ash thursday

by lboros on Sep 8, 2005 9:23 AM EDT in St. Louis Cardinals News

lot of ways we could torture ourselves over last night's game -- for starters, the 10 men left on base and 0-for-6 performance with men in scoring position. it's 0-for-8 if you count mulder's two at-bats with RISP -- but then, why was mulder allowed to bat in the bottom of the 6th with two on, two out, and the cards down 2-0? and why did tony stick with mulder after he yielded two rockets in the 8th inning and two hard-hit singles opening the 9th? and why, in a one-run loss with a lot of missed rbi opportunities, did we never see larry walker off the bench? and why --

how about why this: why bother? i mean, really. losing our last chance to stick it to the cubs at busch is painful enough; no need to compound the punishment by looking for clues to our postseason fortunes in the ashes of the loss. i'm just putting all that out of my mind; should we see the like in october, it'll hurt plenty enough then. instead i'm just gonna pull a couple of pain- and portent-free embers out of the pit, little glowing sticks:

i've been watching david eckstein lately for examples of what i'm calling "situational aggressiveness"; he provided another last night in the bottom of the 9th. man on first, one out, cards down a run, and he went up there ripping -- swung at the 1st pitch and yanked a line drive down the left-field line, just foul. he ended up grounding out to first, but the approach was sound. it has taken most of a season, but i'm finally down with this guy.

while i'm on the subject -- and truth to be told, i've been on this subject all year -- dan fox has posted an excellent study about hitters' counts v. pitchers' counts at hardball times today. his conclusion is not shocking -- it's good to get ahead in the count -- but the study quantifies the advantage to a degree. it also identifies which players have been the most successful over the last five years at getting themselves into hitters' counts, and which are most prone to fall into pitchers' counts. no current cardinal appears on either list, although tony womack shows up as one of those most likely to fall behind (he resolves fully 50 percent of his at-bats while behind in the count); long-ago cardinal joe mcewing ranks 2d on the same undistinguished list, and ex-stl benchman shawon dunston ranks 4th. another interesting tidbit: for all the moneyball ballyhoo about working the count, only one oakland athletic -- scott hatteberg -- shows up on the "hitter's count" table. it's a good article; if you liked my piece about first-pitch swinging last month for baseball analysts, you'll enjoy dan's piece as well.

'nuther ember: three hits for pujols, including a dinger. after a lackluster (for him) august -- .287 average, 16 rbis -- albert is off to a smashing start in september. through six games: .455 average, .556 obp, .773 slugging average. he now stands 2d in the league in batting avg, 2d in rbis, and 3d in home runs; also 1st in runs scored, 1st in obp, 2d in slugging, 2d in total bases; he even ranks top-20 in stolen bases, chrissakes. how can he not be the mvp? even the stat-fratters at Beyond the Boxscore grudgingly acknowledge that he is the guy. i say "grudgingly" because, per their numbers, derrek lee has had the more productive season. but like good sabermetricians, the BtBers don't follow the numbers blindly; as one panelist notes, "Cubbies could have finished fifth without D-Lee." interestingly enough, the man who may well beat pujols in the mvp voting -- andruw jones -- doesn't even merit a mention at BtB. and at hardball times, studes wonders whether jones is even the mvp of the braves.

by the way, the BtB panel embraces chris carpenter as cy young with a fair degree of enthusiasm.

back this aft'noon w more links and a game thread.

Tweet Comment 9 comments | 0 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

LB--

what's your overall take on Mulder now? We've both been stragglers about jumping on his bandwagon, and obviously the true test of his worth is yet to come, but I gotta say that I'm believing in him more and more. With MattyMo tanking, Mulder has definately moved up to our #2 "ace" position, and he'd have easily taken his 16th win last night with a little more support. Do you think he's actually becoming one of the few exceptions to the K-ratio predictors? Just wondering.

I'll be at the 1st two of the Mets series, so I'll try to take some notes worthy of a diary on monday. Looking forward to seeing Carp get #21 (hopefully they'll do a better job of run support), and I'm inordinately excited about getting the replica Busch Stadium giveaway tonight. I usually could care less about those things, but with the end so near I really want this one. Here's to getting back on track this weekend...

by rockin redbird on Sep 8, 2005 11:13 AM EDT reply actions

i rarely argue with results

and mulder has been getting them pretty consistently for two months now. so i'm with you, my confidence level in mulder has risen. more to say in this afternoon's post

by lboros on Sep 8, 2005 11:24 AM EDT reply actions

Andruw Jones...

Can someone direct me to a link that discusses how win shares are calculated? I have a vague grasp on the concept, but would like more detail.

Watching the ocassional Braves game, I've noticed that Mr. Jones hits a lot of meaningless home runs, ie late in the game one or two run jacks when the Braves are down by a half a dozen. Or a homerun when they are up half dozen or more that just pads their lead. Wonder if I'm only seeing those or that is the case.

In spite of that, Andruw Jones IS the MVP of the Braves, if the P stands for player. He's been healthy and has made some adjustments which we got an early glimpse of during his monster spring training. Also, Jones was called up as a 19 year old so understands what some of the younger kids are going through. If the P stands for person, the award would have to go to Bobby Cox.

by Brock20 on Sep 8, 2005 11:26 AM EDT reply actions

teams and MVPs...

Sorry, LB, I don't think the MVP race is as settled as you make it out to be. And that's primarily b/c I don't go for all the team-dependent criteria that filters into the debate.

To wit: you point out with approval a line over at Beyond the Box Score: "Cubbies could have finished fifth without D-Lee." Yes... but then again, the Cards could have finished first without A-Pujols. (As great as he is, no way he's worth 13 wins over a replacement player.) But when you bring team performance into the debate, these are precisely the kinds of contortions you need to make -- the ideal candidate has got to be from a team that's not just good, and not great, but somewhere in-between. Ugh. Let's just talk about the player that contributed the most wins to his team and leave it at that. That may well be Phat Albert, but it's certainly not a slam-dunk.

After all, remember when the shoe was on the other foot? In 1998 I thought McGwire clearly deserved the MVP. He was more productive than Sosa, but because he didn't have the proper supporting cast he was deemed less valuable. By your reckoning that's sound logic. But not to mine.

Brian Gunn

by briangunn on Sep 8, 2005 12:44 PM EDT reply actions

brian, you're setting up straw men

i don't look first at the team, and then at the player's numbers. i look first at the player's numbers, and then ---- as one among many criteria --- at the performance of the team. by the numbers, pujols and lee are in a two-way race for the award. and it's close, as you say. but in a close race, non-numerical factors like team performance SHOULD be considered. so too should subjective criteria like character and leadership and "gets big hits" and "makes the guys around him better" and "held his team together through a potentially devastating rash of injuries." the stats are very revealing, but in the end it's still a judgment call. we're talking about people, not strat-o-matic cards; we're talking art, not science.

re the mcgwire-sosa analogy, a) i had no problem with sosa winning, and b) the comparison doesn't hold. that cubs team beat the cards in the standings by 5 games; this cardinal team is beating the cubs by 20.

by the way, when you say "The Cards could have finished first without A-Pujols. (As great as he is, no way he's worth 13 wins over a replacement player.)" --- surely you're not suggesting that the cardinals would be winning the division with john gall or chris duncan as the everyday 1st baseman . . . . ?

by lboros on Sep 8, 2005 2:49 PM EDT up reply actions

Too often,

it seems, players are penalized for playing on too good a team when it comes to any type of award. It's unfair, but it's a fact of life, because every voter has his or her own agenda.

by cardsrul on Sep 8, 2005 1:12 PM EDT reply actions

not sure i agree, larry...

I'm not arguing with the fact that you favor Pujols over Lee -- to me it's a tight race with good arguments on each side, including all the subjective stuff you mention (character, leadership, clutch performance, etc.). Those things are and should be considered when sizing up the league's best.

No, what I'm arguing with is your assumption that it's a clear choice, that the MVP race is over; or, as you ask rhetorically, "How can [Pujols] not be the guy?" I mean, you rattle off all the categories where Pujols rates highly, but you could just as easily do the same for Lee: 1st in average, 7th in ribbies, 2nd in HR, 1st in slugging, 3rd in OBP, 1st in OPS, 1st in total bases, 1st in extra-base hits, AND he's a better fielder than Pujols and quite possibly a better runner.

In other words, in my mind Lee's numbers are slightly better than Pujols'. So if you look first at the numbers and then the non-numerical stuff, I think you need to make a case that the non-numerical stuff weighs heavily enough in Albert's favor that it makes up for Lee's performance edge. I don't think you've done that.

Finally, I'm not suggesting that Pujols is fewer than 13 wins ahead of Duncan or Gall, because Duncan and Gall are below replacement level. However, I am suggesting that the Cardinals would be winning the division even without Pujols. I know that's a dangerous argument to make (because it gets into hypotheticals that are almost impossible to support), but no player in baseball is worth 13 wins over a replacement player. This year Pujols is about 9 wins over a replacement player (I'm using that phrase in the sabermetric sense). In the Cardinals case our everyday first baseman in lieu of Pujols would be John Mabry. We would be in first even if he were playing everyday.

Brian Gunn

by briangunn on Sep 8, 2005 3:58 PM EDT reply actions

in my mind it is a clear choice

but that's just my opinion. pujols and lee have been the two best everyday players in the league, by far. we might break the tie by sorting through those final decimal points of VORP or fractions of Win Shares or NRAA; or we could just look at the 20-game gap in their respective teams' win columns and call it good. in my mind, the 20-game gap in the standings far outweighs any marginal statistical gap. not a significant statistical gap ---- if lee was a year as dominant as a-rod's in 2003 for a last-place team, that'd be diff'nt.

it seems like you believe in isolating the players from their contexts as much as possible; and i'm saying the contexts are important. decisive? not in most cases. subjective? absolutely. but when the players are as evenly matched as lee and pu, i'll take my own judgment over the formulas. we don't know how to measure everything, and it's not a stretch to suggest that at least a fraction of the cards' 20-game gap --- even if only one game --- accrues to pujols' presence, his intelligent play, his consistent effort, his leadership by example. i can't prove that such value exists, and you can't prove that it doesn't; nor can either of us prove whether lee has greater or lesser value in those regards.

but i'm more persuaded by those intangibles -- as i see them -- than i am by a couple of Win Shares or a few points of VORP.

by lboros on Sep 8, 2005 5:53 PM EDT reply actions

you've hit the nail on the head...

I think you've pinpointed our disagreement quite nicely, LB:

"it seems like you believe in isolating the players from their contexts as much as possible; and i'm saying the contexts are important."

Of course, I think context is important too, but in general I'm in the "isolate from context" camp. My attitude is that MVPs are individual awards and that we already have rewards for contributions to a winning team -- they're called the playoffs. And while I'm certain that Pujols brings a number of real and intangible benefits to the Cardinals, I can't say that Derrek Lee brings fewer real and intangible benefits to the Cubs. If, for example, Pujols turns a 90-win team into a 100-win team, I'm not sure how that makes him any more valuable than a guy like Lee who turns a 70-win team into an 80-win team.

Clearly we disagree on this point, but I think your position is entirely respectable and ultimately our differences may come down to something more like taste.

One last note, however -- we don't get a ton of help by appealing to the official BBWAA voting guidelines. Here they are in their entirety:

"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.

Number of games played.
General character, disposition, loyalty and effort.
Former winners are eligible.
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. Keep in mind that all players are eligible for MVP, and that includes pitchers and designated hitters.

"Only regular-season performances are to be taken into consideration."

Those guidelines seem pretty loose to me. No surprise, then, that the definition of an MVP has meant different things to different eras, or that you and I are finding wiggle room on this issue today.

Brian Gunn

by briangunn on Sep 8, 2005 8:01 PM EDT up reply actions