MVP Runner-Up: A Baseball Novel

Many folks who make their living, or spend unhealthy amounts of their free time, in the baseball world have loved the game since they were children. When we weren't playing little league, we were collecting cards, watching games, or hearing the roar of the crowd in our head as we circled the bases after an imaginary shot to dead-center cleared the wall in game 7.

Some of us, when forced to leave the field at night, merely read about the game, and may have stumbled upon the novel "Rookie" by Jerry B. Jenkins. For those that haven’t read the book, it chronicles the childhood and coming of age of a gifted boy named Elgin Woodell whose father happens to be a drunk, violent ex-big leaguer. The narrative of baseball combined with life and the detail of how it shapes the little things in Elgin’s world as he grows to love the game, despite the darkness his father brings into his and his mother’s life, makes for a moving tale.

While I can’t recommend the book highly enough to those who have a young child, I have some serious problems with the facts presented by Jerry B. Jenkins relating to Elgin’s MLB career. Here is a screen grab from Rookie’s Epilogue that shows some of Elgin’s career statistics and accolades:

• His career started at age 14.
• He started out playing 1B and was only 5’9" and received an average of 2.2 AB/game. Either he started about 60% of the 72 games and pinch-hit in the others or he was pulled for defensive reasons. (I think it was poor management to let defense at 1^st base drive a decision to deprive him of 1.8 AB’s game when he was hitting .310, and 27% of his hits went for extra bases.)
• He didn’t grow at all from ages 14 to 15.
• He grew 3 inches and raised his batting average 45 points between his age 15 and age 16 seasons(we all endured growth spurts and know this is not possible).
• He lacked the arm strength to play SS as a 17-20 year old, yet was able to develop it as a 21 year old. (By age 17 He was a 3-year veteran in the Big Leagues and his arm strength wasn’t developed to the point of being able to play SS?).
• He never played 3B following his turn at SS despite being a career INF. This would only be acceptable if he moved to CF (plausible given that he hit between 8-11 triples/season during that time).

Ok, so these are some small, quibbling problems. Beyond that, we know practically nothing about the teams that Elgin played for during his career. Maybe there was a star player blocking him at SS early in his career, maybe the other infielders in his age 14 season were incredibly accurate and didn’t mind a 5’9" first basemen who had failed to go through puberty. However, we can safely assume some very basic facts about Elgin’s career:

Regulation games were in fact 9 innings.

Elgin probably got up to bat around 4 times a game.

Elgin probably didn’t hit an inordinate amount of sacrifice bunts or sacrifice flys.

So, utilizing these very simple and safe assumptions, I have expanded Elgin’s batting lines to infer the number of BB’s per season (PA-AB-SF-SAC), and the number of PA’s that would lead to extrapolating his SLG and OBP. The expanded numbers look like this:

Age	HT	Wt	Pos	G	PA	AB	R	BB	SF	SAC	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	Avg	OBP	SLG	OPS
14	5’9"	165	1B	72	176	158	17	14	3	1	49	10	3	0	20	0.310	0.358	0.411	0.769
15	5’9"	174	1B	160	636	571	84	56	7	2	197	29	10	0	100	0.345	0.398	0.431	0.829
16	6’0"	188	1B	158	635	570	119	55	9	1	222	45	9	7	118	0.389	0.436	0.537	0.973
17	6’1"	190	2B	156	619	556	120	53	9	1	223	44	13	24	115	0.401	0.446	0.656	1.102
18	6’2"	195	2B	156	617	554	116	53	9	1	226	41	10	27	121	0.408	0.452	0.664	1.116
19	6’3"	205	2B	155	596	535	118	55	6	0	205	39	12	33	105	0.383	0.436	0.686	1.122
20	6’3"	208	2B	153	595	534	112	55	6	0	208	38	13	32	104	0.390	0.442	0.689	1.131
21	6’3"	208	SS	160	615	552	116	57	6	0	205	36	9	41	118	0.371	0.426	0.692	1.118
22	6’3"	208	SS	159	626	562	114	57	6	1	207	39	8	44	120	0.368	0.422	0.701	1.123
23	6’3"	208	SS	160	604	542	122	50	10	2	223	47	9	43	130	0.411	0.452	0.769	1.221
24	6’3"	208	SS	158	613	550	119	56	7	0	219	46	12	51	162	0.398	0.449	0.804	1.252
25	6’3"	208	SS	158	626	562	144	56	7	1	230	47	11	49	167	0.409	0.457	0.794	1.250
26	6’3"	208	SS	160	653	586	119	56	10	1	215	45	10	40	146	0.367	0.415	0.683	1.098
27	6’3"	208	SS	114	439	394	80	35	10	0	166	33	8	30	83	0.421	0.458	0.774	1.232
28	6’3"	208	SS	155	719	646	140	63	9	1	256	50	13	58	171	0.396	0.444	0.783	1.227
29	6’3"	208	SS	161	712	639	161	62	10	1	274	55	20	67	188	0.429	0.472	0.892	1.364
30	6’3"	208	SS	160	707	635	150	64	7	1	263	51	21	62	189	0.414	0.463	0.854	1.316
31	6’3"	210	OF	157	647	581	141	54	10	2	239	40	11	49	170	0.411	0.453	0.771	1.224
32	6’3"	215	OF	159	637	572	137	58	6	1	227	41	8	48	161	0.397	0.447	0.748	1.196
33	6’3"	215	OF	156	614	551	93	55	6	2	218	43	9	45	162	0.396	0.445	0.751	1.196
34	6’3"	215	OF	157	623	559	94	54	10	0	217	40	8	40	145	0.388	0.435	0.703	1.138
35	6’3"	215	1B	156	637	572	104	58	6	1	209	38	9	42	141	0.365	0.419	0.684	1.103
36	6’3"	215	1B	151	616	553	95	51	10	2	191	35	6	40	131	0.345	0.393	0.647	1.040
37	6’3"	216	1B	140	628	564	104	54	9	1	193	30	5	37	120	0.342	0.393	0.610	1.003
38	6’3"	216	1B	141	619	556	71	56	7	0	185	31	3	37	101	0.333	0.389	0.599	0.988
39	6’3"	219	1B	140	500	449	60	41	10	0	150	28	1	30	90	0.334	0.382	0.601	0.983
40	6’3"	221	1B	130	462	415	50	42	5	0	132	20	2	22	82	0.318	0.377	0.535	0.912
27	-	-	-	4042	16171	14518	2900	1420	210	23	5549	1041	253	998	3460	0.382	0.431	0.695	1.126

Draw your own conclusions and call for your own specific PED testing regimen, but looking at that prolific career, we would expect a fair amount of accolades to be given to Elgin Woodell.

Accordingly, we have the following:

In Elgin’s age 20 season he had won 4 consecutive MVPs and the Cubs won the NL Pennant, he posted this line as a second-basemen:

	HT	Wt	Pos	G	PA	AB	R	BB	SF	SAC	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	Avg	OBP	SLG	OPS
20	6’3"	208	2B	153	595	534	112	55	6	0	208	38	13	32	104	0.390	0.442	0.689	1.131

In Elgin’s age 26 season he had won 5 consecutive MVPs and the Cubs won the NL Pennant, he posted this line as a shortstop:

Age	HT	Wt	Pos	G	PA	AB	R	BB	SF	SAC	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	Avg	OBP	SLG	OPS
26	6’3"	208	SS	160	653	586	119	56	10	1	215	45	10	40	146	0.367	0.415	0.683	1.098

In Elgin’s age 35 season he had won 7 consecutive MVPs and the Cubs won the NL Pennant, he posted this line as a first-basemen:

Age	HT	Wt	Pos	G	PA	AB	R	BB	SF	SAC	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	Avg	OBP	SLG	OPS
35	6’3"	215	1B	156	637	572	104	58	6	1	209	38	9	42	141	0.365	0.419	0.684	1.103

In each of the three seasons outlined above, Elgin Woodell hit for average and power and his team won the NL Pennant. He had all the criteria that one could ask for to win an MVP:

Lots of HR’s

Lots of Ribby's

High batting average

"Led" his team to the playoffs

Since 1931, when MVP’s were first awarded, exactly 23 seasons have occurred where a player has amassed at least the following in a single-season:

30+ HRs

100+ RBIs

.350+ batting average

In an odd piece of errata, the strike-shortened 1994 season saw 3 players go 30-100-.350 despite playing less than 115 games. However, since no postseason occurred (and no batting averages regressed), the 3 players have been removed from out data set. Of the remaining 20 seasons, the 10 players who won the MVP also played in the postseason. The 10 players who did not win the MVP also, in a not so surprising coincidence, did not make the postseason.

We are left with a very difficult story to reconcile: how did the world’s greatest baseball player, a sure-fire hall of famer by the age of 24 or so, get passed up for multiple MVP awards despite spectacular statistical seasons that fell during years where he "led" his team to the playoffs?

You could chalk it up to a lazy writer just making it so his protagonist didn’t win EVERY year (this is a human story after-all, so the perception of his performance must also be human).

But, the more obvious answer is that another player had to surpass Woodell by such a substantial margin in raw statistics that the "playoff" factor could not override the statistical gap created by Mystery Player and Elgin. There have been 163 MVP’s awarded since 1931 (One to each league, each season; and Willie Stargell and Keith Hernandez tied in 1979 giving us the odd-numbered total) and out of those 163, 115 played for team’s that made the postseason. There have been 48 players to win the MVP and not make the postseason.

I have analyzed the performance of the other players who were up for MVP consideration in each of these 48 seasons to see how big of a "gap" existed between the MVP winner who missed the playoffs and the highest-OPS performer who made the playoffs in that year. As we would expect, there is a significant difference in the performance of the player who won the MVP and failed to make the playoff (Player A) and the player who made the playoffs but didn’t win the MVP (Player B):

Player	HR	RBI	AVG	OPS
A	37.04	123.59	0.327	1.019
B	30.20	102.20	0.305	0.955
Difference	6.84	21.39	0.022	0.064

On average, an MVP-winner who misses the postseason needs to hit 7 more HR’s, knock in 21 more runners and bat 22 points higher. In terms of counting stats, that’s a solid month of production, in term's of BBWAA columns that's using the word "clutch" ~38 times depending on the player's upbringing, position and demeanor.

This leads us to extrapolate what the historic seasons that another player in the NL must have posted to beat out Elgin Woodell:

Age	HR	RBI	Avg	OBP	SLG	OPS
20	39	125	0.411	0.461	0.753	1.213
26	47	167	0.388	0.433	0.742	1.176
	35	49	162	0.386	0.436	0.743	1.179

Finally, we know roughly what a guy had to do to beat out the great Elgin Woodell for the MVP. Only problem is that there have only been 13 seasons in the history of the game that saw an OPS of 1.176 or better. The list reads as follows (in chronological order):

• Babe Ruth (1931)
• Jimmie Foxx (1932)
• Ted Williams (1941, 1957)
• Mickey Mantle (1957)
• Frank Thomas (1994)
• Jeff Bagwell (1994)
• Mark McGwire (1998)
• Barry Bonds (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004)>

A quick look at this list confirms that Elgin was beat out by some epic names and huge seasons. There weren't excellent enough seasons closely bunched with one another until the 90’s and 00’s. Could Elgin Woodell have played against Thomas, Bagwell, McGwire and Bonds? The book was copyrighted in 1991 so it couldn't have been a recounting of past performances. Instead, our only assumption is that Jerry B. Jenkins, author of the Left Behind series and numerous other religious novels, is in fact a baseball prophet and saw the future. He correctly predicted that such fantastic baseball seasons would exist throughout the next 15-20 years that even the incredible fictional seasons by Elgin Woodell paired with postseason appearances would be overshadowed by the likes of Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds.

The steroid debate may rage on, but one thing is for sure: if you want to impress the BBWAA in real-life or in a children's baseball novel, you had better hit a lot of dingers if you play on a crappy team.