The season of the homer has come and gone, capped by a most unusual World Series and a surprise champion. Now we take a look back at the season that was to identify its most outstanding performers. At this point, I’ll hand things over to Dr. Doom, who starts with a rundown of candidates for NL MVP. More after the jump.
Hello, HHSers! Dr. Doom here. It’s been a long time since I’ve been around. Well, I have been around, actually, reading all the posts and most of the comments. I just haven’t been commenting myself. I don’t know… work’s been busy, my three-year-old takes a lot of my attention. It makes things tough.
But enough about that. Instead, I’m here to do what I’ve done the past two years: awards voting posts. We’ll start things off in the senior circuit with the MVP (in this post), wend our way to some minor votes, and end with the AL MVP. So let’s begin!
Last year’s runaway MVP, Christian Yelich won a second-straight batting title, banging out a league best 169 OPS+ from .329/.429/.671, each of those slash marks topping the league and improving on his 2018 MVP numbers. Yelich also improved from 36 to 44 home runs, leading the league in taters at the time of his injury. However, given that he only played 130 games and the Brewers played their best ball without him, does he have a shot at a second straight MVP?
From the beginning of the season, Cody Bellinger was a story. Playing RF, CF, and 1B, Bellinger led the NL in TB (351) and was arguably the game’s most feared hitter, leading the majors with 21 intentional walks. A .305/.406/.629 batting line doesn’t hurt things either, especially playing in a notorious pitcher’s park. Plus the Dodgers won 100 games, giving him team success to match his individual numbers.
The NL’s HR leader was Pete Alonso, the Mets’ rookie sensation. Batting .260/.358/.583, Alonso was a triple short of Bellinger’s TB lead, while setting a new MLB record for rookie HR. Without Alonso, it’s doubtful the Mets would have even made it to .500, much less been in the race for the Wild Card right up until the season’s final week.
The only other player with more HR than Bellinger was Eugenio Suarez, whose 49 bombs were the most by a Red since George Foster in 1977. Suarez’s other numbers were basically the same as he put up last year (identical doubles and triples, one fewer RBI) when his season was written off as a fluke. It was no fluke. Suarez, a launch angle devotee, is now one of the NL’s premier power threats, to the tune of a .271/.358/.572 line. One of the lone bright spots in a dark season for the Redlegs, Suarez may be deserving of a spot on your ballot.
It’s also worth highlighting a couple of Braves, Freddie Freeman and Ronald Acuna, Jr., who made their own MVP statements. Freeman continued to hit like… well, Freddie Freeman, with a .295/.389/.549 supplemented by 38 HR, 113 R (4th) and 121 RBI (2nd) (he and Bellinger were the only two players to finish in the top 4 in the latter two categories). Acuna built on his sensational 2018 RoY season by leading the league with 37 stolen bases and blasting 41 homers to become the NL’s youngest 30-30 man (and the youngest 35-35 man in either league). Oh, and his 127 runs were the NL’s highest league-leading total for a 21-and-under player since Vada Pinson tallied 131 sixty years ago.
Last year’s RoY runner-up, Juan Soto (.282/.401/.548) continued his development in 2019 before shining on the big stage in October. Soto both scored and drove in 110 runs this season, one of only 4 NL players to do so. One of those others was his teammate Anthony Rendon, who posted league-leading marks in RBI (126) and doubles (44), to go with 1.010 OPS and 153 OPS+, both third best in the league.
There are other good choices out there – Ketel Marte (4th in OPS and OPS+), the Rockies’ trio (Nolan Arenado/Trevor Story/Charlie Blackmon), Jeff McNeil, among others – so make sure you do your research.
Among the NL’s pitchers, no one had a record-setting-type season. But, as per usual, Max Scherzer had a great season, plus was flanked by two teammates roughly as good in Patrick Corbin and Stephen Strasburg. And, don’t forget Jacob deGrom who followed up his 2018 CYA with another very strong showing (2nd in Pitcher WAR, ERA and WHIP). So, perhaps one of them will merit a vote. Rules are below – happy voting!
Rules: Vote by making a comment below and numbering your choices with 1 being the MOST preferred candidate, and 10 being your LEAST preferred candidate of your ten choices. Your ballots will be EXACTLY ten places for each award, just as the BBWAA does. You must vote for 10 players. Scoring will be 14-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, just as the BBWAA does. You are not required to vote in all elections; only vote in the ones you would like to vote in. You may make vote changes, if the discussion so moves you. If you change your vote, please do so in a new comment, not as a reply to your original comment (it’s a lot easier to find new comments than replies to old ones). Please don’t vote strategically; we’re trying to get the best result, not to manipulate the vote totals based on what others have done. Voting will remain open about one week. When players are tied, tiebreakers go as follows: first tiebreaker is number of ballots on which players were named; second tiebreaker is highest placement on a ballot; third tiebreaker is the first player to be named (as this usually only happens when a bunch of players are tied for last). Results will be posted when balloting closes.
1. Yelich
2. Bellinger
3. Acuna
4. deGrom
5. Strasburg
6. Alonso
7. Rendon
8. Marte
9. Scherzer
10. Donaldson
Hey everyone! Thanks for being willing to do this again! I think we’ll leave this open through Sunday night (11/10) at 11:59:59. As per usual, I won’t tabulate until Monday morning, so it’ll be about one week from right now (this post) that you’ll see results. Happy voting!
My own ballot:
1. Christian Yelich – Yeah, it’s a homer pick. So sue me. He was stellar, and I while I’m not sure he was better than Bellinger this last year, I AM confident that he has been the best player in the NL for two years, so I’m happy to vote for him. At the end of the day, there’s only one player in MLB I’d rather have than Yelich, and he plays in the other league, so Yelich gets my (biased) vote here.
2. Cody Bellinger – Even without accounting for homerism, which I will openly acknowledge contributed to my vote for Yelich, I have Yeli worth more than Belli… by 2 runs… and if you don’t account for defense. So the question is, was Bellinger worth 2 runs more than Yelich defensively? Baseball-reference says so (by 27 runs). So does Fangraphs (by only 8 runs). But I’m not going to rank him first. Still, a stellar season by a great young player. Were he not in a tight battle with a Brewer, it’s safe to say I’d put him first with ease.
3. Anthony Rendon – Rendon literally does everything well. He hits well (153 OPS+), fields well, runs the bases well, AND shows up in the “traditional” stats, leading the league in RBI and doubles. I can’t believe he’s a free agent. I have to imagine everyone Nats fan out there is sweating bullets about potentially losing Rendon and another fella you’ll see a couple spots below this.
4. Jacob deGrom – Yeah, he was good. The one bummer about putting one of the MVP votes before the Cy Young votes is that it always feels like a little bit of a spoiler, at least if you rank players more or less in the same way for both awards. But any rotation in the NL would have deGrom at its top, so he’s the top finishing pitcher for me.
5. Ketel Marte – Holy cow! Who saw this year coming from Marte? He improved on his last-season OPS by over 200 points! He hit three fewer triples than a year ago, but gained 10 doubles and 18 homers. And it’s not like he had a ballpark switch – he was a D-Back last year. We’ll see if it was a total fluke, or if this is a sign of big things to come, but either way, he was a fabulous player this year.
6. Max Scherzer – He’s the National League’s best pitcher and probably a top-3 player, when healthy. Unfortunately, there was a dearth of such days in 2019.
7. Stephen Strasburg – He would’ve been here for me, irrespective of postseason play. If we were taking postseason play into account, he’d go a lot higher. It was a great year, but I’ll say more in the Cy Young post when we get to it.
8. Pete Alonso – Pete Alonso hit 53 home runs. Pete Alonso was good enough at first base. Pete Alonso deserves some vote points, I think!
9. Juan Soto – I think Soto is quite underrated by both WAR systems. If you buy that his defensive metrics are good (he get the best jump of any outfielder in MLB, and he’s got a good arm), then you’ll feel, as I do, that his WAR’s a little low, and he squeezes into the top 10.
10. Yasmani Grandal – This is not a homer pick (believe me – I’m actually a little mad at him for opting out when he could’ve stayed in Milwaukee for next year). He was the NL’s best catcher, and I have him worth as much as anyone in this region. I always like to see a catcher good enough to at least be NAMED, and I’m never sure WAR is capturing the value properly. So Grandal gets a vote.
1) Yelich
2) Rendon
3) Bellinger – much better teammates than the two guys ahead of him here
4) Acuna
5) Alonso
6) Marte
7) Albies
8) Soto
9) Realmutto
10) Josh Bell / Freddie Freeman – splitting hairs at this point.
If Tatis played the whole year, I imagine he would have been at least half way up this list
Had I had the information at the time of writing the posts, I would’ve included MLB’s list of finalists. For the NL MVP, the three finalists are, as you’d expect: Cody Bellinger, Anthony Rendon, and Christian Yelich.
Don’t forget to vote, folks!
1. Yelich
2. Bellinger
3. Rendon
4. Scherzer
5. Soto
6. DeGrom
7. Marte
8. Arenado
9. Freeman
10. Flaherty
Agh! I have house guests coming for a week, so I can’t go into the depth I should. Here are the players I considered, with some stats:
Position Players
…………………………..bWAR………./500PA……….OPS+………..dWAR
Acuna………………….5.5……………….3.9…………..122……………0.7
Albies………………….4.8……………….3.6……………114…………..1.0
Alonso…………………5.0……………….3.6…………..148…………..-1.6
Arenado……………..5.7………………..4.3…………..129……………1.1
Bell……………………..2.9……………….2.4……………143…………..-1.5
Bellinger……………..9.0……………….6.8……………169……………1.9
Donaldson…………..6.1……………….4.6…………..127……………1.7
Freeman……………..4.1……………….3.0……………136…………..-0.5
Marte………………….6.9……………….5.5……………149……………0.9
Muncy…………………5.7……………….4.8……………133……………1.1
Realmuto…………….4.4………………3.7…………….108……………1.7 (catcher bonus)
Rendon……………….6.3……………….4.9……………153……………0.3
Soto…………………….4.7……………….3.6……………138…………..-0.6
Story……………………6.4……………….4.9……………118…………..2.4
Yelich………………….7.1……………….6.1…………….179………….-0.7
Pitchers
………………………….bWAR……………/162IP……….ERA+
deGrom……………..7.9…………………6.3…………….167
Scherzer…………….5.8…………………5.5…………….157
Strasburg…………..6.5…………………5.0…………….138
I’ve made sure to include all position player top-ten bWAR leaders and all pitchers among the top-ten overall bWAR leaders . . . plus a few other players.
I’m aware that fWAR is quite different for some players, and in the case of Yelich vs. Bellinger it has them tied (preserving the offensive/defensive balances). But with limited time, that’s about all I can take into account from fWAR
I’m going to pick Bellinger #1 for several reasons. In the MVP case, quantity matters. I think I’d likely say Yelich was the best player when he was playing, but a player adds no value to the team when he’s not. (The same problem applies to Scherzer. They’re both terrific players.) Other than that, I very much prefer players who are balanced with offensive and defensive positives–I think a player who is a defensive liability creates an extra threshold for this award. I don’t believe any bonus applies to being on a winning team; I don’t count a player’s teammates for or against him on the basis of these stats (RBI and R would be different). I like to see a power/speed balance, but apart from awareness of Yelich’s superior performance on this basis, I don’t have time to pursue that dimension. I do think pitchers have a higher threshold here, since everyday play outweighs for me the number of IP contemporary leaders compile.
With that in mind:
1. Bellinger
2. Yelich
3. deGrom
4. Marte
5. Rendon
6. Story
7. Strasburg
8. Muncy
9. Donaldson
10. Realmuto (it’s the catcher bonus!)
That leaves some good players off the list, but if I included them, I’d leave good players off the list.
Gotta go. I’ll try to peek in to see how it’s going–this is such a great exercise and I’m grateful to Doom . . . but it does take a lot of work and time to do it right. I wish I had more time to do more work . . .
Appreciate you taking the time to vote, even in a busy week, Bob. We have already matched the number of NL MVP voters we had last year (5), so I’m hoping we’ll get a few more, with about half the voting period remaining.
This is one of the oddest years I can remember. There are SO many good candidates that each of the ballots that comes in names someone new. Each time, I think, “Shoot, I should’ve named him, too,” but then I realize I can’t name 20 players on a 10-man ballot!
Also, the “how do you deal with injury time” thing… man is THAT ever going to be a theme this year! Yelich was the majors’ best hitter this year, but missed time. A second-straight NL MVP was all but guaranteed had he finished out the year, by my reckoning. But this isn’t the only race where that’s an issue: Scherzer will complicate the NL Cy Young race, and Mike Trout has the same complication in the AL MVP! So it should be pretty interesting to see how our voters handle that same issue across multiple races. I suspect that the competition will be tighter in some than others. But I’ll be tracking that. We had that issue last year in the AL Cy Young… but of course, that’s the only race this year WITHOUT that problem! So it should be fun to watch.
One of the benefits of a Baseball Reference subscription is that it also provides access to the Play Index for their other sites (football, basketball, hockey, etc.). So, if you’re watching tonight’s Thursday game between the Raiders and Chargers, I can tell you that safety Erik Harris has become the first Oakland Raider to have a game with two 50+ yard interception returns (Mike Haynes had such a game for the LA Raiders). And, Harris did it in the first quarter.
Here are player WAR totals as a percent of their team’s WAR totals.
TmWAR% = Player WAR / (Team Batting + Pitching WAR)
TmbWAR% = Player WAR / Team Batting WAR (incl. dWAR)
TmoWAR% = Player oWAR / Team Offensive WAR (excl. dWAR)
Here’s RC/TeamRC:
………………………………..age……….PA..OUTS.RC…RC/TeamRC
1 Christian Yelich* 27 MIL 580 341 150 17.54%
2 Cody Bellinger* 23 LAD 661 407 146 15.70%
3 Anthony Rendon 29 WN 646 394 139 15.33%
4 Ketel Marte# 25 ARI 628 393 134 16.13%
5 Nolan Arenado 28 COL 662 427 129 14.79%
6 Juan Soto* 20 WN 659 407 128 14.22%
7 Fredo Freeman* 29 ATL 692 443 127 14.14%
8 Pete Alonso 24 NY 693 458 126 15.00%
9 Ronald Acuna Jr. 21 ATL 715 469 125 13.92%
10 Trevor Story 26 COL 656 429 123 14.11%
11 Char. Blackmon* 32 COL 634 419 119 13.65%
12 Eugenio Suarez 27 CIN 662 439 119 15.93%
13 Ozzie Albies# 22 ATL 702 461 118 13.14%
14 Bryce Harper* 26 PHI 682 441 115 14.39%
…………..good luck with these columns posting accurately
I’ll help you out with the formatting.
Yelich seems to be in a class of one in terms of runs created relative to outs created.
Doug,
Thanks for the formatting. Yes, Yelich appears to be the “class” of the class, and, if he doesn’t get injured and picks up another 14% more PA’s (equivalent to Bellinger’s 661), he might have finished with 170 runs created. As is, he certainly appears to be the best offensive performer in the NL by a good measure anyway.
I didn’t even check the arcane/esoteric stats ( Base-Out Runs Added (RE24), Win Probability Added (WPA), Situ. Wins Added (WPA/LI), Base-Out Wins Added (REW) ) on the b-r leaderboard when I initially voted, however, Yelich is either first or second in the four categories with Rendon and Bellinger either first, second, or third in the four categories.
This table is interesting, but also takes you back to a definitional thing. Is “Most Valuable” best player? Is it most impactful on his team? There’s no way that Bryan Reynolds or Brian Anderson is more valuable than Bellinger, On the other hand, Trevor Story has a juicy 6.4 WAR (4th among position players) a TmWWAR of 28.2% (2nd best) and hasn’t appeared on a single ballot yet. I’m not suggesting I’d vote for him either.
I had Story as #6, Michael; I agree he’s been overlooked.
Just as I don’t think the MVP should relate either to a player’s team finish or to the teammates he has, I don’t think his percent of team value is what the V in MVP should be about (that stat is a numerical reflection of his teammates as much as of him–same as judging a player by his teammates).
I also think defense counts . . . a lot, so isolating oWAR or RC seems to me an error unless you pair it against dWAR. I keep pushing the Fielding Bible‘s point that every base a fielder’s unusually skillful play prevents the offense from gaining, or that his below-par play allows the offense to claim, is precisely equal to +/- one TB on that player’s offense. Since we now have the tools to measure norms for a wide variety of plays at every position and to calculate these +/- effects, there is no excuse for making MVP judgments without regard for dWAR, which uses these stats.
Bob, I take your point about the value of fielding, but still have some doubts about the accuracy of fielding metrics, although I recognize they are constantly improving. Evaluating a good player on a lousy team is hard–many people presume that being in the low-pressure losing environment may enhance their stats, and there’s also the possibility they aren’t seeing the other team’s best as much as a player in a more competitive situation.
Mike, B-R uses the fielding metrics of Sports Information Solutions (which used to be called Baseball Information Solutions), which produces the Fielding Bible. Let me suggest an analogy to what SIS does with fielding stats, using hitting stats.
As you know, StatCast information now allows teams to track the performance of their hitters in terms of things like BiP exit velocities and launch angles, and chart them against pitch types and execution, which some teams read as better indicators of performance than hits and outs, since they measure pure batter performance. However, offensive stats do not use those new indicators; they rely on the traditional hit/out dichotomy.
SIS fielding stats combine both measures. They track things like distance covered/sec. and forward/backward movement to rate degrees-of-difficult for every play, tailored to each position, in order to measure the defensive efficiency of a player’s fielding play, measured against positional norms. They also track traditional fielding measures (PO A DP). This yields a +/- score, in the RE24 context, which weights each play according to the fractional runs at stake with regard to each baserunner compounded by the fielder’s execution of the play, essentially adding WPA value to each play. In these respects, I think the fielding stats currently incorporated in dWAR are probably more advanced than the metrics we use for offensive performance, all of which are simply based on outcomes. I felt as you did about fielding stats until I got hold of [cheap, used] copies of the Fielding Bible (I think I recall that v. III is the most important).
(After all this time, it gets a little lonely pushing the SIS case all alone here. Is there anyone else familiar with the Fielding Bible? It seems to me a major publication and I’m puzzled that others haven’t discussed it. Sean Foreman certainly knows about it, the data is first sold to MLB teams, which is an endorsement of its value, and the system is largely a Bill James creation.)
Moving on, if many people presume that being in a low-pressure losing environment enhances player stats, surely some of them must have developed ways of testing whether the presumption is actually true. If they haven’t, the presumption is as useful as thousands of years presuming that the world is flat has been to astrophysics. What respectable basis is there for this presumption? The success of Yastrzemski, Yelich, & Co. argues for the opposite presumption. As for not seeing the best competition (which would primarily involve pitchers), that may have been true in the 1950s era of Casey Stengel’s Yankees, but rotations now overwhelmingly work on a fixed schedule, and the idea seems to me to be stamped “Best Used Before 12-31-69.”
Fair enough. I think to support either the idea that low-pressure leads to better results for some players, and that they face lesser opposition, the ideas might be a bit anti-diluvian. We’d need to see numbers–things like teams bringing in the least accomplished pitchers from their bullpens because it’s already a blowout, etc. I’m not trying to make the case that this occurs systemically (I have no idea) but it’s not completely unreasonable to wonder if it does, and, in making your MVP selections, rank accordingly.
Mike L. / Bob (Eno):
Baseball Prospectus gets into opposition metrics to some degree and, as far as I can tell, these guys seem to be facing similar opposition for the most part unless one would like to try splitting hairs:
https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/glossary/index.php?mode=viewstat&stat=594
Have fun with the link….if that doesn’t work, try their website and hit ‘sortable stats”. The ‘opposition” stats are about 2/3rds across going left tp right
Mike l. / Bob’
…perhaps this is more direct:
https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=2846340
Thanks
Following along….won’t have time to post my own ballot but should be able to chime in on the next vote.
1. Yelich
2. Bellinger
3. Rendon
4. Marte
5. Story
6. Acuna
7. Alonso
8. Donaldson
9. Arenado
10. Muncy
I thought I already posted my selections so here they are again.
1. Rendon
2. Bellinger
3. Yelich
4. Freeman
5. Arenado
6. Marte
7. Alonso
8. Bell
9. Soto
10. Blackmon
As I usually do I created a spreadsheet that calculates % of base runners driven in, but not counting PA in which the batter received a BB or HBP. Tops were Rendon and Freeman at 24.7%, Bell at 23.3% and Blackmon and Harper at 22.6%.
1. Yelich
2. Bellinger
3. Rendon
4. Marte
5. Soto
6. Alonso
7. Acuna
8. Donaldson
9. Arenado
10. Muncy
It’s perhaps notable that the league’s highest paid position player (I think that’s true of Harper) failed to crack the top 10 on any of our ballots.
Doug,
After McCutchen went down, Harper didn’t get a lot of help from his teammates. Here’s a tale of two seasons for the PHI NL 1B:
First 310 PA’s .273 .400 .522
Final 395 PA’s .189 .336 .401
Hoskins wasn’t much help, really struggled, and the former manager just wouldn’t/didn’t give him a day off for some strange reason….and continued to bat him in the top half of the lineup
Results!
With EIGHT ballots submitted, here are your results in the 2019 NL MVP vote! Vote points, then first-place votes in parentheses:
1. Christian Yelich, 101 (6)
2. Cody Bellinger, 76 (1)
3. Anthony Rendon, 65 (1)
4. Ketel Marte, 44
5. Pete Alonso, 27
6. Jacob deGrom, 27
7. Ronald Acuna, 24
8. Juan Soto, 19
9. Max Scherzer, 14
10. Stephen Strasburg, 14
11. Nolan Arenado, 13
12. Trevor Story, 11
13. Freddie Freeman, 9.5 ( I don’t normally allow ties, but what the heck; let’s not make it a habit)
14. Josh Donaldson, 9
15. Max Muncy, 5
16. Ozzie Albies, 4
17. Josh Bell, 3.5
18. J.T. Realmuto, 3
19. Yasmani Grandal, 1
20. Jack Flaherty, 1
21. Charlie Blackmon, 1
The top four were named on all 8 ballots. Bellinger was in the top-2 on every ballot. As for individual voters, b-rar had all the top-7 on his ballot, and 9 of the top 10. Doug and Scary Tuna had the top 4 in order.
As for tie-breaks, Alonso finishes ahead of teammate deGrom by virtue of appearing on more ballots (6 to 4). Meanwhile, Scherzer tops teammate Strasburg in spite of being named on the same number of ballots by virtue of appearing highest (4th) on a ballot, topping Stras by one spot. The only other ties are the 1-point guys, for whom the tie-breaker is the order in which they were named.
This was a really, really tight one, so thanks for your votes! There are other elections coming, so I hope you’re all ready for those! Happy voting!
Doom,
Re “Bellinger was in the top-2 on every ballot”, F W I W, I had Bellinger 3rd on my ballot behind Yelich and Rendon
Thanks
You’re right. I did have the correct point totals – I just missed the difference between the little 8 and 9 on my spreadsheet when I perused the list. Thanks!