TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Baseball Writers Still Don't Get It

Pujols to be Jobbed Out of MVP

Don't Even Talk to Mrs. Lee's Boy

You can feel the consensus building into a giant wave for Andruw Jones as the NL MVP. Comments on Baseball Tonight, in the sports columns, on talk radio, in discussing potential MVPs seem to have settled on Andruw over Albert Pujols and Derek Lee, the two other obvious candidates. Given that the writers don't seem to like voting for candidates who aren't on winning teams, we can rule out Lee's candidacy (and since the criteria are a bit fuzzy, they're allowed to do that). Jones seems to be a logical choice: he's leading the league in HR and RBI, which is strongly associated with winning the award based on precedent of past years, he's a great outfielder, and nobody else on his team has had that great a year.

Pity poor Albert Pujols. He's about to finish a nearly unprecedented five-year run, and he's going to have no MVPs to show for it. It's hard to argue that over the last five years, Pujols hasn't been the single most valuable guy in the majors. At this writing, he's sitting on 199 HR, 614 RBI, and 623 Runs scored. His batting average is a remarkable .333, never worse than .314. His career OPS sits at 1.039, behind only Todd Helton and the San Francisco Left Fielder among active players with at least 3000 plate appearances. This year's numbers: 39 HR, 350 total bases, 110 RBI, 123 runs scored, a .432 OBP and a 1.045 OPS. He's even piled on 16 steals.

Yet Pujols has been the Bridesmaid of the NL for four years now, having finished fourth, second, second, and third. (He finished behind the San Francisco Left Fielder all four years, behind the SF left fielder and Adrian Beltre last year, and behind the SF LF, Sammy Sosa, and Luis Gonzalez in his rookie year.)

Pujols' offense, of course, gets discounted because of the alleged murderer's row in St. Louis: Edmonds, Rolen when healthy, Walker, and the usual Cardinals suspects. I get the sense that, well, the Braves keep pulling out these miracles, and this year since you can't put your finger on any one other player, and Andruw is collecting more of his share of RBI than the rest of the Braves, you have to label him as most valuable to his team. Here are Jones' counting stats for the year: 51 HR, 127 RBI, 93 Runs scored, 335 total bases, 3 stolen bases.

This is why I'm saying the Baseball Writers who will be voting Andruw his MVP still haven't gotten it. Jones' OPS numbers: .351 OBP (just above league average for starters), .589 SLG, for a .940 OPS. For all the abstractions and inaccuracies in OPS, it does tend to reflect player contributions in a way that's a bit more lineup-independent than that old sawhorse of the MVP, the RBI. And Andruw, bless his soul, is ninth in the NL right now. Your league leader is still Derrek Lee at 1.089, followed by Pujols, then Carlos Delgado, Todd Helton, Jason Bay, Morgan Ensberg, Ken Griffey, and Miguel Cabrera before we get to Jones. Lance Berkman, Adam Dunn, and Aramis Ramirez are right behind Jones.

If we go to a more reliable sabrmetric measure, Runs Created, the differences are even more stark. Lee leads the league at present with 151, followed by Pujols at 143. Andruw Jones clocks in at...number 10 in the league, with 112. The Runs Created stat measures, more or less, how many of his team's runs the player is responsible for with all his contributions: total bases, steals, subtracting the outs he makes, double plays he grounds into, and so forth.

In Runs Created per 27 outs, it's once again Derek Lee at No. 1 and Albert Pujols at the 2 spot, with 10.25 and 9.59. For those of you not familiar with the latter stat, it basically tells you how many runs a lineup of nine Derek Lees or nine Albert Pujols would score in an average game. Jones is 19th, at 6.77, between Jeff Kent and Chad Tracy.

If you don't believe in this new-fangled sabrmetric stuff, I'll translate this back to runs and RBI -- relative to each player's team. Pujols has 15.2% of his team's RBI, and 16 % of his team's runs scored. Subtracting the homers (which get double-counted), he's driven in or scored 194 of his team's runs, or 25% of its scoring. Jones has been involved with 169 of his team's runs, which is 23% of its scoring. So even by those traditional measures, Pujols has been more valuable to his team this year.

Is Jones' defense worth 25 runs more than Pujols' defense? Such defensive contributions are notoriously hard to measure, and their relative worth distorted by comments from managers like "he's worth a run a game", etcetera. That they play different positions makes this even more problematic. We all see Andruw making circus catches on SportsCenter; first basemen who dig balls out of the dirt don't make the highlight reels very often. Pujols is exclusively a first sacker now, where he plays very good defense at a position not particularly noted by MVP voters who crave defensive prowess in their candidates. He was a good third baseman and a good left fielder in previous years; surely nowhere near Jones' caliber, of course, but unlike many past MVPs, a net asset at his position over the league average.

I'm a huge fan of defense as being the most beautiful part of baseball, from an aesthetic standpoint. I remain unconvinced the differences between the worst major league fielders and the best are that significant compared to offensive contributions and the relative values of pitchers. I'll leave this by saying I probably agree Jones contributes more on defense than Pujols, if we can actually measure the difference between two guys at two different positions with different pitching staffs, but I don't see the margin makes up for the differences in offense I've outlined. Anyway, we've got an award for defense called the Gold Glove to handle those gray areas.

Maybe if we just voted the award based on pure performance, it should go to Derek Lee. Or if it's by pure performance by a player on a winner, go with Pujols. If the writers are truly paying attention to the revelations of sabrmetrics from the last 25 years, they'd vote for one of them. But I'd bet the mortgage payment the award is going to go to the RBI and HR king, Andruw Jones. I'm sure Albert will get over it, of course, but it would make me feel better if the guys reporting on the game for us, who vote on this award, would wake up to the true relative value of the players.

Until then, when the MVP voting comes out, we'll all be bridesmaids.

posted by The Crank 2:59 PM