Contraction Comments, AL MVP Race

Well, the World Series is over. And I don't want to talk about it.

Not because it wasn't a great one -- it was. Not because I'm unhappy with the outcome, because I am.

I don't want to talk about it because on those few opportunities I get to write a column, I like to at least try to say things no one else is saying. And I really don't have anything unique or new to say about the World Series.

And as for contraction, I'm madder than a tiger in a rabbit cage (just made that up, do you like it?), but a fellow named Jim Caple on ESPN.com said it all better than I could: Read this.

Plus, I wrote a column about contraction six months ago that still basically holds up: Read this if you want. Don't read the second part though. It's a little, ahem, out of date.

I just have to add: If contraction goes through, it's time to revoke the anti-trust exemption on major league baseball. The only way to get these evil, self-serving plutocrats to listen is to threaten to keep them in check through competition.

The anti-trust exemption exists because Congress recognized many years ago that major-league baseball is not just another business, it's a community institution that should be stabler than the whims of the free market would allow. But MLB is clearly being run as if it were a business, and nothing more -- meanwhile MLB is extorting the communities it pretends to serve for tax money and free stadiums.

Well, fine, MLB, if you make that bed, you're going to have to lie in it. You want it to be a pure business, you'll have to deal with what businesses deal with -- market-driven competition. You might have to contend with a competing league and fight in each market for the fans. How'd you like that, huh?

In fact, thinking about it further, this solution could really clear up a lot. The essential problem with baseball economics for the last 10 years has been MLB's neither-here-nor-there status in the marketplace, hasn't it? It has been making decisions like it's a full-blown, coldhearted corporation, because everyone has forgotten that it isn't, that it's actually partially a community institution protected by the antitrust exemption.

Because it's a community institution, it gets to exploit a privileged legal status for all it's worth. And most of the time it does so by telling bald-faced lies about their economic status and then begging for money. In this article, the always-reliable Baseball Prospectus gets into the economics of it all much deeper than I will.

The point is, MLB is a hopelessly spoiled and sheltered baby, sucking on the silver spoon of anti-trust exemption that we, the public, have given it, and then using our trust and love against us for its own selfish benefit. It's times like these when you cut the cord and watch, filled with worry, as the child goes out into the real world.

You know the kid will come back, with skinned knees and black eyes, and when it does, you know you'll take it back and support it again. But you know it'll be wiser this time around, with a humbler attitude and a knowledge of where the food it eats is coming from. This latest selfish tantrum by MLB has me thinking that some tough love is long overdue.

Moving On ...

OK, before my head explodes with anger, let's talk about the AL MVP race instead. It's a doozy this year. That is, it's a difficult choice, and will probably go to the wrong guy.

Bret Boone will probably win it. And on first glance, he certainly seem to deserve it: .331, 37 HR, 141 RBI from a second baseman is nothing to sniff at. He may not be the best hitter in the league (that would be Jason Giambi), but that kind of production is too rare from a middle infielder to pass up.

Except that there's another second baseman in the league who might have had a better year. It's close, but Roberto Alomar pretty clearly beats Boone in everything except RBI. Unfortunately, MVP voters historically have a big ol' ? um ? affinity for RBI, and don't really like to think about it too much more deeply than that.

But since we're smarter than MVP voters (it's not hard to be), let's think about it more deeply. Boone has superficially better power numbers than Alomar, who managed 20 HR and 100 RBI. And Boone beats Alomar in slugging percentage too, .578 to .541.

But Alomar was better at getting on base, with a .415 OBP to Boone's .372. Hmm. That makes it a little harder to decide between the two.

Let's look at some cumulative stats, ones intended to sum up a player's entire offensive contributions. These are available on ESPN.com, so they're not too esoteric.

OPS = On-base percentage plus slugging percentage. Considered the best quick-and-dirty way to sum up a player's offensive contributions. It doesn't account for stolen bases and a few other things, so it's not perfect.

RC = Runs created. This is computed by an extremely complicated formula that essentially sums up, predictably enough, how many runs were "created" by all of a player's offensive contributions.

OW% = Offensive winning percentage. This tells you what a lineup of nothing but the player in question would accomplish. A lineup of nine Mike Piazzas would end up with a wining percentage of .718, therefore Mike Piazza's OW% is .718. Again, this is a complicated formula perfected by a bunch of statheads, so I'm sure it is much more reliable than anything I could come up with.

OK, let's take a look at where Alomar and Boone fall in these cumulative categories:

        OPS (League Rank)  RC (League Rank) OW% (League Rank)

Alomar .956 (7th)      138.38 (4th)        .773 (5th)

Boone  .950 (8th)      133.73 (7th)        .728 (9th)

Hm. Even if you can find a chink in the armor of these cumulative stats, you have to admit that that says something. All of those stats are close enough that you wouldn't want to say Alomar definitely had a better season offensively than Boone: The difference of five runs created over a season of 162 games is tantamount to splitting hairs.

But by the same token, you can't say that Boone definitely had a better offensive season than Alomar. They're about even. Alomar's better speed and on-base ability makes up for Boone's edge in power.

OK, you might say, but remember that Seattle plays in a pitcher's park, while Cleveland plays in an essentially neutral one. And you're right, that's a factor. But apparently not a large one: Let's look at the home/road splits for these two players:

                     BA  OBP  SLG

Alomar at home     .326 .404 .497

Alomar on the road .325 .425 .585


Boone at home      .322 .355 .580

Boone on the road  .339 .389 .576

Alomar seems to have a more power on the road, and Boone seems to have a bit more on-base ability on the road. Probably those are just due to chance. What this definitely tells us is that Boone's numbers were not hurt by his home park, and if they were, Alomar's numbers were hurt worse. So it's a wash.

Moving on ? who's better defensively? Boone won a Gold Glove in 1998, and by all accounts, is pretty good. Alomar has won nine Gold Gloves already, and by all accounts, is the best of our generation. Not much argument there.

Well, OK, you might say, but clearly those 141 RBI of Boone's mean something. He's gotta be better in the clutch, which has to help his case.

Actually, the stats indicate otherwise. Look at their averages with men on base, with men in scoring position, and with men in scoring position with two outs:

                     AB   BA  OBP  SLG

Alomar men on       249 .406 .473 .675

Alomar scor. pos.   132 .424 .479 .629

Alomar s.p. 2 outs   42 .333 .491 .595


Boone men on        322 .311 .353 .525

Boone scor. pos.    202 .302 .350 .490

Boone s.p. 2 outs    94 .234 .351 .391

I don't have to tell you that this probably says something, namely, that Alomar was much better than Boone in the clutch. So how did Boone end up with 41 more RBI? Note well the at bats with men on. Boone had the opportunity to drive men in much more often, despite having essentially the same number of plate appearances (Boone: 690; Alomar: 677).

Does this mean Boone had some magical ability to get up in the right situation? No, it means that the hitters in front of him had a magical ability to get on base and in position for Boone to knock them in. He spent the first half of the year batting behind Ichiro (.381 OBP, 56 SB on the year), John Olerud (.401 OBP) and Edgar Martinez (.423 OBP), and ended up with 84 RBI before the All-Star game. Toward the end of the year, Boone often batted third, behind Ichiro and whoever felt like batting second, and drove in 57. Still quite good, of course -- but anyone could do that batting behind Ichiro.

But Alomar batted third much of the year, behind Kenny Lofton (.322 OBP) and Omar Vizquel (.323 OBP). There's a huge difference between the paltry RBI opportunities afforded Alomar and the smorgasbord of opportunities afforded Boone; I think it's safe to say that Alomar's RBI total is very impressive considering what he had to work with, and actually, all things considered, more impressive than Boone's.

I'm not saying all this to trash Bret Boone. He had a terrific year, and was possibly one of the top five most valuable players in the league. I love the guy, and I love the Mariners. All I'm saying is that Roberto Alomar had a better year, which means Bret Boone is not a deserving MVP.

So is Alomar a deserving MVP? Maybe. But my personal choice is Alex Rodriguez.

That's right, Alex Rodriguez, of the 73-89 Texas Rangers. You know why I don't care that the Rangers stunk? I've said it before, and I'll say it again. And I'll keep saying it and saying until they throw me in the nuthouse: The MVP is an individual award. As such, it doesn't matter what your team accomplishes, it matters what you do.

I know, this idea seems to run anathema to the principle rule of baseball: that the team matters more than the player. I agree with that principle wholeheartedly, and I believe it's why a championship ring does, and should, mean a hell of a lot more than an MVP trophy. But since MVP trophies go to players, not teams, a player's accomplishments should be considered independent of those of his team when deciding the MVP.

It just doesn't make sense. How can you punish Rodriguez, the individual player, for the rest of his team's ineptitude? Rodriguez did everything humanly possible to help his team win. Have you ever trying to help someone who just couldn't be helped? That's Rodriguez with the Rangers.

The Rangers didn't lose because Rodriguez was anything less than an MVP-caliber player. The reason the Rangers lost is immediately obvious: they had one of the worst pitching staffs in recent memory, with a 5.71 team ERA (second-worst was Detroit with 5.01). How was Rodriguez supposed to help that? Learn a curveball and go out there and pitch?

I'm still trying to get my head around why people think a team's performance matters in the MVP race. Maybe people presume that there are some "intangibles" that Rodriguez must have lacked. After all, if he was an MVP, why didn't his team succeed?

This is a load of crap, of course, stemming from the fact that people think that individual players have much larger stakes in their team's success than they really do. I've written about this many times before, including extensively in this column, but in brief, baseball is a team game to such an extent that no player ever single-handedly adds more than 7 or so wins, over the abilities of an average player, to a team's total. When you've got a lineup of nine guys and a starting staff of five guys, that's just how it is.

In other sports, one player can have a much larger effect on a team's success. Going from Trent Dilfer to Brett Favre might buy you a championship. Going from Mickey Rivers to Babe Ruth won't. Not unless you also have Lou Gehrig and Earle Combs and Tony Lazzeri and Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock and etc. etc.

It's not about the number of players you have on a roster, it's about the proportion of the stake that each player has in a team's success. Babe Ruth ends up with about as many at-bats and plays in the field as Earle Combs, essentially having the same stake. Brett Favre makes many more plays and is responsible for much more of a team's success than Corey Bradford. Both are starters, but Favre's role, by its very nature, is much more pivotal. It's just the nature of the sports.

In this column I estimated, rather unscientifically, that the most influence one baseball player can have in a team's success if about 8 percent. You can do a lot with that 8 percent, but it's still only 8 percent. If you had the best 8 percent in history, and the other 92 percent was a bunch of Aaron Myettes and Rob Bells, well, you'd find yourself on a 73-89 team, just like A-Rod.

Maybe it's also because people feel weird about rewarding someone on a terrible team. I suppose I can sympathize with that. It's odd to see some who suffered through a season of failure get a coveted award. It makes it seem like there is more value in individual accomplishments than there really is.

Well, then, if we're admitting that individual accomplishments are not really that important in a team game, maybe we should put our money where our mouths are and abolish individual awards. We wouldn't do that, of course, because, as much as we want to be team-oriented at all times, sometimes we just love the player.

So we end up bastardizing the MVP my making it a muddle of individual and team factors. Look, as long as we keep sight of the fact that individual accomplishments pale in comparison to championships, there's nothing wrong with giving a little individual love. Love Alex Rodriguez, hate the Rangers. They're together, but they're separate too.

Maybe I should actually get to his credentials. A-Rod was the second-best hitter in the league, behind Jason Giambi. He played in 162 games, totaling 161.44 runs created, traling only Giambi's 173.15. (Third was Jim Thome with 143.02.)

A-Rod was third in OPS by a small margin and fourth in OW% by another small margin, so it's not like resoundingly the second-best hitter in the league, the way Giambi is resoundingly the best. But he played in 20 more games than Manny Ramirez and six more than Jim Thome, which I believe gives him the edge.

What clinches the MVP for A-Rod is that he's a shortstop and a good one. I don't think I need to tell you that a shortstop who hits 52 home runs is a heck of a lot more valuable than a first baseman who does. Recent history notwithstanding, shortstop is not an offensive position. Even nowadays, unless you have one of the few big boppers (Garciaparra, Tejada, Jeter), any offense you get from your shortstop is a bonus. With A-Rod it comes to a huge bonus.

A-Rod really doesn't have a chance though. He's already deserved about three MVPs but keeps getting them stolen away by each year's RBI leader. When he loses this one, he should give Aaron Myette and Rob Bell a few punches in the gut. After all, they lost him the MVP.

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