Miggy or Trout: Who's your AL MVP?

[Mantle7]

You cant really argue that. If Trout gets on hes coming around. That is a game changer. Cabrera gets on and a ground ball is hit it's a Dp. Trout gets on, he steals, and all the sudden a ground ball moves a runner to 3rd with 1 out as opposed to 2 outs and nobody on. Huge...

[BuddyBear]

well they're stats guys....they're going to swing completely the other way and will have zero influence by "x factors" such as timing of performance that i alluded to

i do some amount of analysis in my job as well and i can tell you that someone who lives and dies by what the statistics say without trying to understand they why's and the how's generally fails miserably in the business world

But that's the point. You answered your own question. They are stats guys. How do you think we know anything about our world? Everything we do is based on statistical analysis. Do you ever see anyone cite the Bible for anything meaningful. How do you think the betting syndicates work....by who they feel is going to win or through statistical analysis? This is exactly how we know who the better or "more valuable" player is through statistical analysis...not through our personal biases and random criteria. Although I appreciate your efforts and opinions, I think the points you make are not very good or even convincing for that matter (1) sportswriters rely on dino statistics. So what? So if they are wrong that makes it right? If they don't have a scientific understanding of baseball that means none of us should? I can understand like You Mad Bro who is 14...but for baseball writers??? They should be up to date with what is current in the field? Not what was used in the 19th century to evaluate players. That baseball writers have chosen to ignore sabemetrics reflects poorly on them as a group. If sabermetrics were wrong or invalid they would be dismissed by the scientific community and the reality is they are not. They are here to stay and even MLB.com (a bastion of antiquity) has begun to reference them in their reports. And so what if WAR is not perfect. It is certainly a massive upgrade in evaluating players compared with dino stats like HR and RBI. (2) And so what who has the hotter September? Since when did that become a criteria for evaluating an MVP candidate. Last I checked, the whole season was the barometer for evaluations. These beliefs that "hot Septembers" and "clutch hitting" and "momentum" are nothing more than nonsense and have no real statistical validity. The body of work is the ultimate evaluation.

The reality is that Trout is a much better player in virtually every facet of the game. To be honest, I am surprised there is this much debate.

[Chimneyfish]

I saw you didn't argue that anyone who has come up with a WAR formula is reverse engineering a metric so they can subjectively come up with a measure of performance. WAR is an interpretation....stats like avg, ops, etc are not.

That's just not true. Calculating a player's WAR is no more of a subjective interpretation than calculating his slugging percentage.

I doubt that anybody would argue that WAR is a perfect, all-encompassing statistic, or that MVP honors should be decided by a calculator. I just don't think the criticisms being made against it here are very valid. It should be used as yet another tool by which a player's performance can be quantified, the same way that Cabrera's power and average should be considered for what they're worth. There is no dichotomy between sabermetrics and the eye-test; they are two different ways of measuring the same thing.

[Chi_archie]

Trout is like Mickey Mantle mixed with Rogers Hornsby mixed with Ralph Kiner