Fire Thomas Boswell

Although I haven't read much of Thomas Boswell's work, I know him by name as something of an authority figure among newspaper columnists who write about baseball. Then I saw a post he made on the Washington Post blog yesterday. Since the estimable Fire Joe Morgan has boarded up the windows, let's take a crack at this one.

MVPs: Howard & K-Rod, Not Pujols & Pedroia

Not off to a very good start here. Feel free to quibble with Pedroia, I guess, but Pujols was pretty much the hands-down selection in the NL, and anyway Boswell's alternate selections are kind of appalling.

Thirty years ago, I created the statistic Total Average. Now I'm almost ashamed to have been one of the original baseball geeks. Where did we go wrong?

Clearly your Total Average statistic didn't account nearly enough for "saves records."

This week, Albert Pujols won the NL MVP Award. Why? Mostly because he had a better OPS and VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) than Ryan Howard. Say what? Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Phils' first baseman had 48 homers and 146 RBI to Pujols' 37 homers and 116 RBI.

As "one of the original baseball geeks," shouldn't you be better than resorting to hoary clichés like "OPS and VORP? Those sound funny!"? Also, please note that your own statistic of Total Average does not take RBI into account (as it shouldn't), and furthermore that it favors Pujols by a margin of 1.278 to 0.885. This isn't even close! And you're going to lean your entire argument on home runs (Howard admittedly hit a lot of them, although he didn't hit much else) and RBI? Fucking RBI? Were you hit on the head on your way to the office yesterday?

Earth to my baseball writing buddies: We all love the new numbers, but lets not worship false idols. When I published my Total Average numbers, I'd always emphasize that while stats were wonderful, common sense was better. When stats WILDLY contradict common sense, always doubts the stats. In the case of the goofy gap between Pujols' VORP of 96.8 and Howard's 35.3, my reaction is "Time to revisit VORP. If it can be this wrong, it's not as good as I tought it was."

Several [sic]s in that paragraph. Anyway, no. When the stats wildly contradict a "common-sense" notion that most thinking people have already realized is bullshit - namely that RBI is the best judge of a player's individual value, which anyone with half a brain can realize is wrong simply by thinking about how much individual input a player has into whether or not there is a man in scoring position when he bats (that is to say: zero) - then it goes to show you even more that that "common-sense" notion is, in fact, incredible bullshit.

It's said that, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a modern baseball writer, unfortunately, reality often looks like an excuse to apply statistics and then torque our opinions to fit them.

Ryan Howard is a fine player. He was also hitting under .200 as late as May 21, and under .230 as late as August 29. Average doesn't tell us much, of course - Howard's OBP on August 29, when he was hitting .229? Oh, it was .321. For most of the season, Ryan Howard was Mr. Three True Outcomes (homer, walk, or strikeout). This is a charge that is also frequently leveled at Adam Dunn, who was hitting just .241 on August 29. The difference? His OBP was .389. (Albert Pujols' BA and OBP on August 29, for good measure: .356 and .464.) All this is reality. Not reality: "Albert Pujols was a worse player than Ryan Howard because he had fewer at-bats with RISP."

All of the encompassing offensive stats __and there's little difference between Total Average, Runs Created, OPS and others__ run the risk of overvaluing walks and singles while undervaluing the bases-clearly game-changing power of extra base hits. So, sometimes, you have to underline the obvious; for example, a first baseman with 146 RBI is "more valuable," especially when he plays on a first-place team, than a first baseman (Pujols) with 116 RBI on a fourth-place team.

Siccity sic sock. This paragraph makes me sad, because it proves that Boswell does not even understand the statistics he's referencing. OPS, a raw addition of OBP and slugging percentage, is often criticized by statheads for overvaluing slugging. The Wikipedia entry for Total Average notes that it intentionally overemphasizes walks... and extra-base hits. You created that statistic, T-Boz. Also, feel free to look at the raw slugging number, which emphasizes the "game-changing power of extra base hits": Pujols .653, Howard .543. How about just a raw count of extra-base hits? Pujols had 81; Howard had 78. Oops! Honestly, you didn't look any of this up at all, did you? You saw the RBI number and you ran for a keyboard.

We then get into the whole "quality of team" idea, which is another mark for Pujols, who did not play with Jimmy Rollins or Chase Utley or Pat Burrell or Jayson Werth or Cole Hamels. In addition, the Cardinals had more blown saves than any team in baseball this year, while the Phillies had a closer who blew no saves. Give the Cardinals Brad Lidge and they might very well have made the playoffs, and then where's the argument? I guess it's Pujols' fault for not taking the mound in the late innings often enough. If you're the best player on that team you should be carrying them to the playoffs any way you can, goddammit!

Let's get another thing straight: Ryan Howard had a very good September, but that doesn't mean he carried the Phillies to the playoffs by himself. Chase Utley's enormous April and May - a period in which Ryan Howard was about as valuable to the Phillies as I was - were at least as important. How can sportswriters, especially those of Boswell's pedigree, get sucked so easily into such lazy decisions as wanting to call a guy an MVP because his one really big month happened to be the last, as though wins in September count double?

Oh, you've got more?

Don't analyze beyond that.

You'd like that, wouldn't you?

True, Howard can't field (19 errors). And Pujols outhit him by .357 to .251. Howard strikes out a ton while Pujols walks constantly. But none of it outweighs Howard's RBI total, built on his .320 average with runners in scoring position. For what it's worth, Howard wasn't even in the top half dozen in baseball in runners-on-base when he came to the plate. His 146 RBI wasn't a fluke. He's Mr. Multi-Run Homer.

Ryan Howard did, in fact, hit .320 with RISP. In all, he hit .309 with men on. He also hit .196 with the bases empty. Now, there are three possible reasons for this. One is that Ryan Howard actually walks to the plate when no one is on and says, "Shit, who cares what I do right now? If the bases aren't juiced I can't help the team effectively. I might as well strike out." Which he did 111 times with the bases empty, well over half his total Ks. And then, conversely, he comes up when people are on and says, "Now I'm going to hit a home run, to live up to the nickname that Thomas Boswell gives me in a mid-November column in the Washington Post." Reason #2 is that it just might be easier to hit when runners are on because most pitchers are not looking to put you on with a walk and have to throw more strikes. Reason #3 is that it's just statistical noise. For his career, Ryan Howard hits .266 with no one on and .282 with RISP, which is a pretty miniscule difference over 1658 at-bats.

Also, in an almost identical number of plate appearances for the year, Howard hit 22 home runs with no one on and 26 home runs with someone on. He's Mr. A Couple More Multi-Run Homers, By Chance. Also also, if you're going to give him credit for some sort of magical clutch gene that allows him to rocket balls out of the yard when runners are on, you should also consider that he hit .158 in "Late and Close" situations.

By the way, guess what Albert Pujols hit with RISP? .339. But clearly the lower RBI total is his fault, because he's the one who kept writing Skip Schumaker's name into the leadoff spot.

Ironically, Pujols complained two years ago when Howard won MVP ahead of him even though their team's positions in the standings were the opposite of this year. Maybe they should just meet quietly this winter and exchange MVP trophies. Who'd know?

Pujols was wrong to complain and came off like a whiner. Of course, he was more valuable that year (11.8 WARP3 to Howard's 9.7), but he was wrong about why, suggesting that players from non-playoff teams shouldn't win the award. It's odd that Boswell considers it okay if they exchanged trophies, though, since 2006 Ryan Howard had 58 home runs and 149 RBI, even more than 2008 Ryan Howard! And 2006 Ryan Howard actually hit .313, with a .425 OBP! Ryan Howard plays for a team that scores a lot of runs. Part of this is attributable to him, but not as large a part as Thomas Boswell wants to think.

As for Pedroia, I'd pick him over his main competitors --Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer of the Twins. Pedroia and Mauer won gold gloves at valuable defensive positions __second base and catcher. Morneau is just a first baseman. Besides, Pedroia's Red Sox made the playoffs, the Twins didn't.

And the only measure of value is your team making the playoffs. Ugh.

But in 30 years, nobody is going to remember anything Pedroia did this year. Howewver, Francisco Rodriguez saved 62 games for the first-place Angels may still be the MLB record. I know this argument is hopeless. The retort that almost always wins the debate is: "Relievers have their own award." They are not "players," as in MV"P". However, convention also holds that, if the best reliever's season utterly dominates the best season by any player, as Dennis Eckersley's did in '92, then he's the long-shot MVP.

Siccity doo. Frankie Rodriguez isn't the MVP not because he's a pitcher (Cliff Lee had a case), but because he wasn't even that valuable a pitcher. The save is an absurd stat that depends as much on context as on actual pitching performance. F-Rod had a good season, but in terms of his career it was actually right there with his worst - in his sixth full season as Angels closer, he recorded his lowest strikeout total and highest WHIP. Do you know why he saved 62 games? In large part, it's because he had 69 save opportunities. Second place in all of baseball was Jose Valverde of the Astros with 51, meaning that even 100% conversion would have left Valverde 6 shy of Thigpen and 11 shy of Rodriguez. Just like Howard's RBI totals, Boswell thinks that Rodriguez should be the MVP because of the fact that his team put him in a certain situation on a lot of occasions. I mean, obviously it's impressive that he came through all those times, but it's likely that most top-level closers (Lidge, Rivera, Soria, Nathan, Wood, Papelbon, Jenks, etc.) could get 58 saves - i.e., the record - if given 69 shots at it. There's a decent chance that Rodriguez's save record could still be standing in 30 years, but that's because 69 save opportunities is an enormous number of chances, not because Rodriguez is some kind of immortal being. I forget where I saw it, but there was some stat showing that only like four or five guys since Thigpen had even had as many as 58 save chances (i.e. enough to break the record had they converted all of them). 69 chances is a number we might not see for 30 years, hence 62 saves is a number we might not see for 30 years. That doesn't make 62 saves worthy of MVP status.

Even besides all that, the idea that a guy who pitches fewer than 70 innings is an MVP is ridiculous. It's just not enough of a contribution. I'm not even touching the idea that Rodriguez should have won because Dennis Eckersley won in 1992 (one previous vote that also might have been questionable counts as "convention" to Thomas Boswell, apparently).

I won't fuss about Pedroia over K-Rod.

"Except for just now, where I fussed about it."

But Pujols over Howard is nuts.

You are nuts. There are literally two stats in which Howard outperformed Pujols this year: home runs and RBI. And it's not like Pujols hit 15 home runs and knocked in 80. You're going to bitch about 37/116 when Pujols was such a comprehensively better player than Howard? Enormous edge in VORP, 98.7 to 36.6. Pujols was first in the majors by a long shot; Howard barely cracked the top 50. I'm sorry, I don't see that and think there's something wrong with the stat. Not when the difference is that significant. Anyway, don't like VORP? Too nerdy? How about Pujols' huge edge in batting average (106 points), OBP (123 points), slugging (110 points), his 34 more hits in 86 fewer at-bats, his 104/54 K/BB ratio (Howard's was 81/199), the fact that even with an 11-homer deficit Pujols had more total XBH than Howard? You cannot make a case for Howard that does not begin and end with "But, but, the RBIs!" And since RBIs have been thoroughly discredited as a way to seriously judge value, you are a moron.

At least Ryan got three homers in the World Series and a parade.

Which I'm guessing was more important to him than an MVP trophy, especially since he already has one anyway. Did you have a point?