MVPs: TROUT, BRYANT

[Snapolit1]

Originally Posted by Econteachert205

Mike trout is so valuable in his career he has led the angels to how many post season victories? Oh yeah, zero. MVP was Cory kluber. Where would the Indians have been without him? 88 or 98 losses who cares?

No offense, but that's a ridiculous argument. Baseball is not basketball. LeBron can carry a team on his back. Not the case in baseball. The Hall of Fame is full of amazing players who were saddled with terrible teams their whole career.

I would argue that it's far far harder to achieve the numbers Trout has on a string of bad teams. If he was on a stacked team like the Cubs or Red Sox he'd see a lot better pitches and who knows what insane numbers he'd rack up.

Trout will end his career I think as one of the absolute best baseball players of all time. I'm not an Angels or even an AL fan, but facts are facts.

[tschock]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

No offense, but that's a ridiculous argument. Baseball is not basketball. LeBron can carry a team on his back. Not the case in baseball. The Hall of Fame is full of amazing players who were saddled with terrible teams their whole career.

I would argue that it's far far harder to achieve the numbers Trout has on a string of bad teams. If he was on a stacked team like the Cubs or Red Sox he'd see a lot better pitches and who knows what insane numbers he'd rack up.

Trout will end his career I think as one of the absolute best baseball players of all time. I'm not an Angels or even an AL fan, but facts are facts.

THIS, but....

I think the issue and discussion comes from the award name itself. Should it go to the Most VALUABLE Player or the BEST player of the year?

[Baseball Rarities]

Originally Posted by tschock

THIS, but....

I think the issue and discussion comes from the award name itself. Should it go to the Most VALUABLE Player or the BEST player of the year?

That is the tough part. It obviously goes to the most Valuable, but both writers and fans define the word Valuable in very different ways.

[Snapolit1]

If it's truly the "most valuable" and not the best, let's give the award to the guy from Triple A who had 15 at bats in September but one of them was the walk off three run homerun that sent us to the playoffs. If he didn't hit that homerum we didn't make the playofffs. So I guess he's the "most valuable".

[chaddurbin]

best player (10wins) is also the most valuable. best bill ($100) is more valuable than a $50 bill. the $100 has more value, whether you're a techie millennial or a high school student pulling down min wage at mcdonald's. it's a pretty simple concept.

[packs]

Betts I think was hampered by Ortiz's season. During the season a bunch of people were calling for Ortiz to be the MVP, though Betts was clearly the best player on the team. Trout, though, has no competition on the Angels and is clearly not only their best player, but the best player in the league. His advanced stats tells you everything you need to know:

#1 in WAR
#1 in Offensive WAR
#1 in OBP
#1 in OPS +
#1 in Runs Created (on a terrible team)
#1 in Power Speed

In many of these categories he is ahead of only Betts. So he clearly had the better season.

[Snapolit1]

Originally Posted by packs

Betts I think was hampered by Ortiz's season. During the season a bunch of people were calling for Ortiz to be the MVP, though Betts was clearly the best player on the team. Trout, though, has no competition on the Angels and is clearly not only their best player, but the best player in the league. His advanced stats tells you everything you need to know:

#1 in WAR
#1 in Offensive WAR
#1 in OBP
#1 in OPS +
#1 in Runs Created (on a terrible team)
#1 in Power Speed

In many of these categories he is ahead of only Betts.

I read somewhere that some of the stats he's putting up this early in his career are putting him in company that only Babe Ruth is in.

[packs]

I think Mike Trout's age 28 to 31 seasons will be legendary.

[Econteachert205]

The only ridiculous argument is that a player on a losing team is somehow more valuable to that team than a player with similar statistics on a winning team. The gold standard for this is Steve Carlton in 1972. So valuable, if it weren't for him they would have sucked worse. Also a player cannot put a team on his back for a whole season, but certainly can for one month, I've seen David Ortiz do it.

[nat]

The directions for voting for the award mention "actual contribution to the team", and explicitly say that the winner need not come from a playoff team. Trout simply contributed more wins to his team than Betts did to his.

As for Verlander and advanced stats. No, that's not it. Verlander does very well by the advanced stats. He actually led the league in baseball-reference's version of WAR (albeit by a meaninglessly small margin over Kluber). I don't know why Verlander was left off two ballots, he really shouldn't have been.

[Snapolit1]

I confess that an entire generation of advanced baseball analytics has totally passed me by. If it wasn't on the back of a 1978 Topps, I have little idea what it means. Very little. But I have to assume all these advanced and super advanced analytics explains some of the craziness that is now happening -- like Verlander not getting on peoples ballots and the guy who wins the AL Cy Young then shows up nowhere on the MVP ballot while Verlander does. I think some of this stuff is getting people so far up their own [FILL IN THE BLANK] that they are really missing the forest for the trees. Or they are trying to prove how brilliant they are by latching on to stuff no one else is thinking about.

Signed, Old School Baseball Fan.