Mike Trout’s Case for 2016 AL MVP
In 2012, Mike Trout burst onto the scene with perhaps the greatest single season in modern MLB history for someone not named Barry Bonds.
He started the year in the minors, but was quickly called up and immediately made enough of an impact to stay. Despite only playing in 139 MLB games that year, Trout led the league in runs (129), stolen bases (49), Wins Above Replacement (10.8), and OPS+ (168).
source: trout.la
Description of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) from baseball reference:
The idea behind the WAR framework is that we want to know how much better a player is than a player that would typically be available to replace that player. We start by comparing the player to average in a variety of venues, then compare our theoretical replacement player to the average player and add the two results together.
There is no one way to determine WAR. There are hundreds of steps to make this calculation, and dozens of places where reasonable people can disagree on the best way to implement a particular part of the framework. We have taken the utmost care and study at each step in the process, and believe all of our choices are well reasoned and defensible. But WAR is necessarily an approximation and will never be as precise or accurate as one would like.
Definition of OPS+ from fangraphs and baseball reference:
This statistic normalizes a player’s OPS — it adjusts for small variables that might affect OPS scores (e.g. park effects) and puts the statistic on an easy-to-understand scale. A 100 OPS+ is league average, and each point up or down is one percentage point above or below league average. In other words, if a player had a 90 OPS+ last season, that means their OPS was 10% below league average. Since OPS+ adjusts for league and park effects, it’s possible to use OPS+ to compare players from different years and on different teams.
OPS+ = 100 * ( OBP/lgOBP + SLG/lgSLG - 1)/BPF, where lgOBP and lgSLG are the slugging and on-base percentage of a league-average player, and BPF is the batting park factor.
Despite leading the league in WAR, a catch-all statistic aimed at estimating a player’s overall value, Mike finished 2nd in MVP voting to MIguel Cabrera, one of the best hitters of our generation, who won the triple crown that year by leading the AL in Home Runs, RBI, and Batting Average.
Advanced baseball statisticians dismiss the traditional triple crown because on base percentage (OBP) is a more important statistic in determining a player’s value than batting average, and runs are a more important statistic than RBI. Trout had both a higher OBP and more runs scored as well as superior defensive play, and many stolen bases, leading to a significantly higher WAR: 10.8 to 7.2. But tradition won out, and Cabrera was awarded the MVP.
source: thesportsfanjournal
2013 was the same result as 2012: Mike Trout led the League in runs, walks, and WAR once again, but finished 2nd in MVP voting to Cabrera again, who led the league in batting average, OBP, slugging %, OPS, OPS+, and offensive WAR. This year was a less contentious result as Cabrera had an even better offensive season than the previous year when he won the triple crown.
After winning MVP in 2014, Trout once again led the league in WAR in 2015 and once finished 2nd in MVP voting, this time to Josh Donaldson, who had a phenomenal second half of the season and led the Blue Jays to the playoffs while Trout’s Angels faltered down the stretch.
The 2016 MLB regular season is coming to a close, and Mike Trout is once again expected to finish second in MVP voting despite leading the league in WAR for the 5th straight year.
This time, he will lose to Mookie Betts, the best player on the Boston Red Sox, a team that made the playoffs while Trout’s Angels again finished in the bottom half of the league. Mookie is an incredible player, and very similar to Trout: a great defensive player that hits for average, hits for power, and steals bases. But Trout was simply better, and deserves to win. In this blog I will make the case for why Trout deserves MVP over Betts.
Players on teams that don’t make the playoffs deserve MVP consideration
There is precedence for players on non-playoff teams winning the MVP: Bryce Harper (2015), Albert Pujols (2008), Ryan Howard (2006), Barry Bonds (2004), Alex Rodriguez (2003), Barry Bonds (2001), and Larry Walker (1997). Out of 42 past MVP winners since 1995 when the divisional era of the playoffs started, 7 have won the award from non-playoff teams.
Mookie Betts best argument to beat Mike Trout for MVP is that the Red Sox won 19 more games than the Angels and made the playoffs, yet no matter how good Mike Trout was this year, the Angels were not making the playoffs.
If we consider WAR an accurate estimate of how many wins a player adds, then Mike Trout added 10.6 wins to the Angels this year. Barry Bonds 2001 season is the greatest modern single season performance and he added 11.8 wins that year. Babe Ruth added 14.1 wins in 1923, which is by far the most of all time. Adding Babe Ruth’s 1923 season to the Angels over a replacement player while keeping Trout on the team would still have resulted in them missing the playoffs. Teams needed 89 wins to make it, and 14 more on top of the Angels 74 would have still missed.
To doom Mike Trout’s MVP hopes before the season even started because of the ineptitude of the rest of his team is unfair. There was no chance they could make the playoffs, and even adding the greatest season from the greatest player of all time to their roster might have resulted in them missing the playoffs.
Mike Trout’s WAR would have been even higher on the Red Sox
The Red Sox were the best offensive team in baseball, scoring 878 runs, 70 more than the second highest team and 171 more than the Angels. When a team scores more runs, the players on that team get more at bats, and for a good player more at bats equates to higher WAR.
Mike Trout played 159 games this season and had 681 plate appearances, while Mookie Betts played in 158 games and had 730 plate appearances. That’s roughly a third of a plate appearance per game more than Trout.
Of course, Mookie bats leadoff while Trout hits 3rd, and leadoff hitters get more plate appearances (PA) due to better lineup spot (when the game ends after the first or second batter in the order, the leadoff hitter gets an extra at bat compared to the #3 hitter). But let’s compare Trout’s PA per game to Dustin Pedroia’s, who hit 3rd for the Red Sox this season.
Trout: 681 PA in 159 games, 4.283 PA/game
Pedroia: 698 PA in 154 games, 4.532 PA/game
This season Trout added 9.9 wins above replacement offensively and another .9 to 1 win defensively. If we prorated his offensive wins by plate appearance, and gave him the number he would have had batting 3rd in 159 games for the Red Sox, his offensive WAR would have been 10.47. That’s over half a win more! Additionally, he would have had more RBI and runs due to better scoring chances on the team and a much better hitter (David Ortiz) behind him than he had on the Angels (Albert Pujols).
Mike Trout being on a non-playoff team in a way makes his season even better.
Defensive War Is Largely Circumstantial
One of the biggest contributors to defensive WAR is how many superlative plays a fielder makes over the course of the season. This season, Trout was credited with 2 superlative defensive plays while Mookie had 5. Mookie has a much throwing better arm than Trout, so his WAR would have been higher regardless, but the gap was much lower the previous season.
source: mlb.com
Mookie is unquestionably a better overall defensive centerfielder than Trout is, but Trout’s defensive wins added were dismissed in 2012-2013 when compared to Cabrera who is a terrible fielder. Mookie’s contributions defensively, while more than Trout’s, can be somewhat overlooked because Trout is a well above average fielder who had his defensive contributions overlooked previously.
source: Seattle Times
I don’t want to look back in 40 years and think “the best player of our era continually finished 2nd in MVP voting because his teams sucked”.
Mookie Betts is a fantastic player, and awarding him MVP is by no means a robbery. But he was not more valuable than Trout, and that’s all this award should consider.
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Awesome article! I think the injury of Trout this year takes him out of the running for MVP but we know his talents are amazing and if he plays most of any year he will always be in MVP consideration. Love the in depth description in the article for those who don't know so much about baseball or have been out of the loop. This years AL MVP.... Aaron Judge?!
MVP MVP MVP MVP MVP ......
Wrong Account
I still feel like Trout is on Human Growth Hormone
I get the argument, he's the same height and even thicker than Bonds. But the difference is he came out of high school looking like that, he didn't have a rapid transformation 10 years into a career. I like to compare him to lebron instead of bonds in this respect.
I think it's foolish to assume any top tier athlete of a major sport has never used testosterone enhancers or HGH, but we should also give most of them the benefit of the doubt.
The fact that he looked like that out of high school was the main reason that made me be suspicious of him in the first place the way his shoulders and chest was.
Yeah it makes it tough on guys like me who didn't. I was D1 and never made it out of the minors. But you know I can look in the mirror and know that everything I did was real. For the guys who took drugs....... well they can look at their millions and know that the money is real. But what are you going to do.....
I meant to say that here... Trout is an absolute monster. Size of an NFL linebacker with incredible speed and agility.
Yup, incredible stuff. Early this season I thought Bryce was better....that was not a good take.
Yeah Harper did not have a good year. I still think he will end up with a great career, perhaps there is some truth to the shoulder injury talk that led to this years crappy batting average.
Now it's Judge's year!