The Awards (Dammit)

Yesterday, Alex Rodriguez was awarded the American League MVP. While I was neither shocked nor stunned by the announcement, the debate over who "should" win the award is always annoying.

Much of the debate focused on whether a designated hitter like David Ortiz should win the award, given that he does not play the field. I'm somewhat sympathetic to that argument because a good player in the field can add value to a team. The problem is that Alex Rodriguez is not someone who adds much value at the third base position. According to Baseball Prospectus, A-Rod is seven runs below average at the hot corner (and only 9 runs above a replacement player). So, all things being equal, A-Rod is actually a defensive liability. Should that be taken away from him? At least David Ortiz does not have the chance to hurt his team in the field. Luckily, A-Rod makes up for his lack of fielding with clear advantage in VORP over Ortiz (which is partially explained by A-Rod playing third base).

But what bothers me more in this debate is that pitchers are, for the most part, excluded from the MVP debate. Sure, there was Hal Newhouser and Guillermo Hernandez and Dennis Eckersely winning MVP awards in the past. However, for the most part, starting pitchers are excluded from the MVP debate because "they only pitch every five days."

What an unbelievable load of excrement. By the same logic, why shouldn't position players be excluded because "they only bat once every nine times"? While batters have an everyday impact on games, starting pitchers have a more intense impact on the games they pitch - they face every batter for seven or more innings. This is demonstrated by a two data points - batters faced and plate appearances. Chris Carpenter faced a total of 953 batters for the Cardinals this year. At the same time, Albert Pujols had 700 plate appearances. Thus, Carpenter had 36% more chances to impact his team's performance than Pujols did. If you compared two position players and one played in 162 games versus one playing in 118 games, all other things equal, you would say that the 162 game player was more valuable to the team. And that's exactly what happened in St. Louis.

You can also compare performances a little more directly. Imagine scaling back Chris Carpenter's statistics to 700 PA.

Here's Albert Pujols:

.330 AVG / .430 OBP / .609 SLG - 41 HR, 117 RBI, 97 BB, 65 K

Now, here's what Chris Carpenter held the opposition to, adjusted to 700 PA:

.231 AVG / .271 OBP / .351 SLG - 13 HR, 56 RBI, 37 BB, 156 K

If a manager ever put out a guy like that for 700 plate appearances like that, he'd be fired. Yet, Chris Carpenter did that to the National League as a whole last year - turned them all into squirming Corey Pattersons. And Chris Carpenter wasn't nearly as good in the rate-stat department as Roger Clemens, for example, who would have done this in 700 PA:

.198 AVG / .261 OBP /.284 SLG - 9 HR, 37 RBI, 52 BB, 154 K

Those are sub-Guzman statistics! Roger Clemens turned the National League into hitters worse than Cristian Guzman. And you (the pejorative "you") are trying to tell me that Roger Clemens (who face 838 batters this season) does not have the impact on his team that a position player does?

I'm not advocating that starting pitchers should always or frequently win the MVP award. In fact, I think everyone would be better off if the MVP was always for hitters and the Cy Young stayed as a pitching award. But do not tell me that a starting pitcher is not as valuable to his team as a position player "because he only pitches every five days."