July 21, 2005
Pujols for MVP
Ok, look, I’m biased, I admit that. But to me, it seems that Albert Pujols is, at this point, the frontrunner for the National League MVP. I understand that this is a minority opinion, so let me explain why.
The conventional wisdom has Derrek Lee of the Cubs as the MVP favorite, for pretty obvious reasons. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of their stats, including where those stats rank in the NL, through July 20’s games:
| Pujols | Lee | |
|---|---|---|
| AVG | .338 (3rd) | .375 (1st) |
| OBP | .425 (4th) | .445 (1st) |
| SLG | .617 (2nd) | .741 (1st) |
| OPS | 1.043 (2nd) | 1.186 (1st) |
| HR | 26 (3rd) | 31 (1st) |
| RBI | 77 (2nd) | 78 (1st) |
| TB | 217 (2nd) | 253 (1st) |
| Runs | 78 (1st) | 77 (2nd) |
Clearly, Lee beats Pujols in nearly every category, and in fact he’s leading in all three Triple Crown categories (Batting Average, Home Runs, and RBI) as well as the sabermatricians’ two favorite stats, On-Base Percentage and Slugging Percentage. Is Derrek Lee having a better season than Albert Pujols? Yes. Yes he is. But that’s only half the story.
As great as Lee’s season has been, Pujols isn’t exactly stinking up the joint either. Albert is in the top three in every major offensive category except OBP (where he’s fourth), including the top three for the Triple Crown categories, not to mention he’s leading the league in runs scored (and isn’t scoring runs kind of the point of the game?). He’s on pace to finish the season with a .338 average, 45 HR, 133 RBI and 134 Runs—in many seasons, that’d be a slam dunk MVP year.
Nevertheless, by itself this only means that, just as in the past four years with Barry Bonds, Pujols is having the second-best season in the National League. Here’s what tips the scales in his favor: his team has both the best record and the best offense in the National League. The Cardinals are 13 games in front of the Cubs and have scored 477 runs—tops in the NL and almost 10% better than the Cubs’ 437.
“But the Cardinals have a better lineup than the Cubs; naturally they score more runs. Why should Lee be punished for his teammates mediocrity?” He shouldn’t, and the Cardinals lineup is superior to the Cubs—maybe. Last year it featured three MVP candidates in Pujols, Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen, along with the best-hitting shortstop in the NL, Edgar Renteria. But Renteria departed in the offseason for Boston, Rolen was out for six weeks with a shoulder injury and has struggled even when healthy enough to play, and Edmonds, while solid, isn’t putting up the kinds of numbers he had last year. In fact, Pujols is the only Cardinals starter hitting over .286 and the only one other than Edmonds with more than 44 RBI.
The rest of the Cubs lineup, meanwhile, isn’t that far behind. They have two starters (Lee and Aramis Ramirez) batting over .300 and three starters (Lee, Ramirez, and Jeromy Burnitz) with over 50 RBI. The Cubs actually have a higher slugging percentage than the Cardinals, due in part to the fact that they’ve hit 20 more home runs (125 to 105) than the Redbirds so far this season.
So, yes: Derrek Lee is having a slightly better season than Albert Pujols, and his numbers are slightly higher. And yes, he is carrying his team—but so is Pujols, and his team is doing better than Lee’s. Isn’t that the very definition of valuable?
Posted by alex at 03:03 AM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2005
Some observations at baseball’s halfway point
The All-Star break is next week, but the half-way mark of the baseball season—at least for the Cardinals—was yesterday. With last night’s 9-3 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Cards advanced their record to 52-30, putting them 11.5 games in front of the second-place Cubs and on pace to win 102 games this season. Which is awesome, of course.
Some observations:
- The Washington Nationals have scored and allowed an equal number of runs (340). They’re a great story and all, but they have no business being 19 games over .500. However, as Rob Neyer points out, even if they go .500 the rest of the season (as their RS/RA ratio would suggest) they’ll still finish with 90 wins, which might be enough for a playoff berth.
- At the start of last night’s games, every team in the NL East was at .500 or over, while every team in the other two NL divisions (except the division leaders themselves) were below .500. I’d have thought that the unbalanced schedule would prevent this kind of thing from happening, but I guess the NL Central and West are pretty weak divisions.
- Derrek Lee is having a monster season, no doubt, but let’s not get carried away with talk of a Triple Crown. He leads the NL in only one of the three catagories (Batting Average), and while he’s 2nd in HR and 3rd in RBI, he’s also on pace to completely shatter his career bests. It’s likely he will, in fact, set new career highs, but at this rate he’ll come close to improving his career best BA by 100 points, his career best HR total by 20, and his career best RBI total by 40—this all seems like a stretch.
- Meanwhile, in other Triple Crown news, Albert Pujols is 2nd in the NL in BA, 2nd in RBI, and 3rd in HR. Also, he’s first in Runs. And his season projections are pretty much in line with his career norms. He’s clearly the best hitter in baseball, and everyone knows it. His team went to the World Series last year and leads its division this year by 12.5 games by the All-Star break. I swear, if he gets snubbed for the MVP again…
I don’t know why it took me so long to start commenting on baseball, but I’m going to keep it up. It’s just too fun. :) And maybe I’ll even consider stooping low enough to comment on the American League…
Posted by alex at 12:47 PM | Comments (2)