NL MVP Follow Up
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I promised a follow up to my Ryan Howard piece and here it is:
Reader Joseph Mulvey from West Chester, PA writes:
Hi. I live in Philadelphia and watch the Phils religiously and keep up with the rest of MLB as best as I can. Your essay was well thought out, researched, and you made your point. It's hard for me to argue against Pujols as MVP. He is a great player and the numbers bear this out. One point that you did not consider is that Albert has Scott Rolen hitting behind him and we have Pat Burrell…
The reader directed me to an article by John Smallwood which I am seriously tempted to go into later, but to Mr. Mulvey’s credit, he did warn me first by calling it an “uncharacteristic hatchet job”. The point was that Howard was hurt by having a mediocre, or if you believe the people of Philly, poor hitter behind him when compared to Rolen. Mr. Mulvey also closed by arguing that Beltran is seriously helped by the fact he has Carlos Delgado and David Wright hitting behind him.
I’ve argued the value of protection before when shooting down the belief David Ortiz was an MVP candidate over Travis Hafner, so this is an angle that deserves to be looked at. What about the guys batting after the NL MVP candidates? Let’s take a look:
Delgado: .262/.358/.552/.910- 13th in the NL in OPS
Rolen: .302/.374/.531/.905- 15th
Willingham: .283/.365/.505/.871- tie 22nd
Burrell: .253/.380/.491/.871- tie 22nd
I did not use stats like RC or Win Shares here because I highly doubt Grady Little is sitting in his dugout saying "Wait a minute! Pat Burrell has a really high RC/Game count! He's good. Let's pitch to Howard!" Also, there is one more player to throw in I suppose, though he doesn’t immediately bat behind the candidate:
Wright: .307/.380/.547/.907
Considering that Willingham plays at an extreme pitcher’s park and Burrell at a very good hitter’s one, there is truth to the idea Burrell is the worst “protection” of the MVP candidates. However the difference is not exactly drastic enough to suggest it is forcing pitchers to not pitch to Howard. This isn’t the case of Victor Martinez versus Manny Ramirez. All four hitters are in the top 25 of hitters in the National League this year and separated OPS wise by forty points, top to bottom. A good couple of weeks can change that, as Delgado would have been near the bottom of this list about a month ago.
Along those lines, people have pointed to a higher IBB (intentional walk) for Howard and suggested it was an indictment of the protection. Stupidly, I made a counter argument without looking at the facts, something I chastise professional writers for doing. I argued the common sense rationale; that if a player is an MVP candidate and therefore one of the top ten hitters in the league, they are usually going to be bypassed in key spots. The reason is since they’re the best hitter on their team, the opposing managers will not let that player beat them. David Ortiz was the one exception of an MVP candidate who had another MVP candidate behind him, which was my reasoning why his numbers weren’t as impressive as Hafner’s.
Well here are the IBB counts for the season.
Howard: 29
Pujols: 26
Cabrera: 26
Beltran 6
Much to my delight and relief, common sense was actually correct this time. (there are plenty of times where it is not) Howard does have three more intentional passes, but Pujols missed time. If he had played a full season, he would likely be the leader on the list. Cabrera is right there as well. Only Beltran trails, and does so drastically.
This of course shows the problem with using the IBB alone as a rationale to argue for protection; it doesn’t account for manager incompetence. The difference between Carlos Delgado and Scott Rolen is negligible and for most of the year, Rolen was having a better season. While Pujols is having a better season than Beltran, up until recently the latter had an OPS over 1.000 in a pitchers park. It makes no sense that Beltran has gotten pitched to that much. It could be the fact that Wright follows Delgado as well, but I can’t see a manager worrying about what a guy two spots later will do, especially since the intentional walk normally comes with two outs in the inning. Finally Beltran is third in the NL in extra base hits, behind Alfonso Soriano and Howard, so it isn’t as if he’s not making people pay for pitching to him. That would make you think it’s the reputation of either the hitter or the protection.
But here’s the odd thing. Taking out the IBB and just leaving the regular walks; here are the walk totals:
Beltran: 79
Howard: 65
Pujols: 58
Cabrera: 54
As you can see, Beltran gets more unintentional free passes. Does it mean Beltran picks up a lot of the unintentional, intentional walks? Does this mean he just has a much better eye than the others? I’m tempted to say the former, but I’m not 100 percent sure.
But what it does say is that even if managers don’t seem respect Beltran as much as his MVP peers, pitchers certainly do. Judging by his walk count, it seems unlikely he’s getting many fat pitches to hit just because Delgado and Wright are hitting behind him.
Correspondingly, it is little surprise that of the four, nobody sees more pitches per plate appearances than Beltran. He currently ranks fifth in the NL in the stat with 4.18 pitches per plate appearance. If he wasn’t hitting for so much power, the guy would make a great leadoff hitter. As for the others, Howard is at 4.04, Cabrera’s at 3.90 and Pujols is at 3.75.
Interestingly enough, the number one player in pitches per plate appearance is none other than the much maligned Burrell- at 4.33 pitches per PA. It’s why his on base is 130 points higher than his batting average. And also suggests that despite what many Philly phanatics or sports writers think, Burrell has really helped his team out this year.
So what does this all mean? Ryan Howard being walked isn’t a sign of anything except he’s really good. And there are very few guys in baseball who could change that.
Hypothetically, there could be cases where protection can be an issue in deciding a close MVP race, but this is not one of them.
Author's Note: I should have mentioned this in the last piece, but you can find another argument based solely off RC, RC/G and Win Shares against Ryan Howard (since that was the purpose of my original piece) and for the AL MVP race as well over at: June Has Decided. I'll get into the AL MVP race (along with all of the others) next week, but you can probably guess which of her conclusions I don't agree with...
