2016 MLB awards thread

looks like they avoided V completely in favour of Brittan?!

http://images.usatoday.com/sports/_photos/2006/07/22/dombrowski.jpg

Verlander 2nd (more 1st-place votes), Kluber third. Sounds like an obvious case of old-stat guy edging out sabermetric vote-splitting.

depends on which metrics you're using. by fangraph WAR, which leans more heavily on FIP to reward what "should" have happened given things completely within the pitcher's control (Ks, walks, HRs), porcello was actually tied with verlander and sale for the AL lead in WAR (5.2). by baseball-reference WAR, which leans more heavily on the actual results on the field, porcello was 5th with 5.0 bWAR, far behind verlander (6.4) and kluber (6.2).

You're right, not the clear split I thought.

Rick Porcello, Red Sox (1st-8, 2nd-18, 3rd-2, 4th-1, 5th-1; 137 points)
Jason Verlander, Tigers (1st-14, 2nd-2, 3rd-5, 4th-4, 5th-3; 132 points)
Corey Kluber, Indians (1st-3, 2nd-6, 3rd-12, 4th-8, 5th-1; 98 points)
Zach Britton, Orioles (1st-5, 2nd-3, 3rd-2, 4th-5, 5th-9; 72 points)

(Has a winner ever had six fewer 1st-place votes than the runner-up?)

Eighteen of the 22 people who didn't put Porcello first had him second. That means that of the 17 first-place votes for Verlander and Kluber, at least 13 of them put Porcello second over whichever of Verlander or Kluber they didn't vote for, and theoretically all 17 could have done that.

That's weird. I would have guessed all 17 Verlander/Kluber 1st-place ballots would have had Kluber/Verlander 2nd.

rWAR otm

You weren't kidding about Kate Upton...

@ScottLauber
Porcello on reax of Verlander bro, fiancee Kate Upton: "I honestly don't care." Eager to resume drinking "some really good bottles of wine"

same

no one deserved it this year tbh

I thought any one of the top 3 would be a fine Cy Young winner in a normal year. Those season's like Verlander's MVP, or Kershaw's, or last year's NL top 3, those are still the exception, no?

Stunned at JV's difference between rWAR and fWAR ( I'm more inclined to follow fWAR if only because the website is easier to use, ahem)

even this year in the NL there are at least 4 or 5 guys who would easily be the top pitcher in the AL if they switched leagues xp

xxpost Kluber's 2014 season was one of the best this decade, if not the best in the AL. Felix was considered to be not too far behind. Even last year you had four better fWAR performances better than the 2016's leader this year (Porcello) so yeah, in the AL, it has been 'less deserving' (I blame Price and Sale).

Verlander and Kluber led both leagues in bWAR (although, yes, 7 of the next 8 were from the NL).

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2016-pitching-leaders.shtml

ah, yeah i tend to use fWAR for pitching, it's much more intuitive for me

I like the idea of combining them--I can see the arguments for both--which gives you these guys over 10.0:

1. Fernandez - 12.5

2. Verlander - 11.8 / Scherzer - 11.8 / Syndergaard - 11.8

5. Kluber - 11.6

6. Cueto - 11.1

7. Porcello - 10.2

8. Sale - 10.1

9. Tanaka - 10.0

You can add Kershaw at #2 (12.1) - he wasn't on one of the leaders lists because of IP, so I missed him.

Rick Porcello, Red Sox (1st-8, 2nd-18, 3rd-2, 4th-1, 5th-1; 137 points)
Jason Verlander, Tigers (1st-14, 2nd-2, 3rd-5, 4th-4, 5th-3; 132 points)

Yeah, I can't recall such a strange result. I think one-third of the voters had written off Verlander as a top pitcher after two sub par years (and not a great first half in 2016) and didn't even notice that he was having a great year.

maybe they thought he was going to get enough votes with others and wanted to throw some love to their pet-favs?

either way, Kate Upton losing her shit on twitter has been a sight to behold.

Kluber seemed to be the favorite down the stretch.

disappointed that kate upton didn't start ranting about xFIP and curveball RPM etc

great that ppl have never given less of a shit about these than now

No vote-splitting--Trout cleaned up.

woo-hoo!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUahRdeHJTdPyI3qPU_k4_53i0zgYlVENVV_He7_a14/pubhtml#

one guy put cabrera in front of trout, for old time's sake

good job john hickey

i'm startled

Was a little surprised there weren't any Red Sox after Betts and Ortiz to show up down-ballot--Pedroia, at least.

Top four AL MVP matched the top four bWAR finishers, and the vote spread also looks similar to the bWAR spread.

Ortiz with a 1st place vote :|

@DetroitTigersPR
Per @EliasSports, Cabrera is the 4th player to receive a MVP vote in 14 straight seasons, joining Hank Aaron, Yogi Berra and Barry Bonds.

that's odd, because he's only played 14 seasons. so he received a MVP vote for his 2003 rookie season (87 games played, .268/.325/.468, 106 wRC+)?

he's amazing, though. if his defense wasn't awful he would have had a better chance of catching up with Pujols, at least by fWAR. even now, he might have a chance. he trails him by 23 right now (68 to 91), but it's not hard to imagine a scenario where pujols five more years (!!!!?!?!?) of -1.0 to 1.0 level seasons while cabrera cranks out another handful of 3-4 WAR seasons.

taking sides: Ryan Howard in 2015-16 or your idea of how Pujols will be doing in 2020-21

he got one 8th place vote for some reason

If Trout were to win the MVP unanimously next year, he'd be tied with Schmidt for 11th on the all-time MVP-share list; a unanimous Cy Young for Kershaw would move him to third on the Cy list.

BP podcast pointed out that this pool of 30 writers on this award was relatively analytics- and Trout-friendly

Conceding James has a heavy bias here, I think this is an excellent breakdown of why Verlander's big bWAR advantage over Porcello is illusory.

http://www.billjamesonline.com/porlander_and_vercello/

sean forman's response (to pos, not james): https://twitter.com/sean_forman/status/800775742724325376

So James is saying Verlander would have given up just as many hits on balls in play even with a great defense behind him? If that's true, what does it mean to say that the Tigers were 50 runs worse than average on defense? It means they should have given up more hits than the average defense, which translates into more runs, unless they so happened to be not as bad when Verlander pitched. I think this is Forman's point ...?

more on various WARs: http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/18114272/miller-going-war-mystery-robbie-ray

that's a fantastic article

yes

Rick Porcello, Anthony Rendon Win 2016 MLB Comeback Player of the Year Awards