In a website headline last Friday, the Boson Globe declared, “In voting Mookie Betts MVP, writers got it right.” I agree with that headline, but I will add one of my own: In voting Mike Trout second, the writers got it wrong.
I do not belittle Trout as a player; he may very well be the best player in the game. He certainly is the most consistently outstanding player. But he was not the second most valuable player in the American League last season, as 24 of the 30 writers voted him, or the first, as one writer designated him.
Trout plays for the Angels, as he has every year of his professional career. The Angels had a losing record – 80 wins and 82 losses. The Angels finished in fourth place in the A.L. West, a distant 23 games from first. What did Trout do that made him so valuable? He prevented the Angels from finishing in last place? He kept them from having an even worse losing record?
This has happened before, though not all of the time when the Angels have had a losing record or weren’t contending for a post-season spot. The only thing I can conclude is the writers aren’t voting for the most “valuable” player but for the “best” player.
The award, however, isn’t meant for the best player. If it were, the winner would require no thinking. Just select the player with the best WAR ranking. I suspect that’s what some voters do now. In a recent year’s voting the m.v.p. order of finish in one of the leagues was a virtual match for the WAR rankings.
There is no challenge in that way of selecting an m.v.p. In the years I was an m.v.p. voter I enjoyed the deliberations, both with myself and wither other writers. It was seldom a simple matter of looking at a list of statistics and picking the player with the best numbers.
I don’t know on what basis writers vote for players today, though I’m sure analytics play a significantly larger role than in the past. The voting for Trout, however, prompted me to seek answers about why so many writers elevated him above J.D. Martinez and Jose Ramirez, for example.
Via e-mail, I asked 28 writers why they voted for Trout as high as they did. The only voters I omitted were Gerry Fraley of the Dallas Morning News and Jon Paul Morosi of MLB.com, both of whom placed Trout fifth on their ballots, which I thought was a reasonable spot for him.
Ten writers promptly responded to my question, not as many as I would have liked but enough to explain the writers’ thinking on Trout. Their responses made it obvious that, like many other things in the game, the M.V.P. isn’t necessarily what it used to be.
Voters are thinking differently from the way their predecessors thought and voted. The change will be reflected in award voting and Hall of Fame voting.
As older writers fade from the baseball scene, the changes will become more entrenched. Will they be good or bad for the game? That depends on whether they are good enough to be accepted.
Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram may one day be seen as a pioneer. He was the only writer who placed Trout No. 1 in the m.v.p. voting, ignoring what I see as the significance of a player’s impact on his team’s presence in a pennant race.
Wilson wrote:
“I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve evolved as an MVP voter. I initially believed the best player from the best team, or a very good one, should be the MVP. Part of me still believes that has merit and that bad teams would still be bad without their MVP candidates. While I’m not a diehard analytics guy, I see the value in them.
“But MVP is an individual award, and I now tend to vote for the best individual player with some exceptions. For instance, I voted for Miguel Cabrera over Trout in back-to-back years despite his issues with defense and base running. However, I voted for Trout over Josh Donaldson in 2015 even though Trout played for a non-playoff team (the Angels did contend).
“Trout was my pick this year because he was a best offensive player and is a better defender than the flawed defensive metrics make him out to be. I filled out spots 3-10 on my ballot well ahead of the deadline but didn’t make my Trout-Betts call until the end. It wasn’t easy. The Red Sox’s success and Angels’ also-ran status weighed on me, but I was convinced Trout was better.”
Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sports.net in Toronto put Trout second and said,
“Not only does Mike Trout reach base nearly half of the time he bats, he hits for as much power as anyone in baseball, walks nearly as much as he strikes out, steals bases and saves runs with his center field defense. This combination creates value across the board–more value than any American League player except Mookie Betts in my view.”
Larry Stone of the Seattle Times said, like some others, his thinking on the question has evolved.
“As you know, the very first sentence of the instructions to MVP voters reads, ‘There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means.’ It also says that it’s up to each voter to decide, and that the MVP winner need not come from a division winner or playoff qualifier. And the very first rule of voting is, ‘Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.’
“So putting all that together, I have come to vote for the players I feel are best, in order – and I have come to believe those are the most valuable as well. Mike Trout should not be punished because he didn’t have a good team around him. I think it’s pretty clear he had the second-best season in the American League, and that his ‘actual value’ to the Angels is immense and undeniable. So I had no qualms listing him second – and I would have voted him first if I felt he had a better year than Betts.”
Marc Carig of The Athletic website said,
“The system is seemingly designed to grant voters wide latitude while making their decisions. But since voters are given a few specific guidelines with their ballot, I tend to weigh them heavily. To me, they should supersede any other factors that an individual voter may also decide to consider.
Those guidelines note that ‘the MVP need not come from a division winner or other playoff qualifier,’ and that the first consideration should be ‘the actual value of a player to his team.’
“In my view, Mike Trout was of great value to his team, regardless of where it finished in the standings”.
Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star noted that,
“I see it the opposite of what you are saying. I believe I voted for Trout as LOW as I did because he is the best player in the AL but his team did not win. I’m with you about value to your team that wins as a prime factor in MVP and so Mookie Betts was my MVP but Trout will always be in my Top 3 as the league’s best player.”
Christopher Smith of the Springfield (Mass.) Republic said flatly the award has,
“become a best player award. I asked several respected baseball writers what advanced stats to take into consideration and how I should view value. Is it best player or most valuable to his team? Most everyone told me they would pick the best player. If you’re debating between two players like Betts and Trout as the winner, then how those players’ teams did in the standings can be the tiebreaker. I took several days to break down the advanced offensive, defensive and base running metrics. Many were upset J.D. Martinez wasn’t a finalist. But José Ramirez was one of the best, if not the best, best runner in the league in addition to hitting 39 homers and playing solid defense. I went back and forth between Ramirez and JD for third place.”
Dan Connolly of The Athletic acknowledged that the concept of “value” presents problems.
“I struggle a little bit with the ‘valuable’ contention because, despite the attempt of advanced analytics, it is hard to quantify a player’s actual value to a team. As someone who has covered the Orioles for two decades I can tell you J.J. Hardy may have been the team’s most valuable player during its successful playoff runs due to his defense at shortstop, his steady leadership, his consistency and his occasional power bat. But he never received any MVP votes because his offensive numbers were often in the average range. Yet if you look at the club’s record with him starting and on the shelf (or at home), it’s pretty startling.
“Anyway, I try to morph production with importance to team and how that affects the standings. In my ballot, you’ll notice eight of the other nine were on playoff teams. And I feel that’s an ingredient for MVP consideration. But sometimes a player is so incredibly productive and talented that he transcends the standings. That’s Trout. Yes, the Angels were bad, but he energizes that lineup, that outfield, that ball club, that town, the ballparks he enters, the entire sport. He’s baseball’s best player, and I don’t think I can ignore that simply because his team stinks. Who knows how far the Angels would have fallen without him in 2018? And it probably doesn’t matter since they were wholly out of contention. But his ability to play and produce has tremendous value to the game, not simply his team. I would have voted him first if Betts wasn’t equally fantastic and played for a division winner. And I would have voted him third if Jose Ramirez hadn’t struggled mightily in the second half.”
Jeffrey Flanagan of MLB.cm simply wrote,
“I don’t punish players in MVP voting because their teammates underperform. Simple as that.”
Rich Dubroff of BaltimreBaseball revealed that he,
“was one of five writers who voted for Mike Trout third or lower. I voted for him (Trout) third.
“I felt J.D. Martinez was of more value to his team than Trout, and I voted for him second,” Dubroff explained. “I felt that Jose Ramirez, who I voted fourth, accumulated his stats while playing about half his games against the AL Central, which was the weakest team in baseball.
“I do consider both an outstanding players stats along with the team’s performance. The Angels were mediocre with Trout, and would have been simply awful without him.
“Trout’s numbers could have merited him MVP’s in most years. Mookie Betts was clearly the league’s best and most valuable player. Martinez’s addition was key to Boston’s ascension, and so I put him ahead of Trout.”
The way Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register sees it,
“’most valuable’ and ‘best’ are the same thing. That’s how it works if you’re discussing the value of anything else. I don’t know where the word ‘valuable’ got twisted into something else. If you think otherwise, then you must also believe Brock Holt is more valuable than Mike Trout too. Do you want to write that column?”
I invite readers to respond with their view of Fletcher’s position on M.V.P. and best player.