I love that guy.

Pitchers can only compete on one with the hitters, WAR.

So if I am looking at things like OPS, BA, HR, RBI, WAR, VORP, UZR, etc, the pitchers generally only get 1 or 2 chances. The rest are all offensive minded.

My meausre is highly slanted toward hitting and offense, so you could say there is a penalty for pitchers, but it also should actually reflect how little the pitcher plays in the total number of games for a team. Like I said, I love Lincecum, but he is only going to play in 35 games this year. Can an MVP be a guy who has only played about 1/5 of his teams games?

I used to look at Win Shares as well before THT removed them from their stats page and replaced it with WAR. So that plays a little bit of a role when it comes to pitchers.

I would have to say CY is for pitchers and MVP for hitters/the other 8 players.

When I said “top 10” for Lincecum, that was a non-numbers related response, just throwing him in there, realizing his importance to the Giants, but not wanting to include him in the conversation. The topic is out of my league. Maybe thats an article….Pitchers and MVP….

this is how we make friends

But Sandoval is the only one I regret mentioning.

Aaron Rowand’s been solid and should finish the year at about 3.5 WAR. Above average but not great. Randy Winn’s been average overall (better if you count his clutch hitting.)

On the pitching side, Cain is now overrated, as he’s the exact same pitching he’s been the last three years, but with a prettier ERA. He’s a 3.5 WAR guy. Above average, but not great. Jonathan Sanchez is underrated by many, but is still “only” league average (5 BB/9!). Brian Wilson’s pitched quite well, but it’s tough to be really valuable as a reliever, even a closer, and he’s on pay value wise with a league-average position player. Affeldt’s nice, but a 3.50 FIP from a reliever isn’t stellar.

In other words, the Giants have one unbelievable player (Timmy) and one other who’s been great (Sandoval). A couple others have bee above-average, but not stars. I guess that was my point, but in fewer words earlier, which were obviously open to many interpretations.

Apart from Haudricourt, thats all there is.

Tom H will jump on board any day now. He may not give Fielder a #1 vote, but thats the reason for the post…is Fielder even worthy of a top 5 vote?

Where do you put him?

Can a player from a team that isnt very good be considered?

Fielder and Braun are both at 3.8 WAR right now. You take either of them off of the Brewers and the 09 Brewer season is not dramatically altered from what it is right now. In fact, there are 7 position players above those two who are having better years according to WAR.

The poll above shows that what my thesis is about Fielder, at this point in the season is true (albeit unscientific), that he would finish about 5th in MVP voting.

If a player bats .500 in a certain situation, how many runs would he contribute if he played in that situation an average amount of times. That would take out the opportunity issues of WPA.