A History of Bad MVP Voting: Part Three

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I completely forgot about this shit, so I might as well just post whatever was left. Here are the three most egregious MVP voting mistakes since 1970:

Joe Carter, 1990 NL – T-17th, 7 Vote Points – Winner: Barry Bonds, 9.5 bWAR

-2.0 bWAR, -1.8 fWAR     .232/.290/.391/.681     24 HR, 115 RBI, 79 R, 22 SB

Oh, ya know, just one of the worst seasons of the last one hundred years getting multiple MVP votes. No big deal. The majority of that negative WAR comes from having one of the worst defensive seasons ever, but a wRC+ of 80 with those numbers is kind of hilarious. Continue reading →

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Josh Hamilton; or, How to Rake Despite Really Shitty Plate Discipline

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Josh Hamilton is a really weird dude. And I’m not even talking about the born again Christian/former heroin addict stuff. I’m talking about his plate discipline. More specifically, I’m talking about the fact that he has zero plate discipline but still manages to be a good enough hitter that the Angels gave him a 5 year, $125 million contract this offseason.

You see, in 2012 he swung more than anyone except Delmon Young and made less contact than anyone period, but was still one of the best hitters in baseball, finishing 10th in wOBA and 13th in wRC+. I couldn’t really wrap my head around it, so I started looking into plate discipline numbers across the league. I pulled stats starting in 2002, which is all the data Baseball Info Solutions has. (I probably would’ve used PitchFX but it doesn’t start until 2007, missing a bunch of seasons by a certain free-swinging former MVP who we’ll get to later.)

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Mark DeRosa, Winner

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The Toronto Blue Jays signed noted winner Mark DeRosa to a one-year, $750,000 contract today with a team option next season for the same price. Why do I refer to him as a noted winner? Because Jon Fuckin’ Morosi says so.

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Houston ASStros

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The Houston Astros are going to be fucking abysmal this season. This isn’t news and they won’t be upset about it. It sure seems like they’re in pretty good hands long term with ex-Cardinals Scouting and Player Development bro Jeff Luhnow. All he did in St. Louis was draft and develop the homegrown core of two World Series champs and leave them with what’s probably the consensus best farm system at the moment. He started a department called “Decision Science” and hired a literal rocket scientist to run it. He also hired a couple of well-respected Internet types in Mike Fast and Kevin Goldstein. Their new owner seems like he’s pretty pumped to own a team and is going to try to win. They’ve already improved the farm system considerably with a few trades. It’s actually sort of an exciting time to be an Astros fan. This team will probably be good in a few years with these guys running it. But they’re going to be hilariously awful in 2013, and I can’t wait to watch it. (By which I mean following how bad their stats are. There’s no way I’m watching an actual game under any circumstances.)

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A History of Bad MVP Voting: Part Two

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Continuing my look at bad MVP voting since 1970, today I bring you Part Two: The Deadbeats. I would just like to mention that there are more of these than I would have ever liked to know about. Just about every year, there are multiple guys getting down-ballot MVP votes who aren’t even their team’s 5th best player. That said, I’ve left a lot of very (un?)deserving candidates off my list. There was no exact reasoning for any of my picks – chances are I just looked at their stats and laughed uncontrollably (hi, Ed!). Several players had their overall value greatly diminished by being A-ball level defenders, which isn’t as fun to me. I prefer guys who just flat out couldn’t do anything. Alright, enough bullshit. Here’s a bunch of guys who were nice enough to their local writer to get a cheese-ball down-ballot vote. These ones are in reverse chronological order.

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Darren “Buzz” Oliver

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If you’ve been following Fangraphs’ 2013 ZiPS Projections, you may have noticed something goofy about the Toronto Blue Jays projections. Namely, the lack of Darren Oliver. You will find, however, a Buzz Oliver.

Is that you, Black Magic?

Is that you, Black Magic?

Obviously, this is Darren Oliver. But where the hell did Buzz come from? I had never heard of it until today, so naturally, I went and asked a Jays fan – Drew Fairservice – if he’d ever heard of it. He couldn’t remember where exactly it came from, but eventually I was pointed to Dan Szymborski. Makes sense that the author of the fuckin’ article would know the origin of a nickname that apparently only he uses.

Turns out that the nickname comes from a game in which Oliver had to be taken out due to swarms of bees chasing him. He claimed they were attracted to the coconut oil in his hair gel. Read that article – it is incredibly goofy, mostly because the game was called after only five innings, and this quote:

Shortstop Sergio Santos, who had just entered the game, was chased all the way into deep center field.

So, yeah. All three people out there who were wondering where Buzz came from – fuckin’ bees. Also, 0.8 fWAR this year from a 42-year-old? Fuckin’ eh, Black Magic.

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A History of Bad MVP Voting: Part One

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Since the BBWAA released its year-end awards nearly two months ago, this post is already horribly dated. I, however, refuse to wait another ten months to write about awful MVP voting from the past. My goal was simple: find the single most egregious voting mistake in MVP history. In this case, history began in 1970. Voting before then was really strange and, to be honest, not as interesting to me. That cut-off also saved me a lot of time. Now, by voting mistake, I don’t mean some idiot filling out his ballot with presidents. I mean voters banding together to either give a player many undeserving votes, or neglecting him completely.

I’m going to split these up into two categories: Deadbeats and Snubs. Deadbeats are pretty simple – guys who had terrible years, yet still managed to get on an MVP ballot. Extra credit for players who got multiple votes, or managed to receive first place votes despite their best efforts. We’ll call that the Michael Young Rule. By Snubs I don’t mean guys who were left off completely – in fact, after researching all of them, it occurred to me that I only looked at players that got at least one vote. I’m a horrible researcher. Anyway, I just mean guys who should have been much, much higher on the ballot, but only got a small number of votes. In case you were wondering, Deadbeats are much more common than Snubs. I would bet that most of the Deadbeats were for things like “clubhouse presence” or “veteran leadership.” Ya know, the stuff voters know nothing about. Also: playoffs. Because nothing tells you more about a player’s value than the skill levels of his teammates! Note: I understand the sentiment that pitchers have their own award and therefore shouldn’t win MVP, but…come on. You’ll see.

Having said all that, I realize that the advent of sabermetrics has made the evaluation of players much easier for us now than it was in the 70s. Back then, all that really mattered was HR, RBI, AVG, ERA, saves, and wins. We now have much better methods of evaluating everything – baserunning, defense, hitting, and pitching. While I’ll point at WAR a lot, it isn’t the sole determining factor – I just think most of them are self-explanatory. I decided to include each player’s traditional stats rather than newer ones like wRC+ or xFIP because that’s most likely what the voters looked at, but I generally don’t give two shits about them. Some of these votes are just downright ridiculous, and even a quick glance at a player’s slash line would tell you that. I really wish I could get voters’ explanations for some of these. Anyway, let’s start off with the guys that got jobbed, in no particular order. SPOILER ALERT: pitchers!

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The Yankees are done, right?

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Most of baseball seems to be operating under the assumption that the New York Yankees are going to take a step backwards in 2013. It seems like a reasonable thing to assume. The Blue Jays have apparently based their hyper-aggressive offseason strategy on this and the existence of the second Wild Card. It’s been an odd offseason in the sense that the Yankees have barely been mentioned in the rumour mill, at least not in connection to the elite free agents. They haven’t made any significant trades. They were outbid by the goddamn Pittsburgh Pirates for the services of Russell Martin. They have no elite prospects that are expected to make an impact in the Majors next year. They’re slashing salary to get under the $189M luxury tax limit in 2014. Bodog has their World Series odds listed at 14/1, almost twice as long as the Jays’ 15/2. They’re old as fuck. There have been rumours that they’ve considered trading for the corpse of Vernon Wells. I get it. But I still think they’re going to be extremely competitive with the Rays and Jays in the AL East.

Last season, New York won 95 games and compiled right around 50 WAR according to Fangraphs. They won the most games in the AL and were basically tied with the Rangers for the AL WAR lead. The math all checks out. They outscored the opposition by 136 runs and Baseball Prospectus had them at 96.7 3rd order wins. The 2012 Yankees were a damn good team.

With that established, let’s take a quick look at the few changes New York has made so far this offseason, starting with the lineup. 2013 projections have been conservatively made by the author based on guesswork and witchcraft.

OUT (2012 PA, 2012 fWAR) IN (Projected 2013 PA, Projected 2013 WAR)
R. Martin (485, 2.2) A. Romine (400, 0.5)
A. Rodriguez (529, 2.2) K. Youkilis (400, 2) / Random Injury Fill-Ins (250, 0)
E. Chavez (313, 1.8) E. Nunez (350, 1)
N. Swisher (624, 3.9) I. Suzuki (600, 2.5)
R. Ibanez (425, 1.1) B. Gardner (550, 3)
TOTAL (2376, 11.2) TOTAL (2550, 9)

So it looks like a loss of a couple wins right there, mostly due to the lack of a half-decent replacement for Martin. Of course, you can squabble about the win projections I made, but I think they’re pretty safe. Youk was basically identical to A-Rod on offense last year. He’ll get hurt, but Rodriguez will also likely be back at some point in the not terribly distant future anyway. It’s not reasonable to expect Ichiro to be as good at the plate as he was after the trade last year, but Yankee Stadium helps him and he still plays defense and runs the bases well enough to bring value. Ibanez is 40 and terrible and Brett Gardner is 29 and the best defensive left fielder around so that’s an upgrade (and it’s a lot bigger than what I projected if you buy his UZR).

Doing the same for the pitchers:

OUT (2012 IP, 2012 fWAR) IN (Projected 2013 IP, Projected 2013 WAR)
R. Soriano (67.2, 1.2) M. Rivera (60, 1.5)
F. Garcia (107.1, 0.7) A. Pettite (100, 1)
TOTAL (175, 1.9) TOTAL (160, 2.5)

Those are really the only notable changes. Soriano is a nice reliever, but it’s still a good bullpen presuming Mo is roughly as good as he’s always been. Dave Robertson forever. The rotation is basically the same as ever. It’s not even worth talking about.

There are some other considerations to make when projecting the Yankees, ones that will probably determine its fate. When is age finally going to catch up to them? I’d drop them by a win or so due to general team aging. Will Cano put up another MVP level performance? Probably, but he won’t be as good as last year. What is Granderson’s true talent on defense? Seems like it’s -5 to -10 runs and getting worse. Those all seem pretty negative. But I don’t see Teixeira’s rapid decline continuing at the same pace. I don’t see Granderson’s strikeout rate being 28% again. It seems like Jeter can put up at least league average offense for a couple more years. Pitchers will get hurt, but so will every other team’s pitchers. CC will likely throw more than 200 innings because he’s CC. An outfield with Ichiro and Gardner instead of Swisher and Ibanez will save a bunch of runs and pitches. They might get Michael Pineda back as soon as June. (He might even have functioning shoulder ligaments and under 30% body fat! You never know.) And you have to assume they’ll add a couple bench players on one-year deals so they’re not stuck playing Chris Dickerson and Ronnier Mustelier. They’re rumoured to be in the trade market for a right handed outfielder who would presumably also take DH at-bats from Nunez. They’ll be as active as possible at the trade deadline without taking on 2014 salary. I’m sure they’re not completely done tinkering.

My point is: it seems like the Yankees are going to be 2-4 wins worse but not much more than that, putting them in the 90-93 win range. Last year 91 wins would’ve been enough to edge out the Rays for the second wild card and this year will probably be pretty similar. The Rays are undoubtedly set up better for the future but haven’t really gotten any better for 2013. James Loney is their first baseman and Ryan Roberts is their DH. The Jays are brand new and hard to figure, but it’s a stretch to assume they’ll jump right up into the 95 win range. These three teams are all really good, if flawed, and the rush to write off New York just to have something to talk about is foolish. Do it at your peril. We’re looking at a good old-fashioned horse race for the AL East.

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Hall Of Fame Voters Are The Best

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I think baseball Hall of Fame voting might be my favorite time of year. I don’t really care who gets into the Hall at this point. The voters have made the whole thing a joke, which is why it’s so entertaining. Some guys even elect to try to justify their terrible ballots. This is never a good idea for most of the BBWAA members, as Joe Capozzi proved two days ago. What better way to start a baseball blog than to rip off the shtick of one of the most beloved baseball blogs ever?

How can baseball’s Hall of Fame be the Hall of Fame without its all-time hits leader, all-time home runs leader and most decorated pitcher?

Great question, Joe. How? Well, it can’t. Pete Rose aside, leaving out the other two will essentially make the Hall irrelevant. But hey, I can’t wait for you to explain the answer to me.

Barry Bonds (762 home runs) and Roger Clemens (seven Cy Young Awards) should be no-brainers because of their statistics.

Oh. So we’re on the same page, then. Bonds and Clemens go in, and all is right with the world. Great job, Joe!

But their presence on this year’s ballot raises a far more distressing question:

Why didn’t the Astros sign Clemens for the last week of the season? I’ve lost sleep over this question.

Should players be enshrined in Cooperstown despite widespread suspicions that they cheated by using steroids and then lied about it?

Huh. Bummer. But, to answer your question, yeah, sure. I mean, it’s a suspicion. It would be pretty reckless to blackball people solely based off suspicions.

After all, how do we know who else was using steroids but didn’t get caught? And why should alleged cheats be excluded if the supposed misdeed have never been proven? Or if they’ve never been convicted of a crime?

All excellent points. I guess the column could just end now.

Fair questions. But I still can’t bring myself to vote for Bonds or Clemens. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Well if you aren’t going to do it now, why the fuck would you do it in ten years? Will that give you enough time to see that it’s quite likely we’ll never see two better players in our lifetime? Maybe both can make comebacks and further improve their mediocre-at-best numbers.

And I’m not ready to vote for Mike Piazza or Jeff Bagwell, two players who fall into the suspicion category even though they never failed a drug test and weren’t named in the Mitchell Report.

YOU LITERALLY JUST SAID THEY NEVER DID ANYTHING WRONG. THEY WERE NEVER EVEN LINKED TO ANYTHING WRONG. THIS IS YOU: “WELL THAT GUY WORKED OUT TOO MUCH SO NOPE TOUGH TITTIES NOT IN MY PRECIOUS HALL.”

I cast votes for Tim Raines and Jack Morris on Friday

Oh thank God you voted for Jack Morris. He’s much more deserving than Clemens. If Clemens isn’t in, then a guy as mediocre as Morris shouldn’t even be allowed near the fucking building.

I gave careful thought to Craig Biggio, one of 28 players in history with 3,000 hits. But when I think of the most dominating players in the 1990s and 2000s, Biggio (3,060 hits) just doesn’t rank at the top.

Hahahahahaha what? Did anybody explain to you what you’re voting for? You aren’t voting for the single best player of his generation. That would be stupid. Especially because you’ve already said you won’t vote for Bonds. I’m honestly baffled by this explanation. Biggio is one of the best second basemen of all-time.

Growing up, I knew 714 meant Babe Ruth’s home run total and 755 meant Hank Aaron’s total. While writing this column, I had to look up Bonds’ total.

So it means less! Take that, steroids!

Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, Palmeiro and McGwire strike out on “integrity, sportsmanship” and “character.’’

Yes, the Hall is full of dirt bags — from racists (Ty Cobb, Cap Anson) to cheaters (Gaylord Perry’s spitball).

But it’s not an era worth glorifying by giving suspected cheaters a coveted spot on the same wall that adorns the plaques of Ruth, Roberto Clemente and Christy Mathewson.

WHAT WHY CAN’T YOU SEE YOUR CONTRADICTIONS YOU OAF. For the sake of my sanity, I’ll just assume you’re suggesting Perry, Cobb, and Anson be removed from the Hall. That’s still really stupid, but it’s less stupid than leaving out two of the best players ever because you have a suspicion they did something bad.

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