What to make of the MVP vote

Well, the AL and NL MVPs have been announced, and there were no surprises.  But the results in both races raise some interesting questions about what voters look for in an MVP.

I usually mock the “unwritten rules” of baseball; I want someone to show me just where these unwritten rules can be found, and what is the process for changing them?  But there is one I wholeheartedly buy into—the MVP should be from a playoff team.  Back when one team from each league went to the “post season” (then known solely as the World Series), you could make a claim that a player who took his team close to the Promised Land deserved consideration.  But now that five teams from each league make the post season, it is hard to argue that someone from the sixth best team or worse is that valuable.  It goes back to the famous Branch Rickey line when he was GM for the hapless Pirates in the early 50’s and Ralph Kiner threatened to hold out; Rickey allegedly said, “Ralph, we came in last place with you, we’ll come in last place without you.”  A player is only valuable to a team if they get to play more games because of him.

In the American League, the choice game down to post-season participant Josh Donaldson, and Mike Trout of the loser Angels.  Here, the old guard prevailed, with Donaldson getting the nod despite having a slightly lower WAR (9.4 for Trout to 8.8 for Donaldson).  Of course, it should be noted that unlike stats like batting average, RBI and slugging percentage, WAR is not an exact measurement.  Some of the defensive data still has a little wiggle room, and a difference of 0.6 WAR may be illusory.  But there is little doubt that probably the main distinction was that Donaldson’s team won and Trout’s team didn’t.

Trout’s supporters always tout the fact that he has had the highest WAR in the AL each of the past four years.  I hope we never get to the point where the MVP will be awarded solely by comparing WAR; that will take all the fun out of debating the results.

The situation in the NL was a little different, as the top three vote getters, Bryce Harper, Paul Goldschmidt and Joey Votto, all played for non-playoff teams (Goldschmidt and Votto’s teams were sub-.500).  The 4^th and 5^th vote getters were the closest playoff players got, with the Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo and the Pirates’ Andrew McCutchen.  However, Harper’s season was so epic, that giving him the MVP for a non-playoff performance was an inevitability.  Every dissection of Harper’s 2015 stats that I’ve seen (WAR almost 10, OPS of 1.109, OPS+ of 195) drew comparisons to Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Barry Bonds.  With no position player on a playoff team posting anything close, I don’t think this is a repudiation of the preference for players from playoff teams, but an acknowledgement of a truly historic season.

There was an interesting by-product of the NL vote that bears mention.  I was somewhat surprised that Mets spark plug Yoenis Cespedes finished 13^th in the voting.  I expected him to finish much higher, with some votes in the top five and ending up in the top ten.  But he received no vote higher than two 6^th place votes; tellingly perhaps, neither of the New York journalists with a vote put him on their ballots.

Before Cespedes joined the Mets, they were last in the league in offense; after he joined, they were much better and went from being .500 to upsetting the Nationals for the NL East title.  The difference is clear: before Cespedes, average team; with Cespedes, World Series contender.

I think the failure of Cespedes to garner much MVP support is a question of marginal analysis vs. total analysis.  Voters could say that Cespedes contributed ZERO to the Mets from April through July because he was playing for Detroit at the time.  Since he only contributed for two months, his total contribution was small.

People with economics training look at marginal analysis, where you look at the change engendered by a new element, and Cespedes’ marginal contribution transformed the Mets into a playoff team.  I admit that the logical extension of this would be to say that if a team was playing for a playoff spot in the final game of the season, and they scored the winning run in the bottom of the ninth when their weakest hitter walked with the bases loaded, then that hitter is the season MVP.  But this is hardly a reductio ad absurdum; Cespedes did more in two months to help the Mets into the playoffs than any other Mets player did through the entire season.

This is a year where there shouldn’t be any angst over the MVP winners, unlike seasons when the Trout vs. Cabrera debate over new metrics vs. slash stats created a generational war over the meaning of statistics.  Trout’s backers really shouldn’t begrudge Donaldson winning despite a slightly lower WAR, and Harper’s season was one for the ages.  The interesting thing to ponder now is how many more times Trout and Harper will be mentioned in MVP debates in the future.