Verlander and the MVP

Justin Verlander has been exceptional this year. He’s probably the AL Cy Young, and while I’ve expressed earlier why I do not think he’s the MVP this year, he’s (rightly) in the conversation, and that’s something, considering that pitchers don’t get into the conversation much.[1] In any case, most of the people who have dismissed other cases dismiss WAR as not being able to account for all the intricacies of the game (which it, of course, does not), and say that those intricacies are why Verlander (or Granderson, or someone else not names Jose Bautista) should win. I’ve also previously mocked said intricacies, but I think it might be worth some time to point out—in light of the little things—why Verlander might not be the MVP this year.

Positions and Patterns

It has occurred to me, in the recent discussions of the weakness of this year’s group of third basemen, that we actually have three of the top ten third basemen ever playing right now, even if they are all in decline (I’m counting A-Rod, assuming that he will soon have more games a 3B than SS). Which seems a little odd. So I made a list, as I am want to do. After long amounts of consideration, I chose years based on peak and service time, since I feel that those are more indicative than my feeling out when we “knew” that they were one of the greatest ever. As always, numbers are from Fangraphs and list is organized by WAR.

2011 MVP

It’s the time of year when we start talking about the baseball MVPs. In the last week, approximately everyone and their mother has written an article debating whether Verlander should win the AL MVP. All this follows on the heal of whether Adrian Gonzalez should win it, and then Pedroia had the monster July, and then there was talk of Granderson/Ellsbury… long story short, everyone suspects that Bautista is doping and / or cheating and is really wary of giving it to him. That, or they think that MVP candidates should win based on whether their team does. Also, no one has been inspired by the NL.

Defense and the concept of diminishing returns

In basketball, though it isn’t discussed particularly often (or wasn’t until talents were taken to south beach) there are diminishing returns on offense skill. There are a limited number of minutes and shots per team, and while more good offensive players will tend to increase the general efficiency of their teammates, there is a theoretical limit to how much each additional offensive upgrade will make the team better.[1]

The same is true in hockey and football, though probably to a lesser extent in the hockey than in basketball. In baseball, nine players have to hit (whereas in the extreme basketball case, a Wilt/AI/Kobe/Carmelo can shoot the ball 90% of time while his team watches for a quarter or more), so, while you will see some diminishing returns if you hit an amazing hitter ninth in the order, the fact that the ninth player is generating fewer outs will actually improve the total offensive output (a team with nine .400 OBP guys will get 2-3 more baserunners and trips to the plate per game than a team with nine .300 OBP hitters, which gives them a better chance to score more runs).[2] In hockey, I would assume it would take much longer to see diminishing returns since so there are so many more players involved. If you have three A+ centers, while the other team has only one, you will have a distinct advantage because every team has to play at least three centers in every game.

Expanding baseball's playoffs

Today, Joe Posnanski (who you might suspect I have a lot of respect for, at least when it comes to baseball reporting, and you would be correct) wrote about what seems like an inevitable shift towards more teams in the playoffs. It’s a horn that’s been tooted a lot recently, mostly on ESPN, where Jason Stark and Steve Berthiaume in particular have taken to the idea as if it has no possible downsides. But it has died down recently, as reports surface that there will definitely not be an extra team this year and possibly won’t be next year either. So while the subject was perhaps the main one that I began this blog wanting to cover, it has slipped from my mind of late.[1]

In any case, Posnanski concluded that it probably isn’t as much of a boon as everyone makes it out to be, but that we’ll get used to it. I’d go farther on that first point—probably a lot farther—but Posnanski’s stance seems like the sole voice of reason so far, the one person who questions whether gunning the engine while approaching a curve is really the right course of action (ok… so that analogy was a stretch). In fairness, Jonah Keri at Grantland has expressed reservations in the past (I believe it was in a podcast with Simmons), and GM’s and players—at least according to what Stark reports—are not necessarily as on board than commentators seem to be.

A (not actually very quick) thought: WAR and positional adustments

Every year, there are a few players whose defensive problems or injuries lead to discussions about when they’ll need to move to another position. This year, there’s been talk about moving Joe Mauer, Buster Posey, and Matt Kemp, just to name the most famous. With all of these discussions comes the inevitable mention about how much less valuable the player would be at their new position. With Mauer and Posey, this reasoning is obvious: both are considered to be good “gamecallers” and Mauer, at least, has a reputation for being a very good defensive catcher in other respects. Those skills would be useless at first base.

With Kemp, I’m less convinced. Despite the Gold Glove, Kemp has a reputation as a poor centerfielder. By Fangraphs, he has been poor this year, though his -6.5 fielding runs has nothing on the -25.7 that he recorded last year. Given his defense, one might suppose that Kemp would be more valuable at a corner position, especially since the Dodger regularly roll out Tony Gwynn Jr. in left. At least according to a traditional understanding, Gwynn’s plus fielding numbers would be much better used in center. And while the Dodgers might not gain even a win or two in what is already a lost season, switching their two outfielders would probably improve their team. Kemp, as such, might have more value in left to the Dodgers in left than he does in center.

So far, though, Kemp’s case seems like a semi-unique one, which can be expressed by saying that when a player’s defense improvement from a switch outweighs the change in replacement value, he will have more value at the second position. Or: (d2-d1)+(rv2-rv1) = net gain (assuming that the position change does not impact the offense that the player provides).

But I think that positional part of replacement value is misleading in other situations as well. Right now, for example, Lance Berkman and Albert Pujols have played almost the same number of games (105 to 107) and have almost the same fWAR (3.7 to 3.8). For the sake of argument, however, let’s assume that the teammates have been identical offensively and on the basepaths. Just for example, let’s say that, in a whole season, they will both create exactly fifty runs offensively and be neutral runners. Continuing our imaginary world, we’ll assume that the positional difference between RF and 1B is 10 runs this season, and that Pujols is about 5 runs better defensively than Berkman when both are playing first and 10 runs better when Berkman is playing RF. Here’s how WAR would determine their value, assuming that each plays a full season:

	Bat	Running	Fielding	Replacement	Positional	RAR	WAR
Imaginary Pujols	50	0	5	24	-15	64	6.3
Imaginary Berkman	50	0	-5	24	-5	64	6.3

WAR is, of course, a theoretical measure. But we would, nevertheless, assume that either of these players getting injured (as both have been this season) would deprive the club of the same amount of value. This is not true. Let’s assume Berkman goes down for sixteen games. He’s replaced by Allen Craig, who’s hitting pretty well right now. We’ll say Craig is the same defensively  in RF and on the bases, and give him about three runs generated in those sixteen games from his bat. Now say Pujols gets hurt for the same time. Berkman fills in at first and Craig plays RF instead of Berkman. Our comparison for the two results looks like this:

	Bat	Running	Fielding	Replacement	Positional	Runs Lost
Without Pujols	-2	0	-.5	0	0	-2.5
Without Berkman	-2	0	0	0	0	-2

Now, there’s not a huge difference there. But there is one, because both are essentially replaced by the same player offensively, but the replacement situation for theoretical Pujols is worse defensively over that 1/10 of a season.

It may be clearer to say it this way: real replacement/positional value is team-dependent. Team-dependency, of course, is kryptonite to anyone in the sabermetrics community; rbis and runs are terrible way to judge true talent level, and thus true value. What I’m saying is that WAR, as currently constructed isn’t judging true value added either. This may be obvious to some, and the distinction I’m about to introduce may seem trivial; but the “positional” part of WAR is valuable not on the field but in the general manager’s office. Troy Tulowitzki and Dustin Pedroia are extremely good players to build a team around right now (and who, as of today, lead their leagues in WAR) because they are terrific all-around players who play key defensive positions. But another terrific player—let’s pick on Derek Jeter since I’m a Red Sox fan—would likely have created more value over the last decade at a different position than shortstop, because what he contributed on the field (in terms of better defense) would have been better, regardless of whether the Yankees could have more easily found a replacement shortstop or centerfielder.

To estimate the true value that a player added to a team over their replacement, we would have to use their specific replacement, something based on their team and thus un-related to their skill level. But when we estimate that same value with WAR, we do essentially the same thing, only with a less specific measurement: a theoretical replacement level adjusted to how well other players at that position are playing. To put it another way: Jeter’s skills had nothing to do with the those of the other shortstops between 1997-2003. Judging him on the fact that (most) of his prime coincided with the “Golden Age of Shortstops,” a historical circumstance, is just as “inaccurate” as judging him based on the historical circumstance of who he came to bat in front of or the park he played in.[1]

To sum up, a middle-of-the-order hitting shortstop or second baseman is (or should be) like candy for general managers. Having a good hitter who can also play a prime defensive position allows you to have a better offense overall because normally you expect to have not very good hitters at those positions. However, that expectation doesn’t mean that said player creates more value on the field than your first baseman who couldn’t dream of playing short. That determination requires adding up the various things the player brings to the field and maybe some bonus points because short ends up having a greater defensive impact than first. Determining which player is a better one to sign—i.e., which one you can replace more easily—is an entirely different question. Maybe there’s no one who hits like your first baseman does, and maybe every short stop in the league has hit free agency at the same time.

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[1] A side note: had Albert Pujols or Jeff Bagwell come along in say, 1977, the relative position scarcity at first base would have made them seem even more impressive than they seem today. But the fact that there were a lot of great-hitting first basemen—for various reasons—in the last couple decades lessens that impact.

Barry Bonds and the Hall of Fame 2: Young Barry

Steroids, in theory, can help an athlete in three ways:

First, they apparently aid in recovery and in maintaining health, boosting performance by allowing an athlete to spend more time on the field. In this sense, steroids are like cortisone shots (which is, in fact, a steroid) or Tylenol with the significant addition of being illegal. This is their least objectionable facet: nearly everyone of likes the idea of having the best players on the field, and a “fix” for Koufax’s elbow, Mantle’s knees, or Nomar’s wrist is something that most baseball fans would approve of.

The problem lies in the line between a “fix” and something that benefits a player. The second benefit of steroids is that they both allow players to add muscle mass more easily and to maintain facets of their athletic performance for a longer period of time. (I would guess that steroids do not benefit flexibility, coordination, or speed, but their ability to allegedly remove nagging injuries would likely do so, as anyone who has tried to run on a wonky ankle would know.) In this sense, steroids are just the poorly regarded cousin of modern medicine more generally: Mays and Aaron didn’t have the supplements, or the advances in nutrition, or the knowledge of training regimens that we have today. All of these things allow players to become “better” than a player who doesn’t use them. In basketball, advances in medicine, equipment, and nutrition have allowed KG, Kobe, and Nash to continue playing beyond the point where would have expected them to break down.

The difference between these advances is that steroids are, again, illegal. This creates three issues when comparing steroids to other advances. First, there is the moral issue involved. Theoretically, barring a player from the Hall wouldn’t be that dissimilar from banning a player for using a spitball or because he, say, whipped his kids or was violent towards his wife. Second, and more important, at least from my view, is the issue of access. Because steroids are / were illegal and expensive, only already semi-established players with the correct connections could afford and access them, giving a certain class of players concrete advantages over their competitors. Of course, this advantage is not the same as that held by whites over blacks before 1946, but that’s a slightly different issue. Third, and stemming from the limited access issue, is that most advances in sports medicine and preparation “raise all boats,” as it were: because everyone has access to the same technology, hitters and pitchers and fielders will all get better relatively equally, allowing us to compare all players from different eras because the baseline hitter in 2011, while likely better than the baseline hitter in 1946, is at the same level relative to the pitchers of 2011 as the hitter of 1946 was to the pitchers of 1946.[1]

Finally, steroids, according to some, allow players to go play above their “true” talent level. Following this idea, Barry Bond and Mark McGwire were both totally incapable of hitting over 70 home runs “legally,” even if they were totally healthy and had trained like mad in order to do so. I find this idea suspicious for a couple reasons: first, muscles are muscles. Steroids might help them develop, but they won’t replace a player’s legs with those of a cheetah or his arms with springs and steel cables. Second, I’m not sure what “true talent level” means: is Willie May’s true talent level the .345/.411/.667 that he hit in 1954, or is it his .302/.384/.557 career line? Had he hit like he did in 1954 in 1971, we would probably say that he was “over-performing” for age 40. But I’m not sure that, had Mays hit .370/.450./.700 in 1955 that we could say the same; while those numbers would have been his best ever, they wouldn’t have been so far out of line with expectations to be considered to be an “over-performance” of his peak.

Barry Bonds and the Hall of Fame

It had to begin with Barry Bonds.

It had to begin with Barry Bonds for two reasons: first, it had to begin with Bonds because this blog is named after Barry Bonds.

More importantly, it had to begin with Barry Bonds because my first solid memories of caring about baseball are of Barry Bonds in 2002. Not 2001, when he hit 73 home runs, but the 2002 postseason, when pitchers refused to pitch to him, when Bonds and Jason Schmidt carried the team into the World Series. My father and grandfather were New York Giant fans, and I abandoned my then-liked Red Sox for my first baseball love: Bonds and the 2002 Giants team.

So it had begin with Barry Bonds. I think I can safely say that right now the most divisive thing about Bonds is his Hall of Fame candidacy. And, in the spirit of a man defined by hyperbole, it isn’t a stretch to say that Bonds’ candidacy will be the most divisive ever.

The subject has been written about before, and likely will be written about again, by better baseball minds than mine. It will likely be written about by better scouts, by better number crunchers, and by those with a better sense of the history of the sport. Nevertheless, I had to begin with Barry Bonds, so, at this particular moment, it makes sense to begin with his Hall of Fame candidacy.