2012 awards thread

does it count for more when you get a hit with RISP w/ 2 outs as opposed to none?

only in the ninth inning of a game in September

if you value situational hitting, that RE24 stat actually seems like a pretty solid metric. i'd never heard of it before

i love baseball really needed a poster named peepee

we need to test his for Heyman residue

Constructing a case for Cliff Lee:

http://www.highheatstats.com/2012/10/is-cliff-lee-worth-some-cy-young-love/

lol, fangraphs votes:

AL MVP: Mike Trout (25)

He got all 25 votes, including mine. No big surprise here, and we probably don’t need to spend too much time on this one, given all the discussion over the last few weeks.

can we send peepee over there for a PTBNL?

Rancor of Trout-Cabrera MVP...

Both sides. Ugh. They take the fun out of the debate, because it's no longer a debate. It's a game of putdowns, so predictable that USA Today's highly regarded Bob Nightengale couldn't write in support of Cabrera as MVP without urging both sides, "There's no need for name-calling."

Comments on that article are pretty hilarious.

cool false equivalence! peepee seems like a really smart poster

the thing is MOST ppl with one view or the other don't think it's close.

I tried to convince a buddy of mine to take Trout's candidacy seriously but he was not having it.

Miggy, Miggy, Miggy, can't you see?
You're just not this year's MVP
I really love your old-school stats
But WAR's the thing, that's where it's at

(I realize Trout's case is clear enough without WAR. But c'mon' I'm rockin' the mic here, cut me some slack.)

wtf

I thought it was self-explanatory.

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/6bafa22480043f47c91356280ed84c56/774664.jpg

it was, you're just weird

Guilty as charged...I've got the Sheffield bug for fake lyrics.

i wouls lol if they split the vote and a splinter old man contingent put Fernando Rodney into first.

zachylon -- you mean your vote or your vote within the 25? becaus if the latter i was in your otto neu league last year.

i was just quoting the fgraphs article w/o convenient quotation marks or italics or anything, still don't really understand this newfangled ottoneu thing

oh thought you might have been zach sanders

my nonexistent vote is for Trout too, though i dont really care who gets it. in the few casual coversations ive had about its kind of sad how people just dismiss defense and nsb by fiat, end of argument right now.

seems like the NL MVP was leaning toward Posey anyway, but that grand slam today may have locked it up imo

not that postseason performance should (or shouldn't) play into MVP votes, but i think for a lot of voters it does.

Award ballots have to sent in before the end of the regular season.

It looks like Posey and Cabrera are both going to win their respective MVP's in a walk.

Do they still do the announcements after the post season? Or have they changed it to during?

announcements are in mid-november usually

comeback players of the year

AL - Fernando Rodney
NL - Buster Posey

this award is fucking stupid. Adam Dunn is clearly to guy who 'came back' for the AL. Posey is ok-ish bc he was hurt but its not like he's 35.

When has this award not been stupid?

Not that it matters, but did Alex Rios get any votes? I can't find the actual vote. Injuries seem like a separate category to me.

Dunn had no shot with 222 Ks and a .204 average.

it's mindboggling that this really was kind of a comeback year for Dunn

By WAR, Rios was 50% better than Dunn and Rodney. Rios improved +6.3, Rodney +4.1, Dunn +4.0.

yeah, but if you're going by WAR alone i'm not sure it's right to give "credit" for for the negative value that a player erased. that's kind of confusing, but what i mean is, if a player somehow had -6.5 WAR last year and 0.0 WAR this year, they shouldn't be comeback player of the year just because they improved by 6.5 WAR. here's how Rios, Rodney and Dunn improved from 2011 to 2012 by WAR:

Rios: -2.1 to 4.2
Rodney: -0.4 to 3.7
Dunn: -3.1 to 0.9

So it's still close between Rios and Rodney, I think, but Dunn just crawled back from the abyss to become a marginally better than replacement player

damn, i kinda want to make a spreadsheet that calculates how much $ was paid to each player per 1.0 WAR this year. The White Sox shelled out $14 million for Dunn's 0.9 WAR this year.

ok, here's another caveat-riddled* list that I put together: top 50 MLB batters, Salary divided by WAR. The far right column, "Salary / WAR", in other words, shows you how much a player was paid to produce each 1.0 WAR in 2012.

*Some of the players on Baseball-Reference, where I collected the data, don't have Salary information. For the most part it's rookies, people picked up off of waivers, utilitymen, etc, that don't affect the results. However, little-known baseball player MIKE TROUT does not have salary information on Baseball-Reference. So I looked up his salary information from another source and manually added it in. However, I didn't do that for anyone else. So if your favorite hometown player with no salary information on B-R is not included on this list, that's why!

Rk	Name			Tm	G	PA	WAR	Salary	Salary / WAR
1	Mike Trout		LAA	139	639	10.7	$480,000 	$44,860
2	Andrew McCutchen	PIT	157	673	7	$500,000 	$71,429
3	Buster Posey		SFG	148	610	7.2	$615,000 	$85,417
4	Giancarlo Stanton	MIA	123	501	5.4	$480,000 	$88,889
5	Austin Jackson	        DET	137	617	5.2	$500,000 	$96,154
6	Bryce Harper		WSN	139	597	5	$500,000 	$100,000
7	Jason Heyward	        ATL	158	651	5.5	$565,000 	$102,727
8	Josh Reddick		OAK	156	673	4.5	$485,000 	$107,778
9	Darwin Barney	        CHC	156	588	4.6	$500,000 	$108,696
10	Brett Lawrie		TOR	125	536	4.1	$482,500 	$117,683
11	Jason Kipnis		CLE	152	672	3.7	$482,100 	$130,297
12	Carlos Santana	        CLE	143	609	3.7	$501,900 	$135,649
13	David Freese		STL	144	567	3.6	$508,000 	$141,111
14	Jonathan Lucroy	MIL	96	346	3.5	$500,000 	$142,857
15	John Jaso		        SEA	108	361	3.3	$495,200 	$150,061
16	A.J. Ellis		        LAD	133	505	3.2	$490,000 	$153,125
17	Paul Goldschmidt	ARI	145	587	3.1	$482,000 	$155,484
18	Matt Wieters		BAL	144	593	3.2	$500,000 	$156,250
19	Jon Jay			STL	117	502	3.2	$504,000 	$157,500
20	Ian Desmond		WSN	130	547	3.2	$512,500 	$160,156
21	Starlin Castro		CHC	162	691	3.5	$567,000 	$162,000
22	Desmond Jennings	TBR	132	563	3	$486,900 	$162,300
23	Mike Moustakas	KCR	149	614	2.9	$487,250 	$168,017
24	Michael Brantley	CLE	149	609	2.9	$495,300 	$170,793
25	Craig Gentry		TEX	121	269	2.8	$484,300 	$172,964
26	Brandon Belt		SFG	145	472	2.7	$481,000 	$178,148
27	Cameron Maybin	SDP	147	561	2.7	$500,000 	$185,185
28	Kyle Seager		SEA	155	651	2.6	$484,300 	$186,269
29	Zack Cozart		CIN	138	600	2.4	$480,000 	$200,000
30	Neil Walker		PIT	129	530	2.5	$500,000 	$200,000
31	Ben Revere		MIN	124	553	2.4	$492,500 	$205,208
32	Brandon Crawford	SFG	143	476	2.3	$481,000 	$209,130
33	Danny Espinosa	WSN	160	658	2.4	$506,000 	$210,833
34	Mark Trumbo		LAA	144	586	2.3	$500,000 	$217,391
35	Allen Craig		STL	119	514	2.2	$495,000 	$225,000
36	Alex Avila		        DET	116	434	2.2	$510,000 	$231,818
37	Michael Saunders	SEA	139	553	2.1	$489,100 	$232,905
38	Alejandro De Aza	CHW	131	585	2.1	$495,000 	$235,714
39	Andy Dirks		DET	88	344	2	$485,000 	$242,500
40	Wilin Rosario		COL	117	426	1.9	$480,000 	$252,632
41	Lorenzo Cain		KCR	61	244	1.9	$480,850 	$253,079
42	Tyler Colvin		COL	136	452	1.9	$481,000 	$253,158
43	Freddie Freeman	ATL	147	620	2.1	$535,000 	$254,762
44	Gregor Blanco       	SFG	141	453	2	$516,000 	$258,000
45	Ruben Tejada		NYM	114	501	1.9	$491,209 	$258,531
46	Eric Young		COL	98	196	1.8	$481,000 	$267,222
47	Salvador Perez	        KCR	76	305	2.8	$750,000 	$267,857
48	Pedro Alvarez       	PIT	149	586	2.6	$700,000 	$269,231
49	Matthew Joyce	        TBR	124	462	1.8	$499,500 	$277,500
50	Michael McKenry	PIT	88	275	1.7	$485,000 	$285,294

man, seriously FUCK trying to copy excel spreadsheets to BBcode. I went in there, use the Code tags, lined up everything, it looked fine, and now that. whatever

i'll do it for pitchers in a second, too.

unfortunately calculating the most overpaid players (by WAR) is more complicated. it's easy to do when a player has a positive WAR (same formula > Salary divided by WAR), but when a player has a negative WAR you get some really funny results

Z S, you should come to a SABR convention, kid.

Please do the reverse if you can, heh.

also: SABR has conventions?

2012 MLB Pitchers, Salary / WAR

(same caveats apply)

http://i45.tinypic.com/16adwkx.png

just going with screenshots because i already ripped out half of my hair trying to accommodate microsoft office's many special needs

nothing groundbreaking, but looking at these really reinforces that pitchers are really expensive. the 50th batter in the list is paid $285K per WAR. The 50th pitcher is paid $481K per WAR.

Can't look at it too closely right now, but that's great, Z S. Wonder what people are getting paid per WAR on the Barry Zito bizarro version (actually, he might not have been so bad this year)--12 million a win?

zito is a good example of how the (really simplistic) formula i'm using doesn't work for terrible players. his salary is $19 million, his WAR is -0.3. 19 million divided by -0.3 is about -$63 million per WAR. it's counting the wrong direction, saying that he's worth $63 million for each NEGATIVE WAR, which of course is not what we're looking for here.

i was trying to think about how to address this until i put on the B-52s debut, and now i'm just kinda dancing around

OK, NEW METHODOLOGY - UNIFIED FIELD THEORY OF GOOD AND BAD

1. i start with the assumption that each WAR is worth $4.5 million on the open market, which is the value that Fangraphs used last year.
2. i calculate each player's "Fair Salary" by multiplying each player's 2012 WAR by $4.5 million. so if a player has 2.0 WAR, their "Fair Salary" is $9.0 million (2 x 4.5).
3. i calculate each player's "Net Value" by subtracting their Actual Salary from their Fair Salary. if they were paid exactly what they deserved, the Net Value is 0. if they were a relative bargain, the Net Value is positive. if they were a relative ripoff, the Net value is Negative.

TOP 50 2012 MLB Pitchers - Net Value (Fair Salary - Actual Salary)
http://i46.tinypic.com/2hmkftt.png

BOTTOM 50 2012 MLB Pitchers - Net Value (Fair Salary - Actual Salary)
http://i46.tinypic.com/4iycl.png

4. i also calculated their net value as a ratio (Fair Salary divided by Actual Salary):

TOP 50 2012 MLB Pitchers - Net Value Ratio (Fair Salary / Actual Salary)
http://i49.tinypic.com/20aau1f.png

BOTTOM 50 2012 MLB Pitchers - Net Value Ratio (Fair Salary / Actual Salary)
http://i47.tinypic.com/2vnm4gp.png

FUCK, that last chart is messed up (as usual, because it's dealing with negative numbers and ratios). it's punishing players who are paid less. if you look at the top two players on the list, they both have -1.4 WAR, but Zach Stewart has the worse ratio because he is paid less than Brian Duensing. It should be the other way around - Brian Duensing is WORSE because he's paid more and did just as shitty as Zach Stewart.

i am done thinking about this. i just spent the last hour in the kitchen trying to figure this shit out and still failed in the end

Please ignore the last chart. However, the three before that are ROCK SOLID.

jeezus

zs you effin rule