The best example is an article written at FoxSports.com by Jon Paul Morosi. He's a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, meaning he gets to vote on these annual awards and will receive a Hall of Fame ballot in a few years. His article, titled "Miggy's MVP a good call by voters," features the following sub-headline:
"Mike Trout had a superb season, but Miguel Cabrera led his team to the playoffs."This is the crux of the Cabrera-over-Trout argument. Basically: how much "value" could Trout really have provided if his team didn't make the playoffs? Because the official BBWAA guidelines for this award are nebulous, Morosi is free to use this subjective argument. Here's how he explains himself in the article:
"In 2013, as in 2012, the question was not whether Cabrera or Trout deserved the honor. They both did. The issue, instead, was how each voter defined “value.” The official voting criteria empower us to choose the meaning of “value” for ourselves. Based on my interpretation, as one of the 28 BBWAA voters for this award, I ranked Cabrera first and Trout second."Fine. But this is where it gets really good:
"Statistically, did Trout have the superior all-around season? Yes, he did."I wish I could frame this quote and carry it around with me at all times. Let's see it again:
"Statistically, did Trout have the superior all-around season? Yes, he did."Good lord, man. Morosi outright acknowledges that Trout had the better season. He's not even going to dispute that point. So now he's got to come up with a sound reason why the player who had the inferior all-around season deserves to be called the Most Valuable Player.
"Trout is a better defender than Cabrera, and he adds value through his baserunning. But MVP voters aren’t asked to fill out our ballots based on raw numbers. We must consider the context of each candidate’s performance. We are supposed to weigh the “value of a player to his team,” as the instructions suggest. And I believe a player is most valuable to his team when he helps it win."As if Mike Trout doesn't help his team win. Good one, dude.
"In the baseball industry and among fans, team wins dominate – as they should. Boston hosted a duck boat parade for the Red Sox when they won the World Series. I’m still waiting for the first civic rally to honor an individual OPS title."A few reactions to this moronic paragraph:
1. Who won the individual OPS title? Miguel Cabrera. So deriding that statistic kind of undermines the whole "Cabrera-for-MVP" thing.
2. The Boston Red Sox winning the World Series is a team accomplishment achieved in the postseason. The MVP award is an individual accomplishment achieved in the regular season. These two things have nothing in common.
3. Team wins are obviously important. But the MVP is an individual honor. Team wins are awarded to entire teams. The MVP is awarded to a single player. Why is this such a difficult concept to grasp?
"Trout’s performance was exceptional. But what was the true value of it? In August, while a gimpy Cabrera won AL Player of the Month honors and moved the Tigers to within range of a division title, Trout amassed an OPS of 1.090 and hit six home runs. He swiped six bases and finished with more walks than strikeouts. It was another crowd-pleasing display of Trout’s breathtaking ability.
But what impact did that month’s .590 slugging percentage have on the Angels’ 2013 season? It carried some significance, surely. It had value. But was it the most valuable? In my estimation, no. That distinction belonged to the man whose ability to play at an elite level, through pain, made certain his team sprayed champagne as AL Central champions for a third consecutive year."Everyone got it? Trout had the better season, but it was mostly worthless because his team didn't make the playoffs. Well, maybe Morosi hasn't looked closely at the annual letter sent out by the BBWAA to the MVP voters, because its opening paragraph contains this critical sentence:
"The MVP need not come from a division winner or other playoff qualifier."The official guidelines for the MVP award specifically note that the MVP winner doesn't have to make the playoffs. And yet, Morosi didn't vote for the candidate he himself acknowledged as the superior one just because that candidate didn't make the playoffs.
That position is fairly indefensible on its own. What makes it downright irresponsible is the fact that Morosi wrote a column three years ago, on the 2010 AL MVP race, in which he used the exact inverse of his 2013 voting philosophy to support his MVP choice. The obvious logical contradictions between the two articles suggest either hypocrisy or severe memory loss.
Back then, the MVP choice was between Josh Hamilton (who ended up winning) and, yet again, Miguel Cabrera. Both of them had great offensive seasons, but Hamilton's Rangers won their division while the Tigers finished in third place, leaving Cabrera out of the postseason. In other words, Cabrera in 2010 was ironically a lot like Trout in 2013 -- a worthy candidate whose MVP chances were crippled by not making the playoffs.
Based on the principles Morosi laid out in his Trout article, we would expect him to have supported Hamilton back in 2010, because he made the postseason and Cabrera didn't. And yet, Morosi wrote a column in September of 2010 titled "Cabrera has MVP edge over Hamilton." Here's how he justified that position back then:
"The BBWAA, of which I am a member, acknowledges that the definition of “value” is subjective. Each individual voter must decide. And while I am not part of the MVP electorate this year, I believe a player’s “value” is best defined as how difficult he would be for the team to replace."Yeah -- this definition of "value" is entirely different from the one he used to disqualify Trout this year. In 2010, Cabrera's team finishing in third place and missing the playoffs didn't affect his value. In 2013, Trout's team finishing in third place and missing the playoffs rendered his season virtually useless. Cool stuff. Morosi elaborated:
"When Hamilton is hurt, manager Ron Washington can summon David Murphy, who would be a full-time player on many other teams. By comparison, how good would the Tigers be if they didn’t have their MVP candidate?"One could easily apply this same logic to the Cabrera-Trout debate this year. When Cabrera was hurt and terrible in September, the Tigers were still good enough to win games and make the playoffs. The Angels would've been unspeakably bad without Trout keeping them somewhat respectable. The logic that Morosi used to support Cabrera in 2010 could easily be used in the same way to support Trout in 2013. So of course he just ignored that argument and came up with a new one that supported his desired conclusion.
Another one of his pro-Cabrera points in 2010 was this:
"Take away Hamilton, and the Rangers still have a very good lineup. Take away Cabrera, and Ryan Raburn is the potential cleanup man."Again: one could say this same exact thing about Cabrera and Trout in 2013. Take Cabrera off the 2013 Tigers and they still would've had a very good lineup, with Torii Hunter, Prince Fielder, Victor Martinez, and Jhonny Peralta. Take Trout off the 2013 Angels and you're left with a sad bunch of guys led by the corpse formerly known as Josh Hamilton. Yet Morosi made no mention of this argument in his more recent MVP column, because the logic would have benefited the wrong player this time around.
Three years ago, Morosi made up a definition of "value" that justified his support for a player whose team finished in third place and missed the playoffs. This year, Morosi made up a whole new definition of "value" that justified his decision to withhold support from a player whose team finished in third place and missed the playoffs. Yes, the BBWAA lets individual voters determine the meaning of that nebulous word on their own, but that doesn't give guys like Morosi the license to keep moving the goalposts and inventing new criteria every single year.
The problem with Cabrera winning two MVPs over Trout isn't the "injustice" of that decision. They're both great players, and who really cares about a stupid award, anyway. The real problem is what these last two MVP races have revealed about some of the sport's most visible and influential writers. Those that are committed to portraying Cabrera as the more valuable player have been willing to resort to flimsy premises like "individual value is tied to team accomplishments" and "great offense renders great defense and base-running irrelevant." The intellectual inconsistency and basic misunderstandings inherent in these weak rationales undermine the credibility and authority of the writers who resort to them.
the most valuable player is the player you'd pay the most to recover via ransom were he to be kidnapped
— Jeff Sullivan (@based_ball) November 14, 2013
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