786, 20 HRs) in the first 2 months of the season?

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Look, someone else with a different opinion!! Oh no!!

http://proxy.espn.go.com/blog/boston/red-sox/post/_/id/13543/video-picking-an-al-mvp

Maybe your opinion is a little biased because you are a Blue Jays fan.

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[quote]strungoutboy21 wrote:
Look, someone else with a different opinion!! Oh no!!

http://proxy.espn.go.com/blog/boston/red-sox/post/_/id/13543/video-picking-an-al-mvp

Maybe your opinion is a little biased because you are a Blue Jays fan.[/quote]

You didn’t read what I wrote. I acknowledge some writers have picked other players as their MVP candidate but they ALL acknowledge Jose Bautista has the best offensive stats. In the video you posted they say it in the first 20 seconds!

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“Best offensive player?”

“By far”

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Was talking to one of my boss’s sons, he’s like 23 or 24. He was telling me how boring baseball is and how much it sucks, all the negatives blah blah blah. Then he starts talking about the sport he loves the most… tennis.

His sister goes nuts over sports. We went out at noon in the middle of the summer here in Florida, easily over 100 degrees out, not a cloud in sight, to watch the Gators play baseball (yes I know not MLB but there’s no MLB teams around me!) She likes football too. This guy wakes up at 4am to watch tennis, and he sorts through his “Magic: The Gathering” cards every day. I told him his sister is more of a man than he is.

Also, for MVP:

AL: Adrian Gonzalez
NL: I really don’t know… I’m gonna guess Prince Fielder.

That’s who I think is going to win, not making a claim either way about who should win.

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[quote]eeu743 wrote:
Was talking to one of my boss’s sons, he’s like 23 or 24. He was telling me how boring baseball is and how much it sucks, all the negatives blah blah blah. Then he starts talking about the sport he loves the most… tennis.

His sister goes nuts over sports. We went out at noon in the middle of the summer here in Florida, easily over 100 degrees out, not a cloud in sight, to watch the Gators play baseball (yes I know not MLB but there’s no MLB teams around me!) She likes football too. This guy wakes up at 4am to watch tennis, and he sorts through his “Magic: The Gathering” cards every day. I told him his sister is more of a man than he is.

Also, for MVP:

AL: Adrian Gonzalez
NL: I really don’t know… I’m gonna guess Prince Fielder.

That’s who I think is going to win, not making a claim either way about who should win.[/quote]

So what your saying is your banging your bosses daughter…

453

[quote]therajraj wrote:
I agree that RISP is a genuine knock on Bautista
[/quote]

What would you say about his noticeable decline in performance after the All-Sate break? His average was .334 before the break, and he’s now hitting .261 in the games after the break. He’s also striking out at a much greater clip, and hitting a lot less home runs.

Simple regression towards the mean? or a lack of performance when it counts?

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[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
I agree that RISP is a genuine knock on Bautista
[/quote]

What would you say about his noticeable decline in performance after the All-Sate break? His average was .334 before the break, and he’s now hitting .261 in the games after the break. He’s also striking out at a much greater clip, and hitting a lot less home runs.

Simple regression towards the mean? or a lack of performance when it counts?[/quote]

There’s a few reasons:

If you look at last year he had two TERRIBLE months, I believe in June 2010 he hit under .200 with only 4HRs. So I think based on this he will likely have a bad month every year, it may just be part of the package.

The other reason is due to the lack of protection from Adam Lind behind him. Adam Lind has been AWFUL since the All star break, his batting average has dropped 50 points. If you look at Adam Lind’s number before the All Star break he was hitting above .300 and overall had great all around production.

Lets also not forget who hit in front of Bautista for most of the season - Rajai Davis and Corey Patterson two HORRIBLE hitters. Compare that to Adrian Gonzalez who has two MVP candidates in Pedroia and Ellsbury in front of him and David Ortiz behind him who is having an all star year. Think about it, with all the protection A-Gon has, he is STILL being outperformed by Jose Bautista.

The pace Bautista was on before the all star break was so ridiculous it’s unfair to really expect him to do that for a whole season. He was on pace for 60HR while hitting .334 as you said. I’m really not surprised he has slowed down.

Lastly, his walk rate has gone through the roof this year. He already has 5 more walks than he had all of last season, if there’s a RISP and 1st base is open he is pitched around a lot of the time. Again this is tied to Adam Lind’s disastrous 2nd half.

But lets be realistic, he’s leads the league in on-base percentage (.456), slugging average (.645), on-base plus slugging (1.101), home runs (37) and bases on balls (103). If you guys don’t think he should be MVP fine, but don’t give me this BS that he is not the best offensive player in the league. It’s laughable to say he isn’t, let alone rank him 4th.

If you guys are going to pick A-Gon or someone other than Bautista for the AL MVP I’d love to know why. The only semi-legit reason is that it should go to a team in contention. Other than that I can’t see why you’d pick anyone else.

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[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
I agree that RISP is a genuine knock on Bautista
[/quote]

What would you say about his noticeable decline in performance after the All-Sate break? His average was .334 before the break, and he’s now hitting .261 in the games after the break. He’s also striking out at a much greater clip, and hitting a lot less home runs.

Simple regression towards the mean? or a lack of performance when it counts?[/quote]

There’s a few reasons:

If you look at last year he had two TERRIBLE months, I believe in June 2010 he hit under .200 with only 4HRs. So I think based on this he will likely have a bad month every year, it may just be part of the package.

The other reason is due to the lack of protection from Adam Lind behind him. Adam Lind has been AWFUL since the All star break, his batting average has dropped 50 points. If you look at Adam Lind’s number before the All Star break he was hitting above .300 and overall had great all around production.

Lets also not forget who hit in front of Bautista for most of the season - Rajai Davis and Corey Patterson two HORRIBLE hitters. Compare that to Adrian Gonzalez who has two MVP candidates in Pedroia and Ellsbury in front of him and David Ortiz behind him who is having an all star year. Think about it, with all the protection A-Gon has, he is STILL being outperformed by Jose Bautista.

The pace Bautista was on before the all star break was so ridiculous it’s unfair to really expect him to do that for a whole season. He was on pace for 60HR while hitting .334 as you said. I’m really not surprised he has slowed down.

Lastly, his walk rate has gone through the roof this year. He already has 5 more walks than he had all of last season, if there’s a RISP and 1st base is open he is pitched around a lot of the time. Again this is tied to Adam Lind’s disastrous 2nd half.

But lets be realistic, he’s leads the league in on-base percentage (.456), slugging average (.645), on-base plus slugging (1.101), home runs (37) and bases on balls (103). If you guys don’t think he should be MVP fine, but don’t give me this BS that he is not the best offensive player in the league. It’s laughable to say he isn’t, let alone rank him 4th.

If you guys are going to pick A-Gon or someone other than Bautista for the AL MVP I’d love to know why. The only semi-legit reason is that it should go to a team in contention. Other than that I can’t see why you’d pick anyone else.[/quote]

Honestly, I’d pick Justin Verlander as the AL MVP. You can argue all you want that pitchers shouldn’t be in, but he is almost single handily responsible for the lead the Tigers have in the AL Central.

7 wins in his last 7 starts, 2.28 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, 19-5 Record, 212 K’s on the season…

456

[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:

[quote]eeu743 wrote:
Was talking to one of my boss’s sons, he’s like 23 or 24. He was telling me how boring baseball is and how much it sucks, all the negatives blah blah blah. Then he starts talking about the sport he loves the most… tennis.

His sister goes nuts over sports. We went out at noon in the middle of the summer here in Florida, easily over 100 degrees out, not a cloud in sight, to watch the Gators play baseball (yes I know not MLB but there’s no MLB teams around me!) She likes football too. This guy wakes up at 4am to watch tennis, and he sorts through his “Magic: The Gathering” cards every day. I told him his sister is more of a man than he is.

Also, for MVP:

AL: Adrian Gonzalez
NL: I really don’t know… I’m gonna guess Prince Fielder.

That’s who I think is going to win, not making a claim either way about who should win.[/quote]

So what your saying is your banging your bosses daughter…[/quote]

No, but I would.

457

[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
I agree that RISP is a genuine knock on Bautista
[/quote]

What would you say about his noticeable decline in performance after the All-Sate break? His average was .334 before the break, and he’s now hitting .261 in the games after the break. He’s also striking out at a much greater clip, and hitting a lot less home runs.

Simple regression towards the mean? or a lack of performance when it counts?[/quote]

There’s a few reasons:

If you look at last year he had two TERRIBLE months, I believe in June 2010 he hit under .200 with only 4HRs. So I think based on this he will likely have a bad month every year, it may just be part of the package.

The other reason is due to the lack of protection from Adam Lind behind him. Adam Lind has been AWFUL since the All star break, his batting average has dropped 50 points. If you look at Adam Lind’s number before the All Star break he was hitting above .300 and overall had great all around production.

Lets also not forget who hit in front of Bautista for most of the season - Rajai Davis and Corey Patterson two HORRIBLE hitters. Compare that to Adrian Gonzalez who has two MVP candidates in Pedroia and Ellsbury in front of him and David Ortiz behind him who is having an all star year. Think about it, with all the protection A-Gon has, he is STILL being outperformed by Jose Bautista.

The pace Bautista was on before the all star break was so ridiculous it’s unfair to really expect him to do that for a whole season. He was on pace for 60HR while hitting .334 as you said. I’m really not surprised he has slowed down.

Lastly, his walk rate has gone through the roof this year. He already has 5 more walks than he had all of last season, if there’s a RISP and 1st base is open he is pitched around a lot of the time. Again this is tied to Adam Lind’s disastrous 2nd half.

But lets be realistic, he’s leads the league in on-base percentage (.456), slugging average (.645), on-base plus slugging (1.101), home runs (37) and bases on balls (103). If you guys don’t think he should be MVP fine, but don’t give me this BS that he is not the best offensive player in the league. It’s laughable to say he isn’t, let alone rank him 4th.

If you guys are going to pick A-Gon or someone other than Bautista for the AL MVP I’d love to know why. The only semi-legit reason is that it should go to a team in contention. Other than that I can’t see why you’d pick anyone else.[/quote]

Honestly, I’d pick Justin Verlander as the AL MVP. You can argue all you want that pitchers shouldn’t be in, but he is almost single handily responsible for the lead the Tigers have in the AL Central.

7 wins in his last 7 starts, 2.28 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, 19-5 Record, 212 K’s on the season…[/quote]

I would never give the MVP award to a pitcher because they already have an award the Cy Young.

As much as Verlander has helped his team, he’s only playing in 30-35 games in a season. It would be unjust to ignore the players having great years that play 155+ games a year and have to perform on a DAILY basis.

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Look rajraj, first of all there’s no reason to cite sportswriters or their opinions in this discussion. Their opinions are no more valid than yours or mine. So let’s just stick to our own opinions and statistics to buffer our arguments. Sportswriters are the scourge of the journalistic world.

In today’s baseball, where runs are harder to come by, the more runs you can score from good baserunning/stealing and the more you can prevent with good defense, the higher your value. Defense and baserunning matters when it comes to MVP. It isn’t an award for strictly the best hitter.

If it were, you’d have an almost airtight case for Bautista. But Granderson and Gonzalez have had legitimately comparable years to Bautista, offensively, and they each are better players in other facets of the game than Bautista is. You’re right, Granderson isn’t that good defensively, but he’s solid, he has good range, and his fielding % is pretty good. He’s also the superior baserunner, even if I have undervalued Bautista’s baserunning at this point.

Gonzalez is the best defensive player of all the candidates and a legit perennial Gold Glove candidate. He also hits about 100 points higher than Bautista does with runners in scoring position and about 30 points higher overall. And I don’t think avg w/ RISP can really be overvalued when it comes to two players whose seasons are otherwise very comparable. What hit is more VALUABLE to a team? A hit with no one on, or a hit with one or more on?

The reason I would go with any of the three aforementioned players before Bautista is simple, really. ALL of these players are having outstanding years at the plate and while Bautista might be having the best one, depending on what stats you do and don’t value, there is a legit argument for the others, except for Ellsbury. But there is no argument as far as what player brings the least intangibles to a game in terms of baserunning, defense and clutch hitting, and that is also Bautista. So although he is still one of the best all-around players in the game since he isn’t necessarily bad at these other things, he is the 4th best all-around player of the four candidates. He’s the 3rd best baserunner, he’s the worst defender of the four, playing the easiest position of the four, and he’s the worst clutch hitter of the four. You argue that his RBI numbers aren’t as high as Gonzalez’s due to playing in Toronto and not Boston, but how many more would he have if he hit .348 with RISP like Gonzales does instead of .241 like he does now?

If you simply go based on hitting statistics, there isn’t much of an argument for anyone else, other than maybe Gonzalez. But if you give defense, baserunning and clutch hitting its due credit, then Bautista isn’t the MVP, plain and simple.

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[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
I agree that RISP is a genuine knock on Bautista
[/quote]

What would you say about his noticeable decline in performance after the All-Sate break? His average was .334 before the break, and he’s now hitting .261 in the games after the break. He’s also striking out at a much greater clip, and hitting a lot less home runs.

Simple regression towards the mean? or a lack of performance when it counts?[/quote]

That’s another good point. What did George Steinbrenner used to disparagingly call Dave Winfield? Oh yeah, Mr. May.

It’s much more important to play well in the second half than the first, especially when there is a significant difference in performance from one half to the next. Down the stretch matters because performing well in those games is the very definition of value, especially in tight divisional or wild-card races. That’s why Bautista gets undervalued by some as an MVP candidate; he simply doesn’t play in games with as high a value to them that the others do, so each statistic he accrues simply doesn’t have the same value attached to it. I suppose the flip side of this coin is that he should get a little extra credit for doing well earlier in the year when Toronto was still in it, but it doesn’t outweigh the value of games now.

460

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
I agree that RISP is a genuine knock on Bautista
[/quote]

What would you say about his noticeable decline in performance after the All-Sate break? His average was .334 before the break, and he’s now hitting .261 in the games after the break. He’s also striking out at a much greater clip, and hitting a lot less home runs.

Simple regression towards the mean? or a lack of performance when it counts?[/quote]

There’s a few reasons:

If you look at last year he had two TERRIBLE months, I believe in June 2010 he hit under .200 with only 4HRs. So I think based on this he will likely have a bad month every year, it may just be part of the package.

The other reason is due to the lack of protection from Adam Lind behind him. Adam Lind has been AWFUL since the All star break, his batting average has dropped 50 points. If you look at Adam Lind’s number before the All Star break he was hitting above .300 and overall had great all around production.

Lets also not forget who hit in front of Bautista for most of the season - Rajai Davis and Corey Patterson two HORRIBLE hitters. Compare that to Adrian Gonzalez who has two MVP candidates in Pedroia and Ellsbury in front of him and David Ortiz behind him who is having an all star year. Think about it, with all the protection A-Gon has, he is STILL being outperformed by Jose Bautista.

The pace Bautista was on before the all star break was so ridiculous it’s unfair to really expect him to do that for a whole season. He was on pace for 60HR while hitting .334 as you said. I’m really not surprised he has slowed down.

Lastly, his walk rate has gone through the roof this year. He already has 5 more walks than he had all of last season, if there’s a RISP and 1st base is open he is pitched around a lot of the time. Again this is tied to Adam Lind’s disastrous 2nd half.

But lets be realistic, he’s leads the league in on-base percentage (.456), slugging average (.645), on-base plus slugging (1.101), home runs (37) and bases on balls (103). If you guys don’t think he should be MVP fine, but don’t give me this BS that he is not the best offensive player in the league. It’s laughable to say he isn’t, let alone rank him 4th.

If you guys are going to pick A-Gon or someone other than Bautista for the AL MVP I’d love to know why. The only semi-legit reason is that it should go to a team in contention. Other than that I can’t see why you’d pick anyone else.[/quote]

Honestly, I’d pick Justin Verlander as the AL MVP. You can argue all you want that pitchers shouldn’t be in, but he is almost single handily responsible for the lead the Tigers have in the AL Central.

7 wins in his last 7 starts, 2.28 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, 19-5 Record, 212 K’s on the season…[/quote]

I would never give the MVP award to a pitcher because they already have an award the Cy Young.

As much as Verlander has helped his team, he’s only playing in 30-35 games in a season. It would be unjust to ignore the players having great years that play 155+ games a year and have to perform on a DAILY basis.[/quote]

I agree with you on this one. As great a year as he’s having, I think there’s still more value to a team in a player who plays everyday.

Position players seem to have a higher rate of diminishing returns than starting pitchers do, meaning that while one position player may have more value than one starting pitcher, five good starting pitchers would be better for a team’s chances of success than having five good position players.

But we’re talking about just one player here, so regardless of which position player we think is having the best season, they have all been more valuable to their team because they play everyday. There’s value in being in the lineup every single day in and of itself, along with whatever performance occurs. A starter might make 35 starts a year and win or pitch well enough to win with really good numbers about 25 times if he’s really good, maybe a few more times if he’s an MVP candidate.

But I think if you were to go back and look at any position player candidate, you’d find that they basically impacted the game enough to shift the outcome in his team’s favor, resulting in a victory in some way, more times than a starter ever does on the mound. How many times does a hitter hit a game-winning home run? What about a home run that breaks a game wide open? Or one that ties a game, or knocks out a top-flight starter/closer? How many runs does he knock in at KEY moments in the game, how many does he score by moving up on a good baserunning play, or save from a nice scoop at first, or a nice running catch against the wall in center? Add all that sort of stuff up and you have probably way more plays like that than the best starter in the majors has wins.