Here We Go Again

It's happening again. 

Miguel Cabrera is vying again for the Triple Crown, leading baseball in batting average, RBI and trailing only Chris Davis with 35 home runs. He also leads the AL in on base percentage, OPS and runs scored. The future Hall of Famer is undoubtedly the best hitter in the game now that Prince Albert has succumbed to corporeal ravages.

How unusual is Cabrera's accomplishment? He's only the 16th player in 130 years of ball who matched that particular feat in the first place. Taking five of six MVP categories in two consecutive years has been done once, by Jimmy Foxx in 1932-33. Double-X paced the AL with 58 homers and 169 RBI in 1932, but his meager .364 batting average cost him the medal stand. He claimed the crown in 1933 with 48 HR 158 RBI and a .356 BA, then failed to lead in any of those categories the following year.

(Ted Williams swept to the Triple Crown in 1942, then went to war for three years. A year after his return (picking up a W against the Germans), he repeated his dominance along with the league lead in runs, walks, OBP, slugging and OPS. Give him a non-steroid asterisk.)

Cabrera is in rarefied air and it gets even thinner: He hit for the highest batting average in 2011. That leaves him with three batting titles, two home run titles and two RBI titles over three consecutive years if the current pace continues.

That's not the deja vu part of the story, though. In fact, the story isn't even about Miguel Cabrera. It's about the guy who right now has a better case for American League MVP. Mike Trout.

Again.

Mike Trout doesn't carry Miguel Cabrera's stick. His OPS -- on base percentage plus slugging percentage -- is 121 points lower. He doesn't hit for the average (.331 versus .360), get on base as regularly (.425 versus .464) or hit for the same kind of power (20 HR versus 35). But Trout does everything else better.

Trout is fast and Cabrera is...fast for an Abominable Snowman. Trout makes the highlight reel with his glove. Cabrera makes the highlight reel for discovering third base for the first time. Trout staffs the critical middle pasture. Cabrera defaults to third because Prince Fielder is even more cube-shaped than he is.

Sum the column and you get a big chunk of the game where Trout runs circles around Cabrera. The 26 of 30 steals, the base running advantage (e.g., Cabrera has grounded into 14 double plays to Trout's six), the superior defense and the comparison at the plate to center fielders rather than corner infielders gives Trout an edge. 

This isn't really to propose that Trout should be the MVP over Miggy this year. Immature defensive stats can hardly be determinative even if at season's end, which we're not. The gap between the two -- Baseball Reference has Trout at 6.4 wins against replacement and Cabrera at 6.2 -- is too close to end the discussion. 

Still, we're on pace for familiar arguments and, I suspect, a familiar conclusion when the votes are counted.

Again.

A Triple Crown of Nothingness

Now that Miguel Cabrera is making an assault on the Triple Crown, even savvy commentators are wondering if he could nonetheless whiff on the MVP. Good question: let's delve.

Ted Williams won the Triple Crown in '42 and '47, but finished second in the MVP balloting to Yankees Joe Gordon and Joe DiMaggio respectively in a pair of travesty votes. (Williams won the slash stats triple crown as well those years, with .356/.499/.648 and .342/.497/.667 marks. Guy could swing the wood. He would win the slash stat triple crown five times and lead the AL in OPS 10 times.)

More to the point, because batting average, home runs and RBIs don't measure the most important things, they lead us off the scent. Even with the benighted slash stats we have a fuzzy picture. Let's take a look:

Miguel Cabrera   .333 BA   40 HR   111 RBI   .396 OBA   .612 SLG
Mike Trout          .327 BA   27 HR   77 RBI    .396 OBA    .558 SLG

Even using slash stats, Cabrera looks like the same offensive force, but with more boom in his bat.

Now consider this:
Miguel Cabrera has hit into 28 double plays. Mike Trout, seven. 
Mike Trout has stolen 46 of 50 bases. Miguel Cabrera, four of five.

In other words, add to Cabrera's total four more total bases and 29 more outs. Credit Trout 46 more bases and 11 outs. Their new slash stats:

Cabrera   .378 OBP   .615 SLG
Trout       .389 OBP   .649 SLG

Now we see that Trout is a greater offensive force than Cabrera. Compare him to the lower hitting standard of a center fielder, and Trout's 7.8 offensive wins against replacement beats Cabrera's 7.0.

Of course, that's not the end of the story. Trout owns the critical middle pasture. Cabrera makes dogs growl and babies cry with his third base gyrations. I don't trust the defensive metrics, but I think we can conservatively call the difference "a chasm."

Miguel Cabrera could win the Triple Crown and not be the best hitter in the AL this year. He could be the best hitter in the AL this year and not be the best offensive performer. And he could be the best offensive performer this year without being the most valuable player. 

How about that, sports fans!

Who's Better: Ted Williams or Johnny Damon?

Yesterday, Johnny Damon passed Ted Williams on the all-time hit list. Wrap your head around that.

Here's another Johnny Damon fact: he's on pace to play in 140+ games for a 16th consecutive year. The other guys on that list: Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Pete Rose. That's the list. If Damon can do it again next year, he'll be the whole list.

Johnny Damon's a swell player. Fifteen seasons of .287/.354/.436, 392 steals at an 80% clip and a cool haircut (or lack of one) is worth writing home about even if you have a noodle arm in the outfield. He's not Ted Williams swell, though, or Frank Robinson swell or Hank Aaron swell or Pete Rose swell. 
But he's flying in their rarefied air these days. That's got to be a nice feeling.

That and the $107 million he's made in his career.

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