Mike Trout or Miguel Cabrera? It’s the bacon-or-cheese argument of the 2012 major league season, a decision that is weighted in preference rather than a universally recognized consensus. Both players have historic cases to make, just as the fatty pig meat and the pressed curds of milk are each historic in their deliciousness. On one hand, you have a rookie sensation whose electricity could power Paris, a player with an unprecedented debut campaign that draws comparisons to a young Mickey Mantle, only better, which isn’t exactly normal. This generational performance just happens to share a space with another generational performance, a statistical feat of such lore and reverence that the mere hunt and proximity to such an accomplishment is worthy of high praise and metallic hardware. Miguel Cabrera is the most feared hitter in the game, and when the dust settled on the 2012 season, his out-of-fashion slash line made him the winner of the Triple Crown, the first of its kind in the American League since 1967, which isn’t exactly normal either.
My head swims when I read about the absolutes of the game, my thoughts beaten down by the weight of the value argument, the binary answer to a question without a clear path to certainty. We all approach the game with different eyes, forming conclusions based on explosive mixtures of subjectivity and concrete data. Without a perfect recipe for value, we each make our own cocktails that are heavily rooted in our own experiences, be they on the field or on the computer screen. I’m not here to present one side of the argument over the other, or to paint one side of the fence a color that will instigate condemnation from a disapproving majority; the baseball industry doesn’t wear one suit, and when I polled ten contacts to get their take on the Trout/Cabrera debate, the answers were as diverse as the job titles next to their name. From the top of the industry food chain to the bottom, I asked a simple question of value, which yielded a surprisingly close vote.
Before I get to the results and share just a few of the thoughts from insiders, I want to preface with a call for respect for those that participated in this article. Each voice has earned the right to call major league baseball their home, which neither guarantees an intelligent and rational nature to their response nor elevates their words beyond criticism. With different approaches and experiences, they form an opinion just like everybody else, albeit opinions that come from behind the curtain rather than the cheap seats or the sofa. As a hot temperature topic, opposing thoughts, especially those wearing the old-school label in the face of a new-school bully, will most likely be met with contempt, and perhaps ridicule. I get it. I can’t say I understand the rationale of some of the arguments that I received, but I respect the voices providing those responses, and I hope you can do the same.
The Final Vote: Mike Trout wins the MVP with 6 out of 10 industry votes
Pro-Trout (a few select quotes):
“Trout. Defense at a premium position is the difference maker for me.”—Front office executive
“I understand that, to some degree, this individual award depends on how your team does and accordingly that Trout loses some ground because of that. The key word is “some." Not infinite, but “some.” I think it is reasonable to believe that at some point, a player can be so far ahead of another that he still gets the award despite his team not making the post season. When you break down what these two contributed, it isn’t very close; perhaps Trout exceeds not only Cabrera’s value but another 50% of Cabrera’s value. Really? Being in the “right” division (the Central instead of the West) is enough to shift the lead to Cabrera? That seems way out of whack to me. In effect, that is a giant step towards making the “did he play on a playoff team” a requirement to win the award. Voters have not behaved that way in the past and if I were voting, I would not behave that way today.”—Front office executive
“Trout should win the MVP. He was the better player and without him the Angels may have finished under .500. In fact, you could even argue—although not very well—that Verlander was as valuable as Cabrera to the Tigers' winning ways. The Tigers would have been a good team even without Cabrera, but the Angels would have finished last in the AL West without Trout; that's the difference for me.”—Front office/scouting department
“Trout for me. While Cabrera is having a MVP season as well and is on pace to win the Triple Crown, Trout changed the culture and attitude of an entire ML team. They were downtrodden and struggling till the day he showed up. He revitalized Torii Hunter, Albert came out of his funk and they started playing outstanding baseball. You asked me about Most Valuable Player….Trout, best player Cabrera.”—Pro Scout (former player)
“I'm going with Trout, and the primary reason is position and defense. What he did as a plus-plus center fielder is what gives him the edge, albeit slight, over Cabrera.. But acting like some WAR or WARP or whatever leader board is how the MVP ballot should line up is ludicrous.”—Front office/Scouting department
Pro Cabrera (a few select quotes):
“Cabrera, though very close and a real head-scratcher. Would have liked Trout in ML entire year versus 89 PA at AAA before 4/28 call up. Both have MVP performances, but Cabrera is not only in MVP territory, but is in Triple Crown reach—a real achievement not done since ’67 Yaz. Though Trout’s defensive run prevention is plus-plus, and offense is plus, I still feel Cabrera’s likely Triple Crown offense offsets some of Trout’s offensive & defensive performance.”—Pro Scout (former player)
“Cabrera. The bat and a full-season of production.”—Pro Scout
“ I would lean towards Cabrera. I am not as focused on the potential Triple Crown as most people who would vote Cabrera, although I do think it is a nice accomplishment. I think Cabrera has had a slightly better offensive season and while Trout is the better defender and plays a priority position, I think Cabrera should be rewarded for moving to 3B for the good of the organization.”—Front office/Player Development
“Miguel Cabrera is the MVP. Mike Trout is a better baseball player, but so is Robinson Cano, Matt Kemp, and a handful of others. None were more valuable to their club, over the course of the season, than Cabrera. He was consistently great for 6 months, 161 games. He had a better 2nd half and, more importantly when talking about value, he was at his best during the pennant race. The Triple Crown was last achieved 45 years ago. No matter what you think of AVG, HR, and RBI, the feat is amazing. There's value in all 3 categories. The most I believe is in the ability to drive in runs. RBI aren't about luck. It's bat control and sacrificing personal stats like AVG to do whatever is needed to get the run in. Cabrera was even better in these situations. Cabrera was also supposed to be a killer at 3B. He ended the season with only 13 errors and somehow had a range factor higher than Adrian Beltre. He hardly cost the Tigers the way everyone assumes. Trout was very good in CF, but did move to LF late in games 35 times for Peter Bourjos. Either Bourjos can't play LF or he's that much better than Trout in CF.”—Scouting (former player)
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I also like batting average. It's a good measure of hit tool utility. You don't need to hit for a high average to have offensive value, but in order to allow a derivative tool to play, you have to start with the basic bat-to-ball relationship. It's not a perfect metric, but from a scouting perspective, it's a good way of looking at how well a hit tool is performing in game action. It shouldn't be ignored just because it has limitations.
BUT, since WAR is looking at replacement level value, wouldn't that overvalue skills or traits not normally associated with the position? for example a catcher that steals 20-30 bases. stealing 20 bases is by no means exceptional in the context of most baseball players, but compared to other catchers, it's astronomical.
a pitcher that hits 5-10 home runs a year would create more runs than a pitcher that doesn't, but the value in those 5-10 ab's should be miniscule when compared with the 800 or so hypothetical ab's where he is pitching.
Ludicrous is a really strong term, and I haven't seen anyone saying that WARP should be the only metric taken into consideration. But as metrics go, it's considerably better RBI or AVG.
AS for those who wish Trout played a full season in the majors, well, he did league the majors in runs and, for what it's worth, stolen bases. Hey, speaking of which, since the two leagues play so many interleague games, why aren't the leaders combined too? If they were, no Trips for Miggy.
I think it's funny that you spent time critiquing someone who made a comment about RBIs and said nothing about the person who voted for Trout because he "changed the culture and attitude of an entire ML team". At least the RBI scout made an argument that you can have a discourse about.
I think the quotes are great and show that you can have a lot of valid and varied opinions about this topic.
But a player -- or coach -- thinks differently for a reason, I suppose. Reading the ex-players' quote, it reminds me of how Joe Morgan used to talk. The way a player should think to get optimal results on the field isn't necessarily how a GM should think.
I'd flip a coin here, though I lean Trout. A Triple Crown's a remarkable accomplishment, too.
As I coach and fan I really hate RBIs, but you make an outstanding point. I would never tell a player that. It makes sense that people value Cabrera higher because their experience comes from playing. That being said Trout brings more value.
why do you hate the tigers?
3B is at least as important as CF defensively, and despite a lot of naysaying in the beginning of the season, his performance there was adequate, and how great was Trout's CF if he keeps getting moved to a corner? Adequate defense at 3B is more valuable than any level of corner OF defense.
A stolen base gets you one quarter of what you need to score a run, a home run gets you the whole thing, plus more runs if guys are on base. The Angel's lineup has more reliable hitters, where the Tigers are very weak past Cabrera, Prince Fielder and Austin Jackson, Making Cabrera more valuable to his team as well as the better hitter.
The Angels lineup is better than the Tigers, it's true, but they're also a better team. They won more games in a MUCH harder division -- it's hard to justify crediting Cabrera for his team not being as good. If the Angels were worse than the Tigers, I'd agree that the shallowness of the Tigers lineup would be a reason to prefer Cabrera, but you shouldn't get credit for leading your team to be worse than one of your competitors.
But, it's also a bit of an overstatement to credit the Angels turnaround to Trout's callup. Pujols was horrible during the first six weeks, then turned back into Albert Pujols. That helped.
To put it in perspective, Trout's slugging this year as a 20 year old is right between what Larry Walker and Albert Belle slugged for their careers (good for 13th and 14th place all time, respectively). Just because Trout is amazing in the field and on the bases doesn't mean he's much less amazing at the plate. Miggy had a better season at the plate, but not an astronomically better season -- and most of that difference is as a function of games played (Trout had a higher OPS+).
Besides, Trout only had 8 triples all season. Taking away 8 TB to transform them into doubles would leave him with ~97.5% of his season TB, or a slugging of .550 -- not a huge difference.
If a guy keeps hitting moon shots to the warning track, that obviously shows more power than a guy hitting liners in the gap, but it's not too useful.
I can certainly understand what's being suggested here, but this should be something we can evaluate. For instance, it's pretty easy to look up the AL leaderboard for sacrifice flies. Cabrera's in a big pack in 15th place with 6 SFs. The leader, Mark Teixeira, has 12. That raw number should probably be adjusted to account for how many times the batter has come up with < 2 outs and a runner on 3rd.
I don't know how to look up how many times Cabrera has grounded out while driving in a run, but sac flies + RBI groundouts would be the only 2 scenarios covered in "sacrificing AVG to get the run in", right? Maybe Cabrera has a huge number of RBI groundouts and his SF/chance is really high, which would validate what the insider was arguing.
I suspect it's more likely that Cabrera has the most RBI because he has the most extra base hits, the most total bases, and the 2nd most hits in the AL. In other words, accumulating the "personal stats" are where the RBI came from.
A ground out that scores a run would hurt your batting average, but it should, shouldn't it ? If there were 2 outs, the run wouldn't count. So, the batter must have been up with a man on 3rd and less than 2 outs. In such a situation it seems doubtful that the batters intention was to hit a ground ball to drive in the run, a fly ball would work just as well, and a base hit would be even better. It seems like the main goal at that point would be simply to make contact.
Regardless the fact that the leader in SF's has 12, tells me all I need to know about the quality of this argument. We're talking about players who hit ~3 to ~4 times more homers than the SF leader had in SF's, and I'm supposed to believe that SF's are somehow important in determining who was the better player ?
What about grounding into DP's ? Cabrera led the AL with 28, Trout had 7. That right there wipes out the SAC fly argument.
100% agreed on double plays.
For the record, Trout made 404 outs this year (PA - H - BB + GIDP + CS + SF + SH). Cabrera made 404 outs this year. Cabrera had 62 more plate appearances than Trout.
So too are Runs, but Trout's 129 in 139 games is still arguably the most impressive stat either player put up. Without doing the math I would bet that Trout's R/G and R/PA ratios are off the charts in the last 50 years. So if you want to talk context stats...
"RBI aren't about luck. It's bat control and sacrificing personal stats like AVG to do whatever is needed to get the run in."
then shouldn't the batter be penalized for getting a hit in that situation? For if his intent was to "sacrifice personal stats like AVG...", he did not meet his intended outcome. Or it could just be that the batter has less ability to control the outcome in that situation than some are giving him credit for.
"But acting like some WAR or WARP or whatever leader board is how the MVP ballot should line up is ludicrous.â€
why do you hate the angels?
Some of the points made by the people quoted seem ludicrous. Trout loses points because of how the team did? His team was better and won more games against a tougher schedule. What difference does the timing of their value distribution make in the question of who was more valuable overall? Cabrera gets bonus points for being a lousy third baseman because the Tigers' roster management was f-ed up?
either way, two historical seasons and no need for people to be negative toward people on either side. just great for fans to be able to experience both.
MVP: Trout
Aaron award: Cabrera
~ 330/45/140ish slash lines should be in the running for MVP every year, regardless if a Triple Crown occurred or not.
- Judged by people that watched Tigers games Cabrera's defense at 3B has been adequate, in fact he's credited with "saving" a few September games with good plays at 3B.
- Most defensive metrics remain very flawed (evidenced by how they bounce around from year to year and show Miggy with more range than beltre), yet most WAR models do not adjust accordingly. In fact, I would trust a scout's eye over most defensive metrics in judging defensive talent.
- If Miggy wasn't playing 3B for Detroit in 2012, Don Kelly would be. If not Trout in OF, than Wells or Bourjos. Hence, all "replacement players are not equal", yet in WAR they are. Context (division, clubhouse morale) matters for purposes of some of the Trout advocates yet WAR which ignores certain context (actual replacement players, hitting with runners in scoring position) remains a big part of the argument.
- A double with 2 outs and no one on in the 4th inning of a blowout, is not worth same as one with 2 men on in close game. Yet the value of said double is equivalent in WAR which assumes that all at bats are a "random walk" and thus outcomes are context-independent. Said simpler, RBI's do have some value (agree with Jason).
- Angels record with and without Trout, ignores the reality that Albert Pujols who was AWOL without Trout showed up and some other guys started hitting as well. Grienke arrives.
Trout is a legit candidate and an outright winner in some years, but I go with Cabrera in 2012
Understand all of the sabre arguments, been reading Bill James since 1977 and BP for 10 years.