BBWAA awards 2017

his career has been pretty amazing, there was definitely this trio of seemingly likely and perhaps inevitable HOF pitchers who debuted before him (Felix, CC, Verlander) who to varying degrees have lost their luster considerably and in at least the former two cases maybe their HOF case, whereas Scherzer despite his top comp being Weaver seems a better bet than any of them at this juncture. it's foolish to predict anything w/pitchers but if he clears 200 wins with those 3(+?) Cys he's 100% in. bc of his dominance i could see him being viewed as a poor man's Pedro Martinez. which considering the league switch and the two subsequent Cys is not a bad comp imo.

using the winning of previous awards as a standard for the ultimate award has always seemed weird to me.

it's probably more an indicator of how good they were rather than a reason to win. i guess what i think is always funny is when writers make a case for HOFers based on all star game appearances, or a lack thereof. i mean wow, 10 time all star steve garvey DOES sound impressive i guess...

*a reason to enter the hall, rather

Agree that using what may be questionable awards in the first place (and, to an even greater degree, All-Star picks, which are often wildly questionable) doesn't make sense, but it's just the way the HOF voters look at it--it's a convenient shorthand, I guess. And with someone like Scherzer, I don't see it as a problem: his three Cys have all been legitimate.

The two recent inductees with just over 200 wins are both special cases: with Pedro, you've got arguably the most dominant peak pitcher ever, and with Smoltz, he spent a few years as a closer, reducing his win total. So voters could say, "Only around 200 wins, but..." I thought Halladay would be the first ~200 win guy to go in with no mitigating factors, but now (unfortunately) he'll be a bit of a special case too. But I think 200 wins is now the HOF floor.

And obviously: more and more voters pay less and less attention to wins every year anyway.

Sandy Koufax, 165-game winner, inducted in 1972

(I know, a special injury case, but also somewhat overrated because of his home ballpark and the near-deadball era)

no one won more than 18 games this year, lowest since jimmy key won 17 in strike-shortened 1994. with more and more bullpenning, that will probably drop further. so even if you lead baseball in wins for 11 straight years, you'll be just shy of 200

200 wins w/dominant seasons over a shorter period of time is vv attractive to HOF voters at this point. I don't think Halladay would have had much trouble getting in anyway, we'll see i guess, but he's kind of in that group of pitchers who were the best in the game for a long enough time that their lack of counting stats isn't an issue.

i think w/a guy like Schilling, to cite one example, he's hurt not just by the fact that he's an unconscionable douchebag but by the fact that he had somewhat inconsistent dominance and he did a lot of bouncing around and had some injuries here and there.

or conversely Mike Mussina was really consistently very good for a long time but he was never considered dominant.

for either of the above i don't think that will be a problem w/Halladay or Scherzer. (i do think Mussina and Schilling should and at least in Moose's case *will* get in, i'm just probing voter minds a bit...)

going forward i guess the other best HOF bet is someone like Chris Sale, though he could wind up flaming out Guidry or Lincecum style, i guess. you never know with those skinny fellas. Corey Kluber is an amazing pitcher, i wouldn't bet that much against him but he's already 31. he looks built for durability, though, and he's arguably the best right-handed pitcher in baseball.

Kluber's fascinating--outside of Randy Johnson, I can't think of another pitcher who's been so dominant after such a late start. If he wins a third Cy Young in the next couple of years, he'll really scramble up HOF standards. (Johnson's durability was so off the charts, the late start became moot.)

i'd be interested in seeing the breakdown of war/jaws between players who went to college and those who didn't. overall there's probably not much difference, but for the near-hall candidates that extra season or two is a big deal. (financially as well, of course.)

verlander tore through the minors -- he debuted 13 months after he was drafted -- but he was still 22 1/2 then (madison bumgarner was up at 19). kris bryant is nine months older than bryce harper. etc.

maybe verlander and bryant needed that time to become the players they are, of course. but if players hit their peak at 27, bryant will start going downhill in 2020

As soon as the analytics-friendly writers are the majority, Mussina will get in. It's absurd that one of the 20-30 best pitchers ever is so underappreciated.

I actually think that a strong CY/MVP voting history is a really good indicator of HOF-level dominance. A good pitcher like Porcello can have a flukey good season and win the CY, but I don't think you'll find pitchers with a string of top three or five CY finishes (say, more than five times in the top three over a ten year period) who weren't elite.

I like looking at Baseball Reference's award shares more than award wins--as you say, the Porcellos and Morneaus win once and don't do much otherwise; consistent Top-5 or Top-10 finishes are much more meaningful. (At three wins, that usually takes care of itself; I don't think there's anybody who won three awards and didn't also have a decent number of other Top-5/10 finishes.)

yeah i like award shares if i’m going to be making an argument from a non-saber perspective

for a not entirely fair comparison (sorry morbs), every single hall-eligible nba mvp has been inducted, and only three hall-eligible nhl mvps were not

(derrick rose might break the nba streak tho)

yeah baseball is too random

probably the best pitchers in terms of dominance and award shares who will never come remotely close to the HOF were guys like Santana and, arguably even better than him, Bret Saberhagen. couple of cy young awards plus a third place finish in the strike shortened '94 season, big WAR seasons, world series MVP, when he wasn't injured he was in the top 3 pitchers in the game. still managed a career WAR of almost 60.

Porcelol (typo but i'm leaving it) falls into that John Denny/Pete Vukovich/Lamarr Hoyt category of, well, he got a lot of wins and uh anyway moving on, we'll do better next season.

David Price was another guy who looked like he was on a HOF track for a minute there and he may yet return to it (though he's already 32??)

I'd add David Cone--won once, also finished 3/4/4/6. He didn't have huge single-season WARs (7.2 was his best), but for his career he edged Saberhagen 62-59.

But the Cy was in a strike-shortened year, and he won 194 games during an era when that automatically ruled him out of the HOF. Great pitcher. Had a few poor seasons early and late, and a couple of injury seasons along the way, but from 25-36 he was consistently good-to-excellent.

302-300--wow! Except for the '79 tie, that's got to be the closest vote ever. I know Votto supporters will be disappointed, but I'd count that as another move in the direction of sabermetrics; the 59-HR guy would have won lopsidedly 10-15 years ago.

Not surprised Altuve won in a walk.

damn, six guys received first place votes in the NL. 10 for Stanton, 9 for Votto, 4 for Goldschmidt, 3 for Blackmon, 2 for Arenado, 1 for Bryant.

tommy pham in 11th, just ahead of harper!

i'm a little surprised that altuve won so easily -- wonder how much of it was 'well, he's gonna win ROY, so'

judge was going to win ROY, i mean

sad for joey :(

302-300--wow! Except for the '79 tie, that's got to be the closest vote ever.

According to the BBWAA, there have been only two closer NL MVP races than the 2017 edition: in 1979, when Keith Hernandez and Willie Stargell tied and, in 1944, when Cardinals shortstop Marty Marion topped Cubs outfielder Bill Nicholson by a single point.

I think Judge's big midsummer slump hurt him too. (which is nonsense imho)

Can't believe 5 NL voters didn't know you can't adjust enough for Denver...

oh you

otm about judge though, the race should have been close

well, if possible I would have voted a tie between them if i didn't hate the motherfucking Stanks with every fiber of my being

Can't believe 5 NL voters didn't know you can't adjust enough for Denver...

And you were doing so relatively well faking something approaching politeness the last few posts.

I romanticize Koufax and give Arenado a hard time. You're vigilant about Koufax and give a pass to Arenado. Two sides of the same coin.

There was one closer MVP race in the AL -- Joe D. won over Ted Williams in 1947 by a single point.

The most amazing thing about this year's vote as opposed to the previous near ties is that it wasn't the result of some weird vote splitting or from one guy being inexplicably left of some ballots. Votto and Stanton had nearly the exact same number of firsts, seconds, thirds, etc.!!

relax, clem, it's just baseball.

Kershaw moved ahead of Halladay, Palmer, and Seaver in Cy Young shares yesterday. He's sixth now, behind Clemens, Johnson, Maddux, Carlton, and Pedro; he'll probably end up third by the time he finishes (Clemens and Johnson are way ahead).

btw Molitor is the 2nd HOF player to win Mgr of the Year, after Frank Robinson (award has only been around since '83 of course).

I imagine this will get some push-back:

http://www.billjamesonline.com/judge_and_altuve/

i like the maximalist image of killebrew's best 142 games combined as a theoretical season.

disagree with the punishment of judge based on team wins and/or team pythag, though his lack of clutchiness is fair game

definitely agree with the evaluation of things that actually happened vs. things that 'should' have happened/are more likely to be predictive

that was really interesting, i'll be looking forward to reading responses to it

i'm not a big stat-head so just to make sure i understand - it seems like the crux of his argument is that WAR is flawed because it's calculated based on expected team wins instead of actual team wins?

tango with something similar: http://tangotiger.com/index.php/site/article/re-leveraging-altuve-and-judge

(xpost) I think that's the basic argument--and yeah, the idea that what actually happened (looking back, not forward) is by definition more important than what should have happened when handing out awards (not contracts).

My argument against Judge is simple, even though I realize many of you don't place any importance on when, just what. For exactly one-third of the season--54 games, July 13 to Sept. 12--Judge was pretty lousy:

.184/.354/.398, 11 HR, 83 K, 48 BB

He was still getting on base at a not-bad rate because he was still drawing lots of walks, and still hitting a few home runs. He was Rob Deer with more BB. That's not his 54 worst games compiled, isolated like Killebrew above, but a two-month block out of the season. I find that impossible to ignore.

i read that bill james article twice because i think he's trying to make an important point, but i don't really understand his argument. i'm with him up through his dramatic buildup:

We reach, then, the key question in this debate: is it appropriate, in assigning the individual player credit for wins, to do so based on the usual and normal relationship of runs to wins, or based on the actual and specific relationship for this player and this team?

I have been silent on this issue for more than 20 years, and let me explain why. In the 1990s I developed Win Shares, while younger analysts developed WAR. At that time it was my policy not to argue with younger analysts. I was much more well-known, at that time, than they were, and it’s a one-way street. When you are at the top of a profession, you don’t speak ill of those who coming along behind you. It’s petty, and it’s just not done. Some of those people did take pot shots at me and some didn’t, but. . .well, it’s a one-way street. I’ve got mine; I’m not pulling up the ladder behind me.

But that was a long time ago. We’re not there anymore. WAR is not an upstart statistic; it is the dominant statistic. We can debate its merits on an equal footing.

The logic for applying the normal and usual relationship is that deviations from the normal and usual relationship should be attributed to luck. There is no such thing as an "ability" to hit better when the game is on the line, goes the argument; it is just luck. It’s not a real ability.

But. . . I have held my peace on this for 20-some years. . .that argument is just dead wrong. There are five reasons why it is wrong.

the arguments he lays out from there are kind of rambling, and they smell like liquor:

The odd thing is that these analysts are faithful to the principle that the value of each statistical accomplishment is based on its relationship to wins all through their process, only to drop it just as they get to the finish line. If you backtrack the logic of their system, you can see that they base the value of a double or a walk or a stolen base on its relationship to wins. They make park adjustments, for example, which are of exactly the same nature; they are variances in the runs-to-wins ratio. If a one player creates 110 runs but in a hitter’s park and another player 105 runs but in a pitcher’s park, they acknowledge that the 105-run player has more value. Why? Because 105 runs in a pitcher’s park will win more games than 110 runs in a hitter’s park. There is no other reason for making that adjustment.

Of if a team scores 700 runs in 1965 but another team scores 720 runs in 1975, they will agree that the team which scores 700 runs in 1965 has the better offense. Why? Because 700 runs in 1965 has more win impact than 720 runs in 1975.

But if a team actually wins 80 games when they might have won 90. . .well, we’ll pretend that they won 90. It makes no sense.

why does that make no sense? he's talking about other stat adjustments that we use when comparing different ballparks and eras, and then he bring up the difference between how many games a team actually wins and how many they "should" have won (according to pythagorean records or other methods). that's not a good, obvious counterexample. that sounds like another statistical adjustment, falling in line with the others that he mentions.

i don't know, it's difficult to even criticize because he's all over the place in his explanation.

honestly a little shocked at how off-base james is

i'm willing to hear him out and take him seriously - i don't regularly read him but it seems like he's trying to make a strong, long-repressed point here.

if i understand him correctly, he's pointing to other elements of the game that involve at least some luck that are not adjusted - "Third, there are "luck" elements all over the statistics. You can’t adjust them out of existence; it’s impossible. A player hits .270 one year and .330 the next, and he’s the same hitter one year that he was the other, it’s just luck. Are you going to adjust that difference out of their values, because you know it is just luck?". and then earlier, he talks about how the actual # of wins, compared to how many they "should have won", should be used as an adjustment for individual player stats:

The first indication that there is a problem with applying the normal and general relationship is this. The Yankees, by the normal and general relationship, should have won 102 games, when in fact they won only 91. That’s a BIG gap. The Yankees played poorly in one-run games (18-26) and other close games, which is why they fell short of their expected wins. I am getting ahead of my argument in making this statement now, but it is not right to give the Yankee players credit for winning 102 games when in fact they won only 91 games. To give the Yankee players credit for winning 102 games when in fact they won only 91 games is what we would call an "error". It is not a "choice"; it is not an "option". It is an error.

When you express Judge’s RUNS. . .his run contributions. . . when you express his runs as a number of wins, you have to adjust for the fact that there are only 91 wins there, when there should be 102. (The Astros should have won 101 games and did win 101 games, so that’s not an issue with Altuve.) But back to the Yankees, one way to do that is to say that the Yankee win contributions, rather than being allowed to add up to 102, must add up to 91. That’s a good way to do it, and, of course, if you do that, it reduces Judge’s win contribution by 11% Using WAR, it reduces his win contribution by MORE THAN 11%, because the replacement level remains the same while his win contribution diminishes, so the wins ABOVE THE REPLACEMENT LEVEL are decreased by more like 16%. Judge drops from 8.1 WAR to 6.8.

ok. then he looks into judge's stats and shows that he was terrible in clutch situations, so the yankee's underperformance is disproportionately due to judge's sucking in high leverage situations. ok. but it seems very odd to advocate applying a blanket team-specific Win adjustment (actual vs projected) which could punish/reward all the players on the team based on nothing but bad or good luck. for example, let's say a team is projected to win 100 games based off of their pythagorean record. but in each of the last three games of the season, the bullpen blows a 4-run lead and they end up only winning 97 games. so now, according to bill james, we should apply a -3% win contribution adjustment to each of the individual player's WAR because they "actually" only won 97 instead of 100? that seems like going out of the way to emphasize the role of luck?

uh, please ignore all of that. but i wish i understood wtf he was talking about!

OK SORRY, one last thing. take that last paragraph again:

When you express Judge’s RUNS. . .his run contributions. . . when you express his runs as a number of wins, you have to adjust for the fact that there are only 91 wins there, when there should be 102. (The Astros should have won 101 games and did win 101 games, so that’s not an issue with Altuve.) But back to the Yankees, one way to do that is to say that the Yankee win contributions, rather than being allowed to add up to 102, must add up to 91. That’s a good way to do it, and, of course, if you do that, it reduces Judge’s win contribution by 11% Using WAR, it reduces his win contribution by MORE THAN 11%, because the replacement level remains the same while his win contribution diminishes, so the wins ABOVE THE REPLACEMENT LEVEL are decreased by more like 16%. Judge drops from 8.1 WAR to 6.8.

so just to provide an example. he's saying that judge's WAR should be negatively adjusted by 11% (8.1 WAR to 6.8) to account for the number of games the yankees actually won, rather than how many the "should" have won. and in judge's case, it might make sense because he was unclutch and bad and hated for 2 months of the season. ok. but then wouldn't that same logic also adjust the WAR of all Yankees by 11% and wouldn't it be wrong to punish, say, chase headley, who was an outstanding hitter in High Leverage situations in 2017?

i'm convinced Bill James no longer knows what he's talking about.

i prefer to avoid all this by jettisoning 'valuable'

'most player award'

i'm not going to make another bartolo colon joke, don't worry

James has been reversing his opinion on "clutch hitting" and the like for some time ... we were discussing it on at least one other thread some time ago.

Here's another way to look at it -- in this year's World Series, George Springer was the MVP and the Astros best player and there's not really any disagreement about that. But in 2018, would you bet on him being the Astros' best player? Probably not. But that doesn't change the fact that in the actual, completed games of the World Series, he was easily the Astros' best player. They're two different things.

James is saying that you can apply the same logic to an entire season. In a short series, nobody has any trouble giving the MVP to the guy who isn't necessarily the "best" player, and it's easier to connect a player's contributions to his role in helping to win the games. There's an assumption that we can't apply his logic to an entire season because the luck will average out when the sample size isn't small, but that's not always true! Players have flukey great seasons all the time, for example, because of a high BABIP that never levels out, even though it should, probabilistically speaking.

http://m.cubs.mlb.com/news/article/262070398/why-kris-bryant-got-first-place-mvp-vote

the single 10th-place vote for Gary Sanchez gave me a chuckle

every single hall-eligible nba mvp has been inducted, and only three hall-eligible nhl mvps were not

Not really a hockey fan, but I found the comparison interesting, so I took a look at all the NHL MVPs.

Similar to the NBA--only two eligible winners not in the HOF, both one-time winners. I take it one of them is somewhat infamous: Al Rollins, a goalie who won 12 games and lost 47 in '53-54 but won the MVP. So I've discovered that sabermetrics was actually invented by a bunch of hockey writers who were paying no attention to a goalie's W-L record 60 years ago.

I don't know if the gap between non-Hall baseball MVPs and their NBA/NHL counterparts has more to do with a) baseball being more of an individual game, or b) baseball being more prone to the fluke (or at least anomalous) season.

Also, Trout has risen to 15th on the MVP-share list (4.43), moving ahead of Berra and Foxx.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/mvp_cya.shtml

Bonds would seem to be untouchable: not sure that even Trout has almost 5 full shares ahead of him. But he seems like a very good bet for second by the time he finishes.

it seems very odd to advocate applying a blanket team-specific Win adjustment (actual vs projected) which could punish/reward all the players on the team based on nothing but bad or good luck. for example, let's say a team is projected to win 100 games based off of their pythagorean record. but in each of the last three games of the season, the bullpen blows a 4-run lead and they end up only winning 97 games. so now, according to bill james, we should apply a -3% win contribution adjustment to each of the individual player's WAR because they "actually" only won 97 instead of 100?

I don't think he was doing that. I think he was positing the 6.8 WAR as being as potentially plausible as the 8.1 WAR.

Clutch hitting was a big part of why I thought Votto should have won the MVP this year

there are flukes in hockey, but not enough to win mvp. rob brown scoring 49 goals with an incredible 29% shooting percentage in 1989 comes to mind -- but he did that because he was on lemieux's line. and lemieux himself went 85-114-199. the great ones can give average/mediocre players a huge boost, but the latter will never overtake them

pitching and goaltending seem to be more prone to flukes. feel for the slider comes and goes, i guess

More evidence of the changing mindset of voters: this year's NL CY Young was only the second time a pitcher who led his league in both wins and ERA did not win (and the other time it went to Willie Hernandez during the we-love-closers era, so in a sense 2017 was the first time):

http://www.billjamesonline.com/2017_nl_cy_young_award/

Marks attributes the key to being IP; if Kershaw had won he would have also set a precedent, the lowest IP for a non-closer, non-strike-year winner ever. He also suggests H/9, but I don't know how much attention voters pay to that these days; I'd say the strikeouts were much more important (Marks mentions those too). There's a little bit on Scherzer and the HOF at the end, where he says pretty much what most of us have been saying here.

Posnanski's response to James's piece:

http://joeposnanski.com/more-on-war/

(I believe they're friends, and Posnanski always writes favorably about James.)

Doddering old guy makes the case for Charlie Blackmon (and, by implication, Arenado):

http://www.billjamesonline.com/mvp_followup/

cameron: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/putting-war-in-context-a-response-to-bill-james

I hardly think the consideration of Pythagorean win-loss in James' article was being suggested as a "simple proposed fix." It was just illustrating a point.

Players have flukey great seasons all the time, for example, because of a high BABIP that never levels out, even though it should, probabilistically speaking.

Are we also allowing for the possibility that a high BABIP over the course of a season is not always flukey, though, in the way that Joey Votto's high lifetime BABIP is presumably not flukey? (I know this post was from three days ago...)