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View Poll Results: Who should be AL MVP?

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  • Aaron Judge

    43 75.44%
  • Shohei Ohtani

    14 24.56%
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Thread: American League MVP

  1. #61
    Be the ball Roy Tucker's Avatar
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    Re: American League MVP

    Quote Originally Posted by M2 View Post
    You're grasping. I said we have mathematically determined it to be valueless and now you're restating that while trying lawyer the terminology. 0 is not production. It is the absence of production. Nothing of value was produced, therefore it is awarded zero points.
    Just trying to understand. So If a position player is a great fielder (Ozzie Smith, young Junior), that doesn’t matter? Conversely, if a guy is a tree stump in left field and can’t field worth a damn, that doesn’t matter?
    She used to wake me up with coffee ever morning


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  3. #62
    Member Sea Ray's Avatar
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    Re: American League MVP

    For all the back and forth on whether WAR is calculated properly, it's interesting that according to RZ the choice for AL MVP is not close. It's Judge in a landslide

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    Old school 1983 (09-22-2022)

  5. #63
    breath westofyou's Avatar
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    Re: American League MVP

    Quote Originally Posted by RedTeamGo! View Post
    Ohtani is excellent, and the pitching piece is really cool and unprecedented.

    With that said, Judge is having one of the greatest offensive seasons in baseball history. No brainer IMHO.
    It's a top thirty one for sure

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    Last edited by westofyou; 09-22-2022 at 11:33 AM.

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    M2 (09-22-2022)

  7. #64
    rest in power, king Wonderful Monds's Avatar
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    Re: American League MVP

    I’m not gonna lie, I’m fairly shocked that it’s controversial here to say a player who both hits and plays the field provides more value to a team than a player who only DHs.

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    Old school 1983 (09-22-2022)

  9. #65
    Member RedsManRick's Avatar
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    Re: American League MVP

    Quote Originally Posted by M2 View Post
    But you could be impacting the ways in which your team is obtaining run production in positive or negative ways. And that varies lineup to lineup, team to team, and no one is doing that math. Likewise, no one is doing the math on the value of a player shifting leftward on the defensive scale so that another productive hitter can join the lineup (e.g. David Eckstein at SS or Miguel Cabrera at 3B). There's a good reason for it - the value is theoretical and we're trying determine the value of observable events. Yet we throw all of that out the window when it comes to the DH. We're making up a number for things that DID NOT HAPPEN. That ought to send us back to the chalkboard.
    Question: You have a league averagish 2B with an 800 OPS and a DH with an 800 OPS. Which player is doing more to help his team win? Which player is producing more? According you, the answer is they're contributing the same amount. If your answer is the 2B, how are you suggesting we account for that difference?

    As for the "DID NOT HAPPEN" point, you're absolutely right. WAR is not about simply measuring what happened. It is about valuing what happened. And value requires requires a comparison against some alternative possibility. Making those comparison requires a process that goes beyond merely beyond merely tallying the events that occurred. If you want that stat, go look at putouts fielding percentage. That's what those stats do. There's a reason we've moved on from them.

    Not every part of the WAR formula is about valuing on field events directly. Some of them are about creating the right comparison, the right value of the opportunity. These are 6 components of WAR, 3 are measures of what happened on the field. Two are about putting everybody against the same baseline group of players. And the last is about accounting for the value of being league over a given amount playing time.

    1) Batting production (relative to everybody else)
    2) Baserunning production (relative to everybody else)
    3) Defense production (relative to the other guys at your position)
    4) Position specific adjustment
    5) League adjustment
    6) Replacement level playing time adjustment

    WAR is, at its root, about opportunity cost -- about what you did relative to what somebody else might have done. An important part of that is understand who the somebodies are. The positional adjustment is about properly accounting for who the somebodies are. For hitting and baserunning, everybody gets the same sort of opportunities, more or less -- facing the same pitchers, the same defense, etc. It's reasonable to compare every hitter to every other hitter. That doesn't work on defense. We only measure how good a defensive play is relative to the other guys who actually had the opportunity to make those plays. If you just counted runs allowed/prevented straight for all defenders, you'd be saying that given two equal hitters, one of whom is an average defensive 1B and the other who is slightly below average SS, the team should more highly value the 1B. We both know that's wrong. And it's wrong because the proper comparison point, the one the GM is actually making, is against the entire pool of players who he can recruit from. If every player in MLB was put at SS, that "slightly below average" SS would not grade out as average, he'd grade out as excellent. So we either have to only compare SS to other SS and have a "SS WAR", or we have to find a way to account for the fact that SS and 1B are different defensive jobs, that the pool of who guys who create the average baseline are different. That's what the positional adjustment does.

    The DH already gets a 0 in terms of what he did on the field. He gets a 0 in #3, defensive production. He's taking the hit is in the position adjustment that accounts for the pool of guys who he's being compared to. It's a means of accounting for the fact that it is, by definition, easier to find a guy who just has to hit at the major league level than a guy who has to hit at the major league level AND play defense at the major league level. The latter is a subset of the former. A guy who played average SS and a guy who DH'd both added/cost no extra value relative to their positional peers. But relative to all the players in the league, the SS produced a lot more defensive value than the DH. That's why we have a positional adjustment.
    Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.

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    *BaseClogger* (09-23-2022)

  11. #66
    Member Tom Servo's Avatar
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    Re: American League MVP

    Quote Originally Posted by Wonderful Monds View Post
    I’m not gonna lie, I’m fairly shocked that it’s controversial here to say a player who both hits and plays the field provides more value to a team than a player who only DHs.
    In a vacuum I have no real disagreement on that point but I think in the specific case of Ohtani it’s kind of bull**** obfuscation. I mean even God rested on the 7th day let the guy just DH after throwing 7 scoreless and hitting a HR, damn.
    “I don’t care,” Votto said of passing his friend and former teammate. “He’s in the past. Bye-bye, Jay.”

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  13. #67
    rest in power, king Wonderful Monds's Avatar
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    Re: American League MVP

    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Servo View Post
    In a vacuum I have no real disagreement on that point but I think in the specific case of Ohtani it’s kind of bull**** obfuscation. I mean even God rested on the 7th day let the guy just DH after throwing 7 scoreless and hitting a HR, damn.
    Well in all fairness he is still a 9 win player even as a DH, so I don’t think it’s holding him back too much lol


    It’s just a matter of like, if he played the field even just at replacement level, even a historic season by Judge this year probably couldn’t even take him down for the MVP. It’s just the slight edge case in this one race where it really is a notable factor at all.

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    Old school 1983 (09-22-2022)

  15. #68
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    Re: American League MVP

    When it comes to Ohtani, WAR needs to account for the fact that he doesn’t play defense when he is not pitching. However, I wouldn’t hold it against anyone who gives Ohtani extra bonus points in MVP voting because he’s DH a due to his unique situation as a two way player.
    Hoping to change my username to 75769023

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    Chip R (10-06-2022),Old school 1983 (09-22-2022),Wonderful Monds (09-22-2022)

  17. #69
    Member Old school 1983's Avatar
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    Re: American League MVP

    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Servo View Post
    In a vacuum I have no real disagreement on that point but I think in the specific case of Ohtani it’s kind of bull**** obfuscation. I mean even God rested on the 7th day let the guy just DH after throwing 7 scoreless and hitting a HR, damn.
    If Ohtani wasn’t a pitcher, he seems like a good enough athlete to be a positive WAR defender in the outfield.

  18. #70
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    Re: American League MVP

    Quote Originally Posted by westofyou View Post
    It's a top thirty one for sure

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    Yep! And even more staggering is that Judge is I believe the 13th man on that list (ranked above) and likely to surpass Walker, to become the 12th man.
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  19. #71
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    Re: American League MVP

    The main thing I like about Judge's HR binge is that it will force the Yankees to increase their offer and overpay in the out years. BTW, is something going on in the salary area with Judge? I went to COT'S and the Yankees were missing?

  20. #72
    Posting in Dynarama M2's Avatar
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    Re: American League MVP

    Quote Originally Posted by Wonderful Monds View Post
    I’m not gonna lie, I’m fairly shocked that it’s controversial here to say a player who both hits and plays the field provides more value to a team than a player who only DHs.
    Provided he plays the field well, sure. Yet you don't have to make up numbers to support that.
    I'm not a system player. I am a system.

  21. #73
    Posting in Dynarama M2's Avatar
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    Re: American League MVP

    Quote Originally Posted by RedsManRick View Post
    Question: You have a league averagish 2B with an 800 OPS and a DH with an 800 OPS. Which player is doing more to help his team win? Which player is producing more? According you, the answer is they're contributing the same amount. If your answer is the 2B, how are you suggesting we account for that difference?

    As for the "DID NOT HAPPEN" point, you're absolutely right. WAR is not about simply measuring what happened. It is about valuing what happened. And value requires requires a comparison against some alternative possibility. Making those comparison requires a process that goes beyond merely beyond merely tallying the events that occurred. If you want that stat, go look at putouts fielding percentage. That's what those stats do. There's a reason we've moved on from them.
    The "valuing" part is where WAR goes off the rails. Once you start making up numbers to support how you feel about comparative value, you lose your claim to being an objective assessment of what's happening on a baseball field (and that is what WAR pretends to be).

    The real answer is Bill James was and always will be right about linear weights. I'm sympathetic to wanting to find a way out of the box WAR has constructed for itself on DH value, but that way it's doing it is pure folderol. As mentioned previously, the way they do it is nonsensical and inconsistent. It's a precedent they aren't willing to follow in multiple other instances. Why use math if it's functionally no different that someone saying "yeah, you're just a DH?" This is one of the spots where WAR breaks.

    So my answer is not that they have the same value. It's that we need a better system of measurement. WAR does purport to roll up into team value, and x-ing out run value for events that did not occur ought to be a no-go. The answer ought to be we need a different accounting method for what's taking place on the field. We've got our 0 in the wrong place (or, more accurately, we've tacitly admitted our 0 is not a 0). We should fix that rather than insist everyone agree to keep telling a poorly constructed lie.
    I'm not a system player. I am a system.

  22. #74
    Posting in Dynarama M2's Avatar
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    Re: American League MVP

    Quote Originally Posted by Roy Tucker View Post
    Just trying to understand. So If a position player is a great fielder (Ozzie Smith, young Junior), that doesn’t matter? Conversely, if a guy is a tree stump in left field and can’t field worth a damn, that doesn’t matter?
    No, all of that matters and it gets measured and accounted for. There is a value placed on everything that occurs in the field. Adam Dunn took a big, old defensive haircut. Ozzie Smith ranks as an elite SS thanks to his glove. Young Jr. - big defensive value. Old Jr. - defense so bad it almost completely erased his bat. All of that gets counted and falls on a +/- continuum.

    Now, I am well aware the 0 lands in an inconvenient place (see my above post). Yet we ought to be able to admit someone who didn't play in the field is the very definition of zero defensive value. They did nothing right. They did nothing wrong. There is nothing to add or subtract. They present a null set. We're then making up a number and jamming it in there. Why? Because our measurement tool is bad.
    I'm not a system player. I am a system.

  23. #75
    Member kaldaniels's Avatar
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    Re: American League MVP

    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Servo View Post
    In a vacuum I have no real disagreement on that point but I think in the specific case of Ohtani it’s kind of bull**** obfuscation. I mean even God rested on the 7th day let the guy just DH after throwing 7 scoreless and hitting a HR, damn.
    I may be completely missing the point but I’m stuck on “only DHs”…isn’t that leaving something out?

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    Tom Servo (09-22-2022)


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