On a per-game basis, the best -- which is to say, most valuable -- everyday players in MLB this year were obscure gentlemen named Trout and Harper. But this isn't the Per Game Award.
A Mr. Julio Daniel Martinez was the NL's best batman with an 1,107 OPS, but JD played half his season for Detroit in the other league. Besides, that's his entire toolbelt. He doesn't run, play the field or make a mean casserole. (Maybe the casserole's great, but it's not like any of the voters are benefiting from it.)
A bevy of hurlers rate high on the Wins Against Replacement scale, but who knows what that means? Comparing the apples of Mr. Kluber with the cantaloupes of Mr. Judge is like, well, you get it.
How About Pablo Sandoval?
Pablo Sandoval could make a claim on the MVP for his contributions to the Yankees and Tigers this season. First, he skimmed $95 million from John Henry's Red Sox war chest before finally departing with an addition-by-subtraction resume. Then, reunited with the league-worst Giants he contributed the winning hit in Game 162 that gave Detroit the top draft pick. What's the WAR for those two accomplishments? (Guy is so fat he can only play Seek.)
That leaves us with slim pickens, and I don't mean this guy.
Don't Judge Me for My AL Pick
In the AL, the long and the short of it is Jose Altuve and Aaron Judge...er, well, the other way around. Judge brings more thunder, Altuve more lightning. Altuve gets my vote for two reasons: 1. As a speedster and middle infielder he did more things to help his team and 2. He didn't disappear in August. Yank Aaron will have to settle for the Rookie of the Year and a slew of records.
In the NL, good freakin' luck. If WAR is your thing, Baseball Reference has Max Scherzer, Giancarlo Stanton, Joey Votto and Nolan Arenado alll close. WAR, what is it good for? Not nothing, but it includes a defensive component whose precision is still insufficient to fly an airplane. Arenado is a great player, but between all the credit for defense and relatively little adjustment for playing in Colorado, I'm dubious. He performed so much worse on the road that I really can't consider him.
Scherzer is my guy as a Nationals fan, but I believe in letting pitchers vie for the Cy Young and sparing the MVP discussion from impossible comparisons. Numerous others have a case -- Paul Goldschmidt, Tommy Pham, Anthony
Rendon, Kris Bryant, Charlie Blackmon, Trea Turner, Marcel Ozuna, and so
on. But there are chinks in all their armor -- mostly that they didn't perform as well as Stanton and Votto.
In the NL, Go Dead Red
Once again it comes down to the on-base machine versus the beast, and once again, I think the safety-maker is the better player.
All due respect to Giancarlo and his 59 bombs, but Vottomatic also made it rain regularly (36 homers) while leading the league in walks, on base percentage, OPS and OPS plus. And the way he zagged while all of baseball zigged -- reducing his strikeouts and increasing his ground ball rate, that's just such genius. Votto is a mere first baseman, but one of the league's best with the leather and he's a surprisingly good runner considering he needs two green lights to cross the street.
In short, Votto is an intellectual with a military haircut. I dig those kinds of guys.
Maybe You Differ
You punched out the chad for Judge and Stanton? Or Kluber and Bryant? Sure, why not? There's a fair amount of tossing up this season. My picks are Altuve and Votto.
There are no sighs in the Cy races. Kluber pretty clearly caught and passed Chris Sale in August and September. Scherzer outlasted Kershaw and Strasburg. I'd love to see them meet in the World Series.
It's scary, really. Mike Trout has spent 40-something games this year in civilian clothes with a torn ligament in his thumb. And he still might be the most valuable player in the league.
In all of baseball, actually.
Per game played, Trout is out-performing the amazing Mike Trout. Consider the baseline for that statement. In his first five seasons he has been the best player in the league each season. (The writers have seen fit to bestow upon him the MVP just twice, but he's finished second three times.)
Yet this year, at the ripe old age of 25, he's surpassed even that level of accomplishment.
Trout leads baseball in on base percentage, the measure of how few outs he makes.
He leads baseball in slugging percentage, a measure of power.
Obviously, he leads in OPS, the measure of all-around hitting prowess. He's hitting 91% better than the average batter. Not including pitchers.
Trout has also stolen 21 of 25 bases and plays stellar defense in the most demanding outfield position.
Trout is, by far, the game's best player.
That is, among the greatest ballplayers on the planet, a collection of hitting and fielding savants whose talents are nearly unfathomable, Trout stands head and shoulders above the most elite of that group. He has been worth six wins above a replacement player in just 102 games. That's a rate of more than nine wins for the season.
That's the issue, though. Even if Trout plays in the Angels' remaining 14 games, he will have missed nearly two months of play. During that time, he contributed as much on the field as you have.
Jose Altuve has missed four games. During the other 42 that Trout was hurt, Altuve was Altuving.
Altuve is no Trout because no one is. He's merely leading the league in batting, getting on base at a 40% clip and ripping 38 doubles and 23 homers. He's also swiped 31 of 37 bases and earned high marks for keystone defense.
He's basically Trout light. Or short.
Altuve's performance has been worth seven wins above replacement to the Astros. That's far short of Trout's value per game, but nearly a full win more of raw value over the course of the season.
We're talking about the Most Valuable Player award. It's Altuve's to lose and there isn't much time left for him to lose it. (I should mention here that Andrelton Simmons is close to Altuve in WAR, but much of that is defensive WAR, which we trust much less. Aaron Judge is a few non-significant ticks ahead of Trout also. Neither will out-poll Altuve.)
So Mike Trout will likely once again fail to win the MVP. At least he's got this: he's now the most valuable player in Angels' team history -- after six seasons.
And early next season he'll pass David Ortiz's career mark. Just start carving that bust now.
Remember Mike Trout? He was the runaway AL MVP until he tore ligaments in his thumb in May. At the time he was hitting .337/.461/.742 with 10 of 11 steals.
He's been back for three weeks and he's doing it again. It appears that the injury has sapped his power, as his slugging has dropped 100 points. He's now down to a desultory .368/.476/.646. He's only crushed five home runs in his 18 games back.
Trout is now back up to third in the American League in Wins Against Replacement, behind the Mutt and Jeff duo of Jose Altuve and Aaron Judge.* Altuve hit .485 in July, while Judge has cooled off since the All-Star break, as he inevitably had to.
*That's Fangraphs' WAR calculation. Trout is 9th according to Baseball Reference, 6th among everyday players. B-R also has Andrelton Simmons second, half a run ahead of Judge.
At this point, the MVP race is among Fangraphs' top three. Putting aside irrelevant considerations, like whether Judge reaches a milestone number of home runs, or how their teams perform around them, or whether one should vote for a player who misses a quarter of the season, it will be interesting to see if Trout can catch Altuve and Judge in WAR.
Fangraphs' projections suggest all three will finish the season with about 7.2 WAR. That means Trout will have contributed as much to his team in 120 games as Judge and Altuve contributed in 160. It takes the otherworldly comparison against Mike Trout to steal the shine from Aaron Judge's amazing debut and Jose Altuve's spectacular career arc.
Whoever is most valuable this season, Mike Trout is best. That race isn't close.
The biggest criticism I hear from itinerant baseball fans today about the 21st century player is astonishment that pitchers are such weenies.
Tommy John threw 200+ innings seven times after his eponymous surgery (five times prior), peaking at 276 innings in 1979 at age 36. John hurled 162 complete games in his career, more than all of Major League Baseball racks up in a season.
So why can't some 240-pound stud last into the seventh without replacing his ulnar collateral ligament?
Answer: See the title of this post.
Behemoths With Bats During Tommy John's career in the 60s and 70s, and even into the early 80s, every lineup
was stocked with batters, often including a pitcher, who couldn't reach the centerfield fence if you spotted him second base. Bud Harrelson anchored the Miracle Mets' World Series run in 1969 weighing in at 160 pounds with change in his pocket. Harrelson produced seven home runs in his 16-year career and I'd be willing to bet my Toyota Yaris that at least four of them rolled around the field of play while he circled the bases.
In 2016, even a novelty like Jose Altuve, all of 5'5" and 165, pokes 24 home runs in a season.
In fact, the year of Tommy John's return from elbow surgery, there were 86 players listed at 175 pounds or
less who made 300 plate appearances. Last year, there were 12. That same year, 102 players with 300 PAs tallied fewer than five home runs. That's three or four semi-regulars per team.
Last year, there were 31 -- one per team.
Back then, a pitcher could cruise through much of the lineup secure that only a couple of bats were capable of doing real damage. Today, every single pitch matters.
Rougned Odor, Keystoner, 33 Jacks
To counteract this, or rather to survive it, MLB teams grow tight ends who can light up radar guns. (Literally, in the case of Jeff Samardzija.) And they throw pitches Tommy John never heard of, like cut fastballs, 90-mph change-ups and 75 mph knuckleballs. They are being bred to snap off breaking pitches that scratch the corners at high velocities. They are not being bred to go the distance. For that, they raise relief pitchers, cultivated for their triple-digit heat, now crowding bullpens that held two or three second-string arms in Tommy John's day. The late innings are their dominion, not the starter's.
In the 70s, more than three-quarters of at-bats ended with a ball put in play. Pitchers could serve it up and allow their fielders to handle the batted balls. Today, about two-thirds of balls are put into play. That's about 650 more walks, strikeouts, and home runs per team each season, which means more pitches thrown per at bat. Today, every one of a starter's 100 precious pitches is delivered with maximum effort to 6'4" shortstops who can crank it out to the opposite field. There are no more Jerry Kenneys, the Yankees' 170-pound shortstop with a lifetime .299 slugging percentage.
Put it all together and you get 21st century baseball. Pitchers aren't wusses today and their ligaments aren't any more tender; in fact, they're bigger, stronger, better conditioned and more adept than ever before. They just have a more strenuous job.
How About Pablo Sandoval?
