Morneau,Morneau ,Morneau ,Justin Morneau

[Guest Edgy DC]

Is Pedro Martinez in Derek Jeter's generation?

'Cuz he's been darn good.

[Frayed Knot]

"Can somebody please wake up the baseball writers before they give out more dumb MVP awards based on RBIs? "

On this point, I agree with Verducci.

[Theoldmole]

Red Barber was more emotion-stricken than he wanted to let on, for all his great professionalism. He had to get off mike. "And the Giants have won the National League pennant...and now here's Connie."

[Guest iramets]

="Frayed Knot"]"Can somebody please wake up the baseball writers before they give out more dumb MVP awards based on RBIs? " On this point, I agree with Verducci.

"Stop me before I kill again!" I don't get why the standard for voting on awards ever fell away from the players themselves.

Or maybe I can answer my own question: Because players did not want responsibility. What can a player or his supporters say, after all, when his peers consider him unworthy of an honor? They're brainless and casual observers gorged on beer and Crackerjax? No. They're corrupt and venal swine who hate us because we give bad interviews sometimes? No. They have to suck it up when the players themselves vote or else they're calling themselves a bunch of stupid idiots. Besides I'm sure the Players' Association would want a few million tossed into the pot for filling out a ballot.

MLB's motto: "MVP Voters: The best we can get to fill out a ballot for free." Ya gets what ya pay for.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I'm guessing that the entire body of players wouldn't necessarily be a sophisticated unbiased group either.

What's difficult to deal with is that so many people aren't able to seperate genuine criticism of this vote with less than genuine scaremongering about anti-Jeterness in the voting body. If Jeter wasn't involved in this election, Morneau is no better and no worse a choice.

[metsmarathon]

Nymr83 wrote: ]basically, i looked at production after the all star game. took the 100 AL players with the most at bats. then i ranked them by: R H 2B 3B HR RBI TB BB SO SB CS OBP SLG AVG OPS and took the average. theres many problems with this but here are a few: why only post all-star? if its because you believe the MVP is the guy who helped histeam down the stretch then you should eliminate players on bad teams and teams that coasted. weighing "CS" equal to any of these categories is probably a bad idea, you'd be better off with "net steals" in place of SB and CS. TB and SLG essentially double counts as does H and AVG (and to a lesser extent BB and OBP once you've already counted AVG) SO are arguably meaningless, if you're going to punish the guys who strike out you need to reward those who dont bounce into DPs (not coincidentally the same guys) OPS is obviously OBP+SLG so i dont know why you'd count it again seperately unless you're trying to give extra weight to them (a value judgment i'd agree with but still) i'd probably narrow it down to: R, RBI, OBP, and SLG. if you put a gun to my head and asked for 4 more i'd use PA, SB-CS, OPS+, and something that took defensive position into account if not defense itself (maybe using defense spectrum to assign a different multiplier to each position)

="that idiot metsmarathon"] its just me being intentionally somewhat dumb, and seeing what "the numbers" tell me.

believe me when i say that i do not believe that the wacky tabulations i did would in any way determine the most worthy MVP, nor do i believe that the methodology i chose to use isn't at all deeply flawed. all i did was "look at the numbers" as a dumb voter might.

i wanted essentially to widen the search to include enough stats that it wouldn't necessarily be prejudiced towards power numbers to the exclusion of other contributions. and i didn't want to think about it too much either!

as to the specific points, well, i only looked at post-ASG because i don't think the voters care about pre all star, and primarily focus on august and september. since i don't know where to find "stats after date X" i chose to add in a smattering of july games. it was more about modeling "dumb writer" than modeling what i believe.

the players on losing teams are important to the mix because you'll never hear somehting like "player X had the highest batting average of any player on an AL contender since june 8th" but you will hear that "justin morneau had the highest batting average in the AL since june 8th" its more about identifying valid candidates than it is in determining a clear winner. if teh top guy is on a team that's so bad that it'll preclude him from getting any votes, move down the list!

SB-CS doesn't give you any way to differentiate between a guy who goes 10-0 in steal chances, or a guy who goes 20-10. my way prolly doesn't either. not that my way does it necessarily better....

either way, it basically violates the premise of my methodology, to just "look at the numbers". sure, i violate it later with OPS, but that's a bit more common a stat than net steals, and might be more likely to be used by a voter than net steals. granted, i don't think they're gonna look at CS either, but lets pretend.

the argument for using both counting and rate stats is that i can give credit for both quantity and quality.

i personally don't like my inclusion of hits into the mix; and OPS does give me a chance to add extra weight in a sneaky fashion. i do think it important to give credit to a guy who gets a lot of doubles and triples, instead of just smacking home runs, and just looking at OPS doesn't afford me that option.

OPS+ i can't get at for post all star game, and i also can't get it in a nice handy sortable table that i can copy and paste into excel. i'm not willing to do taht kind of work for a quick dumb exercise.

once i get into OPS+, or defense, i get into a place where i might as well just look at WARP, or VORP, or win shares, or Runs Created. and i'm working on that one in a wholly separate exercise.

and to be honest, instead of ranking everybody from 1-100, i should be putting them all on a 100 point scale, with the top stat getter as 100, and the bottom stat-getter as 1, adding them all up, and then taking the highest point total. it would better account for players who separate tehmselves from teh pack, or bunches of players around the same stat level.

but it still wouldn't come close to naming the player most deserving of the MVP.

well, maybe a little closer...

[Frayed Knot]

Having the players vote would be a really, really, bad idea IMHO.
As already mentioned, the coach/manager vote for Gold Glove awards is probably more ridiculed than the ones the writers cast and the coaches aren't as likely to have as many hidden biases and petty reasons behind their votes as the players are, particularly when you consider that some of them have a financial interest in the results.



"I'd be lying to say there's not an anti-Jeter sentiment in the Midwest. It's there. But the fallacy here is that the writers would allow that type of feeling among fans get in the way of their voting for the MVP… We're the ones who make a mockery of guys who don't play the game right. More than anybody, we appreciate a guy like Jeter, and the way he plays the game. But it's not like he got beat by some joke of MVP pick. Morneau was a legitimate pick."
--Joe Christenson, Minneapolis Star-Tribune Twins beat reporter


"To me, Jeter is a special player. I just think Morneau sustained a higher level of production."
--BBWAA voter Mark Gonzales of the Chicago Tribune

[Guest iramets]

="Frayed Knot"]the coaches aren't as likely to have as many hidden biases and petty reasons behind their votes as the players are, particularly when you consider that some of them have a financial interest in the results.

You understand that the players are prohibited from voting for their own teammates? There are all sorts of ways to encourage fair and reasonable voting (not that baseball's ever tried any of them.)

[Frayed Knot]

]You understand that the players are prohibited from voting for their own teammates?

You understand that managers are too and it still hasn't stopped DH's (Palmiero) and mediocre fielders (Jeter) from getting multiple Gold Glove awards.

Players play.
Asking them to also be the stewards of the game isn't a good idea.

[nymr83]

i really thought the writers gave Palmiero the GG, can you please confirm it was the managers?

[Guest patona314]

="Frayed Knot"]"To me, Jeter is a special player. I just think Morneau sustained a higher level of production."

agreed, it's not morneau's fault for being young and in a small market

[Frayed Knot]

]i really thought the writers gave Palmiero the GG, can you please confirm it was the managers?

Yes, GG awards are voted on by managers/coaches - 1 vote per team I believe - and that vote can't be for your own guy.

The votes for RoY, MoY, CY & MVP are given to 2 writers (on a rotating basis) per city that has a team in that league.

HoF votes go to any BBWAA member who has spent at least 10 years covering baseball.

[nymr83]

but when did GGs get turned over to the managers, i thought it was after/as a result of Palmiero.

[metsmarathon]

from www.baseballlibrary.com

]First awarded in December 1957 by the Rawlings Sporting Goods Company, the Gold Glove Award honors the top fielders at each position in each league. Honorees, originally selected by a panel of distinguished sportswriters, were chosen by fellow players starting in 1958. Since 1965, managers and coaches have decided the winners. Beacuse of the subjective nature of the voting, the awards have often been criticized for honoring players based on reputation rather than statistics. Perhaps the most egregious example was the Gold Glove awarded in 1999 to the Rangers' Rafael Palmeiro, who had played just 28 games at first base and had just been named the league's outstanding DH. The most-decorated honorees are Brooks Robinson and Jim Kaat, both of whom won sixteen Gold Gloves in their careers.

[Frayed Knot]

AFAIK, it's always been the managers voting for GG awards - and certainly was when Palmiero won the year he DH'd almost exclusively

[Guest Edgy DC]

I guess it's OK to comment here that there's a peck of articles today reporting that Darryl Strawberry is pushing Jeter to embrace A-Rod and bring him into the circle.

[MFS62]

83 got me thinking:

]why only post all-star? if its because you believe the MVP is the guy who helped histeam down the stretch then you should eliminate players on bad teams and teams that coasted.

A few years ago(2? 3?), when The Yankees jumped out to a huge lead early in the season, Sheffield and Giambi were hurt, and many of the other regulars got off to slow starts. But Hidecki Matsui carried the team on his back until the others got better/ returned. Toward the end of the season, he wore down (and still finished with very good stats) and Sheffield got hot to overtake Matsui in overall numbers. But the team coasted, and its big lead even declined by year's end.

Come voting time, the voters picked Sheffield over Matsui, but if he hadn't done what he did and when he did it, the Yanks might not have won their division. And if you had watched that team throughout the entire season, there should have been no doubt as to which player was more valuable to the overall success of the team.

Just saying that to me, sometimes the when is the most important thing to be considered.

Later