Legitimate MVP, Cy Young and Rookie of the Year Candidates using fWAR and rWAR

by Chris St. John on Sep 29, 2011 12:32 PM EDT

Introduction

Now that the Major League Baseball season is over (and what a final day it was), we can start talking about who deserves what award. There is plenty of disagreement about who will actually win, whether or not pitchers should win the MVP and if candidates should come from a winning team. But regardless of all of that, who are at least legitimate candidates that we should be talking about?

Method

I like the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) framework, but each execution of it obviously has its flaws (evaluation of defense being the largest one). The two most well-known WAR statistics come from Fangraphs (fWAR) and Baseball-Reference (rWAR). So we can just average these two statistics and use that, right? Well, there still may be some error there. So I have decided to take the average of fWAR and rWAR and then create a +/- 15% error on this average. So Jose Bautista finished the season with 8.4 fWAR and 8.6 rWAR, for an average WAR of 8.5. Multiplying this number by .85 and 1.15 gives a High WAR of 9.8 and a Low WAR of 7.2. The true measurement of how well he played this season probably falls somewhere in there.

If we look at the top player's Low WAR and each of the next players' High WAR, we should find a good list of players who should be in the MVP or Cy Young conversation for their league. I don't believe that the vote should be based on WAR alone, but I do believe it is a good starting point.

Results

Craig Kimbrel will win the NL Rookie of the Year because of his save totals and because he has been really good. But let's not overlook the Nationals' pair of rookies Danny Espinosa and Wilson Ramos who have been very good this year as well. With Espinosa, Ramos, Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann and Drew Storen already in the majors and Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon on their way, the Nationals have a scary good core of very young players.

Matt Kemp should almost definitely win the NL MVP award, as his Average WAR is a whopping 1.6 points above the second highest player in that statistic. Roy Halladay and Ryan Braun are basically tied for how much value they have supplied to their respective teams.

As can be seen by the NL MVP results, the NL Cy Young is basically Roy Halladay's to lose. The one thing that gives me pause about this is his hitting ability. Baseball Prospectus's WARP takes this into account and ranks Halladay much lower than Kershaw. This year, Halladay had an on-base percentage of .145 in 92 plate appearances. Kershaw's OBP was .267 in 86 PAs. This needs to be adjusted for sacrifice bunting situations, but there is a definite amount of value difference there.

The AL Rookie of the Year is a wide-open race. Mark Trumbo has been mentioned for it, but his .291 OBP is terrible. Brett Lawrie is a definite surprise, gaining a 2.8 average WAR in only 171 plate appearances. Over a full 600 PA season that would be a 9.8 WAR, or the same value as Matt Kemp's 2011. However, the fact that he did not play all season hurts him. I would like to see Ivan Nova win the race, but Jeremy Hellickson has a much prettier ERA.

There are nine legitimate candidates for AL MVP, led by Jose Bautista and Jacoby Ellsbury. Either could win and it wouldn't be a big deal. I do find the last name on that list quite interesting, though: Alex Gordon. I had given up on Gordon this year and traded him in a dynasty league for two prospect picks. The first one I used to draft Carlos Martinez and the second will be the 15th overall selection next spring. If Gordon keeps this up, I may have lost that trade.

Justin Verlander will win the AL Cy Young this year, simply because -- as Keith Law likes to say -- he has won the narrative. However CC Sabathia, and to a lesser extent Jered Weaver, deserve to be in that conversation with him.

Conclusion

Again, I don't condone simply using WAR as a be-all, end-all for voting on awards. But I do believe it can provide us with good candidates and get rid of the bad candidates. My picks? Kimbrel, Kemp, Kershaw, Nova, Bautista, Verlander.

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Comments

The number crunching here is very well-done

But I don’t think fWAR and bWAR (rWAR, whatever you want to call it) can be treated equally for pitchers and hitters when looking at end-of-year awards. fWAR for pitchers is largely speculative, trying to identify a “true” performance level that isn’t equal to what the pitcher actually did. However, when it comes to end-of-year awards, actual performance is what should matter, or at least that’s what I think most people would say.

On the other side of the spectrum, fWAR’s hitting statistic is well-known for being dramatically more precise than r/bWAR’s. OPS+ is a statistic that probably shouldn’t exist (making a “precise,” complex, and adjusted indicator based off of a proxy? – why?), while wRC+ (or TaV or however the corresponding BP statistic is capitalized…) is about as accurate as we’re probably going to get with individual hitting statistics. Adjusting for defensive values from different metrics for hitters is great, but using the r/bWAR component of hitting performance is always going to lead to unnecessary imprecision.

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by Dan Strittmatter on Sep 29, 2011 1:19 PM EDT reply actions

fWAR for pitchers is not speculative at all,

it’s a measurement of what actually happened. It just measures things other than ERA, but that does not make it “speculative”.

by UZR Illusion on Oct 16, 2011 10:07 PM EDT up reply actions

fWAR is trying to measure total value

Yet FIP is an imprecise measure of what value should have been based off of a correlation between production (ERA) and three variables that are known to be strongly correlated, but not the be-all-end-all, of predicting production. That imprecision makes FIP, to an extent, speculation.

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by Dan Strittmatter on Oct 19, 2011 10:38 PM EDT up reply actions

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here,

but i’m afraid it looks like you are assuming ERA is a “precise” measurement of a pitcher’s value.

by UZR Illusion on Oct 21, 2011 12:04 AM EDT up reply actions

ERA is a "sort-of-precise" measure of pitcher + defense value.

If you try to pull pitcher value out of it, that’s even worse.

by ThePanda on Oct 23, 2011 12:47 PM EDT up reply actions

RA is better

Errors are very, very silly.

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by Satchel Price on Oct 24, 2011 12:27 PM EDT up reply actions

As can be seen by the NL MVP results, the NL Cy Young is basically Roy Halladay’s to lose.
My picks? Kimbrel, Kemp, Kershaw, Nova, Bautista, Verlander.

And you’re basing this off of hitting ability? For the Cy Young award?

by philsandthrills on Oct 4, 2011 12:13 AM EDT reply actions

He's basing it off Kershaw's awesomeness!

But honestly Kershaw was a good hitter for a pitcher this year, so that should be taken into some consideration. If you’re going off fangraphs, Halladay is the cy young, kershaw 2nd, but I believe baseball reference war has Kershaw higher. Going off traditional stats Kershaw did better enough to win the CY, but I could easily see and have no problem with doc winning.

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by Ivdown on Oct 20, 2011 3:31 AM EDT up reply actions

Kimbrel, Kemp, and Kershaw

Wonder how often the same first letter of the last name makes up the Big Three Individual Awards in baseball. It’s so lyrical in this case that it would be a crime if it wasn’t upheld.

R.I.P. Nick Adenhart - Always an Angel

by Kernel on Oct 10, 2011 6:04 PM EDT reply actions