MLB 2012

Off Topic
821

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

That’s my whole point, really. It’s TOO arbitrary in that there isn’t even one set standard for determining what the statistic is. How legitimate of a stat would you consider HRs if one site or statistical analyst said that Cabrera hit 48 bombs this year and another said he only hit 42? [/quote]

That’s a silly comparison, HRs is a raw total while WAR is not. WAR is a compilation of statistics with each stat given different weightings depending on perceived importance on the field. The 3 sites value things slightly differently. Even with the differences, generally speaking, they are pretty close in ratings, all have Trout over Miggy by a mile.

If they all agreed and there was 100% consensus as to how WAR should be calcualted, would you accept it as a valuable statistic?

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

I think there is some value in that stat in that I have yet to see a really good player end up with an astonishingly low WAR/VORP and vice versa. But like I said earlier, I don’t need a flawed statistic to tell me what I can clearly see with my own two eyes. [/quote]

Yeah I don’t need stats to tell me about the ongoings of the Blue Jays. However, unless I quit my full time job and dedicate myself to watching several hours of baseball daily, I’m not going to have a good picture of what goes in other teams, especially in the NL.

I mean, how many innings of Miguel Cabrera have you seen this year?

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

And since stats are only useful when comparing players of relatively equal merit (Cabrera and Trout instead of Cabrera and Emmanuel Burriss) the fact that it IS so arbitrary, vague and ambiguous makes it totally useless when comparing players who stack up against each other pretty favorably with all other things being considered. In other words, it’s an absolutely horrendous tool to use as a tiebreaker of sorts when determining who had the better year. [/quote]

Yes, I don’t think it should be the sole determinant of MVP. For instance, I think Yadier Molina should get some votes for MVP this year.

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

One other thing: does this statistic take into account the fact that the talent level in the majors is not distributed in anything resembling a standard bell-curve? After all, if you were to graph the talent level of major leaguers the graph would be right-skewed, meaning that most of the data is stacked up on the left and sharply tapers down to the right. “Average” talent level is actually pretty rare so I wonder if this statistic takes into account that there are WAY more players in the majors at any given time whose talent/production is below average than above it. The mean talent level sits well below the median talent level.

[/quote]

Not sure how this is relevant.

822

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Don’t look now, but Brandon Crawford has legitimately entered the conversation for Gold Glove at SS in the NL.[/quote]

Why is he hitting the ball off the cover?

The Gold Glove is an offensive award in disguise. How do you think Rafael Palmeiro won it after only playing 35 games at 1B and the rest at DH?

Derek Jeter has always been a poor defensive shortstop and I think he has like 5.

Brendan Ryan is having an outstanding defensive year for the Mariners and I doubt he’ll win either.

823

I think it’s generally bad practise to rely solely on stats or the eye test. A good evaluator uses both.

824

Melky left off playoff roster. If it were me I’d say fuck it: flags fly forever

825

Pujols: 1 Hr in 106 September at bats before tonites game. Not getting it done. Where would this team be without Trout? Still out of the playoffs, Cabrera for MVP.

826

[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:
Pujols: 1 Hr in 106 September at bats before tonites game. Not getting it done. Where would this team be without Trout? Still out of the playoffs, Cabrera for MVP.

[/quote]

Pujols fucked my fantasy team right in the cornhole this month. I needed a big month from him to stay in second place and at least get my money back, but my whole team went into the shitter, offense-wise, and Pujols led the charge.

I still think Trout is the MVP, though. Who’s to say that he wouldn’t have had the Triple Crown himself if he played all year? The RBI totals might be tough to top, but maybe if he starts the year in the bigs and tears it up right away they move him into the third spot with Pujols batting cleanup and he makes a serious run at the RBI title, too. I don’t think there is any denying the impact Trout has had on that team, especially given how well he played when they were on the verge of slipping into irrelevancy much earlier in the season. To say anything else about his impact now is pure revisionism. The only argument is whether Cabrera has had the same impact on his team, not how big Trout’s contribution has been, because it’s been THAT big.

Cabrera is a beast and he’s having a year that is very comparable to Trout’s. But I think there is no understating the value and the impact on not only his own team, but the opposing team as well that Trout has brought to the game from Day One of his callup. He just brings a very rare, very significant skillset and ability to the leadoff spot, whereas Cabrera is simply the best of a commodity that is rare in its own right, but not nearly as rare as someone like Trout. What Trout brings is simply totally different from what any other leadoff hitter in the game brings, and he sets the tempo of the game more so than any other player, period. Cabrera does all you could ever ask for from a middle-of-the-lineup hitter and then some, but Trout does all you could ask for from a leadoff hitter and then a LOT more. Simply put, the SLIGHT drop in hitting production that Trout represents compared to Cabrera is MORE than made up for by the far superior skill set that Trout brings to every game in all other areas, namely base running, speed and Gold Glove-caliber defense at a premium defensive position.

827

Hey Raj, check this out. Posey leads McCutchen and Braun in WARP and VORP and he’s light years in front of them in equivalent average. Haven’t you been arguing recently that Posey is not the MVP and that McCutchen or Braun is, but that Trout is the clearcut MVP in the AL because of his better sabermetrics, such as WARP and VORP? Why doesn’t this same standard apply to Posey?

http://claydavenport.com/stats/eqa2012b.shtml

828

[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:
Pujols: 1 Hr in 106 September at bats before tonites game. Not getting it done. Where would this team be without Trout? Still out of the playoffs, Cabrera for MVP.

[/quote]

Lets put this into perspective.

The Angels have MORE wins than the Tigers in a tougher division.

The AL central is an absolutely atrocious division while the AL West is arguably the best division in baseball in 2012.

829

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Hey Raj, check this out. Posey leads McCutchen and Braun in WARP and VORP and he’s light years in front of them in equivalent average. Haven’t you been arguing recently that Posey is not the MVP and that McCutchen or Braun is, but that Trout is the clearcut MVP in the AL because of his better sabermetrics, such as WARP and VORP? Why doesn’t this same standard apply to Posey?

http://claydavenport.com/stats/eqa2012b.shtml[/quote]

Because the race isn’t even close in the AL. Trout is lightyears ahead of Miggy and anyone else for that matter. I’ve never heard of the site you posted but the mainsteam sites that calculate WAR are Fangraphs, Baseball Reference and Baseball Prospectus with Fangraphs being the most commonly used.

Their leaders by WAR

AL

  1. Trout 10.0
  2. Cano 7.0
  3. Cabrera 6.9

NL

  1. Braun 8.0
  2. Posey 7.8
    3.Wright 7.6
  3. McCutchen 7.5

In the NL Ryan Braun leads over Posey by 0.2 however the marginal is negligible and therefore Posey, Braun, Wright, McCutchen would all be fine choices.

I guess my choice of McCutchen over Posey is a personal favourite more than anything. There’s literally not another decent hitter on the pirates and McCutchen pretty much carried them for most of the season. What we were arguing was intangibles. You were deadset on punishing McCutchen for being on a team full of nobodies while rewarding Posey for what you described as “it factor.”

830

The people who are picking Cabera just plain undervalue defense and speed.

Cabrera is a better hitter than Trout, but Trout is pretty much amazing at everything.

831

[quote]therajraj wrote:
The people who are picking Cabera just plain undervalue defense and speed.

Cabrera is a better hitter than Trout, but Trout is pretty much amazing at everything.

[/quote]

Can’t argue with you there. Cabrera would have to be light years in front of everyone in the Triple Crown stats to make up for his decided shortcomings compared to Trout when it comes to every other aspect of the game. The name of the game is runs and Trout has produced and saved way more than Cabrera with his baserunning and defense. 48 stolen bases against 4 caught stealings is a fucking ridiculous ratio, which proves that he’s an elite game-changing talent when he’s on the base paths. That sort of ability to steal a base (and he’s stolen third quite a few times) changes the entire dynamic of an inning every time he’s due up or he gets on base.

The bottom line is that Trout, in different ways, is every bit the threat in the batter’s box that Cabrera is. And he is not even close in terms of the threat he represents on the bases and in the field compared to Cabrera. So I don’t see how it’s close. The Angels underachieved this year no matter how you look at it, but before Trout came along they were well on their way to underachieving in much more epic fashion. I don’t think that represents such a huge factor in Cabrera’s favor that he should get the MVP instead. Cabrera has been the best player on what is the worst of all the playoff teams in either league in terms of record and was the best team in the worst division in baseball. Truth be told, the Tigers as a whole underachieved every bit as much as the Angels did since they should have won that division by fifteen games.

832

You might find this article interesting, Raj. Or anyone else for that matter.

833

The surplus offense Cabrera provides over Trout is erased by the horrendous defense Cabrera has played all year. Oddly enough, the reason Detroit has done poorly is due to their decision of punting away defense and going all in offensively.

But who knows, maybe it will pay off. The division is theirs for the forseeable future, they have quality-to-elite arms which can prove deadly in a playoff series and they will only get stronger offensively next year when when Victor Martinez returns.

834

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
You might find this article interesting, Raj. Or anyone else for that matter.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/these-saber-savvy-san-francisco-giants/[/quote]

I find it odd you’re passing along a fangraphs article to me.

835

At the end of the day, there’s no criteria for what makes the MVP, if you guys recall some baseball writer voted for Michael Young last year.

So technically, I can’t really fault Maiden or any baseball writer who chooses to vote for Miggy over Trout. It wouldn’t surprise me if people don’t vote for Trout for a host of unjustifiable reasons - he’s a rookie, his team didn’t make the playoffs, he didn’t play in April (while I think it’s justifiable to use it as a knock, it’s not enough on its own), their perceived importance of the Triple Crown, placing more importance on games in September vs earlier in the seasons etc etc.

You want to support Miggy? Fine, but I have yet to see a justifiable reason to do so.

836

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

http://claydavenport.com/stats/eqa2012b.shtml[/quote]

I just sorted this link by WARP.

According to that site:

NL

Posey 8.7
AARON HILL 8.5
Ryan Braun 8.5

AL

Trout 7.8
PUJOLS 7.2
ZOBRIST 6.3

I know Aaron Hill is having a good year, but I would say based the value this site determined for him, something is really off in their calculations.

837

[quote]therajraj wrote:

You want to support Miggy? Fine, but I have yet to see a justifiable reason to do so.

[/quote]

He is on the cusp of doing something that none of us have seen in our lifetime. Weve seen exellent rookie campaigns, from McGuires 49 hrs to Pujols exellent rookie year. But the triple crown is something that happens once in a lifetime.

I think they are both deserving, however. Especially with Trout missing a month and still compiling exellent numbers like DB said. I just thought it was a good time to get you riled up being that this thread was on the second page and the playoffs are about to begin.

838

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:
Pujols: 1 Hr in 106 September at bats before tonites game. Not getting it done. Where would this team be without Trout? Still out of the playoffs, Cabrera for MVP.

[/quote]

Pujols fucked my fantasy team right in the cornhole this month. I needed a big month from him to stay in second place and at least get my money back, but my whole team went into the shitter, offense-wise, and Pujols led the charge.

I still think Trout is the MVP, though. Who’s to say that he wouldn’t have had the Triple Crown himself if he played all year? The RBI totals might be tough to top, but maybe if he starts the year in the bigs and tears it up right away they move him into the third spot with Pujols batting cleanup and he makes a serious run at the RBI title, too. I don’t think there is any denying the impact Trout has had on that team, especially given how well he played when they were on the verge of slipping into irrelevancy much earlier in the season. To say anything else about his impact now is pure revisionism. The only argument is whether Cabrera has had the same impact on his team, not how big Trout’s contribution has been, because it’s been THAT big.

Cabrera is a beast and he’s having a year that is very comparable to Trout’s. But I think there is no understating the value and the impact on not only his own team, but the opposing team as well that Trout has brought to the game from Day One of his callup. He just brings a very rare, very significant skillset and ability to the leadoff spot, whereas Cabrera is simply the best of a commodity that is rare in its own right, but not nearly as rare as someone like Trout. What Trout brings is simply totally different from what any other leadoff hitter in the game brings, and he sets the tempo of the game more so than any other player, period. Cabrera does all you could ever ask for from a middle-of-the-lineup hitter and then some, but Trout does all you could ask for from a leadoff hitter and then a LOT more. Simply put, the SLIGHT drop in hitting production that Trout represents compared to Cabrera is MORE than made up for by the far superior skill set that Trout brings to every game in all other areas, namely base running, speed and Gold Glove-caliber defense at a premium defensive position.[/quote]

I have Pujols on my team also. Im not sure how many games since his last Hr, but it seems like atleast 20.

839

[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

You want to support Miggy? Fine, but I have yet to see a justifiable reason to do so.

[/quote]

He is on the cusp of doing something that none of us have seen in our lifetime. Weve seen exellent rookie campaigns, from McGuires 49 hrs to Pujols exellent rookie year. But the triple crown is something that happens once in a lifetime.

I think they are both deserving, however. Especially with Trout missing a month and still compiling exellent numbers like DB said. I just thought it was a good time to get you riled up being that this thread was on the second page and the playoffs are about to begin.
[/quote]

You know there are instances in the past when a Triple Crown winner did not receieve the MVP right?

Ted Williams for instance.

840

I think I’m pretty much ready to move off this topic, really think it will be impossible to convince you and you’ll have a tough time convincing me on Cabrera.

I’m not overly interested in this topic anyhow, no blue jay candidate this year.

Can’t wait to talk post season though. There may still be 1 game playoffs to determine wildcard if certain teams win/lose.