Yan Gomes expected to be activated Friday by Indians
September 14, 2016Low-cut Cowboy: Bode Plots
September 15, 2016The 2016 Major League Baseball season is down to its final two-and-a-half weeks. With that in mind, it’s time to talk year-end awards. And for the fifth straight year (i.e. every full single-season he’s had in the bigs), that means we have to wrestle with what to do with Mike Trout (h/t Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci).
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim franchise has fallen on hard times. From 2002-15, the team averaged 90 regular season wins and made the playoffs seven times. Yes, their World Series win was way back in 2002, and they were subsequently swept in the ALDS in three of those next six appearances. But the Angels were a consistently good team with great talent for a long time.
In 2016, that certainly is not the case. The Angels are 63-82, sitting 23 games back in the AL West and even 16 games behind the second wild card spot. Their starting rotation and bullpen are both among baseball’s worst. They have a collection of below-average performers all over the lineup. This hasn’t been a good team at all.
Yet the even worse prognosis comes into the future. Very little of their existing MLB talent is under 25. And prior to the season, every reputable outlet ranked the Angels as having the league’s worst farm system. The analyses at Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MiLB.com and Minor League Ball are all brutally ruthless:
“There are times when you just kind of run out of ways to describe something, and the state of the Angels’ system defies much in the way of analytic vigor these days.” “The best thing to say about the Angels system, at this point, is that these rankings stories are over.” “UGHHHH: The Angels get a special category of badness all their own. … There’s no way to spin it: this may be the worst system in recent memory.”
Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper also wrote an extended piece on the Angels’ consistent win-now approach, trading away younger prospects for older players year after year. It’s ugly over there in Anaheim. And the one consistent bright spot happens to be the greatest young player in our lifetime.
Mike Trout is batting .317/.434/.558 in 142 games this season. He has 30 doubles, 28 home runs, 89 RBI and 25 steals. For his career, Mike Trout is batting .306/.403/.559. Per 142 games in his career, he has 31 doubles, 30 home runs, 87 RBI and 25 steals. He’s been remarkably consistent and excellent throughout his five-plus seasons in the majors. His on-base percentage has notably improved in 2016.
Pure offensive stats alone don’t tell the full story, even though Trout’s .962 OPS at this stage in his career places him among legendary peers. Guys like Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig and more. You can easily get trapped in a Baseball-Reference rabbit hole on the topic of Trout’s greatness alone.
But let’s take Albert Pujols for example. In his first five seasons, Trout’s current teammate hit .332/.416/.621 in 790 games. The Machine was one year older than Trout, relative to their MLB experience. But Pujols had three main strikes against him, in comparison: 1) He played first base, a less valuable defensive position; 2) He provided relatively little value with his base-running; and 3) He played in a more offensive-prone era.
According to FanGraphs, Pujols had a 166 Weight Runs Created Plus (wRC+) in 790 games from 2001-05. That statistic, a frequently cited offensive metrics in the sabermetrics community, helps account for “park effects and the current run environment.” But despite Pujols’ much larger slugging percentage, Trout actually has a 167 wRC+ in his career so far.
During those first five seasons, FanGraphs states that Pujols provided -20.5 Runs Above Average from baserunning, defense and fielding position adjustments. Trout, on the other hand, has provided 55.5 such Runs Above Average. Considering the conventional wisdom of 10 Runs per Win that gives Trout a WAR advantage of about 7.5, or about 1.5 per season. That’s a fairly substantial difference given the relatively equal weighted offensive production.
There are simply very, very few modern peers who Trout can be fairly compared to in terms of his all-around production. Any position player of the ’90s has to be compared to the overall slugging numbers of that era. Young prodigies like Alex Rodriguez, Vladimir Guerrero, and Pujols are a clear step below. Ken Griffey might be the best such comparison, but even he pales in comparison to Trout’s league-adjusted value at this stage in their careers.1
Mike Trout leads all of baseball with 9.2 rWAR (via Baseball-Reference) and 8.3 fWAR (via FanGraphs) this season. Nobody else is particularly close. And yet, because of the archaic ways in which Most Valuable Player voting works, Trout likely has no shot at the award. He only has one such honor to his name, back in 2014. He was the runner-up in 2012, 2013 and 2015. He’ll likely finish third or worse this season.
We should be talking about Mike Trout more because he is an anomaly in professional sports. No player this young has ever dominated this thoroughly in the modern times since the very start of his career. I understand the complexities of national baseball fandom, but it just seems this goes often underappreciated. Should we just start up a new award for Trout to win each year, instead of MVP?
Here is an assortment of Ohio sports-related articles I’ve enjoyed recently:
- On Urban Meyer, mental health and his journey back to coaching [Brandon Sneed/Bleacher Report]
- On Johnny Manziel and experiencing all of the bars that he likes to frequent [Michael J. Mooney/Bleacher Report]
- On Kyrie Irving and how we attempt to rate him in today’s NBA [Jason Concepcion/The Ringer]
- On Andrew Miller and the Cleveland Indians’ usage of elite relievers [Ben Lindbergh/The Ringer]
- On the Cleveland Browns and using business analytics in the sports world [Eben Novy-Williams/Bloomberg]
- On Tom Herman and 11 more things to know about Houston’s extraordinary rise in the college football landscape [Pete Thamel/Campus Rush]
- Ed. note: Which is crazy to think about given how transcendent Griffey was. [↩]
130 Comments
I can’t see that deal being worth it for anyone. After next year’s $20mil, he’s going to be making $35mil/year and will be under contract through 2020.
Can you imagine what a team would have to give up? It would more than decimate their farm system. It might decimate and then afterwards septimate what’s left.
Perfect candidate is the Dodgers because they are so deep in the type of players the Angels need (and can even headline with Puig)
But, there is absolutely no way that the Angels give the Dodgers Trout
http://i.imgur.com/xwvYKEQ.gif
… it happened with A-Rod.
he does … mostly ankle issues. it’s hard to tell sometimes as he plays through his injuries …. he’s a gamer.
WPA isn’t used broadly at all these days – I haven’t seen it referenced in a long time honestly. But it’s one of those “if you think clutch is a thing… here’s a stat that includes it” arguments. Nobody is better than Trout by that measure, or by any.
I get that Trout’s on a bad team, but we’ve had MVPs from bad/losing teams for years now. Larry Walker, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Howard, and Albert Pujols have all won the MVP on teams that didn’t make the playoffs in my lifetime. There’s no rule that your team has to make the playoffs to be eligible.
I want to know what definition of valuable you have that precludes Trout. By just about any all-encompassing measure, he’s the best.
Excellent point. The rangers had to eat nearly half of his salary. I wonder what the Angels will do.
Also, there were already steroid assumptions and I think Texas just wanted him out. LA isn’t actively trying to rid themselves of Trout
Jose Ramirez is the MVP. Stats be damned
I think when you have 2 guys who are equal – or close to equal – the record SHOULD come in to play. And while Trout is the best, the fact that the Angels are not the best – or even close – should hurt him, in my opinion.
I still need to see how the rest of the season shakes out. If Altuve hits a game winning grand slam in the last game of the year to secure a playoff spot, that makes a pretty loud statement to me, since Trout will be playing for nothing.
Plus-1
there’s a difference between “didn’t make the playoffs” like Trout when he lost to Miggy in 2014 & what Trout is on right now
and, historical precedence for voting for the wrong player doesn’t convince me
as I noted, it’s all about how you define the award. we have different definitions, which is OK and makes for more fun conversations.
Porcello is pushing himself into the Top 5 for sure and maybe higher
Project Nassib for only 4 sacks this season
“Someone made a list of things that they think add to win probability”
That’s not how WPA (or WAR for that matter) were built. People took the time to comb through historical results to figure out the odds of winning in every single reasonable situation. When a player does something that moves his team’s chances of winning from 60% to 65%, or whatever numbers you like, we have historical precedence that there is a 5% increase in the odds of winning. It’s not arbitrary in any way, and it’s not a guess as to what increases your chances of winning.
For WAR, it’s a similar process. People went back and looked at how much each event adds (or subtracts) from run scoring. Again, we have historical precendence that a single adds X amount of runs, and that an added run is worth Y amount to a team’s win total.
“he won the triple crown & the tigers won their division. which obviously the metrics folks put no value in”
Or the metric folks put value in defense, baserunning, OBP, and park factors.
“it might be unfair that the best player of this generation is stuck on a cruddy team”
So how much should he get punished for this, and where is the line where we can vote for the best players as the most valuable? How high can we vote Trout despite being on a ~70 win team?
Instead of win probability added, maybe pennant probability added?
And value has varying concepts. Having a 10 win player on your roster, right off the bat, is incredibly valuable, even if you can’t figure out the rest of your roster. It’s easier to build a contender around Trout than any other player in the game, and team’s would give you more value back for Trout than anyone else in the game.
understood … but you don’t need to look at metrics to see a history making event that hasn’t been achieved in 45 years … or to see that a guy has lead his team to a division title … shouldn’t the MVP go to a guy who lead his team to greatness , or is it just about individual numbers ?
yes , but what is value ? … in my mind , you are getting more value from Dozier than you are Trout.
i was staring at her for a while … i like the way she looks at you as well.
Sure, I understand how value is a variable concept. I have noted to those who have defined what it means to them. That is fine with me.
team’s would give you more value back for Trout than anyone else
A definition I would accept from some would include value as a measure with contractual value. I don’t think Trout would get back more than anyone else specifically because some of his value is already taken by his contract.
Yes, he is worth the $$$ (assuming a team can afford it) and he will give more statistical value per dollar that he is paid (by such measures right now – hard to predict post-CBA but most likely will be even easier for him to obtain after it).
But, is Trout tied up through 2020 at $34m the last couple of years worth more than Lindor tied up through 2021 in arbitration? It might still be yes, but there’s a discussion there and might fall upon which market we are discussing.
good post …
“you are getting more value from Dozier than you are Trout”
I’ll need some more explanation on this one, as I don’t get it at all. Trout is much better at the plate (OBP matters a lot), a better defender, and a better baserunner.
simple … salary versus production.
well , it’s NOT simple … especially when a metrics guy weighs every stat known to man & then some.
“A definition I would accept from some would include value as a measure with contractual value. I don’t think Trout would get back more than anyone else specifically because some of his value is already taken by his contract.”
There is no doubt in my mind that, all contracts being equal, Trout would net a better return than anyone, without a doubt. That’s what I’m referring to.
Both players’ salaries this year was determined by his previous performances. Dozier is benefiting from not being anywhere near as valuable as Trout in the past. Measuring it this way requires us to place too much emphasis on the established financial system and not enough on the actual talent on the field.
hi MG … i know you’re into the metrics thing , and that’s cool … i’ve actually learned a few things from you … but , if you ask me , it’s way too overblown & we’re inundated with , for the most part , what are useless stats.
you should be able to look at a guys AVG, HITS , HR’s , RBI’s RUNS SCORED , OBP , & possibly stolen bases & defense , if you wish … then look at his team’s record … it’s as easy as that.
in 2014 brian kenny was throwing out stats i never heard of in support of Trout … it’s not as complicated as he liked to make it. this is the biggest satisfaction i got out of Cabrera winning it … to shut kenny up … which it didn’t do.
Yes, I realized that but it brought up a good point about value with contractual built-in value utilized too. Shouldn’t be for MVP voting though, and I think we all agree there.
That definition, to me, is MOP, not MVP. Or Titanium Slugger (not sure he’s quite deserving of Gold Glove – though he is close if not – haven’t parsed that one enough yet).
You define it as MVP, fine. The wording on the award leaves that open for either to be correct.
Dear Voter:
There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means. It is
up to the individual voter to decide who was the Most Valuable Player in
each league to his team. The MVP need not come from a division winner
or other playoff qualifier.
The rules of the voting remain the same as they were written on the first ballot in 1931:
1. Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.
2. Number of games played.
3. General character, disposition, loyalty and effort.
4. Former winners are eligible.
5. Members of the committee may vote for more than one member of a team.
You are also urged to give serious consideration to all your
selections, from 1 to 10. A 10th-place vote can influence the outcome of
an election. You must fill in all 10 places on your ballot. Only
regular-season performances are to be taken into consideration.
Keep in mind that all players are eligible for MVP, including pitchers and designated hitters.
If a guy leads the league in singles, triples, and stolen bases in a year, he’s making history, and doing something that hasn’t been done in who knows how many years. That by itself isn’t valuable, but how the pieces all add up together.
As far as the division title, getting to play in the ALC instead of the ALW was the primary factor there. The Angels won one game more than the Tigers that year.
I guess we go back to my first couple questions.
So how much should he get punished for this, and where is the line where we can vote for the best players as the most valuable? How high can we vote Trout despite being on a ~70 win team?
How good do the Angels have to be before we can consider Trout? Should he not be on the ballot or just not #1? Where is the balance between being so much better than the rest of the league and out of the playoff race?
http://www.hardballtimes.com/ops-for-the-masses/
Average, hits (which is pretty much just double counting average), and HR are clearly less correlated with run scoring than the “useless stats”. RBI and runs have clear problems with separating a player’s talent from the guys who hit in front/behind him.
Here, and some comments down below, I don’t really get. You don’t need to understand exactly how wRC+ is calculated to know that it’s the best current measure we have to measure hitters. And the way it is set up is is ridiculously easy to use. A guy with a 125 wRC+ is 25% better than league average. How much better than league average is the guy who hits 30 HRs?
Who is being punished? The vote is specifically setup to vote however you choose to define value, so if we both had votes, then I’m not going to quibble if you define your metrics and vote Trout even if mine do not place him there.
The ultimate goal is still winning games and winning enough to get into the postseason. I would argue against ONLY using wins but we have now fallen too far where players are measured in a statistical vacuum.
randomness for WPA is how often you get put into the high leverage situations
I guess this is where I actually have an issue. The response to “how much should you value team results against individual performance” usually gets something like this, about how values can be defined differently. And that’s absolutely true, and I’m not trying to attack your definition, but understand it. It seems nebulous and possibly arbitrary.
Oh absolutely. This is a legitimate argument against WPA, a metric that has some notable shortcomings. But the pieces thrown in aren’t arbitrarily chosen. We know that a 65% chance and 60% chance of winning, and the difference between the two, are pretty darn accurate measures.
Completely agree though I wonder how accurate the %’s are (in football they are pretty poor – they should be better in baseball given larger sample sizes), but they are the most accurate we have right now, yes.
okay , let’s try this … let’s say Mark Trumbo hit 66 HR’s , 170 RBI’s & had a .290 average & lead his team to the best record in baseball this year … would you really need to dig into a lot of stats to know he’s the MVP ??
Gotcha. And, this is tipping something I am trying to write and been frustrated because I have not been able to find the proper splits (creating a split yourself is incredibly tedious when needing a larger swath of MLB players too). Fangraphs recently increased their ability to create them though, I just need the time to play with their settings.
How much value did a player attribute to games that his team actually won. My preferred metric would look at fWAR, bWAR, WPA and perhaps a few other items obtained in games that the team actually won (adding those together). A split on those by games won.
Because, the true value is in the games his team won. Is it all on one player that those games were won? No, of course not. Does this make it a bit of a team award? Yes, and I think MVP should be to an extent because the ultimate goal is the combined individual efforts.
This is definitively different than the Cy Young Award because it is noted to give that to the “best pitcher” which makes it more a MOP to me.
there are more interesting things to look at than those to me that help shape the narrative of what happened (and others that help predict what might happen). those two things are what stats are to me.
Kenny is confrontational on purpose, his schtick, which only serves to further the divide, sadly.
i totally agree …
There seems to be a lot more possible states in football, and many of them could be so close that maybe they could be combined. No idea how they measure the odds there.
The problem seems to be that anything past avg/hr/rbi is digging into a lot of stats. If Mike Trout out OBPs that Trumbo by 100 points, and is saves 30 more runs on defense, we have to throw that into the equation.
It’s kind of funny. For years, stat nerds were accused of hyping plodding sluggers too much, and now they prefer the all around player over the big bopper.
“Pretty darn accurate” isn’t good enough for me. I am a scientist. I need exact.
see , now i would think the “best record in baseball” to go along with his numbers will trump just about anything Trout did.
good discussion … thanks … and good luck to your Indians.
there’s no way to tell how much each event adds because there are unlimited options based on each outcome. A statistician thinks he found what he deems to be “winning plays” and has made an equation around them.
It’s not an exact science, and until it is, I can’t buy in completely.
Does WPA give equal measure to at bats in April and those in September pennant chases? There’s no question that September at bats mean more. Excuse me, are more high leverage.
Actually you don’t need exact to gain value from the measure. Don’t make perfect the enemy of good. I’ll leave it up to you to prove how inexact it is, but considering that you don’t seem to have a basic grasp on how it was created, I’d say you have some work to do.
Wins in April count just as much as wins in September.
dude – i’m just messing with you. relax.
There are not unlimited options based on each outcome. In baseball, there is a finite set of base-out situations, and still not that many when we include run differential.
We know the historical odds on winning a game, when say its a tie game and a runner on first with no outs in the top of the 7th, and how that changes when it goes to guys on first and third (single), or none on two out (double play), or a two run lead with none on, no outs (home run).
You frankly have no grasp of how WPA works, and I have no idea why you think you’re qualified to comment on it in any way.