Mauer Power

Here too, for those who can’t look at twitter:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=Atgmj8Ee2KHiyojtFryp3WYRvLYF?slug=txalmvp&prov=st&type=lgns

Although I dont diagree with ecp, Miggy did hit a pretty huge HR in the play-in game while being deraded with alcohol related chants from a metrodome crowd.  That homerun shut them up pretty quick, trust me, I was there.

Hey, they improved the look of the BBWAA site.  Now it only looks 10 years old instead of 15.

Well, at least now we know who Migeuel Cabrera hits the sake bars with in Seattle.

Derided?  Degraded?

You can have opinions, sansho. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that those opinions be (a) informed; and (b) defended if they are considerably detached from the mainstream.

Carpenter v. Lincecum v. Wainwright: it’s fairly close. Go ahead and have your opinions, and if you’re Keith Law or Will Carroll or Ron Rollins—all people whose opinions I generally respsect—we can argue all day long without anyone truly able to say that they’re right with a captial R.

But Cabrera over Mauer?  Sorry, show your work or I can’t take you seriously.

What I don’t understand is how did Albert Pujols not even recieve any votes? 

C’mon, he played in American League parks during interleague play, and we all know he’s the best player in the game. And there is no rule prohibiting writers for voting for a National League player for the American League MVP.

This is just another example of these young, upstart junior league writers not showing the proper respect for their established senior league counterparts. And the anti-Cardinal bias? Don’t get me started.

If this isn’t a conspiracy, then what is?  Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me Lee Harvey actually shot JFK, Neil Armstrong really walked on the moon, and the govermentment had nothing to do with 9/11?

Probably the vote was political. Mauer was an absolute certainty for the MVP, so why not push you’re own personal favorite by making him 1st in your ballot. It would have been fun if more writers argued like that, and made Mauer lose the MVP.

Also, how can Rivera get more votes then Greinke?

Micheal,

Explain to me how that makes any difference in how valuable the players are.  Thanks in advance.

“Why does this guy [from Kyodo News] have a vote?”
A lot of newspapers are following the Washington Post’s practice of forbidding their writers from voting on annual awards on “conflict of interest” grounds—especially now that lots of players have financial incentives based upon those awards.  It might be that the Seattle-area papers are among those that do so.  That might be the same reason Law and Carroll got votes.

i agree that Mauer should have been unanimous MVP, but you shouldn’t make comments even if you add the words presumably, when you’re not talking about theory. all you had to do was spend a few mins searching for it, and you’d find who was the guy who didn’t vote for Mauer.
in the end it just reflects badly on yourself that you weren’t bothered to check the facts.

I still don’t understand what that has to do with anything.  Did the support around him make his contributions less valuable?  Absolutely not.  In fact, his high on base percentage was MORE valuable, because he had guys to drive him in.  From a statistical viewpoint, a high OBP guy is always more valuable in a better lineup, especially when he’s hitting before the good players.

Having a good lineup may have affected his runs scored and RBIS, etc.  but using those to decide an MVP is downright silly anyway. 

I’m sure the main argument is that he was “protected” by those guys, and therefore saw better pitches.  Any research done on the subject has shown no effect to having a better hitter hit behind you.  Even if you disregard that and say that it does happen in some cases, I don’t see how you can say it happened in this case.  Mauer walked in 12.7% of his plate appearances this year, right in line with his career mark of 12.7%.  He had just as many intentional walks (14) as Cabrera.

Even if he WAS protected somewhat, I’m not sure that that would make him a better hitter.  Joe Mauer doesn’t swing at balls.  If they pitch around him, he’ll just walk.  All that would happen is his walk rate would go up (it didn’t!) and his counting stats would take a slight hit.  Overall, this would most likely raise his OPS.

As far as his missing time, that really isn’t an issue, because of the huge difference in offensive production.  Look at the counting stats from Mauer and Cabrera for the year (I stole this from Dave at Fangraphs).

Singles: Mauer +2
Doubles: Cabrera +4
Triples: Mauer +1
Home Runs: Cabrera +6
Runs: Cabrera +2
RBI: Cabrera +7
Walks: Mauer +8
Outs: Cabrera +87

So you see, pretty similar seasons.  Cabrera has a few more homeruns, but even despite the missed time, only 6, and only 7 more hits total, with 8 less walks.  All in all, he they were on base basically the exact amount of times despite the fact that Mauer missed a month.  The only real difference here, is that Cabrera has 87(!) more outs than Mauer.  So basically, for their season lines to be the same, instead of missing a month, Mauer would have had to hit 6 more home runs, 4 more doubles, somehow manage to have negative walks, singles, and triples, and make 87 outs.  I think we can safely say that his missing month was not enough to put him on the level of Cabrera.  Not even close.

Ok, so Even if you ignore ALL of that, and somehow conclude that Cabrera is Mauer’s equal offensively, they STILL aren’t close in terms of overall value.  Cabrera is an average defensive first basemen.  Mauer is a great catcher.  The difference in value there is enormous.  Not only is it really hard to find a guy with the skills to be a good catcher, playing catcher wears down a body enough to make it harder to be productive offensively.  The average 1b hit .272/.369/.470 last year.  The average catcher hit .254/.327/.396.  That’s a pretty gigantic difference.  For reference, Joe Mauer was .111/.117/.191 better than an average catcher.  Cabrera was .52/.27/.77 better than an average first basemen.  Again, not even close.

You talk about the great players that Mauer has around him, but forget the fact that he’s partially responsible for them being there!  The fact that he can play catcher opens up first and DH for guys like Morneau and Kubel; that’s why him playing catcher is so important.  If Cabrera could play catcher, they could have gotten rid of Laird’s ugly line and played guys like Raburn and Thomas every day, or signed a power hitting first basemen.  The position a player plays cannot be ignored when talking about value.

Well, I think this has been about long enough. Let’s recap quick, and then I’ll be done.  I promise. Basically, in order for you to even put Cabrera at the same level as Mauer you need to:
1)assume that lineup protection exists AND is significant, despite the evidence to the contrary
2)ignore the evidence that Mauer was not “protected” in away
3)assume that this “protection” somehow makes up for making 87 extra outs while hitting only 6 more hrs
4)ignore the fact that Mauer plays a position that is extremely more valuable than Cabrera’s, and plays it well
AND
5)ignore the fact that besides being a valuable position, is also a position that wears on a player’s body, and generally depresses offensive numbers, as shown by the poor batting lines catchers usually hit up.

If you want to argue with any of those specific points, thats fine.  But in order to vote Cabrera for MVP, you’d have to ignore ALL of them, and that would be patently ridiculous. 

If anyone made it this far, thanks for indulging me.

LATT, I think you forgot some zeroes in Miggy’s marginal slash line.