I think most can agree that the debate over AL MVP is becoming tiresome, even though it has just begun. Even though there are more than two names who should appear in this debate, there are only two names involved in popular discussion: in the corner of traditionalism stands Miguel Cabrera, and in the corner of sabermetrics and analysis stands Mike Trout. One is well on his way to being a first-ballot hall of famer, and the other is an upstart rookie. One drives in runs, and the other creates and prevents them. However, this argument is far from understood. Nobody is approaching this thing the right way. On one hand, sabermetrics are fantastic and completely misunderstood, and on the other hand you can't run into great traditional stats without having at least some kind of talent in your game. This also isn't just a debate about who has been the better player; this is a debate about who has been the Most Valuable Player in the American League. With that, I am going to break this down as much as I can. I'll break it down traditionally, sabermetrically, and I'll even talk a bit about intangibles. Are you ready? No? Well I am, so here we go (p.s. since I gave this article the title I did, I'm going to break it into Acts..you know, like a play...because I'm clever like that!)
Act I: A Beast Named Miggy
Miguel Cabrera has had a decorated career, and he is going to go down as one of the best right-handed hitters this game has seen. Of all of the things Miggy has always done well, he's been best at hitting home runs and driving in runs. How good, you ask? He's averaged 34 homers and 117 RBI since 2004. It's not like those numbers have been inconsistent, either. He's reached the 30 homer plateau in eight of the past nine seasons and has reached the 100 RBI plateau for nine consecutive seasons between Florida (now Miami) and Detroit. However, let's not leave out one little detail: it's not like he's just a "pure power hitter" either as he has a .321 BA (including leading the league last year and this year to this point) and .399 OBP over that span. That high OBP has helped him average scoring 102 runs per year, which really just caps off the fact that the guy is a beast for traditionalists. Really, if you went purely by traditional statistics, it would be very hard to find a hitter or player better than Miguel Cabrera (and heck, even if you go by sabermetrics, it's still really hard to do). This is a beast that is going to be hard to tame.
Act II: A Fish Named Trout
In the month of May after an opening month of disappointment, the Angels called up Baseball America's #2 prospect. A speedster with pop from Jersey, Trout slowly began to earn playing time as he snatched plate appearances and defensive innings from the likes of Vernon Wells, Peter Bourjos, and others. For being up for 5 months of the season, Trout has had a fantastic traditional season. The most impressive part of it? He's scored 124 runs in 131 games. You know what that is over a full 162-game season? 153 runs (and change). A fun fact: Rickey Henderson, the greatest leadoff hitter ever to play the game, had a season high of 146 runs. To continue a pretty fair comparison from a traditional standpoint, let's consider some other numbers. How about home runs? In 131 games, Trout has 28. In Rickey's best season, he hit 28 in 136 games (he also hit 28 in 153 games in 1986). Now, Trout isn't the base-stealer that Rickey was and he won't walk nearly as much, but how about some RBI? Trout has 78. Rickey's highest was 74 in 153 games. The point here is this: when someone says Trout is the MVP because of sabermetrics, keep it in the back of your mind that he might just be the MVP by traditional statistics, too. He's having what could arguably be the best season from a leadoff hitter ever, and that has to be worth something in the eyes of traditionalists.
Act III: The Magic Potion
Talking about traditional stats is fun and all, but there's one thing about them that's always bothered me: they never get down to the substance of what a player truly is. Baseball is about more than your batting average, your homers, and the number of times you knock a run in. If you go sheerly by time spent on the field, baseball players spend most of their time playing defense, and they don't go run around the bases for nothing. This is where a "magic potion" of sorts reveals the players for what they truly are. If you are into fairy tale references, this magic potion represents the schism between the traditional thinkers and so-called stat geeks. Traditionalists think the potion is evil or will harm them in some way. So-called stat geeks believe the potion to be all-powerful because of its magic properties. In reality, all the magic potion is meant to do is provide a new angle by which this story can be told. We consider things like walk percentage, ballpark adjustments, and even the positions players play. When we give players the magic potion, they sometimes come out differently than how we originally thought of them, and sometimes they don't come out any differently at all. Let's take a look at this debate after each player drinks a bit of this magic potion.
Act IV: Turning a Beast Into A Man and a Fish Into a Superhuman
It's time to put Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout under the microscope of analysis through sabermetrics. Throughout this entire debate, traditionalists have complained about stat geeks treating WAR as the be-all end-all in this debate, and stat geeks have called out traditionalists for being too simple-minded in their approach to the situation. I claim that both sides are wrong in their approaches, and not enough is being done to understand each player. Let's do this one at a time:
Miguel Cabrera-
667 PA/ .329 BA/ .394 OBP/ .280 ISO/ 167 wRC+/ 9.7% BB/ 14.1% K/ -9.4 Fld/ -2.9 BsR/ 6.8 fWAR
1.17 GB/FB ratio/ 20.8% LD
I know this is a lot of information to digest, but bear with me. Firstly we need to handle the elephant in the room: WAR. As a statistic, WAR's basic idea is to consider every part of a player's game and mold it together to form a claim on total value. This claim assumes players will see the same environments and attempts to completely isolate the player's performance (since every player is going to face different situations, this is a fair thing to do). WAR assumes that every play contributes positive or negative value based on a given run environment. With WAR, a win is equal to roughly 10 runs created, and a run is created through individual offensive, defensive, and base running accomplishments. In a more simple way, WAR is a reference point. You start your discussion here and end it somewhere else.
Miguel Cabrera's numbers are very impressive. He's played a lot (PA- plate appearances), he's hit for the highest average in the AL, he's great at getting on base, and he's got phenomenal power (ISO- isolated slugging, which represents slugging percentage minus singles). His 167 wRC+ (weighted runs created adjusted for his ballpark) is good for second best in the league. He doesn't strike out much, and he walks at a good rate (although not as good of a rate as in previous seasons). Offensively, Cabrera is a juggernaut whether you use traditional metrics or advanced metrics. Where Cabrera becomes less scary is in his fielding and base running. He's been a terrible fielder by defensive metrics, and I personally consider him one of the poorest fielding third baseman in the league. He's got capable hands and a strong throwing arm, but he's slow and lacks the agility and reaction time to field the position. Cabrera also gets hurt on the bases, where his contribution of a loss of 3 runs on the bases takes him from being a 7.1 fWAR player to a 6.8 fWAR player. When you throw it all together, the offensive prowess is hurt a lot by the fact that he doesn't field well and doesn't run the bases (theoretically, he would score more runs if he was a better baserunner).
Mike Trout-
600 PA/ .324 BA/ .395 OBP/ .230 ISO/ 172 wRC+/ 10.2% BB/ 21.5% K/ 10.0 Fld/ 6.1 BsR/ 9.5 fWAR
1.34 GB/FB ratio/ 23.1% LD
Trout's performance is enhanced phenomenally when you break everything down. However, the reasons for which they are enhanced are entirely misunderstood. Some people have suggested that Trout receives unfair benefit for the replacement level at the position he plays. However, Trout loses -0.2 runs from his position and Cabrera gains 1.4 runs. The difference here is almost completely cancelled out by the fact that replacement contribution at third base is 22 runs while at center field (in Trout's playing time) the contribution is 20 runs. 1.6 runs by positional adjustment in favor of Cabrera and 2.2 for replacement level in favor of Trout. That's 0.6 runs in favor of Trout, which is too close to call, so we have to call positional adjustments a tie. Therefore, Trout's numbers are coming strictly from offensive, defensive, and base running contributions when they are adjusted for ballpark. When we look at Trout's numbers, we find great rates everywhere. He has the 2nd highest average in the AL (Mauer went 0-4 and is down a point to him now), he is masterful at getting on base (with a great walk rate), he's a marvelous fielder, and he's a fantastic base runner. He strikes out a bit, but not enough to make any other part of his game look bad. He hits tons of line drives and the ground ball to fly ball ratio he has posted actually might be a benefit to his game due to his speed.. Trout really has done everything very well this year.
Act V: Beast vs. Fish
Now that we've seen traditional and sabermetric approaches to each player, it's time to start the final battle. This won't determine our MVP, but it will determine who is the better player. First, let's remember that position is out the window as runs from positional and replacement adjustments were a wash. Rather than go to fWAR for the comparison, we are going to ditch it for the purpose of argument. Here we go:
Category One: Playing Time
Cabrera has gathered 667 plate appearances to Trout's 600. He's played in more games and has more innings on defense, so his value has more time to accumulate. Advantage goes to Cabrera here.
Category Two: Batting Average
Cabrera's .329 rate versus Trout's .324 rate favors Cabrera, and it looks more impressive given category one favors Cabrera. As far as park adjustments go for this statistic, Angels stadium is harder to hit in than Comerica, but batting average doesn't seem to be impacted too terrible by park in *most* situations. I'll give this one to Cabrera, but I would accept arguments for Trout.
Category Three: On-Base Skills
Trout holds the raw edge here, with a .395 clip to Cabrera's .394. Playing time makes Cabrera's rate harder to maintain, but park slightly favors Trout. Since it's so close to begin with, we'll call this one a tie.
Category Four: Power
Isolated slugging takes the singles out of batting average, and Cabrera's .280 rate versus Trout's .230 rate is impressive. Even though Comerica is easier to hit in than Angels Stadium, Cabrera holds an advantage here too large to be neutralized by park. Cabrera wins.
Category Five: wRC+
Here's where we start to get a great representation of what is going on. On a basic level, wRC+ does three things. First, it gives offensive events weights that are different from those given in slugging percentage (singles are worth about .75 on the scale while strikeouts carry negative value). This makes it so extra weight isn't given to home runs compared to walks and singles. Second, it calculates the number of runs created through each offensive accomplishment. Lastly, it adjusts the results for the league average and the park environment the player is forced to play in. A five percent difference (Trout's 172 to Cabrera's 167) is enough of a difference to be notable, and it suggests that Trout has been the better overall offensive player. The winner here is Trout.
Category Six: Strikeouts and Walks
Considering how little weight strikeouts are granted on the run-production scale, we are going to call this one a tie. Not worth arguing over, really.
Category Seven: Fielding
This is where the bulk of the difference between the two players occurs. Trout is granted over 10 runs created on defense between his work in center and left. Cabrera loses almost 10 runs. The difference between Trout and Cabrera is about 20 runs, or two wins in value. Even if you don't like defensive metrics, scouts will tell you the difference isn't close. Clear and massive advantage to Trout.
Category Eight: Baserunning
The difference is 10 runs (one win) in favor of Trout. Stealing as many bases as Trout does at the clip he does it at will contribute a ton of value. Once again, Trout wins by a landslide.
Category Nine: Overall Value
9.5 to 6.7. The difference is 2.8 runs, or almost identical to the difference in base running added to the difference in defense. The offense is practically the same, and the rest goes to Trout. Advantage to Trout.
Act VI: Considering the Little Things
I wrote quite a while ago about the impact of so-called intangibles on the game of baseball (read about it here:http://mlbboards.blogspot.com/2012/01/intangibles-not-so-intangible-impact.html#comment-form). For those who want the short version of the article: any contribution given by hard work, hustle, and competitive nature is going to show up in one's statistical performance. In my opinion, true intangibles have to be...well...intangible. Things like leadership have an impact on other players, but there isn't a way to figure that in. Debates can be had on just how much each contributes to their team, but they will end up going in circles ("Trout is a rookie" vs. "Cabrera is an established veteran presence" and "Trout is a spark plug" vs. "Cabrera has had legal issues" are some examples). All in all, I am a big believer that the vast majority of a player's value is going to come out of his statistical performance. While he definitely may contribute positive or negative value through true intangibles, I don't think the value is anything more than a few runs on average.
Act VII: The Forest Where the Story Takes Place
Consider for a moment the pennant chase. The Tigers are tied for first, and the Angels are trailing in the wild card hunt. Both are playoff teams that have very similar records. Some will argue that Cabrera's presence on a playoff team gives him added value over Trout. But really, aren't playoff spots given in a very arbitrary fashion? Winning more games than a particular group of teams is great, but what if the quality of those teams isn't equal? The Angels have three more wins than the Tigers, but are in third place in their own division. The quality of the AL West vs. the AL Central really isn't arguable. As a division, the AL West has a +236 run differential whereas the AL Central sits at -239. This 475 run advantage for the AL West is a daunting figure. In fact, it is truly staggering. Even though the AL West is much better than the AL Central (for reasons including much more than run differential), the Angels have a 31 run advantage in run differential. They've scored more runs and have allowed virtually the same number of runs. So really, the Angels are competing in a far harder environment and have come out better than the Tigers. So really, how is Cabrera's performance more valuable than Trout's? Switch the Tigers and Angels in their divisions and you wind up with the Angels comfortably in the playoffs and the Tigers sitting at home in October without a chance of getting in. And either way, is 10 wins on a 90 win team worth more than 10 wins on a 50 win team? Is a win in April worth more than a win in September? In my opinion, the answer is no. A win is a win is a win, and the team context around the player shouldn't change that.
Act VIII: The Diamond Ring
One of the biggest arguments for Miguel Cabrera is that he is a triple crown candidate. If he were to win the award (leading a league in BA, HR, and RBI) he would be the first player since 1967 to do so. However, before we give Cabrera an award for arbitrary accomplishments (very impressive arbitrary accomplishments), let's consider the context of the award. Ted Williams won the triple crown in 1942 and 1947. He won the MVP award twice, and neither time occurred in a triple crown season. In fact, four different players have won the triple crown without being granted an MVP in the season they did so. In the past, the triple crown hasn't been a game-ender in terms of naming an MVP, and I don't believe it should suddenly become one. Something not having occurred in a long time doesn't make it more impressive in the context of an individual season, and that something being winning three arbitrary statistical categories makes it less relevant in my eyes.
Act IX: The Final Chapter
Throughout this article, we've hammered out everything. We've considered traditional stats, sabermetrics, intangibles, and team context. In fact, we've even considered special accomplishments like the triple crown. Rather than make my own call in this debate, I will let the information provided sit with my readers. All I can do is hope that I have provided the right information with the right context. If I have done so, the choice should be clear. If I haven't done so, then there will still be a debate about who should win AL MVP. Well kids, this is the end of our little story: The Tale of Miggy and the Fish.
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