I can’t think of a better crowd from which to source annual baseball awards than this site’s readership. Let’s kick off a series of groupthink ballots with a conversation about who should win the MVP award in each league. Your mission, should you chose to accept: List the ten players most worthy, in order, of winning the MVP in either league, or both. Feel free to elaborate on why you chose these players or just leave the ballot there in the comments.
My task: counting the votes. I’ll do it a week from tomorrow: Friday, 11/13. I’ll use the same 14-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 scoring that MLB uses. Also, after the jump, I’ll throw some stats out, since that’s what this site is about, right?
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I’ll hop to it first. I already voted in Baseball Prospectus’ Internet Baseball Awards, so I’ll just re-use my ballots from there:
AL MVP:
1. Mike Trout
2. Josh Donaldson
3. Lorenzo Cain
4. Manny Machado
5. Dallas Keuchel
6. Kevin Kiermaier
7. David Price
8. Mookie Betts
9. Chris Davis
10. Adrian Beltre
NL MVP:
1. Bryce Harper
2. Jake Arrieta
3. Clayton Kershaw
4. Zack Greinke
5. Paul Goldschmidt
6. Joey Votto
7. Max Scherzer
8. AJ Pollock
9. Jason Heyward
10. Kris Bryant
My basic methodology is to take the composite of bWAR and fWAR and use that as a starting point, with adjustments made if I see a really compelling reason to do so. I didn’t really see a lot of compelling reasons to do much reconfiguring this year, so that’s basically what you see, and that’s how I’d like them counted.
(However, I WOULD like to leave open the possibility that my vote COULD change, if someone convinces me I’m wrong. Do you have a methodology for dealing with vote changes, Bryan? Thanks!)
Vote changes will be accepted as replies to the voters’ own original votes.
did you account for Greinke’s bat? I think if you did you would have put him above Arrieta and Kershaw
Recall the playoff seeding (listing teams .500 or better only):
AL
1. KC
2. TOR
3. TX
4. NY
5. HOU
===============
6. LAA
7. MIN
8. CLE
9. BAL
NL
1. StL
2. LA
3. NY
4. PIT
5. CUB
==============
6. SF
7. WAS
AL
1 Trout
2 Donaldson
3 Cain
4 Machado
5 Kiermaier
6 Keuchel
7 Betts
8 Beltre
9 Price
10 C Davis
NL
1 Harper
2 Goldschmidt
3 Arrieta
4 Greinke
5 Kershaw
6 Votto
7 Rizzo
8 Pollock
9 Heyward
10 Scherzer
At the risk of sounding cynical, I’ll venture this comment:
Was there really an MVP in the AL this year? The WAR figures indicate Trout and Donaldson as the main contenders, but how really valuable were they in the more generally accepted sense of the word? The Angels went nowhere despite Trout, and the Jays were underachieving in spite of Donaldson’s big numbers until August when Revere and Price joined the team. A case could be made that things would have been worse for their teams without them, but that argument could be made for a great number of players.
To my mind the MVP in the AL is the Kansas City Royals jointly. Without a dominant pitcher or batter they still dominated their division and won tough time and again through the post season. There’s real value in what they accomplished.
NSB – On the one hand, I generally agree with what you’re saying. The MVP ends up being given to an individual for what is essentially a team accomplishment. That really doesn’t make much sense.
On the other hand, Donaldson put up a 1.132 OPS during August, a month in which the Blue Jays went 21-6 and went from 6 games down to 1 1/2 up.
On the third hand, Jose Bautista put up a 1.008 OPS in August and Edwin Encarnacion a 1.379 (!). So back to the first hand…
Interesting take, nsb. I kind of see it the opposite way. The championship is a celebration of randomness. Put the teams who had the best seasons (or were in the right divisions) in a tournament and see how the ball bounces. The individual awards, on the other hand, are a celebration of excellence, mostly disconnected from the championship. They recognize what happened over 162 games, mostly independent of small-sample size-flukes.
Sure, a player’s job is to help his team reach the playoffs, and it’s reasonable to recognize that in voting for an MVP, but I see value as contributing to wins with superior individual performance. Looking back, 1968 was the Tigers, but it was also Bob Gibson. 2001 was the Diamondbacks, but it was also Barry Bonds. If the championship were all that mattered, every season would seem like a waste of time for at least 20 teams.
Playoff baseball is awesome. So is the regular season. And so is award season.
AL: 1) Donaldson, 2) Trout 3) Cain 4) Machado 5) Keuchel 6) Price 7) Kiermaier 8) Beltre 9) Kinsler, 10) Wade Davis
NL: 1) Harper 2) Goldschmidt 3) Rizzo 4) Greinke 5) Arrieta 6) Votto 7) Heyward 8) Kershaw 9) Pollock 10) Carpenter
AL:
1. Josh Donaldson
2. Mike Trout
3. Lorenzo Cain
4. Manny Machado
5. Prince Fielder
6. Dallas Keuchel
7. Wade Davis
8. Kendrys Morales
9. Dellin Betances
10. David Price
NL
1. Bryce Harper
2. Anthony Rizzo
3. Paul Goldschmidt
4. Jake Arrieta
5. Joey Votto
6. Andrew McCutchen
7. Zack Grienke
8. Clayton Kershaw
9. Mark Melancon
10. Yoenis Cespedes
I’ll do NL in a bit but for now here’s my AL ballot:
1) Trout
2) Donaldson
3) Keuchel
4) Kain
5) Machado
6) Price
7) Grey
8) Cabrera
9) Betts
10) C. Davis
And now for my NL Ballot:
1) Harper
2) Greinke
3) Goldschmidt
4) Arrieta
5) Votto
6) Kershaw
7) Pollock
8) Scherzer
9) Rizzo
10) Bryant
I’ve been mulling this over for a couple of days & a few things have occurred to me.
First is that much like the Hall of Fame, the MVP Award is a poorly defined institution. Can you be an MVP if you played for a last place team? If so, aren’t we actually talking about the Best Player Award instead?
But the bigger question for me is right there in the awards name: value.
Is it reasonable to take a players salary into account when voting? After all, Jake Arrieta was paid almost $29,000,000 LESS than Clayton Kershaw. Doesn’t that almost by definition make him more “valuable”? And if we do that do we also need to take total team payroll into account?
And one final unrelated thing that I discovered is that Adrian Beltre
I have no idea why this posted but to complete my final thought:
Adrian Beltre has mostly been more highly regarded by the advanced metrics crowd than the traditionalists but it seems to me that by the time he is finished he will likely have checked at lot of the HOF boxes for both.
1500 runs, 3000 hits, 600 doubles, 450+ home runs, 1600 RBI’s all appear to be within fairly reasonable reach.
Hartvig,
I believe the Sporting News used to have a “Player of the Year Award” in lieu of the MVP and its vague description. I imagine Bryce Harper would have been there selection for 2015 if the award still exists/exited. In any event, I am going to submit a ballot because everybody loves to make lists.
Harper
McCutchen
Posey
Bryant
Goldschmidt
Votto
Rizzo
Granderson
Carpenter
Brandon Crawford
Trout
Cain
Donaldson
Machado
Choo
C. Correa
Altuve
Chris Davis
Bautista
Nelson Cruz
I just think Donaldson got a lot more help from teammates like Bautista, Encarnacion, Pillar, Revere than Trout got from Pujols, Calhoun, and ???
NL (caveat: Cubs fan)
1) Harper
2) Arrieta
3) Rizzo
4) Goldschmidt
5) Greinke
6) Kershaw
7) Scherzer
8) Votto
9) Posey
10) Pollock
AL:
1. Donaldson (TOR) 8.8
2. Trout (LAA) 9.4
3. Cain (KCR) 7.2
4. Beltre (TEX) 5.8
5. Keuchel (HOU) 7.2
3. Kiermaier (TBR) 7.3
6. Machado (BAL) 7.1
7. Kinsler (DET) 6.0
8. Betts (BOS) 6.0
10. Price (2TM) 5.8
NL:
1. Harper (WSN) 9.9
2. Greinke (LAD) 9.9
3. Heyward (STL) 6.5
4. Goldschmidt (ARI) 8.8
5. Rizzo (CHC) 6.2
6. Arrieta (CHC) 9.0
7. Kershaw (LAD) 7.5
8. Votto (CIN) 7.6
9. Scherzer (WSN) 7.6
10. Pollock (ARI) 7.4
AL
1. Cain
2. Donaldson
3. Trout
4. Hosmer
5. Beltre
6. Betts
7. Keirmaier
8. Machado
9. Miguel Cabrera
10. David Ortiz (homer pick!)
NL
1. Greinke
2. Arrieta
3. Harper
4. Bryant
5. Rizzo
6. McCutcheon
7. Heyward
8. Goldschmidt
9. Votto
10. Kershaw
AL vote
1) Trout
2) Donaldson
3) Cain
4) Machado
5) Keuchel
6) Machado
7) Beltre
8) Cabrera
9) C. Davis
10) Kiermaier
AL:
1) Donaldson
2) Trout
3) Cain
4) Kiermaier
5) Machado
6) Keuchel
7) Beltre
8) Price
9) C. Davis
10) N. Cruz
NL:
1) Harper
2) Greinke
3) Arrieta
4) Goldschmidt
5) Kershaw
6) Heyward
7) Votto
8) Pollock
9) Scherzer
10) Rizzo
Can anyone verify this for me: The latest post I can access is the 10 Worst Hitters one on Greg Myers. Are there any later posts?
It seems to me that there are still glitches in the site, at any rate.
That’s the latest post I see, as well. Comments seem to be coming through fine, though. I guess it’s just been slow because it was the weekend.
That is the most current post that I am seeing as well
NL:
1) Harper
2) Goldschmidt
3) Greinke
4) Arrieta
5) Votto
6) Kershaw
7) Cepedes
8) Arenado
9) Carpenter
10) Posey
AL:
1) Donaldson
2) Cain
3) Trout
4) Keuchel
5) Bautista
6) Beltre
7) Betts
8) Kiermaier
9) Altuve
10) Machado
AL
Trout
Kiermaier
Donaldson
Cain
Keuchel
Cabrera
Machado
Lindor
Correa
Cespedes
NL
Harper
Goldschmidt
Greinke
Arrieta
Pollack
Votto
Kershaw
Heyward
Posey
Stanton
I was going to weigh in on this but since I dropped DirectTV last winter & replaced it with an antenna & Amazon Prime/Netflix I no longer see enough major league games to have an informed enough opinion.
Mostly I was trying to come up with ways not to vote for Trout & Harper- since I suspect that eventually they’ll both end up with a fistful or more MVP’s and that gets kind of boring- but I just couldn’t find a logical enough excuse not to do so.
It did however give me an idea to create an all-alphabet team that I actually might try to work up into an article at some point.
One question for our experts at Baseball-Reference searches- is there a way to better differentiate a search for player by name than simply typing in Q or X or whatever, like sorting by WAR or career length or even just getting rid of the guys who have that letter in the first or middle name? I can use my McMillian’s Baseball Encyclopedia to be sure I catch the guys who played prior to the 1980’s but I’d hate to make a fool out of myself by overlooking a more current candidate.
The idea would be to assemble the best possible 26 man roster using only one player from each letter of the alphabet while sticking to real world reasoning- they must have played a reasonable amount of their career at whatever position they are assigned to and fielding counts, multiple catchers & at least 1 person on the roster who can backup at each position, etc.
Does that sound like something anyone would be interested in discussing?
If you are handy with Excel spreadsheets it can be done this way. Copy and paste the BR WAR leaderboard into a spreadsheet. Then by using the text to column feature split the first and last names into separate columns. Then sort by the last name column from A to Z and the list is alphabetic. Do that for position players and pitchers. And you’re already short a man, there are no surnames beginning with X. You can also use the PI, select the initial letter of the surname and sort by WAR but you will have to do that 25 times for position players and 25 times for pitchers.
Actually no X’s makes for a more traditional 25-man roster so that’s all good, I guess.
Thanks for playing, folks. I’ll include my own ballots here before compiling and posting the results:
1. Trout
2. Donaldson
3. Cain
4. Machado
5. Kiermaier
6. Kipnis
7. Cruz
8. C.Davis
9. Keuchel
10. Price
1. Harper
2. Greinke
3. Arrieta
4. Kershaw
5. Goldschmidt
6. Votto
7. Rizzo
8. Posey
9. Pollock
10. Bryant
Details here.