What Makes an MVP?

Most Valuable Player.

For many years baseball writers have tried to define the word “valuable” in the context above and the ensuing discussion yields fascinating results. For the purposes of this post, I’m not going to consider pitchers in this discussion. I believe that they should have a bigger slice of the MVP pie but they do have their own award (Cy Young) so let’s not get too picky.

Is the most valuable guy in the lineup the one who is always on base and is always distracting pitchers with his baserunning ability, thus improving the odds for the subsequent hitters? Is it the hitter the lineup is built around, the one that other teams have to shape their entire game plan around? Is it the clubhouse leader, the one who provides all of those wonderful “intangibles” that you hear about all the time? Or is it the guy who has a good year, and then singlehandedly throws the rest of the team on his back when the calendar changes to September?

In reality, all of that comes into play (or it should) when the writers submit their ballots for the MVP award. What I am going to look at here are some statistical trivialities regarding the MVP awards of 2000-2009. Yes, I could have gone much further back than this but it gives a good snapshot of the way the voters are voting in this era. Truth be told, it was also an easy way to ensure that no pitchers were included in this analysis. If I had gone back to 1990, I would have had to include Dennis Eckersley’s otherworldly 1992 season.

So what have MVP voters valued the most over the past ten years?

Yes, offense with a smattering of defense thrown in. More specifically, MVP winners have shown up atop the rate stats more often than the counting stats, perhaps showing a little sophistication amongst the voters. Perhaps… just a little.

MVP winners of this decade have hit 40 or more home runs 11 times (out of 20 award winners) but have led the league six times. MVP winners have won 4 batting titles and have led the league in RBI only twice. Both times (Ryan Howard in 2006 and Alex Rodriguez in 2007) the winner led their respective leagues in home runs and RBI, the only times that an MVP winner has taken two of the three legs of the hitting Triple Crown.

MVP winners have led the league in on-base percentage 7 times, slugging percentage 10 times, OPS 9 times, and OPS+ 10 times while never playing fewer than 130 games. This certainly implies that in this decade the voters have favored sluggers and middle-of-the-order type hitters to leadoff hitters. In the last ten years only two players have won the MVP award from the leadoff spot of the batting order (even though one of them should have been hitting second) but we’ll revisit them in a minute.

So what was the most important statistical category amongst these players? Well, I’m not sure you can single one out and this becomes blatantly obvious when you look at the average season of these MVP winners. First and foremost, they averaged 154 games played. One of the biggest arguments against pitchers’ (serious) inclusion in MVP discussions is due to the fact that the ones who pitch the most innings (starters) only affect 30-35 games per season and the ones who pitch in late inning, “high leverage” situations may appear in as many as 70 or 80 games but they’ll only pitch 70 or 80 innings.


The next thing to couple with the amount of time they’re on the field is the average slash line; .329/.436/.616. Spreading an average OPS of 1.052 over 3,082 total games played makes it obvious why these players were in the MVP discussion. Having an OPS over 1.000 for a week is hard enough but maintaining it for 6 months, 162 games, and 550 to 778 plate appearances is an entirely different prospect.

So how do the 20 MVP award winners (won by 13 different players) fall into the categories that I listed above? Let’s find out; each player is listed with the category that they led the league in (if any). I’m adding one more category and it’s going to be first.

OTHERWORLDLY CATEGORY

Barry Bonds 2004
BA (.362)
OBP (.609)
SLG (.812)
OPS (1.421)
OPS+ (263)
BB (232)

Barry Bonds 2002
BA (.370)
OBP (.582)
SLG (.799)
OPS (1.381)
OPS+ (268)
BB (198)

Barry Bonds 2001
OBP (.515)
SLG (.863)
OPS (1.378)
OPS+ (259)
BB (177)
HR (73)

Barry Bonds 2003
OBP (.529)
SLG (.749)
OPS (1.278)
OPS+ (231)
BB (148)

Yes, Barry Bonds gets his own category and the reason is simple. Of the MVP winning seasons from 2000-2009, not a single one of them posted an OPS within 100 points of Bonds’ worst season of 2003, when his OPS was 1.278.

TOP OF THE ORDER SPARKPLUGS

Ichiro Suzuki 2001
BA (.350)
PA (738)
AB (692)
H (242)
SB (56)

Dustin Pedroia 2008
H (213)
2B (54)
R (118)

Jimmy Rollins 2007
G (162)
PA (778)
AB (716)
R (139)
3B (20)

These are three of the most suspect MVP’s of the past decade and their good batting lines were all supplemented with other aspects of their game that helped them to this title. Ichiro played Gold Glove defense in right field and gunned down runners right and left on the basepath. Dustin Pedroia was the reliable bat of the Red Sox lineup and he was also the spark plug that kept that engine running, setting the table for the likes of Youkilis and Ortiz and he also played solid defense at second base.

The most suspect in my opinion was Jimmy Rollins in 2007. I am of the opinion that if you lead your league in plate appearances and at-bats, you should also lead in hits and Rollins did not. His batting average of .296 and on-base percentage of .344 were both the lowest marks by MVP winners in the last decade and the only reason his slugging percentage was 4th lowest and not the lowest was due to his 30 home runs and league leading 20 triples. Still, his .875 OPS was the 17th best mark (out of 20) and his OPS+ mark of 119 was the lowest.

Many people said he was the cog that made that lineup as potent as it was but considering they had Ryan Howard (before he had replaced every letter of his name with a “K”) and Chase Utley, I have a hard time saying he was really the most valuable player to this team. My money has been with Chase Utley the past few years and I’m sticking with it. If I have to choose a guy to build a lineup around between Jayson Werth, Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, and Chase Utley, I’ll choose Utley every day of the week.

SEPTEMBER MASHERS

It’s entirely possible that all these players excelled in the month of September and in the case of Barry Bonds, I doubt his September splits look all too different from the rest of the year. However, I do remember one in particular who grabbed onto the award with both hands and carried his team to the playoffs.

Vladimir Guerrero 2004
R (124)
TB (366)

Nothing spectacular; his slash line of .339/.391/.598 was near his career marks (a little higher but not too much) and his 39 home runs and 126 RBI were hardly out of whack with the rest of his career. How he did it earned him the award.

In September of 2004, Guerrero was 41-113 in 30 games with 11 home runs and 25 RBI. His slash line of .363/.424/.726 was his best of the season and his 1.150 OPS was 30% better than the rest of his season and 102% better than the league average that year. To top it all off, he stole five bases without being caught, walked 11 times (the most of any month) and struck out just 6 times (the fewest of any month).

MIDDLE OF THE ORDER THUMPERS

This is by far the biggest block of winners, with 10 of the 20 seasons represented here. These are the guys that you plug into the clean-up spot (or the #3 spot) of the batting order first and then fill everyone else in around them. In case you’re curious, the seasons are in descending order of OPS.

Jason Giambi 2000
BB (137)
OBP (.476)
OPS+ (187)

Albert Pujols 2008
SLG (.653)
OPS (1.115)
OPS+ (190)
TB (342)

Albert Pujols 2009
R (124)
HR (47)
OBP (.443)
SLG (.658)
OPS (1.101)
OPS+ (188)
TB (374)

Ryan Howard 2006
HR (58)
RBI (149)
TB (383)

Alex Rodriguez 2007
R (143)
HR (54)
RBI (156)
SLG (.645)
OPS (1.067)
OPS+ (176)
TB (376)

Alex Rodriguez 2005
G (162)
R (124)
HR (48)
SLG (.610)
OPS (1.031)
OPS+ (173)

Alex Rodriguez 2003
R (124)
HR (47)
SLG (.600)

The astute readers among you will notice that there are only 7 season described above. This is simply because Albert Pujols (2005), Jeff Kent (2000), and Justin Morneau (2006) did not lead the league in any categories despite putting forth OPS’ of 1.039, 1.020, and .934, respectively.

That leaves two MVP winners that haven’t been described by one of the categories above. One of them is Miguel Tejada, who won the MVP award for the Athletics in 2002. He tied for the league lead by playing in 162 games but other than that, his batting line was unimpressive by MVP standards. His slash line of .308/.354/.508 is good for a shortstop until you compare it with some of his contemporaries and then it suffers from the comparison. He did hit 34 home runs and drove in 131 runs for a very good A’s team and he played good defense at shortstop. Add it all up and apparently you get “MVP”.

The last could very well have gone under the “OTHERWORLDLY” category, now that I think about it. This MVP hit only 28 home runs and drove in 96 runs. Good season? Yes. MVP? Not yet. This player also had a slash line of .365/.444/.587, leading the league in all three categories as well as OPS and OPS+. Outstanding season? Absolutely. MVP? Still leaving something to be desired…

Throw in Gold Glove defense as a CATCHER and you have quite possibly one of the most dominant MVP campaigns in the non-Bonds category by none other than Joe Mauer in 2009. He may not ever again exhibit the power stroke of 2009 (he’s only hit more than 10 home runs once in his other 4 full seasons and that was 13 in 2006) but he is becoming a very good major league hitter. He’s already won three batting titles and sports a career average of .327. Unfortunately, it’s only a matter of time until he is switched to either first base or DH but once he does that and his body doesn’t take the continuous beating from catching, his hitting might even reach a new level.

So what does this all mean for this year’s MVP race? Well, considering that there are several NL candidates who are leading their team’s towards potential playoff berths (Albert Pujols, Joey Votto) and considering that there’s still an entire month for Miguel Cabrera to catch Josh Hamilton, not all that much.

If I had to go out on a limb though, Josh Hamilton has been excellent for a Rangers team that shocked the you-know-what out of me and currently holds a 7.5 game lead (largest division lead in baseball) over the second place Athletics. Cabrera has been very good but the Tigers haven’t, in third place with a 65-66 record, 10 games behind the Twins.

The Reds have a five game lead over the Cardinals and if they maintain that edge and win the division, I would say that it has to go to Joey Votto. However, if Albert Pujols has a big September and leads the Cardinals to October, it would have to go to him.

Wouldn’t it?