Which player salvaged/improved his season the most?

[Reason]

Which of the following players salvaged his season the most after a rough start or improved the most after a good start? Take into consideration that statistics or raw numbers involving differences between first half and second half should not be the only criteria. For example, you might want to consider the circumstances of each player (you might weigh Pujols' improvement as more salvaging than Espinosa's simply because more was expected of Albert or you might weigh Espinosa's as higher b/c of his raw numbers improvement for a relatively shitty player, or you might vote Posey because even though he had a strong first half his second half is that much more amazing, etc.).

Using the All-Star break as a "halfway" point, here are the '1st half/2nd half' splits for the nominees:

Danny Espinosa
Pre: .232/.309/.374/.683/7 hr/27 bb/95 so
Post: .284/.333/.462/.795/8 hr/10 bb/59 so

Ike Davis
Pre: .201/.271/.388/.659/12 hr/26 bb/77 so
Post: .259/.332/.536/.868/13 hr/18 bb/39 so

Garret Jones
Pre: .268/.290/.507/.797/12 hr/37 rbi/8 bb/53 so
Post: .311/.366/.604/.970/11 hr/36 rbi/16 bb/35 so

Buster Posey
Pre: .289/.362/.458/.820/10 hr/43 rbi/32 bb/50 so
Post: .396/.476/.654/1.130/9 hr/40 rbi/27 bb/28 so

Albert Pujols
Pre: .268/.334/.460/.794/14 hr/51 rbi/33 bb/39 so
Post: .325/.375/.686/1.061/15 hr/41 rbi/12 bb/23 so

Shout out to Hanley, Torri Hunter, Pedro Alvarez, David Murphy, and a few others who barely missed the cut.

[Reason]

I'm tempted to vote Ike b/c he had the WORST of all first halves and he has been a slugging beast pretty much since the All-Star break but at the end of the day it was hard for me to ignore Posey hitting like Ted Williams. Pujols is really close for me too.

[Philaflava]

I suppose when you look at the number Posey. Giants are in 1st and nobody can understand why. He is the offense and calls a great game it seems. Pujols is probably the favorite vote because of the pressures, but he just needed an adjustment period. He has a stellar supporting cast and was expected to do this. Posey could finish with 330/25/100.

[Reason]

I suppose when you look at the number Posey. Giants are in 1st and nobody can understand why. He is the offense and calls a great game it seems. Pujols is probably the favorite vote because of the pressures, but he just needed an adjustment period. He has a stellar supporting cast and was expected to do this. Posey could finish with 330/25/100.

yea i think the best argument is for pujols b/c of his ridiculous contract/expectations/awful awful first month. if i arbitrarily made the cut-off like pre june vs post june, it'd be different. the counter to posey i guess would be that he had a VERY good first half anyway, considering his position.

i live in new yorka nd listen to WFAn though so i was really tempted to vote ike. you guys have no idea how much exposure his slump/struggles got with EVERY game/telecast/radio telecast/etc.. he struggled to get over the mendoza line for MONTHS.

[Philaflava]

Ike would be the least improved on that list. Save his GW homers dude is having a year I think most of us expected.

[alpha]

I suppose when you look at the number Posey. Giants are in 1st and nobody can understand why. He is the offense and calls a great game it seems. Pujols is probably the favorite vote because of the pressures, but he just needed an adjustment period. He has a stellar supporting cast and was expected to do this. Posey could finish with 330/25/100.

Posey is the NL MVP

[jredd109]

voted albert, even though i knew he'd get back to .300 30 and 100. he always does.

[Tommy Bunz]

I suppose when you look at the number Posey. Giants are in 1st and nobody can understand why. He is the offense and calls a great game it seems. Pujols is probably the favorite vote because of the pressures, but he just needed an adjustment period. He has a stellar supporting cast and was expected to do this. Posey could finish with 330/25/100.

Posey is the NL MVP

No he's not.
Pretty clearly Braun & McCutchen are the front runners, and there are quite a few players you could argue are #3 over Posey as well (David Wright, Matt Holliday, Michael Bourn)

[alpha]

The race is wide open. But other than cutch all those others play on losing teams.

[Gregg Popabitch]

Ike salvaged his season the most.

There was talk of sending him down to the minors for the love of god. None of these guys were as putrid as that. Sure most of the people in this poll are better hitters but in terms of salvaging their season, it's clearly Ike.

[peanut butter]

I suppose when you look at the number Posey. Giants are in 1st and nobody can understand why. He is the offense and calls a great game it seems. Pujols is probably the favorite vote because of the pressures, but he just needed an adjustment period. He has a stellar supporting cast and was expected to do this. Posey could finish with 330/25/100.

Posey is the NL MVP

No he's not.
Pretty clearly Braun & McCutchen are the front runners, and there are quite a few players you could argue are #3 over Posey as well (David Wright, Matt Holliday, Michael Bourn)

You already know this, but MVP is awarded to the best player on a winning team. Cutch and Braun may be having the better seasons, but for better or worse, Posey will be given more consideration because the Giants will win the west. You could have all but given the award to Cutch at the halfway point of the season, but since the Pirates regressed, the race got much tighter.


PEACE

[Tommy Bunz]

Thankfully that "winning" team bs is slowly going the way of the dodo, just as voting for Cy Young based off win totals has as well.

[Philaflava]

Wright has had a shitty 2nd half when you consider his monstrous first half.

[peanut butter]

Thankfully that "winning" team bs is slowly going the way of the dodo, just as voting for Cy Young based off win totals has as well.

Thats fine, but it wont change this year. Honestly I'm OK with having the Best Player discussion as opposed to the Most Valuable Player, but that isnt the topic at hand. And under the current system, Posey currently has a much better chance of winning the MVP award than Braun, Cutch, Wright or any other player having a great year for a team that isn't in contention.



PEACE

[Tommy Bunz]

Disagree. Braun and McCutchen have much prettier numbers on paper and that does matter. Braun is going to have 45+ homeruns, Posey maybe half of that.
Plus the Pirates are only 2.5 games out of the wild card; if they can stay remotely that close that will be enough for the dumb voters that think the MVP should be from a contending team, ala Ryan Howard in 2006.

[Gregg Popabitch]

Bourn or Heyward?

It's kind of sad that votto got hurt because he would probably the front runner.

[Tommy Bunz]

Bourn's been slumping though and his WAR numbers are boosted by insanely good defensive values (and McCutchen's are killed by unreasonably bad one's).

I really think Braun/McCutch are the clear frontrunners but I'm curious how much voters are going to hold the whole PED thing against him, even though he was legally cleared and is having just as good of a season as last year.

Posey is having a great season and I don't mean to take anything away from him but I can't remember the last time a hitter won an MVP and didn't have at least 30 home runs, let alone 25.

[Tommy Bunz]

:icedit:ing myself, Pedroia a few years ago but that was a pretty ho-hum year in the AL from what I remember

[alpha]

I know you're a huge WAR supporter but does it take into account fielding and in poseys case his impact as a catcher?

[Tommy Bunz]

One of the reason's I'm such a big supporter of WAR is because it combines a players contributions in almost all aspects of baseball, not just hitting and fielding but baserunning as well and then adjusted according to the difficulty of the position the player plays.
The formula for catchers is different than other position players though because you can't measure them by the same statistics.

Goes into more detail here: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/index.php/misc/war/

[Reason]

:icedit:ing myself, Pedroia a few years ago but that was a pretty ho-hum year in the AL from what I remember

and (homer alert) jeter should've beaten out morneau

[alpha]

One of the reason's I'm such a big supporter of WAR is because it combines a players contributions in almost all aspects of baseball, not just hitting and fielding but baserunning as well and then adjusted according to the difficulty of the position the player plays.
The formula for catchers is different than other position players though because you can't measure them by the same statistics.

Goes into more detail here: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/index.php/misc/war/

first of all not trolling.
I wanted to look up the WAR of some of the MVPs in both leagues in the last 10 years. left off Bonds for obv reasons.
Vlad(2004) 5.2
Morneu(2006) 4.0
Howard(2006) 5.0
Rollins (2007)6.0
Arod (2007) 9.2
Pedroia(2008) 6.8
Pujols(2009) 9.4----highest non Bonds WAR, fwiw.
Mauer(2009) 7.6
Hamilton (2010)6.7
Votto(2010) 6.7
Braun(2011) 7.7
Verlander(2011) 8.3

**interesting fact that I forgot. Giants players won 5 MVPs in a row. And A's players won 2 of 3. .

and these are your current NL MVP candidates WARs
1. Wright (NYM) 5.9
2. Braun (MIL) 5.8
McCutchen (PIT) 5.8
4. Bourn (ATL) 5.6
5. Molina (STL) 5.3
6. Posey (SFG) 5.2

Felt like looking this up since I'm bored,stoned and have nothing to do. I like WAR as a stat. But I like that MVPs in MLB and the NBA count the importance of a player on a winning team. You take away Cutch or Posey from either team and they're both middling teams. Call them 1a/1b, I'll leave it to the voters. "Most Valuable" and "Best Player" aren't mutually exclusive IMO.

[Tommy Bunz]

I'm always up for honest discussion about this subject.

The reason I don't like disqualifying players for the MVP because they play on non-competitive teams is because it will be held against them later. Hall of Fame voters always look at MVP awards and MVP votes. Having an MVP on your shelf means to the average person/sportswriter that you were the best player in your league that year. Looking at a players MVP votes throughout their career gives a good overview of how that player was compared to their peers. The way that MVPs are voted on and the way they are evaluated down the road should be the same.

The other thing is that it also punishes players who dedicate their lives to shitty teams. What if Babe Ruth played for the Philadelphia Athletics? Would it be right for the best player to ever play the game to not win the games best award because of where he played?
I think that the vote should go to the player on a competing team only in the case where there are two really great but very equally deserving candidates.
Its called most valuable player, not most valuable player who is lucky enough to play for a good team. My $.02.

[Tommy Bunz]

And those are Baseball Prospectus WAR, here are the leaders according to fangraphs (which is the better version imo)

Ryan Braun - 7.0
David Wright - 6.5
Andrew McCutchen - 6.3
Michael Bourn - 6.3
Jayson Heyward - 5.8
Chase Headley - 5.8
Buster Posey - 5.3
Yadier Molina - 5.3

The difference between the two versions of WAR is the way they calculate defense (fangraphs uses UZR which I think is the best defensive metric out there). Unfortunately now that ESPN has made a deal with BP to use their stat on ESPN's sites, its probably now going to become the standard.
Either way they all have the same players, just in slightly different orders.

[Reason]

Bunz and alpha MVP/WAR discussion top five civil and informative back-and-forths ever, son. SPORTS BAR >>>>>>>>


It is uncanny how much tommy and I agree here right down to fan graphs WAR > baseball prospectus or baseball-reference WAR

[alpha]

I've got a bit of a hangover right now, but hey im off today. Anyway, first thought is that is Braun having a season worth 1.7 victories more than Molina and Posey? Seems like that discounting the catchers impact on the game(ie, calling pitches, defense).

Your POV makes sense on MVP, I would say that is giving too much credit to baseball writers. If it took them so long to get Santo into the hall, I wouldn't put too much faith into them looking at MVP voting. and by "them" I mean the lazy ass old guard hall voting baseball writers.

[Tommy Bunz]

I've got a bit of a hangover right now, but hey im off today. Anyway, first thought is that is Braun having a season worth 1.7 victories more than Molina and Posey? Seems like that discounting the catchers impact on the game(ie, calling pitches, defense).

Your POV makes sense on MVP, I would say that is giving too much credit to baseball writers. If it took them so long to get Santo into the hall, I wouldn't put too much faith into them looking at MVP voting. and by "them" I mean the lazy ass old guard hall voting baseball writers.

I don't know if you read that fangraphs link i posted but here's what it says about how they figure a catcher's defensive value

Since there is no UZR data for catchers, the fielding component for catcher fWAR is calculated using two parts: the Stolen Base Runs Saved (rSB) metric from the Fielding Bible, and Runs saved from Passed Pitches (RPP). This accounts for a large portion of a catcher’s value, although pitch framing is not yet included in WAR.

How a catcher calls a game will forever be impossible to measure unfortunately. But anyways fangraphs has Posey as a plus defender, but the real reason that there is such a major difference in value between the two is that Braun is a plus baserunner and Posey is in the negatives, Braun has a larger power output and he's having the best defensive season of his career (which admittedly may not be completely real).

Regarding your second point about the old guard, I agree with you that a lot of the voters suck asshole but they are notorious for clinging to old school measures like MVP awards, wins, rbis and the like. This is the reason why it took 15 years to get Bert Blyleven in the Hall; their main argument against him being that he had never won any Cy Young or MVP awards. Even though he had some of the best stats of any pitcher in history (12th in Career WAR, 5th in total strikeouts, 27th in total wins, etc).
It's also the reason Tim Raines has gotten barely any support for the Hall despite being one of the best leadoff men in baseball history. He never got any MVP support because he spent the prime of his career in Montreal on shitty teams. His highest MVP finish was 5th in a year he hit .298 and stole 90 bases. He had four other years where he put up WARs between 6.1 and 7.3 and placed 11th, 12th, 7th and not at all in the MVP voting.

[Reason]

tim raines is def hof-worthy. overshadowed by rickey no doubt

[Philaflava]

If I didn't know any better I'd think a few of you were still virgins.

[Tommy Bunz]

you know the forums in trouble when the administrator is trolling