Who’s going to win the MVP?

If the AL MVP is anyone but Joe Mauer, the award will become almost completely meaningless to me.

To lead the league in batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS as a catcher in addition to being a gold glove winner is simply incredible.

I don’t know what more you could possibly ask for from a catcher then what Joe Mauer has been doing this year.

Hey Tim,

That’s not actually the case at all. The model thought Jeter would win in 2006 (albeit slightly), and he didn’t. If anything, I would say the Jeter factor would be negative rather than positive.

I think this article might get me to buy the THT Annual now.  This is something I’ve wanted to do using an approach I’ve used for Hall of Fame voting, but haven’t had the time to collect the data.  I’m curious what kind of model you used (though I bet you’re going to tell me to go buy the Annual and see aren’t you).

Cough, Ben Zobrist, cough, not on your list for AL MVP. Take a look at the fangraphs WAR leader board. He had, arguably, a better season than Pujols.

Keep in mind, WRT to Zobrist not being there, the model is designed to figure out who the writers will vote for, not who’s the most deserving.  Zobrist definitely had a fantastic season, but just not in the sorts of categories the writers pay attention to.  It doesn’t devalue his accomplishments at all, just gives you an idea what writers look at.

We should create an award called the BNPP, Best Non-Pujols Player, and give it to Chase Utley.

I’m surprised Kubel showed up instead of Lind.. I’m guessing it’s the playoff team effect? Lind did have higher counting and rate stats although they basically had identical years.

Ecp,

I’m not sure what model he uses here.  But I think the proliferation of much of the sabermetric community toward media (even if it’s not much) may be slowly changing opinions.  That can result in structural change in the decisions of MVP voting, causing the model to need to be updated.  The problem with that is that there may not be enough precedent to be able to classify the change in voting patterns correctly.

Like I said, I don’t know what model is used here.  But that’s my experience with classification models I’ve used in the past.  I think the fact that we’re in a changing time can mess with the newest predictions.

I agree that the debate (Zobrist vs. Mauer) would have seemed highly unlikely at the beginning of the year, and still seems almost laughable to anyone who doesn’t understand/trust UZR and WAR.

Zobrist’s WAR is driven by his insane UZR results at both 2B and RF.  Personally, I take his UZR (and therefore WAR) for this year with a grain of salt.  He had never played more than 8 games at 2B in any previous year, and he had never played more than 2 games in RF in any previous year.

To me, 61 career games in RF and 99 career games at 2B aren’t enough of a sample size to say that his UZR deserves to be as high as it is. 

Zobrist certainly deserves to be in the top 10, and probably even the top 3.  But if we look at JUST batting runs, Fangraphs has Mauer at 56.0 whereas Zobrist is at 40.2.  That seems closer to how the vote will actually turn out.  Zobrist will still get shafted by the writers regardless, by being placed below the several Yankees, but I don’t think anyone can say Mauer “stole the award from him” or anything like that.

Just my opinion.