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