Now that the MVP voting has been announced and, as you all expected (feared?), Mike Trout has lost again to Miguel Cabrera, here’s how I filled out my ballot…
1. Miguel Cabrera
2. Mike Trout
3. Chris Davis
4. Robinson Cano
5. Josh Donaldson
6. David Ortiz
7. Adrian Beltre
8. Carlos Santana
9. Evan Longoria
10. Max Scherzer
Picking between Cabrera and Trout was difficult. Certainly, there’s no wrong answer here. Both players had sensational seasons.
Last year (when I didn’t have a vote), I was actually a Trout supporter. I reasoned that they were close offensively, but Trout was better defensively and on the bases. Both provided important boosts to their teams in the pennant race. (I didn’t discount Trout because the Angels missed the playoffs, because they were still in the race until the final days of the season.)
This year, however, it’s a little different, for a few reasons.
First, the gap between their offensive performances was wider in Cabrera’s favor. Cabrera’s OPS was 1.078, which beat Trout by 90 points. The gap was just 36 points last year. This year, Cabrera led Trout in batting (.348-.323), slugging (.636-558) and on-base percentage (.442-.432). Of course, he blew him away in homers (44-27) and RBI (137-97).
Now is when your advanced metric radar is going off. Yes, I mentioned RBI. Cabrera, you rightly say, should not be getting credit just because the guys in front of him were better than the guys in front of Trout.
To that I add this: Trout also shouldn’t be getting credit because the guys behind him were worse.
Much of the Trout MVP case began to build in the final two months when he was posting a ridiculous on-base percentage because he was drawing so many walks. On July 26, Trout had a .400 on-base percentage and he’d drawn 49 walks in 100 games. That was the last day Albert Pujols hit behind him. For the rest of the season, with Pujols injured, Trout had a .488 OBP and he drew 61 walks in 57 games.
Did he magically become a more disciplined hitter on that day? Obviously not. Pitchers just stopped pitching to him because Pujols was no longer behind him. Trout’s average and slugging percentage didn’t change much, but the overall production went way up because of all those walks.
Finally, I like to look at the situations when a player produces because “value” is about winning games. Don’t confuse this for saying value is about winning the division. Forget the standings. A homer in a 5-0 game is not the same as a homer in a tie game, whether you’re in first or last.
Win probability added (WPA) measures that exactly. It uses the situation – inning, score, outs, baserunners – to determine a team’s chances of winning before and after a hitter bats. It then calculates how much better – or worse – the team’s odds of winning are based on what he did.
Cabrera’s WPA was 43 percent higher than Trout’s. That’s the result of another eye-opening stat: Cabrera’s OPS with runners in scoring position was 1.311 over 204 plate appearances. Trout’s was .993 over 184 plate appearances.
I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t believe “clutch” is a skill that’s predictive. In most cases, if a player is far above or below his normal numbers with runners in scoring position, it’s simply a fluke of a small sample size. Trout could be the one with the better numbers in 2014. But the MVP is not about skill or future value or talent. It’s about what the players actually did.
And in 2013, Cabrera produced better in the most meaningful situations than Trout, by a wide margin.
I haven’t even mentioned the fact that Cabrera performed in a pennant race while Trout did not. Not even for one day. Although that’s far down my list of criteria, it can’t be dismissed completely. (Mike Scioscia himself said this repeatedly in September.)
What about Trout’s defense and baserunning? Obviously, he’s got an edge on Cabrera there.
Figuring out just how much to value the defense and baserunning is the problem. It counts for something, but it’s certainly not even close to equal the offense.
For me, it wasn’t quite enough to vote for Trout over Cabrera, who clearly produced more – when it counted the most – at the plate.
