MVP Predictor-7/28/10

This week's MVP Predictor update

AL Standings

Rank Player Previous

1 Cabrera 1

2 Hamilton 2

3 Morneau 3

4 Cano 4

5 Youkilis 5

6 Beltre 8

7 Swisher 11

8 Guerrero 6

9 Konerko 7

10 D. Young 15

Out: Longoria (9), Crawford (10)

NL Standings

Rank Player Previous

1 Votto 2

2 Pujols 1

3 Howard 5

4 Huff 7

5 A. Gonzalez 3

6 Holliday 4

7 Hart 11

8 Prado 10

9 Wright 6

10 Dunn 9

Out: Ethier (8)

Notes:

-Cabrera increased lead to over 2 1/2 points over Hamilton.

-Votto's huge week (12-26, 1.231 OPS) not only retakes the lead over Pujols, but jumps to a commanding 10 point cushion.

-Players climbing fast (last 7 days):

AL: Delmon Young: (17-32) 1.418 OPS

NL: Aubrey Huff: (10-26) 1.176 OPS

MVP Predictor-7/21/10

Crazy week in "The Predictor" standings...lots of shuffling in the NL and a new league leader!

A couple of questions to ponder this week:

How much should the team's record play into a player's MVP score?

How much should the player's 2nd half totals play into their chances? How about their Sept/Oct totals?

Here are this weeks rankings:

(I'm leaving the scores off because its too hard to format)

AL

Rank Player Previous

1 Cabrera 1

2 Hamilton 2

3 Morneau 3

4 Cano 4

5 Youkilis 5

6 Guerrero 6

7 Konerko 8

8 Beltre 9

9 Longoria 11

10 Crawford 7

Out: Swisher (10)

NL

Rank Player Previous

1 Pujols 2

2 Votto 1

3 A. Gonzalez 4

4 Holliday 9

5 Howard 11

6 Wright 3

7 Huff 7

8 Ethier 6

9 Dunn 5

10 Prado 10

Out: C. Gonzalez (8)

Notes:

-In the AL, Cabrera remained in the lead despite a strong week by Hamilton (13-26)

-Cabrera's lead slipped from 7.73 points last week to a mere .77 points this week...could we see a new leader next week?

-Morneau remains in 3rd despite being placed on the DL for a concussion and not seeing action since July 7

-As the Cardinals pass the Reds in the division, Pujols also passes Votto for the NL lead. St. Louis leads Cincy by 1/2 game...Pujols leads Votto by .23 points. Its creepy how similar their stats are.

-Ryan Howard holds the week's biggest jump thanks to a big week (9-24, 4 HR's)

MVP Predictor-7/14/10

Here's the official midseason prediction, even though it is a repeat of the first two players my high-tech formula spit out. Miguel Cabrera and Joey Votto continue to lead the race in their respective leagues. However, Albert Pujols cut Votto's lead in the NL in half in the last week and looks to be making a charge. Some big questions for the 2nd half include...

Will the Reds and Padres continue to hold on to division leads to give their hitting superstars a chance at the MVP?

Will Vladamir Guerrero's body hold up during the 2nd half of the season to propel a Texas team that looks to be getting stronger with the addition of Cliff Lee?

Here are this week's standings:

American League

Rank Player Score Previous

1 Cabrera 200.18 1

2 Hamilton 192.05 3

3 Morneau 189.35 2

4 Cano 184.39 4

5 Youkilis 181.54 6

6 Guerrero 179.77 5

7 Crawford 176.38 11

8 Konerko 175.35 7

9 Beltre 172.65 8

10 Swisher 171.82 12

Out: Longoria, Hunter

National League

Rank Player Score Previous

1 Votto 186.37 1

2 Pujols 183.16 2

3 Wright 175.47 3

4 A. Gonzalez 174.15 4

5 Dunn 172.42 9

6 Ethier 171.99 6

7 Huff 171.87 8

8 C. Gonzalez 171.21 11

9 Holliday 168.83 10

10 Prado 168.05 5

Out: Rolen

MVP Predictor update

Here are my MVP predictor updates, as of 7/7/10:

AL:
Player: Score: Change:

Cabrera 197.57 -

Morneau 189.35 -

Hamilton 188.75 -

Cano 182.18 -

Guerrero 182.00 -

Youkilis 179.79 -

Konerko 172.27 -

Beltre 170.86 -

Hunter 170.06 -

Longoria 169.61 - Dropped out: None

NL:
Player: Score: Change:

Votto 184.25 -

Pujols 177.43 -

Wright 175.93 -

Gonzalez 171.39 -

Prado 170.55 +3

Ethier 170.03 -

Rolen 169.12 -2

Huff 167.74 -

Dunn 166.67 -

Holliday 166.48 - Dropped out: Corey Hart

Nick Blackburn

While following yet another disappointing showing by Nick Blackburn on GameCast, I decided to spend some of the time investigating the pitch selection of the Twins struggling starter. Here's what I came up with:

Blackburn threw 62 pitches on Saturday.
53 Fastballs (including 3 cutters)
9 Off-speed

That comes out to 86% of all pitches were of the fastball variety.

Of the 6 hits he gave up (2 doubles and 4 homeruns), 5 of the 6 (83%) were put into play by fastballs, which only makes sense since that's what he mainly threw.

Two things are fascinating to me:
1) Four of the Tiger batters saw only fastballs. Three of them (Ordonez, Guillen, and Avila) hit homeruns. The fourth (Santiago) hit a double.

2) In Nick's first start this month (6.1 IP, 9 H, 7 R (4 earned)) against Tampa, he threw...drumroll please...85% fastballs (& cutters). In his stellar month of May, he threw less than 80% fastballs & cutters and over 13% changeups. This month's changeups...less than 5%.

If you look at Nick's Pitch type and value on fangraphs.com, you'll see that his sinker (fastball) is his best pitch by far (1.7w) and that his changeup is his worst (-1.4) for the month of July. However, if you go back to the month of May when he went 5-0 with a 2.65 ERA, you see that his fastball value was 7.1w and his changeup an unspectacular -1.0w.

To conclude: He's throwing less off-speed, which is making his fastball more predictable, and therefore more hittable. I'm not saying that he needs to get batters out using his off-speed, because his career numbers show us that he gets batters out by throwing his fastball. What he needs to do is throw the off-speed more often to keep hitters off balance, otherwise you're punching your ticket to LA to throw in the Home Run Derby.

MVP Predictor

Alright...move over Bill James and Rob Neyer. I have created the next award prediction tool. For those of you who get your MLB info and stats from ESPN.com, you may have seen the Cy Young Predictor that James & Neyer came up with to predict who has the best chance at winning the league's Cy Young award based on each player's current stats. They developed their tool based on which pitchers won the award in previous years and what baseball writers tend to base their votes on.

Well, after many days and weeks of research (pretty much just last night), I have come up with the MVP predictor to determine which player currently has the best chance of winning this year's Most Valuable Player Award. It calculates a players value based on the following criteria: Team Wins, Hits, Runs, Home Runs, Runs Batted In, On-Base Percentage, Batting Average, and On-base Plus Slugging.

Why come up with such a tool? Doesn't the award go to the best player that season? In fact it doesn't, ala Alex Rodriguez's 2002 season where he accumulated 57 HR, 142 RBI, and an OPS of 1.015 and finished a distant 2nd to Miguel Tejada's 34 HR, 131 RBI, .861 OPS.

Well, the voter's look at more than just the player, as we all know. The team's performance also comes into play. A glimpse at the standings in 2002 shows A-Rod's Rangers finishing in last in the AL West, an incredible 31 games behind Tejada's Athletics, despite the incredible season by the Rangers' SS.

So, can we just take the best player off the team with the best record? Not so fast. Fast forward just one year to the 2003 campaign where we again see Rodriguez having a stellar year, only to see his Rangers again finish at the bottom of the division, 30 wins less than the league leading New York Yankees, who finished 101-61. The great Yankees surely had the MVP that year, right? In fact it was one of the closest MVP races in history, with 48 points separating the top three candidates when the dust settled. This year, Rodriguez received the award, with.....Carlos Delgado (3rd place Blue Jays, 15 games behind the Yankees) finishing in 2nd. Finally, we see Jorge Posada of the Yankees in 3rd, even though his team ended up with the best record in the league and making it all the way to the World Series.

So, what have we learned? The MVP race is somewhat unpredictable, but voters seem to weigh heavily on two areas: your team's finish in the division and OPS. So...I have developed a tool to help predict the winner. I won't reveal the formula for my methods (you never know, it might become famous and I'll make a little money on the side because of it). But I will give you who I believe will win the award as of the end of June.

My MVP's through June are:

Miguel Cabrera & Joey Votto

Scoring is shown below:

AL Rank Player Score
1 Cabrera 188.40
2 Morneau 186.44
3 Hamilton 183.19
4 Cano 183.10
5 Guerrero 180.86
6 Youkilis 176.74
7 Konerko 169.50

NL Rank Player Score
1 Votto 177.01
2 Pujols 175.86
3 Wright 172.05
4 Gonzalez 168.50
5 Rolen 167.57
6 Ethier 162.50
7 Hart 161.22