So, back in 2011, I had my heart set on being more involved in writing. About baseball in particular. These were my thoughts before I lost internet and forgot about this for more than a year.
P.S. I was so off. The Yankees won their division yet Granderson was only 4th place. Never thought we'd see another pitcher dominate AND win MVP again. Verlander was (and still is) a beast! In retrospect, I didn't account for the top two Yankees and Red Sox players stealing votes from each other, so the final vote ended up looking like this.
I've had a few things on my mind for weeks it seems now. Baseball is in full swing with the All-Star game gone by. So instead of just boobs, metal riffs and well shot corridors floating around in my head, it seems to have been infiltrated by numbers. All over the place too. It's like hanging sixes and nines on hard nipples and door handles. Guitar tabs are running into each other with periods appearing in front of three digit combos. I am a amateur student of money ball and sabermetrics.
With that beautiful analogy out of the way, I wanna talk about predictions. And not just award predictions, but predictions about players and teams from the end of this year to next year.
But first, I'll break down how MVP predictions are kinda, well, predictable (shocker, right?) In the A.L., your top three players break down into these categories.
1. League Leaders - Players who lead the league in BA (batting average) and RBI (runs batted in) are usually high, if not locks to win. Leading the league in HR (home runs) and SB (stolen bases) helps; but you have to have one of the previous two to back it up. Leading the league in BA usually means you're top 5 in OBP (on base percentage) and leading in HRs means you usually finish in the top 5 in SLG (slugging) so leading in those two are secondary pluses at best. Additions to the secondary tree of MVP caliber numbers are SB (stolen bases) and R (runs scored). If you get plenty of SBs and HRs with a top 5 BA, you're a sure bet for a top three finish in the vote, if not already holding the damn trophy. [Last bit: If you lead the league in HRs and BA, then you're OBS (on base percentage + slugging) is going to be high anyways, so it barely factors in in the long run; all it is is just impressive at best, stacking the odds.]
2. Best Yankee: If you are statistically the best Yankee on a pennant chasing team, you WILL be a top three candidate for the MVP. Period. Look at the past eight years of votes. Here are the top Yankees in each vote (taken from this blog's favorite baseball statistic website, baseball-reference.com):
2003: 3. Jorge Posada
2004: 2. Gary Sheffield
2005: 1. Alex Rodriguez
2006: 2. Derek Jeter
2007: 1. Alex Rodriguez
2008: 8. Alex Rodriguez (Yankees finished 3rd in the AL East)
2009: 2. Mark Teixeira (Jeter finished 3rd in vote)
2010: 3. Robinson Cano
You could argue that this goes hand in hand with leading the league in certain statistics, but look at the list of teams with top 3 MVP candidates in that time frame:
New York Yankees: 8 (two in 2009, as previously mentioned)
Boston Red Sox: 5
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: 3
Minnesota Twins: 2 (Both wins, btw)
Detroit Tigers: 2
Texas Rangers: 2 (Also both wins)
Toronto Blue Jays: 1
Other than Boston, who could almost be interchangeable with the Yankees but just aren't as consistent, there's a big gap between other teams and New York. It helps that two of the teams had players that it was "just their year." Minnesota, in particular, had a winning candidate that goes along nicely with my next type of MVP candidate.
3. The Dark Horse: These are the players that are either having a season beyond their capability, are having an injury shortened season with superhuman-like production at the plate, or the best player on a team that is the Cinderella story of the year. Within the last decade, the only player to reach this status would be Joe Mauer. In 2009, not only did he miss more games (24) than any other player in the top five of the MVP vote, he did it with career bests in Hs (hits), HRs, RBIs, BA, OBP, SLG, OBS and OBS+ (On base + slugging adjusted to home ball park). One of the best catchers in the league got his due in a season he'll probably never duplicate playing catcher.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, with the stereotypes out of the way, here's my top three picks for AL MVP
1: Adrian Gonzalez (BOS, meets criteria 1): Leads league in Hits, RBI, and BA. If he leads the league in hits all season hitting in the middle of order while getting his
I was planning on putting Gonzalez 1, Granderson 2, and Zoberist (and maybe Bautista, but I thought he'd slow down by the time the playoff hunt kicked Toronto off their game) 3, the way my list above stated. But my problem was 1) Not accounting for Verlander to give the GREATEST PITCHING PERFORMANCE SINCE PEDRO MARTINEZ CIRCA '99!!!, 2) as stated above, not thinking Cano and Elsbury stealing votes from their teammates (so much so Elsbury took over and jumped Gonzalez in the end). Even more so, Pedroia broke into the top ten (damn, they were good that year. What the hell happened to the Red Sox...) and 3) Sabremetrics couldn't save Zobrist's chances that year. Only batting .269 isn't going to endear you to voters then or now (but that excuses Longoria's .244 how?). I don't even remember what my predictions for Cy Young would be but I can bet it would have been Verlander and some sort of mixed up argument that a Rays pitcher (probably Shields from the looks of it). Don't remember if I was going to talk about the NL at this point. Would have had the Rays making some sort of comeback to win the AL East and the World Series too, but it just wasn't in the cards that year. Better luck this year. XD
I should try to stop trying to work on posts as long as Bill Simmons and his merry band of bloggers on Grantland. I just can't hold myself to multi-page posts. Start small and work your way up. I'll try better this year, I swear.
