jimmy rollins NL MVP

[PokerFink]

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My calculator has a hard-on

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And so is this.

By the way, I do have actual thoughts on this subject, which are that 1) Jimmy Rollins was not the MVP and 2) I'm not surprised in the slightest that he won.

[THAY3R]

Neyer had a good article on this :

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It doesn't bother me that Jimmy Rollins won the NL MVP Award. He scored a million runs. He stole 41 bases. He hit 38 doubles, 20 triples and 30 home runs. He played 162 games. He's not a great defensive shortstop and didn't deserve his Gold Glove, but he's plenty good enough.

What bothers me is the utter lack of consistency from year to year.

In 2006, Ryan Howard's team finished three games out of the playoffs, and yet in the MVP balloting Howard outpointed Albert Pujols -- whose team did qualify for the playoffs. This, even though Pujols finished with a higher on-base percentage and a higher slugging percentage while playing his home games in a pitcher's park (Howard played his in a hitter's park).

So if you don't have to play for a playoff team, what's wrong with David Wright, exactly?

"When Wright's team really needed him in September, he let them down."

That is not a rhetorical device. That is something people believe. There are only two problems with it: It's mostly irrelevant and it's completely wrong.

First of all, the games in April through August count just as much as the games in September. Actually, they might count for just a little bit more. If you play well early in the season, and your team is winning, management might make a few extra moves with an eye toward winning more games in September and October. On balance, a home run in June might be worth just slightly more than a home run in September.

And second, if there was one player who did not let the Mets down in September, it was David Wright. In September he batted .352. From Aug. 2 through the end of the season, he batted .377 and scored 48 runs in 54 games. The Mets lost 12 of their last 17 to blow the division race (with a little help from the Phillies). In those 17 games, Wright batted .397 and collected at least one hit in every game. That's right: The Mets' 17-game collapse also included Wright's 17-game hitting streak.

So you can say what you want about him, and you can define "valuable" however you like. But unless you think Wright is responsible for his teammates' performance -- Wright, rather than the manager, and the coaches, and veterans like scrappy Paul Lo Duca -- I don't have any idea why the Mets' collapse would be held against him. Even a single iota.

But maybe it's not the Mets' collapse that cost Wright so much as his lack of flash. The one statistical category in which he led the National League -- times on base (297) -- happens to be a category that no MVP voter has ever, in the long history of the award, ever looked at. But they do look at home runs, which I suppose is the only way to explain how Wright could actually finish behind Prince Fielder in the voting. Even if you ignore fielding and focus only on hitting, Wright was the better player. And it's not like Fielder's team was in the playoffs.

Anyway I'm not sure the wrong man won the award. Rollins did guarantee before the season that the Phillies would finish in first place. If they had tanked, he would have been roundly criticized for his brashness. Instead, they finished in first place, and that counts for something. Also, according to the Bill James Handbook 2008, Rollins was one of the most effective baserunners in the majors, even aside from his 41 stolen bases; he was +32 bases by this measure, second in the league to only Jose Reyes (+34). (And while we're on that subject, Wright does not fare well by this measure: +3. But Matt Holliday does: +21.)

One of the principles that Bill James has long espoused is a simple one: "Everything counts." When it comes to the award voting, it's not so much the product that bothers me; it's the process. Year after year, I just don't get the impression that the voters are counting everything. Rather, they tend to fixate on this salient fact or that one, and forget to count anything else.

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http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog...name=neyer_rob

[dkgojackets]

Good article, I agree with that.

However, while I in no way think Howard should have won over Pujols, the team success argument doesn't exactly work since the Phillies won more games than the Cardinals.

He's right about the wishy washy process though.

[lastchance]

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award voters are given a precise meaning of the word "value." According to the MVP ballot, it consists of "strength of offense and defense."
Also includes games played, and "general character, disposition, loyalty and effort."

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Damn article. So yeah.. Maybe Jimmy rollins is the MVP.

[PokerFink]

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Rollins was one of the most effective baserunners in the majors, even aside from his 41 stolen bases; he was +32 bases by this measure

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Roughly how many runs would +32 bases be worth? (I'm assuming it's not as simple as 32/4 = 8)

How many wins would that be worth?

[MikeyPatriot]

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Rollins was one of the most effective baserunners in the majors, even aside from his 41 stolen bases; he was +32 bases by this measure

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Roughly how many runs would +32 bases be worth? (I'm assuming it's not as simple as 32/4 = 8)

How many wins would that be worth?

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This is completely out of my ass, but I can't see those baserunning numbers have much more than a range of +/- 1 win over the course of a season.

[PokerFink]

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This is completely out of my ass, but I can't see those baserunning numbers have much more than a range of +/- 1 win over the course of a season.

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Yeah probably, I'm just curious if there is a known conversion rate.

[THAY3R]

The breakeven stolen base rate is like 75% so you could probably count the 32 extra bases as 8 extra hits/walks(or maybe 8 less outs)?

I could easily be wrong here fwiw.

[Dudd]

How is the extra base stat defined? I mean, it's a given that an extra out is worth more than an extra base, so someone who gains 32 more bases than an average baserunner while getting thrown out at exactly the same rate is more valuable than someone who gain 62 extra bases but gets thrown out 30 more time than average, while they're each +32 in simple addition.

[Troll_Inc]

To all the people upset that Matt Holiday didn't win the MVP.

Would you be mollified if we, here at 2+2, came up with a home MVP just for Matt and awarded it to him? You know, since clearly if he played all his games at Coors Light Field, then he would have been the MVP for sure?