Preview: AL Most Valuable Player

Adrian Beltre

One of the Red Sox’s 2009 off-season investments that actually worked, Beltre was simply resplendent in his vacation away from the West Coast. Beltre’s .390 wOBA is his best since 2004, and he was awesome on defense yet again. Okay, but how does that compare to Hamilton? Offensively, there’s no competition—Hamilton is ridiculously better even counting the 20 games played difference—but defense is again the tricky part. Beltre is considered an elite defender at third, but how “elite” is he? Is he +20 elite or just +10, because that’s a win difference? That win difference is the difference between the two in essentially both measurements. Given that UZR has consistently put him in the 11-13 range over the past few years, he’s probably just that. And if he is just that, then he wasn’t better than Hamilton this season.

Evan Longoria

Couldn't be helped.

Longoria’s numbers are amazingly similar to Beltre’s. In FanGraphs, they really almost are identical, but B-Ref (in which Longoria is a win and a half better than Hamilton and Beltre) really messes things up. Longoria is somehow 1 bWAR better on offense than Beltre, which doesn’t seem possible considering their similar slash rates. Defense is also throwing things off again due to the defensive measurement. Longoria gets his another advantage on Beltre from being +15 on defense (Beltre is only +6) after being +21 the year before and only +6 the season before that. What does FanGraphs say? UZR says he was +15 and +18 the two years previous, so I might actually be tempted to give Longoria a few more points in his fWAR, making him better than Beltre, because it only has him at +11 for this season. But a few more points in fWAR doesn’t nearly close the gap, and what should be a major loss on offense in bWAR closes the gap significantly there.

Jose Bautista

The only things Bautista did better than Hamilton did were play in more games and hit more home runs. Otherwise, Hamilton was better offensively, defensively (much better), and played more valuable positions. I’m not sure there’s much of an argument here.

Robinson Cano

Cano‘s .319/.381/.534 slash line translates to a .389 wOBA, which is significantly lower than Hamilton’s, but Cano A) played in more games and B) played a more valuable position. There’s nothing particularly troubling about any of his numbers, which is odd because everyone else does. His defensive numbers are stable and place him as an average second baseman, and his offensive numbers even look repeatable, which is also odd. But even considering all of that, the metrics still have him 1-1.5 wins behind Hamilton, and there’s nothing that give Cano extra points to close the gap. It’s a little unfortunate actually. He and Longoria are the most likely of all these candidates to have another similar year to this one, but this year wasn’t extraordinary enough to put them over the top.

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Beltre, Longoria, Hamilton, and Bautista are the only AL players that continuously come in the top spots in the wins above replacement statistics, although several others make appearances (Shin-Soo Choo, for instance, is 2.5 fWAR behind Hamilton but second, and just behind Longoria, in bWAR). Hamilton and Bautista are the easiest to compare because they are outfielders, and Bautista loses in that competition. The next competition pits the two third basemen together. Beltre is a bit better offensively, and it appears Longoria is a bit better defensively. Specifically, I don’t know that I can put one over the other. It’s essentially a tie. So it’s Beltre/Longoria versus Hamilton. Hamilton was by far and away the better offensive player, and while Hamilton did spend most of the year in the outfield corners, the positional adjustment isn’t that severe because he played 40 games in center. The difference in games played causes some room for concern, but FanGraphs already has him a win better while he’s close in B-Ref (park factors could be the reason Longoria has more offensive WAR than Beltre, but is a park really worth a win?). Add in the difference on defense (where Hamilton could gain a win in bWAR), and I’m ready to proclaim Hamilton the winner without needing to bring up his personal history. It’s just not particularly close.

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Preview: NL Most Valuable Player

Joey Votto

Though Pujols is awesome, Votto has been just as awesome and maybe better. Votto’s .324/.424/.600 line is ever-so-slightly better than Pujols’ (just better is still better), and it gives him a .439 wOBA that is quite a bit better than Pujols’ .420. The issue in discussing Votto’s value comes on defense. FanGraphs (7.4 fWAR) has Votto at just above average, and he was just below last season after being way above the season before. B-Ref took a dump on Votto’s defense and put him well below average, tanking his bWAR to 6.2. So which is it? Is he good or bad? Up to this year, B-Ref and FanGraphs had essentially agreed on his defense, but because B-Ref flies way down while UZR stabilized, I’ll side with UZR as long as no one else knows of a reason it should be so low, which means that the 0.7 difference in bWAR should be quite a bit smaller. Then again, I’ve heard UZR doesn’t do a great job with first basemen, so this could all be for naught. Sooooo, Votto has the edge on offense while being similar defensively to Pujols, but Pujols played just about as well in nine more games. How do you differentiate that? I’d love to look at fWAR and simply give it to Votto, but we can’t just take FanGraph’s word for it when we’re talking one or two tenths of a point. So I’ll head to Baseball Prospectus for the deciding vote, and they give it to … Adam Wainwright?

Ryan Zimmerman

Here’s why Zimmerman doesn’t get mentioned in this debate by the media—he’s not a first baseman. I realize that sounds weird, but stay with me. Because he’s a third baseman, it’s hard to compare him to first baseman because it’s hard to adjust for the position difference, and it doesn’t help that what Zimmerman excels at—defense—is difficult to measure as well. Add in that he plays for the Washington Nationals and that Strasburg stole the spotlight over the summer, and Zimmerman’s screwed. But he’s still a magnificent player and good enough to be mentioned when talking about the game’s elite. His .307/.388/.510 line converts to a .389 wOBA, and while that isn’t nearly as good as Pujols or Votto’s, the position adjustment and Zimmerman’s ungodly good defense make up the difference, giving him 7.2 fWAR. B-Ref says Zimmerman is only a tick above average on defense, and if I hadn’t given up on that metric already, I would now. But even if you give him a win’s worth of defense, he’s still a win behind Pujols and Votto’s adjusted value according to B-Ref, and he played in only 142 games. Zimmerman should get more attention for what he’s done, but in the end I think he’s somewhere in between FanGraphs and B-Ref, which makes him just a little worse (but still worse) than Pujols and Votto. Sorry Ryan, but you’re playing Pujols to Pujols’ Bonds this time.

After selfishly interjecting Zimmerman into the NL MVP discussion, I’ve formally knocked him out of the competition (I bet he won’t even make the top 5, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him lower than the top 10), leaving … Votto and Pujols, but we all knew that’s where the real discussion lies anyway. Honestly, I don’t know which one to pick. Votto was probably slightly better, but Pujols played nine more games while having similar production to Votto (just to make sure you know I’m not making something out of nothing, let’s do some math. The players were worth 7 wins over 6 months, which makes them worth a little over 1 win per month. Nine games would be about a third of the month’s games, or 0.3-0.4 WAR; if they were similar, then those 9 games would give Pujols an edge). If you want to use BPro as a “tie-breaker”, it did choose Wainwright overall (yeah, someone explain that one), but Pujols was better than Votto in WARP by over a win. If you don’t like using that as a tie-breaker (I don’t ), the deciding factor may come down to something neither player can control—their ballpark. Great American Ballpark is an offensive ballpark while Busch Stadium is about neutral, and if we split hairs, that negates Votto’s offensive advantage somewhat to possibly put Pujols on top. I’d like to see Votto win, but I’m afraid it appears that Pujols is probably the better player, yet again (though only slightly). However, I’ll put my money on Votto to actually win the award because his team won the division, though a win’s a win no matter who it’s for, and writers like guys who play on playoff teams, which doesn’t seem so bad as a tie-breaker in this instance. If it was up to me, I’d call it a tie because that seems to be the only fair way to settle such a close race, but if it is a tie, is it okay to vote Votto simply as a result of “Pujols Fatigue”? Inquiring minds want to know.

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