David Wright got screwed

[MikeyPatriot]

[ QUOTE ]
Why would it be any more unfair than punishing a guy for taking a big deal with a team that is unlikely to make the playoffs? Or punishing a guy for remaining loyal to his small-market team that developed him and that has little chance to make the playoffs?

[/ QUOTE ]

? I don't think either of those things are fair either, and I never said as such? I don't think Ichiro or Hanley Ramirez should be "punished" for playing in Seattle or Florida.

[prohornblower]

[ QUOTE ]

3. General character, grit, quiet strength, disposition, loyalty and effort.


[/ QUOTE ]

[Neuge]

I can't get behind this performance/dollar criteria. Not just for the rookie contracts reasons already stated, but because it inherently punishes the best players in the league, those mostly likely to be valuable on the baseball field. And the definition from the BBWAA backs me up: "Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense." It clearly refers to value on the baseball field. I understand the bias that the term valuable brings, but in this case it clearly doesn't refer to monetary value.

Just out of curiosity though, who is NL MVP based on preformance per dollar?

1. HRam
2. Tulo
3. Brandon Phillips

[Tweety]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
vhawk, i dunno. the mvp award is a regular season award, so its actually 1st-4th, and not 1st-4th (in each league). giving the mvp award to a player on a team that doesnt make the playoffs is like giving the world series mvp to a player on the losing team imo.

[/ QUOTE ]
Why couldn't the most valuable player in the WS be on the losing team?

[/ QUOTE ]

again, because baseball is a team game, your goal is to win

[/ QUOTE ]

The Mets' collapse had absolutely nothing to do with David Wright. He was playing sensational baseball when it happened. It's not on David Wright in any way that other players failed in a game comprised of individual performances.

[/ QUOTE ]

agree 100%. But personally, unless the numbers are hugely different, id rather give it to a guy who's team made the playoffs.

I love David Wright in the most Heterosexual way possible. And he had an MVP-caliber season. And if the Mets didnt collapse, he may have won the MVP. But they did. And since the goal is to make the playoffs, and David Wright's team fell short, then he was not the most valuable player in the league.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is a toally fair way to think in most sports other than baseball. In basketball for example, you have five guys on the floor. If a guy puts up big time numbers but his team only wins 37 games, it's virtually impossible to justify giving him the MVP, regardless of how good his numbers are.

You could say the same for hockey, and possibly even football, despite the high number of players in an active roster, simply because there is so much teamwork involved, and for a player to be truly great he ought to make others around him better, and thus win.

Baseball just isn't like that though. When Jose Reyes is at the plate striking out or not running out ground balls, David Wright is sitting in the dugout. When Guillermo Mota is blowing up and costing the Mets leads late in games, Wright is on the field, but there isn't much he can do to get Mota to pitch better. Sure, there are some instances where teamwork comes in, like in rundowns, signal reading, hitting the cutoff man, etc, but by and large baseball is a team sport comprised of individual performances that are nowhere near as interrelated as they are in other sports. Not even close. So baseball is really an exception to your rule. It is perfectly conceivable (and common) for the best all around player in the league to play for a less than great team like the 2007 Mets.

If the stats are even or very close, then sure, you go with the guy on the playoff team versus the guy on the .500 team, but in the Rollins/Wright case the stats were not close.

[Tweety]

[ QUOTE ]
20/20/20/20/20/20/20/20/20/20/20/20/20 > Mets

as a diehard Mets fan, the only thing Wright deserves to get is not beaten to death, which most of the team DOES deserve

[/ QUOTE ]

I am a Mets fan too, and I am sickened by how their season ended, but I'm not so myopic as to be unable to recognize greatness among [censored]. Wright had a great all-around season and was nasty down the stretch, more so than any other player in the NL in my opinion, and therefore he should have won the award. His team's meltdown had absolutely nothing to do with him.

Assume you have two large companies, company A and company B, both if which are competitors in the same industry. If company A's stock price appreciates 5 percent in a given year, and company B's stock price appreciates 10 percent in a given year, does that necessarily mean that the most valuable employee out of the two companies works at company B?

The answer is no, as I hope anyone can obviously determine, and the logic here can be applied to the discussion about whether an MVP must play for a playoff team. It is completely flawed thinking.

[SMIGLET]

also a mets fan and wright shuda gotten 2nd...do not understand how matt holliday didnt run away with this

but yes rollins did not even deserve 2nd place

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Wright was the best all-around player in the NL in 2007.

That's all.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's called "Most Valuable Player". Not "best all-around player."

Of the top 10 vote-getters, three were paid less than DW. Per baseball-reference.com:

Wright finished 4th, and earned $1.25M in 2007
Fielder finished 3rd, and earned a paltry $415K
Howard finished 5th, and earned $900K
Hanley finished 10th, and earned $402K

I know it's the MLB, and $800K is peanuts, but one could argue that at least Fielder and Howard were more "valuable" than Wright, who was paid 3 times as much money.

Rollins and Holliday were a close 1, 2. Rollins earned $8M, and Holliday earned $4.4M.

There are several ways to define the "MVP" award, and most of them suck. The award should be terminated.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is the kind of non-standard reasoning I can honestly get behind. When I think value, this is what goes through my mind. Its not IMPOSSIBLE for guys like Arod to be the best value but its pretty hard.

You'd have to make some amendments though, you'd have to establish some kind of minimum salary or service time, because otherwise its guys like Arod and Pujols trying to compete with every single rookie and 1 year service time guy who has a pretty decent bustout year. they make 20 times as much money, they arent going to provide twenty times as much value very often.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you are going to get into the value per dollar angle to this analysis, it might also be worth looking at the player's salary as a percentage of his team's payroll. A $5 million a year guy who is only slightly less valuable than a guy making $9 million a year might not necessarily be more valuable to his team if the $5 million guy is playing for the Devil Rays and the $9 million guy is playing for the Yanks.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Why would it be any more unfair than punishing a guy for taking a big deal with a team that is unlikely to make the playoffs? Or punishing a guy for remaining loyal to his small-market team that developed him and that has little chance to make the playoffs?

[/ QUOTE ]

? I don't think either of those things are fair either, and I never said as such? I don't think Ichiro or Hanley Ramirez should be "punished" for playing in Seattle or Florida.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know you dont think either of those is fair. What I'm trying to demonstrate is that there isn't really any fair way to come up with a MVP in any team sport. We are currently incapable of 100% isolating one players contribution to ANYTHING, much less to winning. Every performance is subject to influences that are entirely out of any given players control. I agree that there are some aspects of the "financial value approach" that would unfairly punish certain players. I'm just trying to show that there is unfairness in EVERY possible system. And that the unfairness inherent in THIS system is unfairness that is actually fairly relevant. It is unfair to penalize a guy for his team not getting to the playoffs because not only can he not control that, but he is actively working against that and it occurs in spite of him. Being punished for tenacious negotiating is also unfair since these guys should have the right to get every penny, but at the very least, they are being punished (unfairly) for something that DIRECTLY negatively impacts their team.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
I can't get behind this performance/dollar criteria. Not just for the rookie contracts reasons already stated, but because it inherently punishes the best players in the league, those mostly likely to be valuable on the baseball field. And the definition from the BBWAA backs me up: "Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense." It clearly refers to value on the baseball field. I understand the bias that the term valuable brings, but in this case it clearly doesn't refer to monetary value.

Just out of curiosity though, who is NL MVP based on preformance per dollar?

1. HRam
2. Tulo
3. Brandon Phillips

[/ QUOTE ]

I was under the impression that we were allowed to hypothesize alternative selection criteria that are basically at our own discretion and are completely arbitrary...sort of like what the BBWA does. If we are required to stick to the rules laid out then of course its more simple....but who does that?!?!?

[MikeyPatriot]

[ QUOTE ]
I know you dont think either of those is fair. What I'm trying to demonstrate is that there isn't really any fair way to come up with a MVP in any team sport. We are currently incapable of 100% isolating one players contribution to ANYTHING, much less to winning. Every performance is subject to influences that are entirely out of any given players control. I agree that there are some aspects of the "financial value approach" that would unfairly punish certain players. I'm just trying to show that there is unfairness in EVERY possible system. And that the unfairness inherent in THIS system is unfairness that is actually fairly relevant. It is unfair to penalize a guy for his team not getting to the playoffs because not only can he not control that, but he is actively working against that and it occurs in spite of him. Being punished for tenacious negotiating is also unfair since these guys should have the right to get every penny, but at the very least, they are being punished (unfairly) for something that DIRECTLY negatively impacts their team.

[/ QUOTE ]

If all players entered the league as free agents, I might have more interest in this kind of approach. I just think this idea would shift the arguments about voters from being too team-results-oriented to the award just being a "who has the most under-market contract" which doesn't really mean anything.

The current system is fine, if the writers would stick to the criteria. I don't even mind a player winning the MVP award if the stats are close. For instance

Player X .275/.380/.530, 20 SB/20 ATT, 30 HR, team didn't make playoffs

Player Y .285/.370/.515, 32 SB/32 ATT, 28 HR, team made playoffs.

I really wouldn't mind either player winning the award.