shohei ohtani alert

Frankly, in retrospect, my issue isn’t Judge or MVP voters but that people believe in WAR in the era of representation learning.

xp I’m 100000% with you & said so last year at the time!

judge was better enough as a hitter to justify MVP imo

judge was better enough as a hitter to justify MVP imo

I don’t understand the question!

maybe this is boomer vibes from me but i'm cool w/ a guy who hit .311/.425/.686 w/ 62 homers, 131 RBI, 133 runs (league leader in those three categories) & 16 steals for the yankees winning MVP

fangraphs had judge at 11.5 WAR (a full 4 wins clear of the next hitter lmao) & ohtani's combined WAR at 9.4. looks like bball ref has it more at like 10.6 to 9.6 but pretty much in the same spot

pursuant to our previous discussion ohtani gets unnecessarily dinged via DH penalty but even an optimistic adjustment of fangraphs formula would at best have him tied w/ judge so i don't think it was a miscarriage of justice & frankly the right guy prob won

this year tho i think ohtani will win unanimously & there can't be any other logical vote

Yeah imagine how much better Ohtani could have done if he’d been getting the balls Judge did. 😌 never saw anyone on here who thought Judge deserved MVP have a word to say about MLB putting their hand on the scales.

iirc ohtani is on pace for 12-something bWAR, which would be the most valuable season since dwight gooden's 13.3 in 1985 (when he was 20 ffs)

tbf if you view the MVP a certain way -- i myself do not -- judge absolutely carried a 99-win yankees team, while ohtani was one of two very good players on a team that finished 33 games out of first

I'm in the camp that considers Ohtani's DH WAR hit not necessarily a penalty but the mere reality that if he did play a position, he would be a lesser hitter/pitcher because of it, esp with his injury history.

Speaking of, this is probably the longest stretch he's been healthy in his MLB career...? [citation needed]

jeez Steve Shasta how many positions does Ohtani have to play

Yeah that’s true, he could have run into a concrete wall and torn his toe.

well that's where the MLB MVP gets messy, since it's the one major sport where you really are just the sum of your parts. great players can't make anyone else better which is absolutely not the case with great QBs and LeBron Jameses and things of that nature. also you can't leverage your best guys, in the NBA you can always save your best lineup for crunch time and run the final play through your best guy, whereas in MLB it often winds up coming down to whether or not your backup outfielder can get a clutch hit and there's nothing you can do about it

I'm in the camp that considers Ohtani's DH WAR hit not necessarily a penalty but the mere reality that if he did play a position, he would be a lesser hitter/pitcher because of it, esp with his injury history.

Speaking of, this is probably the longest stretch he's been healthy in his MLB career...? [citation needed]

― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Thursday, June 29, 2023 12:19 PM (one hour ago) bookmar

oh actually I should clarify — my prior confusion about the DH penalty only applied to games where he pitched — getting the DH penalty when he’s DHing is more straightforward

Aye, in a post-NL-rule world that is odd.

This year, not even close, but absolutely would have voted for Judge last year.

I'm fine with Judge winning it last year, and barring a PED scandal or mysterious death Ohtani is pretty much a lock this year. What's interesting to think is what if a hitter like Judge wound up at 10 WAR, while Ohtani had 8 WAR hitting and 3 WAR pitching? Obviously combined Ohtani has more WAR, but Judge is clearly a better hitter, and even though Ohtani is a better than an average starting pitcher he would not be particularly great...he would be on the order of like, George Kirby or Kyle Wright. a solid rotation guy, but you could replace his spot. however that does free up a roster spot and that in itself is very valuable. I'd still vote Ohtani because he's so cool but it would definitely wind up being a very annoying debate.

I love those debates, provided no one's arguing from an I-know-the-truth-and-you're-an-idiot position.

xp idk about Kyle Wright but gotta disagree about Kirby. He’s having a really uneven year (on a terrible Mariners team mar dhea) but on his good starts he looks untouchable. His ceiling is probably not an ace but he’s definitely no 2 when he’s got a couple more years. Whole Mariners rotation has been patchy in general, actual ace Castillo has a FIP of 3.76 atm vs Kirby’s 3.26. Basically interested to see how the rotation can pull together down the second half cos Kirby is really special to watch when he’s on.

Ohtani though, you absolutely can’t discount the roster spot. You can’t discount the fact that he’s got a league-leading 12ks/9, that he’s cut his hits per 9 rate, that he had some shit starts but is generally a solid 6/7 innings guy. Having said that, his FIP looks bad, but could be related to some horrific starts he did have?

In either case, there’s not exactly a surplus of quality arms in either league atm and there’s exactly one that’s outhitting everyone else. Honestly think this is underplaying him even though we constantly hear and see how good he is.

Lmao also at him finishing 4th in AL Cy voting last year behind Verlander (ERA of 4.11/FIP of 4.22, WHIP of 1.228 so far); Cease (ERA of 4.04/FIP of 3.87, WHIP of 1.292) and Manoah (no comment). Every chance he finishes high in Cy voting this year.

I was mostly looking at Kirby from last year, just trying to find someone comprable to the level Ohtani might settle into. was just thinking "ok who's someone who's good, occassionally great, but sometimes uneven". maybe more interesting to think of him putting up 7 WAR as a hitter and 5 WAR as a pitcher, both of which would be very impressive but not exactly MVP/Cy level. curious how the voting would turn out then. like he would still probably deserve it but it might feel weird if he was like the 4th best hitter and 6th best pitcher

funny enough the album I'm listening to right now has a tune called "The Trouble with Shohei" and it would be perfect walk-up music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBEP_YkEa5Y

This made me look what his actual walkup music is
https://i.postimg.cc/bJ6g1grM/IMG-4188.jpg

The first one is some obscure act from Wisconsin whose biggest presence is on bandcamp? Unexpected but he is kind of solitary seeming?

lmao they're from Kenosha? that's amazing

I KNOW I WAS LIKE PLEASE LET FROGS KNOW THEM

I do not but I found out that apparently one of the dudes from Explosions in the Sky lives in the same building as my Mom over the summers? she asked if I want to meet him and I was like uhhh I don't know

if you pull up combined pitching WAR from 21, 22 & 23 on fangraphs the leaderboard is such

1. zach wheeler - 14.5
2. kevin gausman - 14.0
3. corbin burnes - 13.1
4. aaron nola - 12.4
5. sandy alcantara - 11.9
6. carlos rodon - 11.1
7. max scherzer - 10.8
8. gerrit cole - 10.7
9. shohei ohtani - 10.6
10. dylan cease - 10.5
11. logan webb - 10.3

i'd prob toss scherzer out of there just bcuz of his age & webb is a totally different kinda pitcher. but if you look at ohtani vs cole & cease...

K/9

ohtani - 11.54
cole - 11.36
cease - 11.49

GB%

ohtani - 43.5%
cole - 41.3%
cease - 37.0%

FIP

ohtani - 3.10
cole - 3.25
cease - 3.37

ohtani is better at suppressing homers than those two guys, he also has a lower BABIP which fangraphs doesn't see as a pitcher skill

i think if you're looking for ohtani comparables these two feel like the best ones to me... fangraphs basically has them as the same pitcher value wise the last 2.5 seasons & they're getting to their value in pretty much the same ways

Smashed a two-run homer (29th of the year!) in the bottom of the 9th, Angels lose to White Sox 7-5(!)

every time I see an Angels highlight it's like "Mike Trout hit three homes runs and raised his average to .528 while Shohei Ohtani did something that hasn't been done since 'Tungsten Arm' O'Doyle of the 1921 Akron Groomsmen, as the Tigers defeated the Angels 8-3"

— ℳatt (@matttomic) May 18, 2021

9-7, wtf, not 7-5.

14 homers in june

Breaking, according to mlb.com, the team record of 13 belonging to Pujols (June 2015), Tim Salmon (June 1996), and...Shohei Ohtani (June 2021).

at the risk of blaspheming . . . i don't feel like WAR is equipped to gauge ohtani

perhaps not too great a blasphemy considering how its defensive ratings are all over the place from year to year

tell 'em steve shasta

I think that's probably true. It's like OPS; mathematically, you can't give equal weight to two percentages with unlike denominators.

This sounds bizarre, but if baseball is 50% scoring runs and 50% preventing them, it's almost like Ohtani's hitting should be on one side and his pitching and defense on the other.

I don’t understand what you mean by that

i think it mean otani's all man

What I meant (playing off the previous post)...Right now, Ohtani's overall WAR just adds together his position player WAR (comprised of hitting plus defense, or in his case a DH adjustment) and his pitcher WAR. Baseball has two components: scoring runs and preventing runs--you need to do the first better than the second to win. So, as James has written many times (usually debunking things like "baseball is 70% pitching), pitching is exactly 50% baseball, but when you say pitching, that then needs to be broken down into the pitcher and the defense. So for Ohtani, move the defensive part of his overall WAR from the position player to the pitcher.

Do I think that's actually a good idea? Haven't a clue (or if it would even affect his overall WAR--maybe not, since it's all addition anyway). But I agree that "I don't feel like WAR is equipped to gauge Ohtani."

I kinda get it, I mean "Wins Over Replacement" is based on the idea of a "Replacement player", and the people who come up with these calculations admit that this is kind of a guess, so its conceivable that both sides are slightly off in different directions

ohtani hits every day and pitches once a week. when he hits, he gets the defensive penalty of a DH. when he pitches (and hits), he gets the same defensive penalty for being a batter, but gets a defensive boost for playing the field on the mound

Would love to have that translated into Stengelese.

do catchers get a defensive penalty for rarely fielding the ball?

I thought they got a bonus because so few people can play that position. idk how they rate catcher defense though

Re catchers they get a bonus. Re 50/50 pitching and hitting i think EW or fangraphs has the ratio significantly one way or the other

http://research.sabr.org/journals/is-pitching-75-of-baseball

Possibly old

I…think tracer was kidding?

(xpost) That looks like the kind of "insider" survey James got his start debunking: "During the winter of 1978, we sent a short, one page questionnaire to the 26 field managers and the 26 general managers and/or chief executives of all major league baseball clubs, and 26 selected sportswriters and sports broadcasters."

Whatever kind of analytic system you develop, it seems like sound logic to me that you have to start with one basic premise: winning baseball games comes down to 50% scoring runs and 50% preventing them.

right I mean…that’s just not how things work

i just think, if you're a catcher, maybe it's like try playing a real position and then we can give you a meaningful WAR

man and I thought *I* had the most extreme catcher-value related challops on ilx!

as somebody once said, 90% of this game is mental, and the other half is physical. the rest is catching