Wednesday, September 26, 2007

NL MVP, by the numbers

I have a different philosophy about MVP Awards than I do for what I think of as more performance-oriented awards (Cy Young Award, Hank Aaron Award, Rookie of the Year, Golden Glove, etc), in that I think things like being on a winning team, having outstanding clutch ratings, and differences between a player's performance and that of his teammates, etc, can legitimately factor into one's votes. Nevertheless, basic performance has to be the baseline. And, unfortunately, most performance assessments that I've seen thus far focus strictly on offense.

So I thought it was worth getting total value (offense + fielding, approach initially justified here) estimates of player performance as a starting point. To hone down a list of players, I looked at posts by Andy at Baseball Reference's Stat 'o the Day blog, and by Pizza Cutter at StatSpeak. I also threw in a few folks that I thought were deserving of consideration who hadn't otherwise come up. Here they are:

Name POS VORP +-THTFieldingRuns TotalValue
David_Wright 3B 78.6 26.2 104.8
Albert_Pujols 1B 65.8 30.2 96.0
Chase_Utley 2B 67.8 21.5 89.3
Chipper_Jones 3B 73.9 13.3 87.2
Matt_Holliday LF 70.4 9.1 79.5
Hanley_Ramirez SS 86.7 -20.4 66.3
Todd_Helton 1B 48.1 16.6 64.7
Jose_Reyes SS 46.6 16.8 63.4
Troy_Tulowitzki SS 35.1 27.5 62.6
Carlos_Beltran CF 48.9 13.4 62.3
Eric_Byrnes LF 37.1 23.1 60.2
Miguel_Cabrera 3B 69.0 -9.4 59.6
Jimmy_Rollins SS 60.5 -2.8 57.7
Prince_Fielder 1B 64.9 -7.6 57.3
Barry_Bonds LF 56.2 -2.3 53.9
Brandon_Phillips 2B 37.9 15.5 53.4
Aaron_Rowand CF 52.5 -0.1 52.4
Ryan_Howard 1B 47.0 -7.9 39.1
Adam_Dunn LF 45.2 -17.3 27.9
Dan_Uggla 2B 31.1 -3.5 27.6
Ryan_Braun 3B 52.6 -27.2 25.4

Based on these data, I think it's probably safest to conclude that we should restrict ourselves to talking about a 5-man race between Wright, Pujols, Utley, Jones, and Holliday, as there's a 13-run dropoff between Holliday and the next closest player.

Pujols and Jones are on teams that are out of contention now, even though both teams were "in it" in early September. But since neither is clearly head and shoulders above the rest, this puts these two individuals at a slight disadvantage in my book.

So at this point, I'd put it as a battle between Wright, Holliday, and Utley. Holliday's fielding numbers are good, but Wright and Utley are the top defensive players at their respective positions according to THT's fielding data. Utley missed a substantial amount of playing time this season, and I think durability should be a factor with this award...though his numbers when present have been spectacular enough to rank him among these three despite the missed time. Wright leads all three in Win Probability Added, indicating that he's had a greater impact on ballgames this season than the other two (not that this is completely his doing). And, of course, Wright also led all of these players in my total player value estimate.

It's a tough call, but with a week left in the season, I'd probably give the award to David Wright.
Posted by at 12:58 AM
Labels:

8 comments:

  1. Obviously, I agree with your general approach, although I don't take the additional step of team context. I'd be fine with someone going by WPA, too (with a fielding adjustment). The coolest part about a list like this is seeing who's generally overrated (Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins) and underrated (Helton, Tulo, Pujols).
    ReplyDelete
  2. Very interesting stuff. I think it's going to be a very close race with Wright just edging out Fielder. However, if the Rockies win the wild card, I wouldn't be surprised to see Holliday take it. As I think you rightly point out, Fielder really doesn't belong in the discussion.
    ReplyDelete
  3. @Sky - There's a lot of slop and personal decision making about what makes an MVP, as you've mentioned on your blog recently. If one of Jones or Pujols were dramatically better than everyone else -- maybe even just swapping places with Wright -- I wouldn't discard them. I realize it's not fair to penalize (or reward) a player for his team's fortunes, but at the same time the idealist in me thinks that the MVP should be on a team that at least comes close to making the playoffs.

    @Rick - Fielder's had a spectacular year. But at the same time, he's playing at the strongest offensive position, and isn't really an asset on defense (though he's not horrible either). I don't think an MVP *has* to be a spectacular defender, but he would need to be a really exceptional hitter to make up for defensive inadequacies.
    -j
    ReplyDelete
  4. I noticed on your fielding evaluations that you don't evaluate catchers. In a way that makes sense. Still, I feel that the catcher may be the most valuable defensive position - if you consider handling a pitching staff and throwing out would-be base-stealers. My question is how do you factor a catcher's defensive contributions in? Just as an example, how much higher would Russell Martin's VORP be before he received serious MVP consideration? I suppose evaluating something like how a catcher handles a pitching staff is highly subjective. But without doing something along the lines don't catchers get messed over a little bit? Thanks.
    ReplyDelete
  5. I knew someone would ask about Martin. :) I actually originally selected him, but then decided I didn't want to deal with his defense and dropped him. He was a fringe candidate anyway...but that's not always going to be the case.

    Anyway, the issue of how to deal with catching is one I'm open to suggestions on. Past studies have found that the only repeatable, measurable way that catchers seem to affect defense is by affecting the running game via throwing out runners. For example, catchers not shown a consistent effect on how they impact pitcher ERA's compared to other catchers on their squad. I don't think it's actually true that throwing arm is the only way that catchers vary, but but that's the only thing that folks have measured that come up as a repeatable skill.

    But even trying to quantify throwing arm impact is problematic. One can attach linear weights values to all stolen bases and caught steals and then sum up the run impact as a start. But that doesn't include the fact that people just don't run on certain catchers (e.g. Yadier Molina, I-Rod, etc), which might be a big part of their defensive value.

    Anyway, I feel like I need to read more on what others have come up with before I start delving into this stuff myself.

    FWIW, Martin's CS rate of 29% is roughly average, and is right about at the break-even point for when stealing activity helping the offense vs. defense. So I don't think it'll affect his overall numbers that much.

    With the Reds, Ross deserves a bonus for his superb 40% CS rate, whereas Valentin deserves a penalty for his miserable 11% CS rate. I just have to think that Javy has a hidden arm injury...
    -j
    ReplyDelete
  6. Justin, I didn't say that's who I'D vote for. Rather I said, that's who I think is likely to win. Frankly, given defense, pennant race, and park effects, I think it's Wright easily.

    My ballot:
    1. Wright
    2. Utley
    3. Pujols
    4. Chipper
    5. Holliday
    ReplyDelete
  7. Regarding catcher defense:

    Throwing arms are important. But in these days, where teams barely run at a break-even rate, I'd almost rather have a catcher who's only slightly better than average at throwing out runners and does it a lot. If teams just don't run, that's not necessarily a good thing. Of course, maybe it has a positive psychological effect on your pitchers because they don't have to worry about runners.

    The other difference between catchers is passed balls/wild pitches. That data's available. Although, I bet pitchers throw fewer purposely-bad pitches with bad catchers behind the plate.

    The biggest defensive point about a catcher is the fact that he's a catcher and doesn't play some other position. By passing the test of being able to play catcher in the majors, that's worth about 10 runs compared to 3B and 20 compared to LF.
    ReplyDelete
  8. By passing the test of being able to play catcher in the majors, that's worth about 10 runs compared to 3B and 20 compared to LF.

    There's a sense in which that adjustment is already built into VORP, no?

    As far as passed ball data, I could probably try to include that info. One problem I have with that is that the sort of pitchers that one is catching will have a big effect on that. For example, Reds pitchers last season had brilliant passed ball rates. But then again, they weren't fooling batters either. On the other hand, Doug Mirabelli tends to have relatively high PB rates because, at least in part, he's Tim Wakefield's personal catcher. Maybe that's the exception to the rule though...

    I'll have to run some linear weights conversions of sb & cs data at some point to see how catchers rank relative to just straight CS%.
    -j
    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)