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Miguel Cabrera MVP chances

MLB Coverage: An Early American League All-Star Ballot

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We’re just past the quarter pole in the major league baseball season and that means it’s time to see where we stand in the race for the All-Star spots and the major awards. Today, TheSportsNotebook’s MLB coverage will focus on the American League.

A few notes of procedure before we dive in. TheSportsNotebook’s rules for team selection are as follows…

  • This is set up as a true team—a five-man starting rotation, and two setup relievers are picked, to go along with the closer and the regular everyday lineup.
  • As a true team, one of the outfielders must either be a centerfielder, or at least reasonably able to fill the position’s defensive requirements.
  • I place an inordinate value on defensive range at the middle infield spots, while offense tends to take priority most everywhere else.
  • Finally—and this is a minor point—I view this as a starting point for a debate that should take place all the way to the end of the season, not just to the All-Star Game at Citi Field in New York this July. Baseball is alone among the major sports in not having season-ending All-Star selection.

With all that out of the way, here are the choices, based solely on performance in 2013…

C: Carlos Santana (Cleveland): The young Tribe catcher is leading the way as his team’s offense has bashed them to the top of the AL Central. Santana has a stat line of .403 on-base percentage/.548 slugging percentage. I like that his OBP is balanced between walks and hits, suggesting he can continue to contribute even when his bat hits the inevitable slump.

Minnesota’s Joe Mauer is in hot pursuit, at .411/.478. Mauer’s home run power is gone, as he’s only hit two, but 17 doubles are keeping his slugging percentage up. Further off the pace is Boston’s Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who’s OBP has improved, and combined with his good power, could set him up for a summer run. Baltimore’s Matt Wieters is off to a slow start, but can’t be discounted.

1B: Chris Davis (Baltimore): His 13 home runs are tied for the American League lead, and with a .411 OBP to go along with it, Davis is a lot more than just the thunder of the home run. His slugging percentage is in the stratosphere at .675.

Mitch Moreland in Texas is having a surprising year, at .345/.577. While defense is not a priority at this spot, Moreland’s range and glove work could give him an edge if his hitting numbers get close. The same goes for Minnesota’s Justin Morneau, who’s further off the pace. And a nod to Prince Fielder, at .406/.523 in a tough park to hit in Detroit. Fielder will be in this conversation all year long and is the most likely candidate to challenge Davis as his slugging percentage comes down to earth.

2B: Jose Altuve (Houston): I know this pick is going to raise an eyebrow, with Robinson Cano and Dustin Pedroia having excellent offensive seasons for the Yankees and Red Sox. Cano has the power, with 13 home runs, and Pedroia is constantly on base, with a .429 OBP. But they grade out as the worst of defensive second baseman when it comes to range factor. I know Yankee and Red Sox partisans (I’m in the latter category) will find this hard to believe, but there’s more to good defense than having a smooth athletic style (Cano) or bringing scrappy hustle to the park every day (Pedroia). In the end, it’s about getting to more balls and making more plays, and the range factor stat on ESPN.com says both are well below average.

Altuve is an excellent defensive second baseman, and he’s also hitting .327. Whether he can hit well enough to keep this spot as the season wears on is a fair question, but he’s been a good young bat in an otherwise disastrous situation in Houston for a couple years now. Don’t hold his team against him. Another good choice at this spot as the year wears on will be Ian Kinsler in Texas, but after a .369/.500 start he hit the disabled list.

3B: Miguel Cabrera (Detroit): There’s no reason to tilt at any windmills here. Cabrera is at .457/.659 and soaring above the pack. Right now, Tampa Bay’s Evan Longoria, along with Manny Machado in Baltimore are just playing to get further up an MVP ballot that Cabrera quite obviously leads.

Although we should note that both Longoria and Machado are much better defenders than Cabrera. The Detroit third baseman has soft hands and makes the plays he should, but as a converted first baseman, the range just isn’t there. But this is another spot where offense matters most, so the Tampa and Baltimore third basemen need to hope Cabrera comes down to earth.

SS: Jhonny Peralta (Detroit): American League shortstops have been mediocre for several years now, saved only by the presence of Derek Jeter and the occasional outbreaks by Asdrubal Cabrera in Cleveland. But Jeter’s hurt and Cabrera is off to a poor start. Peralta is a solid .381/.467 and in the upper part of the rankings on range factor.

I suppose I don’t have an issue with Peralta as a legit All-Star—he compiles his numbers in a tough park to hit and does the job defensively—but it’s a big dropoff after that, unless Cabrera, Elvis Andrus or J.J. Hardy can start hitting. Or if you think Jed Lowrie  in Oakland, with his .373/.439 start, can hit that way all year.

CF: Adam Jones (Baltimore): This is another pick I’m not entirely thrilled with—Jones is having a good year, at .354/.492, but he’s not nearly as good defensively as I would like to see in center. And though it’s kind of nitpicky, if offense is going to put an outfielder on this team, I’d like to see the slugging get over .500.

But with good defensive centerfielders like Jacoby Ellsbury in Boston and Austin Jackson in Detroit way too subpar with the bat to be chosen, I have to overlook the eight points Jones is short of the .500 mark. Another option I really looked closely at was Lorenzo Cain in Kansas City. He ranked fourth for range among AL centerfielders—Jones was ninth—and had a .370 OBP. But what swung me is that the gap between Cain and Jones on the defensive rankings was tighter than the gap between Cain and the #2 spot on the list. Essentially, Jones threaded the needle in every possible way to get on this team.

OF: Alex Gordon (Kansas City)/Alex Rios (ChiSox): Gordon has arrived as an All-Star leftfielder. He’s put up a .373/.531 stat line and easily the most productive player among the candidates here. Rios is at .366/.554 and doing it in a lineup that isn’t very good. I’ll be surprised if he’s still in this spot when we revisit everything in July, but this selection is based exclusively on the season to date.

The player with the biggest gripe is Mike Trout. He’s got .363/.517 numbers, but that’s narrowly behind both Gordon and Rios, and Trout has more support in the lineup than either one. Even though Trout is playing left in Los Angeles this year, I gave thought to slotting him in center, since we know he can play that spot. For now, Jones has the benefit of the doubt, but if Trout can open up some more room on their offensive numbers, I can easily change my mind.

DH: Lance Berkman (Texas): Wasn’t this guy supposed to be retired? Berkman is instead putting up .423/.463 numbers, apparently wanting to atone to the good people of Texas for breaking their hearts in the 2011 World Series (Berkman delivered one of two different Game 6 hits  for St. Louis when the Rangers were a strike from clinching).

Berkman is leading a good crop of AL designated hitters, and it’s only the missed playing time early for David Ortiz that has the Red Sox slugger on the outside looking in. Ortiz is lighting it up at .402/.647, and as his at-bat totals climb, his credibility as a pick for this position will as well. Travis Hafner is having a comeback season in New York, and Toronto’s Adam Lind is a quiet dark horse. At .396/.465, he’s definitely not the pick today, but he’s in striking distance.

THE STARTING ROTATION

SP: Hiroki Kuroda (NY Yankees)
SP: Felix Hernandez (Seattle)
SP: Clay Bucholz (Boston)
SP: Matt Moore (Tampa Bay)
SP: Justin Masterson (Cleveland)

Kuroda, Fernandez, Bucholz and Moore are the top four in American League starters in ERA. I also look seriously at innings pitched, and wins (yes, I’m a traditionalist on this one, I still think it matters, albeit third in line among pitching stats). Bucholz is 6-0, Kuroda has a 1.99 ERA in one of the game’s most hitter-friendly parks. Hernandez is second in the league in innings pitched, while Moore is a blazing 8-0.

Masterson was the outlier, with a 2.83 ERA that had him well outside the top five. But it’s still pretty good and I like the fact his 70 innings pitched are the most in the American League. I’d rather give up a few more runs and keep the bullpen rested. James Shields is also a horse in Kansas City, but at 2-4, I want to see a few more wins. And Fernandez’s teammate in Seattle, Hisashi Iwakuma is fifth in the league in ERA, with a 5-1 record and can easily move into the starting group.

THE BULLPEN

RP: Jesse Crain (ChiSox)
RP: Tanner Scheppers (Texas)

CL: Mariano Rivera (NY Yankees)

All of these choices were easy. Crain and Scheppers combine sub-1.00 ERAs with over twenty innings pitched, the only two with such a combo of workload and dominance. And Rivera is merely 17-of-17 on save opportunities with a 1.47 ERA.

AWARD CHOICES

MVP: Miguel Cabrera (Detroit)
Cy Young: Hiroki Kuroda (NY Yanks)
Manager of the Year: Terry Francona (Cleveland)

With Cleveland leading the AL Central, Francona is an easy pick, as is Cabrera for the MVP. One thing we should note on the latter though, is that the same could be said for Josh Hamilton at this time last year. By year’s end, Hamilton was nowhere near the MVP discussion, left Texas on bad terms and is now a poster boy for an overpaid and underachieving team in Anaheim. I’m not predicting Cabrera’s heading down that route, but it does bear in mind that saying a vote is obvious in May is entirely different from saying it will be obvious in the first few days of October.

Kuroda was a tougher call, and given my Red Sox sympathies, I’d hope Bucholz would actually win it if the choice really ends up this way at season’s end. Bucholz does have a better ERA (1.78 to 1.99) a few more innings (65-58) and better winning percentage (6-0 to 6-2). But Kuroda is close enough across the board, and I really believe Yankee Stadium is a much harder to pitch in than Fenway, especially for a right hander. Boston’s park has that spacious area in right center where long fly balls go to die. New York has no such safety net for a pitcher, and that’s why I might root for Bucholz to win the award, but based on current numbers, I’d have to give a vote to Kuroda.

Tomorrow we’ll take at the National League, and we’ll update both leagues again before the All-Star break.

The American League MVP Vote

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It’s time to wrap up the regular season in baseball and that means picking award winners. With the postseason All-Star team already picked, we’ll focus here on the American League MVP. The mainstream media storyline tells you the race is about whether you like Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera and his Triple Crown, or Los Angeles’ Mike Trout, who dominates the newer stats, like WAR (Wins Above Replacement). I’m picking Cabrera, and let me tell you why.

I don’t buy that this is about “old stats vs. new stats.” Stats like on-base percentage and slugging percentage might not be new anymore, but they’re certainly not traditional and are definitely a part of the sabermetrics revolution. Cabrera dominates in slugging percentage, leading the league at .606, and he’s fourth in on-base percentage at .393, trailing Trout by only six points—certainly close enough for his overwhelming edge in power to hold sway.

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You can certainly give Trout a big edge on defense, but here again Cabrera has always gotten a bad rap. When he played first base prior to this season his soft hands always put him near the top of the league in the defensive metrics. Now he goes across the diamond, plays a much more difficult position, and still ranks third among American League third baseman when it comes to range factor.

I know WAR is the number that’s all the rage among stat junkies these days. I’m interested in what the new stats tell us, but I’m deeply skeptical that it’s possible to generate one number that’s some universal arbiter of who is the best. If you put together a package of new stats—slugging percentage, on-base percentage and range factor, I think Cabrera still wins the argument.

Furthermore, it’s unfortunate that our welcoming of new stats has led us to discredit the old ones. It’s good that we now give as much credit for runs scored as we do for RBIs. But since when is driving in runs not important?  It’s good that our evaluations of power better account for extra-base hits. But since when is hitting a home run not a big deal? It’s good that we give credit for walks, something done here at TheSportsNotebook every time we pick an All-Star team. But it’s still better to get on base by putting the ball in play, where more things can happen as a result. Cabrera swept the board and led the American League in all three traditional categories.

I’m not going to take the mealy-mouthed approach that says both players are deserving MVP candidates and that you can’t go wrong with either one. I’ll certainly acknowledge both players are extremely good, as their mere presence in the discussion indicates. But I do not see a credible case for Trout going higher than second and that’s why Miguel Cabrera is TheSportsNotebook’s pick for American League MVP.

Throughout the season other candidates came and went, particularly Josh Hamilton for Texas, who owned this discussion the first two months and was still relevant several weeks ago. But his offensive numbers are considerably behind Cabrera’s, in spite of Texas being vastly more hitter-friendly than Detroit. Cabrera’s teammate, Prince Fielder, deserves a solid finish in the voting, but at .528, his slugging number was a little low for the MVP candidacy of a power hitter.

If we wanted to look at a starting pitcher, I’d have to give the nod to David Price. The Rays’ ace was a 20-game winner, led  the league in ERA at 2.56, worked 211 innings and was the clear ace for a team heavily dependent on starting pitching. He deserves his first Cy Young Award, and should be no lower than third in the final MVP vote.

The Manager of the Year obviously comes down to Buck Showalter in Baltimore and Bob Melvin in Oakland, both of whom turned in jobs so extraordinary it makes you wish we could give one to both of them and just blank out another year where there was no obvious candidate. Oakland’s winning the AL West makes this a little tougher, but I’m still leaning Buck’s direction. Oakland had high-quality starting pitching all year and that makes managing a lot easier. Baltimore won because Showalter masterfully handled his bullpen and squeezed the most of a starting rotation that was constantly in flux.

So that’s a wrap for the American League regular season—Miguel Cabrera for MVP, David Price for the Cy Young and Buck Showalter as Manager of the Year. Click here to read the choices in the National League.

 

The American League MVP Race With A Month To Go

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The American League MVP race, at least in the eyes of the media, seems to have been narrowed to two candidates. Los Angeles Angels’ centerfielder Mike Trout and Detroit Tigers’ third baseman Miguel Cabrera. I find it hard to argue with the merits of either candidate, but before we barrel into September and lose sight of everyone else, can we give the field a proper vetting? That’s our purpose here today.

A couple points about my views of the MVP race before we begin and it’s that I reject two key cornerstones that underpin the voting. The first is that you have to make the playoffs. I have no problem with integrating a player’s individual performance into a team goal, but it seems to me that a fairer way would be whether a player helped his team reach a significant milestone—i.e, for a team like the Mariners or Brewers, making it to .500 would be a significant achievement. So why rule out Felix Hernandez or Ryan Braun if they were the difference between the team winning as often as it lost or the team being Triple-A caliber? And since I mentioned King Felix, let me also say that I find the bias against starting pitchers silly. Yes, they only play every fifth day. And their importance to that game is so monumental that they’re listed in parentheses in every game schedule. Impact makes up for lost volume.

With that out of the way, let’s get on with the show. Here are the core numbers for Trout and Cabrera coming into Tuesday’s games, listed in the following fashion: On-Base Percentage/Slugging Percentage, Batting Average/HR, RBI/R

Mike Trout: .396/.570, .332/25, 74/108
Miguel Cabrera: .398/.588, .331/33, 111/87

Cabrera has the better numbers and plays in a deep ballpark, heavily geared toward pitchers. He’s also got significantly more at-bats, thanks to Trout’s late call-up from the minors. While the at-bats obviously contribute to the stats based on volume, they also underscore an even more important point—Cabrera’s been on the field more, and is therefore more valuable.

But on the flip side, Detroit’s also getting a big year from Prince Fielder (.411/.518) and Austin Jackson is having a surprising .387/.492 season at the top of the lineup and setting the table. Trout has less support around him, even with Albert Pujols back to swinging the bat well. From a team standpoint, each player is pushing a team that’s played below preseason expectations and keeping them in a tight playoff race. I think the combination of superior numbers, tougher park and more playing time favor Cabrera, but Trout’s relative impact on the team is high enough that I could be moved by a strong September.

That covers the two big candidates. But like presidential politics, some third-party choices are hoping to angle their way for our attention. Fielder deserves a high finish, but we’ve covered the fact he’s not most valuable on his own team. The next choice would be Josh Hamilton at Texas, who seemed to be running away with this award for the first half of the season until a staggering slump in July put him behind the eight-ball.

Hamilton’s numbers are as follows: .355/.585, .290/38, 114/89. Taken overall, they are a little behind Cabrera, in spite of the fact that Texas’ park is as good for hitters as Detroit’s is bad. And he’s got another Top 10 candidate on his own team in Adrian Beltre (.353/.546), while David Murphy has numbers that are close to MVP-caliber (.401/.515), but with 361 at-bats just hasn’t played enough to merit a high finish in the voting. Hamilton’s year has to be downgraded from MVP to very good.

The Yankees will push Robinson Cano, and at .366/.544, .303/28, and 71/80, he deserves a shout-out. But those run production numbers are low given the lineup he’s in, and the ballpark is the most hitter-friendly one we’ve covered yet. Believe it or not, New York has not produced an MVP since 1985 with Don Mattingly (although in spite of my loathing of this team, I thought Derek Jeter deserved it in 2009), and there’s no reason Cano should end the string.

Now we come to the name everyone will laugh at, but hear me out first. It’s Toronto’s Edwin Encarcion. Playing in a lineup where his one support, Jose Bautista, first slumped and then got hurt, Encarcion has quietly put up a monster season–.383/.570, .286/37, 95/84. Yes, Encarcion has 37 home runs. The problem, at least for me, is not the team being out of contention (though given some preseason expectations of contending, the Jays 60-74 record certainly doesn’t help). It’s the DH issue. When a player doesn’t play half the game he needs to elevate himself well beyond the rest of the field. Encarcion’s year is great, but it’s not well above and beyond.

There are two serious candidates from the starting pitching ranks and that would be Felix Hernandez and David Price. Hernandez is 13-6 with 2.51 ERA and 204 IP. This moves him ahead of Justin Verlander, who has the same innings and almost the same record, at 13-7, but a 2.73 ERA and has the aforementioned pitching environment. Price is 17-5 with 180 IP and a 2.54 ERA, while leading a staff that’s singlehandedly pitched Tampa back into the AL East race. Of these three, I would be inclined toward Hernandez because of the value of innings pitched.

And if Seattle can get to .500 (they are currently 66-70), I’m inclined to give Hernandez my vote. The workload he’s taken on is huge and he could be fairly said to have carried a team toward a significant achievement. Of course they still have to get there—just as Detroit and Los Angeles still have to make the playoffs to achieve their goals, and like Seattle, both teams are little bit on the outside right now. But my top three would be King Felix, Cabrera and Trout in that order as we hit the final month.