Trout’s MVP Candidacy Goes From WAR To WOW

A new strategy vastly different from the previously implemented pompous condescension has emerged in the Mike Trout vs. Miguel Cabrera American League MVP debate. It’s more subtle and friendly-like, similar to the placing of the hand on a person’s shoulder while shaking hands as a gesture of friendship. What’s ignored is that the touching of the shoulder is immediately followed by a rush to the nearest sink to embark on fifteen minutes of hand-scrubbing with industrial soap.

I wrote about the rematch of the MVP debate between Trout and Cabrera for FanIQ weeks ago and again stated that my vote, if I had one, would be for Cabrera. That’s not to say that Trout doesn’t have a case for the MVP, nor is it diminishing how great Trout already is. Making the choice more complicated is Cabrera’s injury-fueled slump in September. But the same logic that tries to render the Angels’ results irrelevant in the argument bolsters Cabrera’s case. The Tigers are essentially on cruise control to the playoffs and Cabrera accumulated his numbers when the team needed him most. That he’s still playing when he could use some time off is a testament to his determination to fight through his maladies.

In essence, Cabrera is being punished because he’s got no range at third base and can’t run. Trout is getting extra points for his abilities other than at the plate. It’s entirely up to the voters to determine what they believe to be more important in the MVP balloting. If they think that Cabrera’s defense and plodding baserunning negates a large portion of the fact that he’s probably the best hitter on the planet, that’s fine. But the decision to shift from denigrating and reacting with overwhelming arrogance to using the exclamatory “WOW!!” to trick those they deem less intelligent than they are into voting for or supporting Trout is even worse.

So which is more important when making the case for Trout? The accumulation of all-around numbers – walks, on-base percentage, defense in center field, speed, stolen base percentage, WAR? Or that Trout’s team is loaded with high-priced talent, is an also-ran and the games he’s played have been meaningless since June?

Which is more important for Cabrera? That he’s leading the Major Leagues in almost every major hitting category, is playing a defensive position he’s not good at to help his team, is playing hurt and the Tigers are heading for the playoffs? Or that he’s weak defensively and can’t run?

I believe Cabrera is the MVP because I’m: A) not punishing a player for what he can’t do; and B) am not picking a player with a sub-.500 team for the MVP.

Others might disagree. This shifting of the message to try and promote their candidate with a more palatable strategy to get support is blatant. Considering the rules for selecting the MVP are up to the voter and what he or she deems important, the new Trout campaign blitz could be taken as an insult to the collective intelligence of the voters and spur them to vote for Cabrera out of spite due to the opaque attempts to call them idiots for having a different viewpoint on the definition of “value.”

Some of the voters/supporters – on both sides – are stupid and don’t know much of anything about baseball whether they make their judgments based on stats or on what they “see.” Regardless, given the rules of the MVP balloting, they can vote for whomever they want. It’s not clear-cut and the simple act of disagreeing with those who think they’ve got a formula doesn’t automatically imply being wrong.

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Bashing and Smashing the Real Underachievers—American League

Yesterday I asked why the Mets were being hammered for playing pretty much the way anyone and everyone should’ve expected them to play. Today let’s have a look at some teams that were—according to the “experts,” payrolls and talent levels—were supposed to be performing better and why they aren’t.

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Toronto Blue Jays

It’s becoming apparent that the Blue Jays are not a team off to a bad start. They might just be plain bad. In addition to that, one of the main culprits in their mediocrity/badness over the past two seasons—former manager John Farrell—has the Red Sox in first place with the best record in baseball. I don’t think he’s a good game manager, but the reality doesn’t lie. The Red Sox will fall to earth at some point, but will the Blue Jays rise?

They may not be making the same baserunning gaffes they did under Farrell, but they’re third in the American League in homers and twelfth in runs scored. They’re last in batting average, next-to-last in on-base percentage, and thirteenth in ERA. The bullpen has been solid, but if a team doesn’t hit and doesn’t get any starting pitching their roster is irrelevant whether it has Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson, Brandon Morrow and Jose Bautista or whatever refuse the Mets are shuttling in and out of their outfield.

There’s too much talent with too long a history for this type of underperformance to continue for the whole season, but if it does it may be time to stop looking at the players, coaches and manager and turn the blame to the front office.

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Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

What I find funny is that one of the main arguments for Mike Trout’s 2012 MVP candidacy apart from his higher WAR over Miguel Cabrera was that the Angels took off after he was recalled. Without him to start the season they were 6-14; with him in the lineup after his recall they were 81-58. Trout’s been there from the beginning of the 2013 season and the Angels are 10-17, looking haphazard, disconnected and awful. The only “war” being mentioned is the undeclared, but known, “war” between the front office and the manager.

They’re not a cohesive unit and when you have a bunch of mercenaries, some of those mercenaries had better be able to pitch.

Yesterday’s win over the Athletics was indicative of one of the Angels’ biggest problems: veteran apathy. In the eighth inning, an important insurance run would’ve scored had Mark Trumbo touched the plate before Josh Hamilton was thrown out at third base to end the inning. Mike Scioscia’s teams were known for the inside game, pitching, defense, speed and going all out. Those small fundamental mistakes didn’t cost them games because they didn’t happen. Now they do. And they’re 10-17 and going nowhere in large part because of that. They got away with it yesterday, but just barely. It certainly doesn’t help that their pitching is woeful, but their issues stem from more than just bad pitching.

Why don’t the Angels just put the man out of his misery? He’s been there for 14 years, it’s no longer his team, his sway in the organization is all but gone and the players aren’t responding to him. It’s like delaying the decision to put down a beloved pet. Another week isn’t going to make a difference other than to make things worse. Sometimes making a change for its own sake is good.

Tony LaRussa’s says he’s not interested in managing. He might be interested but for one thing: his relationship with Jim Leyland is such that he won’t want to compete with his friend in the same league and possibly ruin Leyland’s last shot at a title so LaRussa could stroke his own ego, make another big payday, derive some joy over abusing Jeff Luhnow and the Astros and being the center of attention again. It’s Ivory Soap Pure (99 44/100%) that you can forget LaRussa.

Phil Garner took over an Astros team that was floundering in 2004 and brought them to the playoffs; the next season, they were 15 games under .500 in late May of 2005 and rebounded to make the World Series. Even Bob Brenly, who was a figurehead as Diamondbacks manager and whose main attribute was that he wasn’t Buck Showalter and didn’t tell the players how to wear their socks, would restore a calming, “it’s different” atmosphere.

Someone, somewhere would yield a better result that Scioscia is now. It’s known and not accepted yet. Maybe after a few more losses, it will be accepted that it’s enough so they can move on.

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The Trout vs Cabrera MVP Battle Is Over, But The Argument Rages On

Remember a player named Mike Blowers? He’s a broadcaster now for the Mariners and had a few relatively productive seasons for them in the mid-to-late-1990s. One season in particular stands out. In 1995, the Yankees castoff Blowers posted an .809 OPS with 23 homers and 96 RBI for a Mariners team that came back from 13 games out of first place in August to win the AL West. They bounced the Yankees in the ALDS coming back from 2 games to 0 down before losing to the Indians in 6 games in the ALCS.

That season, you will remember, was shortened by the strike, so Blowers only played in 134 games. Had it been a full schedule, he certainly would have driven in 110+ runs. On the surface, it looks like a solid season. But in reality, was it? Or were his RBI totals cushioned by big games? During that season, Blowers had games with RBI totals of: 8, 5, 5, 6, 4, 4, 4, and 7. Right there that’s 8 games out of 134 where he accumulated 43 of his 96 RBI. Add in that he spent the season batting behind Tino Martinez (.369 OBP); Jay Buhner (.343 OBP); Ken Griffey Jr. (.379 OBP); and Edgar Martinez (.479 OBP), and you wonder why he had so few RBI.

This isn’t to pick on Blowers as a random player, but it proves a point that any stat—not just the old-school ones such as RBI—can be torn apart when they’re examined in depth with an end in mind.

The debate between Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera for American League MVP still rages even though Cabrera was given the award. The Cabrera backers present the following case: he won the Triple Crown; his team won their division; the opposing pitchers said they feared Cabrera more than any other hitter in baseball. The Trout backers point to his 10.7 WAR; his defensive brilliance; his speed; his power; and that the Angels were 6-14 when he arrived and went 81-58 with him in the lineup.

None other than newfound political celebrity Nate Silver made his case for Trout on his Fivethirtyeight.com blog here. Along with the stats such as WAR, Silver uses Trout playing in a “harder division” and other bits of randomness to bolster his case, but it’s not as clear-cut as he implies, nor is Cabrera’s case as clear-cut as the other side implies.

You can use a phantom argument as a means of patting the non-stat people on the head by saying, “Look at their record with him in the lineup and without it,” as if it’s connected on its face. I picture Silver rolling his eyes and thinking, “Here, idiots. Here’s a simplistic number you can understand. Wins.” It’s done as a concession to convince. Because Silver drilled the presidential election doesn’t mean his opinion and calculations in baseball are unassailable. In fact, his history at predicting baseball with PECOTA is quite pedestrian even though it’s promoted for its accuracy. PECOTA is a formula. It’s math and math isn’t the determinative factor with baseball players that it clearly is in the political arena. There’s no variable and no analysis. It’s a sum and when it’s wrong, there’s always an excuse of the faults of human beings in not living up to what was expected.

Does that make it okay to be wrong? To suggest that they would’ve been right if X happened and Y didn’t? If (BLANK) great pitcher didn’t mistakenly groove a fastball to Cabrera so he could knock it into space? If (BLANK) mediocre pitcher didn’t throw the best curveball of his life to strike Trout out with the bases loaded?

If we begin with the premise that Trout’s presence was solely responsible for the Angels rise from that atrocious start, how do we figure where it began and when it ended? How about the acquisition of a reliever named Ernesto Frieri who stabilized the Angels’ atrocious bullpen after they’d demoted closer Jordan Walden? The Angels were 10-17 when they acquired Frieri. Is he suddenly the MVP because they were 79-56 with him on the roster? With the Angels talent—dysfunctional and infighting as it was—do you truly believe they were going to keep playing as badly as they started? The concept of a statistical formula like PECOTA would tell you that it wasn’t going to happen; that they’d get themselves straightened out with or without Trout, but that is conveniently glossed over to promote Trout as the MVP because of his “presence”. Did he show up with donuts every day? Did he smell really good to make the other players happy? The presence argument is fleeting and incalculable before or after it happens and is mitigated by both Cabrera and Trout having positive things said about them. Which is accurate and which isn’t? Which counts and which doesn’t?

The comparison of home runs that were hit to whether or not they would have left a different ballpark is questionable as well. The pitchers pitch differently in a bigger park than they do in a smaller one; they might be more willing to challenge a player like Trout knowing who’s batting behind him (a guy named Albert Pujols) and test the rookie rather than run the risk of putting runners on base for Pujols and the other Angels bashers. Everyone knows the numbers nowadays and applies them to a certain degree. With everyone knowing the numbers, the strategies pitching coaches impart to their catchers as a way of devising a gameplan are contingent on what the opposing lineup does with pitches in various locations. Unless everything—everything—is torn apart to examine when, where, how, and why, WAR or the Triple Crown cannot be the final arbiter of the MVP.

You can’t have it both ways. When lobbying for the Hall of Fame, you can’t say that a player like Ron Santo was far superior to Jim Rice because of his defensive greatness at third base, ballpark factors, and plain factional disputes of arguing for the sake of it and then criticize a Cabrera because he was a bad third baseman, simultaneously crediting Trout because he’s a great center fielder. Rice was playing half of his games in Fenway Park with the Green Monster—a spot more nuanced than reliant on speed and range. He was good at playing that wall. Also he was a prideful and somewhat misunderstood black man playing in Boston in the 1970s which put more pressure on him, pressure that can’t be examined through a statistical lens. Third base is a harder to fill position and, despite his defensive inadequacies, Cabrera was serviceable at the position considering the expectations. He made the routine plays, which was all he was asked to do.

Asked to do.

If you’re asked to do something at work, are you criticized because someone whose duties are totally different from yours; whose skills are in a different category; is working in a totally different department, does their job in a “better” way than you do by metrics that are not in line with one another? That can’t be in line with one another?

No. So why do it with Cabrera and Trout?

With that comes the inevitable question, not of replacing these players with a baseline, invisible Triple A player as WAR does, but with an actual person. The Tigers had no one viable to play third base to take over for Cabrera while the Angels could’ve cobbled it together without Trout had they stuck Peter Bourjos out there (a 4.8 WAR player in 2011) and hoped he reverted to what he was in 2011 after a terrible start in 2012. Does that matter?

This is a tribal debate with the stat people on one end jumping up and down for Trout while shouting about the “injustice” and the old-schoolers gloating that Cabrera won. No one’s going to change their minds. But if this is the way it’s going to be, then it shouldn’t be about the Triple Crown, WAR, team results, aura, or whatever. It should be completely dissected pitch-by-pitch, play-by-play, everything-by-everything. Then there will be a final answer. Until that happens, there will be this endless presentation of supposed facts twisted to suit the purposes of the one arguing, truth and willingness to listen irrelevant and ignored for the sake of the self.

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The Big One: Trout vs Cabrera for AL MVP

Exemplifying the polarization of old schoolers vs stat guys, Mike Trout vs Miguel Cabrera for the Most Valuable Player has become a territorial tug-of-war for the hearts and minds of the rank-and-file baseball fan. What’s missed amid the visceral anger, grumpy tantrums, and condescending pomposity is that the MVP is not the WAR (Wins Above Replacement) Award; nor is it the Triple Crown Award. There are criteria for the voter to follow when selecting his MVP and they follow (taken directly from the Baseball Writers Association website):

Dear Voter:

There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means. It is up to the individual voter to decide who was the Most Valuable Player in each league to his team. The MVP need not come from a division winner or other playoff qualifier.

The rules of the voting remain the same as they were written on the first ballot in 1931:

1.  Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.

2.  Number of games played.

3.  General character, disposition, loyalty and effort.

4.  Former winners are eligible.

5.  Members of the committee may vote for more than one member of a team.

You are also urged to give serious consideration to all your selections, from 1 to 10. A 10th-place vote can influence the outcome of an election. You must fill in all 10 places on your ballot. Only regular-season performances are to be taken into consideration.

Keep in mind that all players are eligible for MVP, including pitchers and designated hitters.

This leaves such room for interpretation that it’s inevitable that stat guys whose lives are based in WAR (baseball’s version of the military industrial complex) are going to ignore any dissenters as to other factors and look at WAR and WAR alone to make their decision. It’s also inevitable that the voters will do what they want regardless of said criteria and, as George A. King III did in 1999, will omit a deserved candidate (in this case Pedro Martinez) due to ludicrous partisanship disguised as an epiphany.

Murray Chass rants about what Chass rants about; Mike Francesa demands to “see” the number of catches Trout made to increase his defensive value past Cabrera’s offensive numbers; Jeff Passan shakes his head disapprovingly with a disconsolate, “I think that’s sad” that he thinks Cabrera’s going to win; Keith Law tweets in Latin.

Chaos ensues.

None of this helps. If anything, it forces the open-minded to pick a side among the entrenched with few understanding exactly what they’re advocating or why. The proper method to convince the undecided (or even the decided) is to provide a cogent, understandable, and palatable point-of-view without rancor, arrogance, or perception of force. The argument has to be shifted from where it is to where it should be.

So let’s examine the MVP race in the American League and decide who should win. I’ll play Abraham Lincoln to provide the foundation to end this destructive and pointless civil war.

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WAR vs the Triple Crown

I listed the players in MLB history who have won the Triple Crown and whether or not they won the MVP here, along with the circumstances of their winning or losing the award.

The Triple Crown is not the deciding factor for the MVP. It is part of the decisionmaking process and has to be placed into proper context. The same can be said for WAR. WAR is a formula designed to evaluate how much better an individual player is than the baseline Triple A player that you can find anywhere for nothing—basically, a ham-and-egger—and it adds in defense, baserunning, and offense. Based on WAR, Trout (10.7) is the MVP over Cabrera (6.9). But it’s not that simple.

That the feat of winning the Triple Crown hasn’t been accomplished in 45 years does matter. Cabrera’s offensive slash line was .330/.393/.606 with an OPS of .999 (leading the majors), and an OPS+ of 165. Trout’s slash line was .326/.399/.564 with an OPS of .963 and an AL leading OPS+ of 171. Cabrera hit 44 homers; Trout 30. Cabrera isn’t a baserunner; Trout is a great baserunner who stole 49 bases in 54 attempts. Trout’s presence is seen as having saved the Angels’ disappointing season from an utter disaster as he arrived with the club at 6-14 and immediately provided a cleansing spark to a toxic atmosphere. Cabrera was the linchpin of the Tigers offense.

Calculating the OPS is also misleading because Cabrera’s walk total declined from 108 in 2011 to 66 in 2012 because he had Prince Fielder hitting behind him. Cabrera doesn’t strike out (98); Trout does (139). Cabrera is a double play machine (28 to lead the majors); Trout grounded into 7.

Where does the dissection stop and the diagnosis begin?

Because Cabrera had Fielder hitting behind him, his old-school offensive stats were bolstered as teams had to pitch to him, and hindered as his new-school stat of OPS was lowered because he walked 42 fewer times. Had he walked 20 more times in 2012, how much would that have increased his OPS and decreased his RBI/HR totals? We don’t know because, like WAR, it’s speculative.

Trout’s WAR was driven up by his defense and speed; Cabrera’s was dropped because he didn’t add anything on the bases and was a below average defender. Does that tally up to Cabrera being deprived of the award?

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Defense, speed, credit, and punishment

Did Muhammad Ali become the legend he is because he was great at beating on a punching bag? No. It was because of his work in the ring. Taking points away from Cabrera because of his poor defense at third base is the same thing. He’s not a good third baseman and Trout is a great defensive center fielder. Is it fair to punish Cabrera because of what he can’t do? It’s like refusing a great novelist the Pulitzer because he’s not a poet; depriving an actor the Oscar because he can’t sing. Why should he have to justify what he can’t do and have it reduce the impressiveness of what he did do?

Cabrera was the epitome of the team player by accepting the shift to third base to accommodate Fielder and losing weight to improve his range. Not every star-level player of Cabrera’s caliber would do that. When he got hit in the face by a ground ball in spring training, the easiest thing for Cabrera to do would have been to toss his infielder’s glove on manager Jim Leyland’s desk and say he’s not going back there—and he could’ve done that and gotten away with it putting the team in an awful position right before the season started. But he didn’t. He moved to third to help the team and, defensive metrics aside, was actually far better than anyone could have expected given that he hadn’t played the position in five years.

Does he get credit for that?

Trout’s defense is absolutely a factor in the MVP voting, but calculating the runs he supposedly saved statistically is ignoring the number of runs the Tigers added by their addition of Fielder and Cabrera’s selflessness in moving to a position he wasn’t good at playing to accommodate that signing. Does WAR account for the team-oriented move? No. Because it can’t since it’s not a number in a calculator.

Much like depriving a pitcher of the MVP because he’s a pitcher, you cannot logically take away the MVP from Cabrera because Trout had a higher WAR due to his basestealing and defense when, at the plate, Cabrera was the bigger threat.

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Team results

Where would the Tigers have been without Cabrera?

Where would the Angels have been without Trout?

The Tigers would have been in the situation where they had to find a third baseman and a middle of the lineup masher to replace what they would not have had without Cabrera. Could they have done that? And where would they have finished in the AL Central without Cabrera?

They could, I suppose, have traded for the available at the time Chase Headley or could have made the Mets an offer they couldn’t refuse for David Wright, but that would’ve gutted the system of the players they eventually used to land Anibal Sanchez and Omar Infante, effectively rendering their acquisitions as a net loss. The Tigers would not have made the playoffs without Cabrera, Sanchez, and Infante.

And the Angels?

They were 6-14 when Trout was recalled in what was labeled as a desperation move for a fractured and shocked team and the Angels went 81-58 with him in the lineup. Would they have righted the ship without him in time to end up at 89-73 and out of the playoffs? Given the star power of the club, their pitching, and willingness to make mid-season deals for the likes of Zack Greinke, it’s not much to expect that team—without Trout—to have righted their ship to the mediocre degree that they did. Trout is given the credit for the club getting straight, but they probably would’ve gotten straight anyway and finished in third place with Trout or anyone in center field.

The “value to the team” argument goes to Cabrera because his team made the playoffs and Trout’s didn’t and because the Tigers had no options at third base and the Angels did in center field.

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The winner

This is a landmark case in the extreme wings of baseball. Extremities win on occasion, but for the most part, it’s nuance that rules not by force and not by transformative thinking, but by reason and reality. And by reason and reality, the AL MVP is the Triple Crown winner, Miguel Cabrera.

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Your American League MVP Checklist

Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout are locked in a duel for the American League Most Valuable Player. In a way, it’s a factional battle for the hearts and minds of the casual fan.

Some quarters look at the conventional batting stats of Cabrera and say that he’s the winner without question. If it’s not a homer or an RBI, then it’s unimportant. If he wins the batting title too? It’s over.

Others examine advanced stats and defensive metrics to give the nod to Trout. Neither side, in general, wants to hear what the other has to say in part because one is the grumpy old man who doesn’t care about OPS+, and defensive runs saved or lost; and the other is higher-educated, pompous, smug, and condescending and lacks the confidence in their argument to lay it out in terms that the old-schoolers are going to understand and accept, so they choose to be dismissive and blatantly arrogant. If it’s not quantifiable, it doesn’t matter and gut instincts from being around the game are claimed not to exist.

So here’s a checklist combining common sense, old-school stats, and new-school metrics to determine what the criteria for AL MVP should be.

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Conventional Offensive Stats vs Advanced Offensive Stats

20 years ago, there would be no contest and Cabrera would win. He’s leading the league in batting, RBI, and slugging. He’s near the top of the league in home runs. As for advanced stats, at the plate, he leads the league in OPS and OPS+. Cabrera has an OPS of 1.003 and an OPS+ of 167. Trout has 27 homers and 47 stolen bases in 51 tries. He has a .949 OPS and also has an OPS+ of 167.

But what about BAbip (Batting Average on Balls in Play)? Trout has been very, very lucky with a .379 BAbip; Cabrera is at .330 (his career mark is .345). There’s no doubt that Trout’s speed is important to his high BAbip and his batting average, and Cabrera is slow. So where does that factor in? Should Trout’s luck count against him just as the defense and resulting higher WAR are counting for him?

Defense

It comes down to deciding how many points to deduct from Cabrera for his poor defense at third base and whether or not he should be punished for not being a good third baseman.

Trout is a defensive whiz in center field and saving his pitchers and team a large number of runs because of that. Cabrera was shifted to third base because they had nowhere else to put him in the field upon the signing of Prince Fielder. Cabrera has only played in 33 games in his career as a DH and his numbers—.242/.317/.414—are poor. Not every player is comfortable as a DH and if Cabrera was already feeling threatened by the Tigers bringing in another star in his stratosphere such as Fielder, the last thing they wanted to do was to make it worse by also telling him he’s not going to play the field at all and will be a permanent DH. Cabrera probably would’ve hit as a DH, but with his history of off-field problems, it’s understandable that the Tigers didn’t want to antagonize him.

The idea that the shift third base was a major issue missed the fact that Cabrera wasn’t any better at first base than he is at third. He should be a DH, but if he’s more comfortable hitting and keeps his head in the game better when he’s playing the field, so be it.

He didn’t take the move to third base lightly (so to speak) and showed up to spring training far leaner than he’s been in recent years. But he’s not a good defensive player. Could the Tigers have moved him to the outfield and found a better way to mitigate his deficiencies? Yes. Would that have made him a more agreeable choice to the voters who are weighing Trout’s defense so heavily? Possibly. If Cabrera is going to be punished for his poor defense, it should be attached to the caveat that he’s not good defensively period and using that as the final word is similar to punishing R.A. Dickey because he’s a knuckleballer as opposed to a conventional pitcher—it’s not fair.

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The “value” argument AKA “Where would they be without him?”

Trout wasn’t recalled by the Angels until April 28^th after they got off to a horrific start amid star-studded acquisitions such as Albert Pujols and preseason World Series predictions. The Angels are 77-54 with Trout in the lineup and 8-14 without him. The Tigers’ record is 82-72 and with Cabrera in the lineup, it’s 81-72. Both clubs have underachieved given the expectations lavished upon them before the season. Is the Tigers’ underachievement the fault of Cabrera? And did the Angels turnaround begin with the recall of Trout? How much does that count in the deliberation process?

I am not one who believes a pitcher should not win the MVP and supported Justin Verlander last season in large part because of the, “Where would they be without him?” argument. The Tigers won the division by 15 games, but that doesn’t tell the whole story of how they did it. Because they ripped off a 12 game winning streak in early September and their closest competitor in the division, the Indians, came apart in the second half, the Tigers were able to make a close race look like it wasn’t close. In truth, had they not had Verlander at the beginning of the season, they would’ve been behind in the division by double-digits. And the “any pitcher could’ve done X” in Verlander’s place is absurd. It was Verlander’s brilliance that kept a struggling team afloat early in the season, making him the most valuable player they had. Without him, they were a .500 team. With him, they made it to the ALCS. This is in addition to his numbers.

So who was more valuable to his team? Trout or Cabrera? And where would they have wound up without them?

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Context

The stat people call the concept of lineup protection a myth, but with Fielder behind him, Cabrera’s walks have dropped to 65 from 108 last season and 89 in 2010. Can it not be said that pitchers aren’t so willing to walk Cabrera because Fielder is behind him? He might not have as many homers if Fielder weren’t hitting behind him, but his OBP would definitely be significantly higher. Would that make his case stronger if he didn’t have that basher behind him? Or does it make it weaker because he has that basher behind him? Which is it?

WAR is an overused stat that doesn’t tell the whole story. If you discount the defensive aspect, Trout’s still ahead, but it’s not by as wide a margin. Cabrera has the eye-catching numbers; Trout has the accumulation of other stuff that many don’t pay attention to at first glance.

Trout’s argument is incremental. Will there be enough of a groundswell from his higher overall WAR, his great defense, speed, and that the Angels’ season was heading down the tubes before he arrived? Or will the power numbers that are more obvious on the part of Cabrera take precedence?

Will those who are vacillating be swayed by the forcefulness of the beliefs from the old-schoolers and the stat people? There are many who simply do what the crowd does; what the crowd tells them to do and, like sheep, are incapable of thinking on their own.

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The final analysis

Each factional end would be better-served to refrain from the name-calling, eye-rolling, tantrums, sarcasm, and obnoxious dismissals that make the old-schoolers knuckles white with rage and cause the veins to bulge out of their necks like they’re having a heart attack. No one wants to hear that stuff any more than they want to be told, “That’s the way it’s always been,” as if that’s a legitimate reason.

Both players have a case for the MVP and if one side is trying to convince the other, perhaps they’d be better-served in looking at it from their point-of-view rather than just shutting their eyes, covering their ears, and throwing a tantrum in lieu of possibly admitting they’re wrong and accepting that there’s more than one way to hand out arbitrary award with no clear-cut process in formulating a conclusion that everyone will be happy with and accept.

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