Quote: Rob Kamphausen said: i've never argued to remove stats and base the award on perception. no one asks that jeter's intangibles don't discredit arod's stats, at all.
Joe's argument for Ortiz being the MVP last year was that A-Rod couldn't be because he wasn't the MVP of his own team, thanks to Jeter and his intangibles.
You've said in this thread that you'd pick Jeter for team MVP every year, including last year, based on those intangibles.
Statistically, there was a very, very large difference between A-Rod and Jeter last year. My stance is not, nor has it ever been, that Jeter's intangibles(or anyone elses') count for nothing. It is merely that they cannot reasonably, logically remove that difference and give Jeter the edge. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that stats mean basically zip; that they have very little "value".
Quote: there's a difference between batting with 2 outs in the 8th and no outs in the 3rd, but your stats don't reflect that. picking up slack when other players on your team are injured doesn't come across any differently on the back of your baseball card.
The idea of the "clutch hitter" is something that is, for the most part, a fabrication perpetuated by those that wish to lionize their favorite players. That isn't to say that clutch performances don't exist, just that there isn't a player who performs significantly better in clutch situations every year. The same is true for the idea of the "choker". This has been the subject of numerous sabremetric publications. Baseball Prospectus has devoted quite a bit of time to it. Wikipedia mentions the study done by Dick Cramer, the seminal work on the matter, in my opinion. Incidentally, and I just noticed this, the wikipedia entry mentions Jeter and A-Rod, though part of the argument it offers is kinda poorly stated.
Even if such an exclusive ability did exist, value is based on what is done, not when. If, hypothetically, player one goes 1-4 and hits a solo homerun in the 3rd inning, tyng a game, and then player two goes 1-4 and hits a solo homerun in the 9th, winning it, they've both contributed the same value: four bases. Without player one's contribution, player two's contribution wouldn't have resulted in a win, and vice versa.
To take this concept further, if, in a season, player one hits 50 homeruns, and player two hits 40, both with identical batting average, walks, RBI, etc, with the caveat that player one's homeruns all came in the 3rd inning, and player two's homeruns all came in the 9th, player one has still provided more value, even if his homeruns weren't as dramatic or exciting.
Quote: stats never have told the whole story, and it doesn't make sense to expect them to.
Stats, like everything, have to be looked in the right context. One of the big reasons I think the stat community is often discredited is that there are many stats that have incorrectly become accepted a part of the baseball paradigm.
Quote: exactly. i would add "leadership qualities" to the comparitive whole.
But you can't compare leadership. That's the point.
Quote: well, i don't feel this should be based on fan perception. but i do feel there should be great value placed on the opinion of other players and coaches.
To a certain extent, I agree, but I think the player's interpretation of the game changes from generation to generation. At the beginning Babe Ruth's batting career, a lot of players looked down on him because of his work ethic, his poor baserunning, his long swing that produced comparatively high strikeout totals, and because he did not utilize many of the standard techniques of the day, like the slap hit, and the bunt. Tris Speaker and Nap Lajoie claimed that Ruth was in a class below Ty Cobb(Cobb himself always said that Ruth "ruined baseball") for this reason, and they clearly weren't alone, as Cobb, as hated a person as he was, received more votes than Ruth for the first Hall of Fame class.
Today, pretty much everyone, fan, player or otherwise, agrees that Ruth was superior.
