The Angels will not be making the playoffs this season. The Tigers likely will. And according to Fox Sports national baseball writer Jon Morosi, that settles the AL MVP debate for him.
Quoth Morosi:
I believe players are most valuable to their teams when they help those teams win division titles and make the playoffs.
— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) September 16, 2013
It's a commonly held belief, and one that's often parried with a simple reply of, "Why penalize a player for the quality of his teammates?" If there's a certain truism about baseball, it's that you get to bat only once every nine hitters. Blaming Mike Trout for the woes of his teammates makes about as much sense as blaming Miguel Cabrera for Detroit's recent bankruptcy filing. If you want to torture the limits of logic, you could make a case that had Cabrera been a better player, more people would have flocked to Detroit from out of town to see him play and that the tax revenue bump would have saved the city.
But the Vince Lombardi "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" mentality thrives. History is written by the victors. Winning covers all sins. Might makes right.
Mr. Morosi will vote on the AL MVP award, presumably in early October (he wisely points out that we should wait for all 162 games to be played). There’s still time for him to change his mind. And yes, it is his right to define "value" as he sees fit. It's also mine to question whether, in the words of Vin Scully, "That's fertilizer!" His having a ballot does not privilege his opinion; it is his privilege that gives him a ballot.
So before the rest of the season unfolds, I would ask a question on the matter to Mr. Morosi or anyone else who would make the "playoffs only" argument. There are another two weeks to go, and let's assume that the playoff picture doesn't change by the end of the season. What would Mike Trout (or any player on a non-playoff team) need to do to receive a first-place vote over Miguel Cabrera? For example, suppose that Mike Trout somehow raised his batting average to .400? Suppose that Chris Davis hits 60 HR, despite the fact that the Orioles miss out on the postseason? Is there anything that would turn the dial?
If Mr. Morosi would like to say that inspiring one's team to the playoffs is worth something, that's fine. But how much is it worth?
If the answer is that there is nothing at all that a non-playoff participant could do, then you have to make silly statements like "Don Kelly has been more valuable than Mike Trout." After all, Don Kelly's team is going to the playoffs. Would anyone like to hazard that argument?
If not, we're left with naming a price. Now, Mr. Morosi could say that someone would have to hit .500 for a non-contender, but that would suggest that he values the mere fact of being on a playoff team as being worth a lot. Whatever price he named, we could do some quick-and-dirty algebra to figure out what he believes the playoff premium to be worth.
One thing that we do know is that, given the current spread between Cabrera and Trout, Mr. Morosi appears to value the playoff premium as worth at least 2.8 wins, which is what Kendrys Morales has been worth to the Mariners this year (although Morosi may disagree about the difference in performance between the two candidates). If Mr. Morosi believes that Mike Trout needs another half a win of distance to eclipse Cabrera's playoff advantage, then he believes that wearing the uniform of a playoff team is worth as much as Giancarlo Stanton's production in 2013.
Again, as Mr. Morosi points out, there is no singular definition for "valuable," and voters (and non-voters) are welcome to construct their own. But their definitions can still be questioned. In that spirit, the question I would pose is whether this is a sensible valuation of the playoff premium.
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If making the playoffs is the baseline for being valuable, then Mike Trout should not appear anywhere on their MVP ballot.
If making/not making the playoffs is merely a multiplier of value, then by what factor should we be adjusting.
It goes back to the message Tom Tango routinely advocates:
1. Be consistent
2. Show your work
Absent that, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the person has done anything more than post hoc justification for the player whom they deem more valuable regardless of playoff consideration.
In general, I stick with WARP standings. When I deviate (and I do sometimes), it's between players who are bunched fairly close together while mumbling the phrase "margin of error." Usually, it's a case where there's been a potential weakness identified in WARP that hasn't been fully examined (e.g., catcher framing) and where I believe that WARP is either over- or under-estimating a player's worth.
I will use "premium position" to break a tie. I don't much care about team standings.
However, if one is going to include it then the final outcome (whether the team made the playoffs) is irrelevant but what matters is doing well in theose meaningful late season games. Furthermore, the magnitude of this late-season playoff-influencing clutch performanc has to be fairly modest (so 0.25 - 1 win above replacement, I'd guess) or else one's ballot ends up becoming rather bizarre, such as giving the 2008 AL MVP award to John Danks because of a huge Win Probability Added in game 163 that gave the White Sox a play-off slot.
I agree with the first poster: be consistent and show your work. Just using this as a pro-Miguel Cabrera, anti-Mike Trout argument isn't intellectually satisfying at all.
Fact is, many players do NOT have zero control over his overall team's strength beyond his individual contribution. One of the most interesting things to come out of Baseball Prospectus this season has been the series on catchers' skill at framing pitches, which I absolutely guarantee does affect the way the pitchers themselves perform. That is merely the tip of the non-linear-effects iceberg, and by this point it can be considered proven. That's reality. Deal with it.
I'm tired and I have no idea if this is a good idea, but imagine every play in baseball was given a WPA - but rather than a WPA for "winning the game", it was a WPA for winning the World Series. Trout's chances for making meaningful impact would have been sunk long ago. I realize it's none of his fault, but because of how terrible his team has been, he's been outside of the narrative for much of the season.
It would be like if there was an exceptionally dominant mop up reliever who refused to move to a more high leverage spot in the game because he felt comfortable in blowouts in the bottom of the 6th. Trout's been playing out the string for a long time. It's hard to fault voters for factoring that in.
3 wins is (probably? definitely?) way too much, but being on a contending team matters.
The Angels without Trout and his 10 WARP are a 4th place AL West team instead of an also-ran 3rd place club. OK, not his fault. But is Trout nearly as valuable to his club as Cabrera?
Not at all. The Tigers without Cabrera and his 8 WARP drop to 2nd place in the Central, one game up on KC, looking up at Tampa and Texas in the wildcard race. Knowing what we do about the value of making the playoffs vs. missing by 1 game (or 10), how valuable is this player to his team? And, no Don Kelly wouldn't have that effect, so he's a silly example to have brought up.
For anyone who would like to claim that can make a 1 WARP player an MVP candidate should his team scrape into a wildcard bid by a single win, I have to point out that an 8 WARP year is far more likely to spell the difference between a playoff berth (and advantageous scheduling should the team win the division) than some setup man. So, no hardware for you, Mr. Kelly.
Granted, not every MVP argument will works out as neatly as this one. But the "contender component" is not entirely invalid.
Never mind that one of the determining stats in the Triple Crown (the RBI) is very much dependent on one's teammates. If nobody is on base when you hit, you can only get one RBI when you hit one out.
This is a sign of the outmoded thinking of much of the baseball writing fraternity. RBIs do not exist in a vacuum, therefore, Triple Crowns do not exist in a vacuum. On the flip side, all that a player can do to influence his team's performance is by doing his job on the field, and maybe by being a glorified cheerleader for his teammates.
In other words, it's not Mike Trout's fault that Pujols (and Weaver and Vargas) was injured. It's not Trout that caused Hamilton to suck. It's not Trout that caused the numerous bullpen implosions that have doomed his team this year. I've always thought that the MVP should go to the player with an outstanding performance that is most valuable to his team. There are multiple factors beyond the individual player's control.
Trout should have won it last year, even though Cabrera had an incredible season. Trout should win it this year, because, unlike Cabrera, he's been able to stay on the field and has still performed at yet another high level.
The award is for the most valuable player, not the most valuable hitter. If it was based on hitting ability alone, then why have pitchers won it?
My lean is to the Dan Brooks/jnossal approach that playing in meaningful games should account for something. I recognize that the fact that the Angels haven't had any important games since June is not at all the fault of Trout's, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't count.
While I don't think there should be a binary made playoffs/did not make playoffs divide, I do think that a player for a team team that's had a playoff odds of <10% for most of the year has a justified, perhaps unfair, disadvantage.