BBA Post Season Awards 2013

Every year, the membership of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance votes for the BBA's versions of the post season awards. This is an Internet version of the awards given by the BBWAA with similar categories containing different names for the awards. I have already given you my manager choices here and here. What follows is the rest of my ballot.

The Willie Mays Award is the award for the top rookie of the season. My votes:

• National League - Yasiel Puig (Dodgers). This one was really difficult. Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs.com both rated Puig as being more valuable than Jose Fernandez of the Marlins. But Baseball-reference.com rated Fernandez much higher. It is a bit of a fallacy that the Dodgers took off as soon as Puig showed up. In fact, the team was 7-10 in his first seventeen games. If I could pick a tie, I would pick them both. But since I must choose one, I will go with Puig.
• American League - In the junior circuit, the pick came down between Wil Myers and David Lough. Both were rated similarly, but Lough's value came mostly from his defense and base running. The defensive stats are still troublesome for me, so my pick is Myers.

The Goose Gossage Award goes to the top relief pitcher of the season. My votes:

• National League - I do not base my picks on saves, but on overall value, WPA and other factors. In the end, Craig Kimbrel, Kenley Jansen and Trevor Rosenthal were all right there. Jansen had the better WPA and clutch scores while Kimbrel had the higher RE24. Rosenthal had the best FIP. I don't think you can go wrong with any of the three, but I am choosing Craig Kimbrel as my winner.
• American League - This comes down to a two-horse race between Greg Holland and Koji Uehara. Both had amazing seasons. Uehara had the better ERA, but Holland the better FIP. Uehara beat Holland by 30 points in WHIP. Holland comes out on top in WPA and Clutch, but Uehara came out on top in RE24. I have to go with Koji Uehara as my winner, though I could support Holland too.

The Walter Johnson Award goes to the top pitcher of the season. My votes:

• National League - There is no discussion. There is the one and only Clayton Kershaw.
• American League - Those in the discussion include Max Scherzer, his teammate, Anibal Sanchez, Yu Darvish and Felix Hernandez. The clear winner for me is Max Scherzer and his win-loss record is the least important of the reasons why.

The Stan Musial Award goes to the top player in each league. My votes.

• National League - My order of finish was: 1. Andrew McCutchen, 2. Matt Carpenter, 3. Carlos Gomez. 4. Paul Goldschmidt. McCutchen is my vote.
• American League - This award says, "top player," and not, "MVP," That being the case, Mike Trout was the top player in all of baseball, never mind just the American League. There is nobody close to him.

So those are my votes. The results will be released just after the World Series concludes.

Andrew McCutchen is the most valuable

I cannot imagine where the Pirates would be without Andrew McCutchen. That to me makes him the most valuable player in the National League this season. Yes, the Pirates have forged this exceptional season due to pitching and defense. But they have been (until some recent acquisitions) a weak hitting team. Except for Andrew McCutchen.

How weak a hitting team? Consider that the Pirates as a team have an offense that has been valued by Fangraphs.com at -14.8 batting runs. Andrew McCutchen's offense has been valued by that same site at 35.5 batting runs. That is second in the National League only to Votto of the Reds who is valued at 36.8 runs.

Starling Marte, McCutchen's teammate, has had a very good season with 4.2 fWAR. That is a surprise. But much of that is on defense, and while I am not discounting that, his batting runs are also the second highest on the team at 12.7. That is 22.8 batting runs behind McCutchen. They are the only two on the team in double figures.

I do not think this makes as much difference as some people say it does, but until recently, McCutchen had little protection in the batting order too. McCutchen has only driven in 76 runs, but that is not hard to fathom considering the first and second places in the Pirates batting order have a combined .334 on-base percentage. That is not that bad, but it is not that great either. And if one of those batters did get on, McCutchen was worked around. He has eleven intentional walks.

The major MVP candidates in the NL this season will be McCutchen, Gomez of the Brewers, Carpenter of the Cardinals, Votto of the Reds, Goldschmidt of the Diamondbacks and Kershaw of the Dodgers. That is who I see as McCutchen's competition. All have had valid seasons and arguments. But here is how I break it down.

Votto and Goldschmidt are the only two NL players with a higher wOBA than McCutchen, but it is just barely. All three have had positive defensive seasons. But McCutchen is only four or five points below those two in wOBA and he plays a much more important defensive position. So with all playing extremely well, the nod to me goes to McCutchen.

I love the season that Carpenter is having with the Cardinals. His offense from the top of that lineup drives that team. But his defense is only meh compared to McCutchen's and Carpenter has had a much better supporting cast.

I discount Gomez of the Brewers, perhaps unfairly. But much of his value is from his defense, which charts out of this world. If defensive stats were stronger and more reliable, I might buy into that more. And yeah, playing for a team that has no shot at being any good detracts things for me. It might be a bit of old-school thinking there.

Old school too describes my loathing for pitchers being considered for MVP. They have their own award. A pitcher winning the CYA and MVP is like the winner of Survivor also getting the hundred grand as the fan favorite. That isn't right to me. Kershaw is behind McCutchen in fWAR but ahead of him in rWAR. Let's face it, Kershaw, unless he pitches at Coors the rest of the season, is going to win the CYA. Harvey of the Mets had a real chance until he blew out his elbow.

Andrew McCutchen has for five years been the bright light in the murky world that has been the Pirates. Now that his team is having this exceptional season, it is time to celebrate him. He should be one of the faces of the game. And he is the National League's most valuable player.

Crowded field for National League MVP

The Most Valuable Player Award is one of the most confusing awards in baseball. The Cy Young Award is easy: Who was the best pitcher in the league? But the MVP is difficult because nobody can agree on who should be considered. The problem comes from the word, "Valuable," stuck in the middle of the award's name. Value based on what? Based on WAR? Based on runs batted in or homers? Does the value have to be to a contending team for it to count? After all, to paraphrase an old general manager, a team finished in last place with a valuable player, it can finish in last place without him. If the award was called the Player of the Year, it would be easier. But it isn't. 2012 gives us a crowded field of MVP contenders, so these questions all come into play.

So who are the contenders? Well, there is Buster Posey, David Wright, Yadier Molina, Ryan Braun, Andrew McCutchen, Chase Headley, Michael Bourn and perhaps Jason Heyward. That is a lot of contenders for the award. And on both stats sites, Fangraphs.com and Baseball-reference.com, several of them are bunched up in those site's WAR valuations. Last year was a little easier as the two contenders were Braun and Matt Kemp. McCutchen was in the conversation too.

How did that race break down since the play of the two players were similar. One led one site in WAR and the other led the competing stat site in WAR. It appears that Braun won because his team was a contender and the Dodgers were not. And personally, that seems fair. The Dodgers were never a factor in any race, whether it be the wild card or the division race. That would have been the case with or without Kemp.

The one problem with this way of thinking is putting so much value upon a player for a team's contending success. A contending team needs so many things to happen in order to contend. It sounds simple to simply say they have to score more runs than they allow on a regular basis. But so much is involved in that equation. The schedule, injuries, the pitching, the defense, "clutch" hitting and to a small degree, the manager and coaching. Even if a player has a monster year, giving him too much credit for that contending team is questionable. If a great player cannot elevate a terrible team, how much does a great player then elevate a good team? Do you see how that is not a correlation and there is a logic conundrum there?

In the course of writing these thoughts out, the feeling that the award has to go to a contending team's player is not in personal jeopardy. The award is not called, the "Most Valuable Player to his Contending Team" Award. In fact, the thinking is now almost reversed itself. Should the award go to a player that brings the most value to his team? That would simply bring the award to the guy with the highest WAR. The trouble with doing that is that the two sites listed rarely agree. Verlander was much more highly rated last year on one site over the other. Gosh this is confusing, especially in light of so many contenders for the award. Fortunately, there are no pitchers close in the NL to the position player's WAR totals, so we can save the debate on whether pitchers should win for another day.

There is another problem to which player is the most valuable to his team concept. When great players dominate bad teams, those bad teams are not going to have much for total team WAR. For example, Mets' batters have accounted for the grand total of 11.5 rWAR. With David Wright's total of 6.4 rWAR, he accounts for 57.1% of his team's WAR. A couple of years ago, the Pirates finished with a negative WAR for the team and McCutchen was at like six by himself. The math on that boggles the mind. This season, the Pirates are a contending team and McCutchen accounts for 46.8% of his team's total batting WAR.

Oh man, we are not getting anywhere are we? This much can be said, rightly or no, public opinion believes that Ryan Braun got away with a technicality on this PED thing. In other words, most people think he was guilty but got off on a forensic snafu. No matter how he fares this season and how much he elevates the Brewers in their last ditch effort to sneak into the wild card mix, he will probably not get the vote this season after winning it last year under what many feel was false pretenses. That is not the personal opinion here. It just states the obvious.

With all the messiness already involved here, the only thing left to do is to assign the award to the player of the year. Who was the best player? One equation this writer would take out would be the part that fielding plays in current WAR evaluations. Fielding metrics are not universally loved and trusted. At least they are not yet. And again, the way the fielding metrics are measured varies from stat site to stat site. So that has to be factored in to some of the valuation methods.

For example, a lot of Michael Bourn's worth is tied up in his fielding. Of his 6.1 fWAR, perhaps as high as two of those wins come as a result of his fielding metrics. Until we can pin this fielding thing more closely to where most people agree they are the bomb, they should not be included in the MVP discussion.

After boiling all this down, the top contenders for this observer are Andrew McCutchen, Ryan Braun and Buster Posey. Not only are all three at the top of the WAR leaderboards, but all three are the only NL players above .400 in wOBA and above 160 in wRC+. If the season ended today, the pick would be Ryan Braun.

McCutchen Great Deal for Pirates

Andrew McCutchen's contract extension by the Pittsburgh Pirates is welcome news to a beleaguered fan base. Now the young center fielder just needs some help from his teammates. McCutchen is just entering his twenty-fifth year on earth and has become the focal point of the Pirates franchise. In recent years, the Pirates have jettisoned their best young players when they became mildly expensive. This news certainly signals a change in the right direction. And judging by his growth as a player, the team got a steal.

Andrew McCutchen's play in 2011 was valued at $25.5 million according to Fangraphs.com. And we still haven't seen the best of McCutchen by a long shot. He improved his play in center and garnered positive metrics for his defense for the first time in his career. He is only going to get better. McCutchen is also improving his power numbers. His ISO was the highest of his career and included 23 homers, seven more than his previous high. The extra power came at a price as his strikeout rate also increased and his 7.9 percent swing and miss rate was the highest of his career. McCutchen has always had good plate discipline and there is no reason to believe that he can continue to improve his power numbers while getting his strikeout rate back to previous levels.

The problem is that McCutchen needs to get some help from his teammates. Besides McCutchen, only Neil Walker produced a WAR higher than 1.9 (Walker finished with 3.0 WAR). With an exception nod to Walker, McCutchen has been an offensive island in the last three seasons. According to Baseball-reference.com, the Pirates accumulated a grand total of 8.2 WAR last season. This was the fifth lowest in all of baseball ahead of only the Twins, Rockies, Mariners and Athletics. McCutchen accounted for 67 percent of his team's position player value. But this is actually an improvement. In 2010, the Pirates shockingly had a WAR value of -3.9. This was despite McCutchen's 4.0 WAR valuation. 

The extension earns McCutchen a bump in pay in 2012, his last pre-arbitration year, but likely will cost him money and save the Pirates money once he hit his arbitration years starting in 2013. And now, the Pirates have the stability in knowing that McCutchen won't walk away in 2016 when he is eligible for free agency. The first two years of that status are now covered, three years if you include the 2017 option. The deal ensures that McCutchen's peak years will be as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. 

This is a great day for Pirate fans and a great day for baseball in general. Andrew McCutchen will be the core the Pirates build upon. All the Pirates need right now is to get the young man some help.

The Pirates Bust Out

The Pittsburgh Pirates have scored 124 runs this season in 35 games or roughly 3.54 runs per game. Meanwhile, they have given up 217 runs or 6.2 runs a game. For those of you keeping score, that's a run differential of -93. That gives the Pirates a Pythagorean won-loss record of 9-26. But they are 15-20, which is remarkable considering their run differential. But they had fallen on hard times this week as they were shut out two games in a row and had scored one run in three games heading into Friday's game with the Cubs. It didn't look good for the Pirates.

But the Pirates have a secret weapon. They are 4-0 against the Cubs this year. And they did something this Fan has never recalled seeing. They had consecutive guys in their line up each get five hits in the game. How about these two lines for the night:

• Andrew McCutchen: 5 5 5 2 1 0 with a homer, a double, a walk and a stolen base.
• Garrett Jones: 6 2 5 5 0 1 with a homer and a double.

Let's see Braun and Fielder top THAT in the three/four hole in the line up! McCutchen in one game raised his batting average 26 points and his OPS 68 points. Garrett Jones raised his average 29 points and his OPS 72 points.

Though the Fan has never recalled back to back hitters collecting ten hits in a game, according to Baseball Musings, two guys on the same team have had five-hit games 21 times since 1957. The last time it was done was last year by the Texas Rangers when Ian Kinsler and Marlon Byrd had 11 hits between them on April 15 (the Fan has a short memory apparently). But Kinsler batted first and Byrd sixth. Ironically, Byrd participated in Friday night's game as the centerfielder for the Cubs.

Keep in mind that the Pirates have a -93 run differential this season. But against the Cubs, they have scored 28 runs and have given up 11. So against everyone else, the Pirates have a run differential of -110 but against the Cubs, they have a run differential of +17! The win also vaulted the Pirates over the Cubs in the standings so now the Pirates are in fourth in their division and the Cubs with their payroll, are in fifth. It's time for Piniella and Hendry to go, no?

National League Rookie of the Year

With the end in sight for the regular season, it's usually common to start speculating about the award season. The MVPs for each league seem pretty much set with Mauer and Pujols. The AL Cy Young should go to Greinke. The NL Cy Young still seems a bit hazy. For Rookie of the Year, there are no runaway performers and the debate will rage between pitchers and position players. For this post, let's see if we can get a hard statistical eye on the rookies this year.

For position players, the field seems to narrow down to Chris Coghlan, Andrew McCutchen, Dexter Fowler and Casey McGehee. For pitchers, the only three worth boiling down to are J. A. Happ, Randy Wells and Tommy Hanson.

Let's start with the position players. The Fan will list each player followed by some stats. The stats will be OBP, OPS, OPS+, Stolen Bases, UZR (a fielding stat), WAR (worth over replacement) and FanGraph's dollar value:

Chris Coghlan: .389 .835 121 7 (in 11 attempts) -12.8 1.8 $8.2 million
Andrew McCutchen: .358 .831 122 17 (in 21 attempts) -0.4 3.1 $13.8 million
Dexter Fowler: .366 .773 99 27 (in 37 attempts) -12.6 0.8 $3.4 million
Casey McGehee: .364 .867 126 0 (in 2 attempts) -5 2.1 $9.4 million

Comments: The numbers seem to exclude Fowler. Coghlan and McCutchen both lead off for their teams. As such, Coghlan has the superior On Base Percentage, which is what you want from the lead off guy. McCutchen does more once he is on the bases. Coghlan had never played outfield before this season and his terrible UZR is explained that way. McGehee out slugs his competition and as such is a valuable middle of the line up kind of guy.

For the pitchers, the stats will be ERA+, WHIP, FIP, Batting Average Against, K/BB ratio, K9, H9 (homers per nine innings), Wins, WAR and value.

J. A. Happ: 154 1.200 4.22 .236 2.07 6.4 1.0 12 1.8 $8.1
Randy Wells: 138 1.307 4.02 .266 2.09 5.34 0.8 11 2.6 $11.9
Tommy Hanson: 140 1.193 3.57 .229 2.43 8.0 0.7 11 2.3 $10.5

Comments: Happ and Wells have significantly more innings pitched than Hanson which is a factor in Hanson's value.

Final verdict: Of all the players we evaluated in the National League, McCutchen has the highest value according to FanGraphs. The problem for the Fan in selecting him is the OBP for a lead off guy. All three pitchers have been outstanding. Happ's ERA+ is so much higher than the other two. But in the end, Hanson has better overall stats across the board. More strike outs per nine, less homers per nine, lower FIP, lower batting average against, lower homer per nine, higher K/9 and K/BB and the lowest WHIP. Plus, Hanson has been a stud down the stretch for the Braves.

The Fan's choice: Tommy Hanson

We'll look at the American League in the next post.

This Baseball Expert Still Sucks

You can be a veteran of over forty-five years of observing baseball and still not know anything. That's either the great thing about writing about baseball or one of the most frustrating things. It depends on how you look at it. Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski, two of the most popular writers (and for good reasons), admit they are wrong all the time. So it shouldn't come as any surprise that the thoughts put into posts here at the FanDome are as often wrong as they are right. Despite what this writer may think, Ricciardi makes the right moves more often than not. Despite what an expert this writer may think he is, the correctness average is not much higher than Barry Bonds' On Base Percentage.

Take the Pirates for example. After they traded everyone away over the last month or so, the Fan didn't think they had a chance to win any games the rest of the year. In fact, at the trade deadline's final gun when the Pirates traded their infield away and much of their bullpen, the Fan picked against them every game. Yet, the Pirates have won every game since the deadline. Whuh? Part of the reason is Andrew McCutchen.

McCutchen hit three homers last night and had another hit besides. He now has a line of: .293/.349/.488. Not bad for a lead off guy. And he is playing great defense in centerfield. He has also stolen nine bases in nine attempts. His only bugaboo may be that he strikes out too often. But, he seems on his way to being a great player that the Pirates hoped he would be when they traded away McLouth to open centerfield for him.

McCutchen in a first round draft pick (2005) and he is only 22 years old. His minor league line after 1967 at bats was: .286/.369/.423. Those numbers are awfully close to those of his predecessor, Nate McLouth, whose minor league line was: .292/.367/.427. If those numbers are any indication, McCutchen should have a successful career. McLouth has been an above league average batter now for five straight seasons.

But then again, the Fan could be wrong. He is at least half the time, remember?