Mike Trout needs his own thread

morbs otm

A run in the first inning counts just as much towards the final score as a run in the ninth inning.

A lead in mid-May is not the same as a lead on Oct. 2.

Leverage in the course of a season is just as meaningful as leverage over the course of nine innings.

that's definitely completely wrong though

Then explain how.

I can accept dismissing both as specious--a run is a run and a win is a win--and I can also accept placing value on both. But saying one is meaningful and the other doesn't exist, that makes no sense to me at all.

because runs in a single game and wins over a single season are obviously different functions? the only reason anyone cares about leverage as a statistic is because it's related to observable, statistically significant skill. "season-wide" leverage is a team skill and "team skills" are not relevant over multiple seasons worth of data.

leverage index also takes into account a bunch of other factors that don't equate to a season of baseball. if the only factor was "this guy does better in later innings" then yeah, it'd be pretty meaningless.

you're comparing a season of 162 games to a single game of 9 innings, i don't really know how else to explain that they don't match up

I'm off to watch the Vietnam documentary--I will try to get my head around that, but I still don't see why, in at least a general sense, the two aren't comparable. If you took two players with virtually identical season stats, and the one guy's monster month was April and the other guy's was September, I don't think there's a GM or manager who wouldn't prefer having the September guy. Everyone remember Yaz's finish in 1967; famous Aprils aren't famous for very long.

This did come up in an e-mail I sent to James a few years ago. For what it's worth (not very much, I'm sure, seeing as he's old and cranky and says dumb things about Donald Trump):

I remember we used to have people in the field who would fume about late-inning homers being counted as more important than early-game homers, etc. We just hadn't worked out a coherent way to think about the problem. Eventually we all came around to the concept of "leveraged" situations, a concept with which people are comfortable, so people stopped bitching about game-time performance being given additional weight. It's not unreasonable to think that late-season performance in a pennant race is ALSO leveraged performance, and should be given weight.

you're gonna make me repost that tweet about the nazis aren't you

not all leverage takes place *late* in the game btw

highest leverage, that is

also i thought we were talking about wins, not "a lead"

late-game and late-season "matter" more but it's silly to assign greater weight to them when evaluating players, since performing better or worse during those times is mostly random

and when i say late game i mean high leverage

I agree that late-season performance is probably no more a repeatable skill than clutch hitting at the game level--you could probably find a very occasional player who reliably hits better in September, but with the great majority, it probably fluctuates from season to season. When voting for an MVP, though, I don't think it's unreasonable to take late-season performance into account, anymore that it's unreasonable to remember Carlton Fisk or Bill Mazeroski or Jose Bautista. They didn't win those games single-handedly--stuff happened in the early innings that mattered, that led to what they did--but we remember them most, and give them extra credit.

And just like all high-leverage situations don't happen late in the game, there are inflection points throughout a season. If you face your main divisional rival in a four-game series in June, and both teams are tied, a four-game sweep could change the direction of the season.

I don't think we're going to agree here. The analogy between leverage at the game and seasonal level seems plain as day to me; they're very different to the rest, or most of the rest of you.

no i think that analogy made perfect sense

i just think individual awards should go to the guys who played the best over the course of the season, without respect to leverage. i would need to have the feeling that the attribute i am using to influence my hypothetical vote is one over which the player has some sort of control, can improve at, etc. trying to strip randomness (and sentimentality in general, i guess) out of the equation seems like the right idea to me

if leverage is that important to the MVP, someone should go back over previous award winners and see who played for dominant teams that were far enough ahead of the rest of the league their late-seasons games didn't really matter...and then we should retroactively PUNISH those players

i'm sorry, joe morgan, but we need to talk about your 1975 MVP award. and also your broadcasting career

(i'm mostly just taking the piss here - if there isn't a clear deserving MVP winner, which is often the case, the deciding factors often turn to recency bias, and late season games are definitely part of that. that's probably not objectively the best way to go about it but it's very understandable.)

Yes--when I say it should have some weight in MVP voting, I really only mean in close votes, or with extraordinary September finishes like Yaz in '67 (who obviously would have won anyway), Caminiti that one year, Manny with the Dodgers, etc. Joe Morgan gets to keep his '75 award, the '76 one too. What got me started down this road was Judge--that if were to be a close vote between him and Altuve (which I don't think it will be), I would want Judge's comparatively poor second half to be weighted into the vote. Except now Judge is scrambling that up even further.

in the event of a tie, it comes down to whoever is tallest

the mvp playoff showdown, this sunday, two men will stand back to back on the pay per view special event of the decade, who is the tallest, aaron judge or jose altuve? tune in and find out

i hear one of them is particularly tall while the other is particularly short, this is gonna get interesting

you know what, i don't care that judge has some natural height advantages and has gone undefeated in every single tallest person showdown that he has ever participated in. my money is on this hotshot jose altuve kid who has never entered a height contest but nonetheless possesses great bat speed and an instinct that can't be taught. he's the underdog for sure but i think his skills translate.

ppl who are 'into' leverage for these awaaaahds tend to look at WPA

Trout 5.1
Altuve 3.6

(Judge not in top 10)

Eighth youngest to reach 200 HR:

Mel Ott -- 25 years and 144 days
Eddie Mathews -- 25 years and 242 days
Albert Pujols -- 25 years and 257 days
Jimmie Foxx -- 25 years and 266 days
Mickey Mantle -- 25 years and 279 days
Alex Rodriguez -- 25 years and 289 days
Frank Thomas -- 25 years and 360 days
Trout -- 26 years and 54 days

(So he's actually within a calendar year of being the youngest.)

https://sports.yahoo.com/mike-trouts-obsession-bomb-cyclone-hot-water-fiancee-182734683.html

haha I also used to watch a lot of the weather channel as a kid

his love of meteorology has long been noted on the EW podcast

Mike Trout says on a conference call that he's not sure yet if he's going to the Super Bowl because he likes watching at home and watching the commercials.

— Lindsey Adler (@lindseyadler) January 23, 2018

sounds like an American

what a fucking geek

you'll never guess who is leading the majors in WAR

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/mike-trout-is-impossible/

if i'm not mistaken this season he's already passed 20 players in career WAR (2 of them being Votto and Kinsler.)

Oh my God pic.twitter.com/axuQLrtARv

— Sung Min Kim (@sung_minkim) April 28, 2018

Since the start of the 2016 season, Mike Trout has surpassed 67 Hall of Famers in career WAR. https://t.co/Z5udhbpXkJ

— Ted Berg (@OGTedBerg) April 30, 2018

Willie Stargell played parts of 21 seasons in the Majors, hit 475 homers, made seven All-Star teams, won the NL MVP in 1978, made the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, and was just surpassed in WAR by Mike Trout.

— Ted Berg (@OGTedBerg) May 9, 2018

with that 3.3 WAR in 35(!) games, he's on pace to pass another twenty guys in WAR before the All-Star break. not to mention being on pace for a WAR over 14(!!)

mike trout: just a fad?

Tim:
Mike Trout is 0 for his last 19. What’s going on? Is the world about to blow up?

Jeff Sullivan:
I like how he’s hitless over 22 plate appearances and his OBP is .318

welcome to the HOF (by rights)

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/mike-trout-is-now-an-average-hall-of-famer/

So he will most likely pass Utley this year, and if Pujols retires this year or the next, he would stand atop the active WAR leaderboards.

don't forget Beltre!

or Cabrera and Cano...

goddamn 'active player' on fangraphs that take away the DL or suspensed when i want to look at whole careers.

He's already passed Cano on FG, Cabrera he might do it by the end of 2019. Beltre he is still relatively far from it.

what's crazy is that despite being ~ 25 WAR behind beltre, that's like about 3 seasons of trout away, maybe even less

The way Pujols is playing, if he sticks around he might meet Trout halfway between Mike’s current WAR and his own.