Barry Bonds for MVP
Posted by SBG on Wednesday, July 21st, 2004 at 3:04 pm
At the all-star break, many of the online baseball columnists for major sports websites selected Scott Rolen as their first half MVP. This is, in a word, ridiculous. Sure, Rolen is having a very good year. Most of these columnists point to Rolen's high RBI total as evidence that he is valuable. Yes, Rolen is on pace for 150 RBIs, which is a large number, but not unusually large. In the previous eight seasons, four players have accumulated 150 or more RBIs. Of those four, only two won the MVP (Sammy Sosa in 1998, in what only be termed as a ridiculous result, considering how much superior Mark McGwire's numbers were, and Juan Gonzalez in the same year).
Typically, two criteria are used to determine who the MVP is. First, the player usually has to play for a team that makes the playoffs or nearly makes the playoffs (the "reason" that Sosa won in 1998). Second, the player must put up big numbers. In addition, it does not help to have a little media savvy as well (in my opinion, the real reason Sosa won).
If you accept that the San Francisco Giants are a contending team, which of course, they are, then one should look at the numbers. And when you look at any other number besides RBI, Barry Bonds is not only having a better season than Scott Rolen, he is having possibly the best season in the history of baseball.
For starters, Bonds is hitting .369 - Rolen .335, a significant difference, to be sure, but not compared to other differences. Bonds has an on-base percentage of .624, more than 200 points higher than Rolen's .412. Think about it. Bonds gets on base more than 50% more often than Rolen! Bonds' slugging percentage is .786, compared to Rolen's .600. OPS? Well, Bonds is almost 400 points ahead (1.410 to 1.012). Lop 400 points off Bonds' OPS and you have Scott Rolen. Lop 400 points off of Rolen's OPS and you have... Tike Redman.
Another way to look at this is to use another statistic called Runs Created Per 27 Outs. This statistic approximates how many runs a team would score if they had nine players exactly like Bonds (or whoever). Bonds RC27 is 20.89. Rolen's RC27 is 8.98. Normally 9 runs a game is a lot. But if you are getting beat 21-9, it's not so many. That's right. A team of nine Bondses would score more than twice as many runs as a team of Rolens. Who would you rather have.
Some have argued that because Bonds has been intentionally walked so many times, his OBP is inflated and it tends to skew his overall numbers. Fine. Pretend that his 77 intentional walks never happened. Don't prorate any of those plate appearances. He still has a slugging percentage of .786, but now his OBP is merely .516. His OPS is 1.302, still almost 300 points higher. He still has more homeruns than Rolen. (Oh by the way, if you did prorate the 77 at bats, he'd have 33 home runs. And he'd have a helluva lot more RBIs because I doubt that he's been intentionally walked with no one on base.)
By the end of the season, Barry will likely have single-season records in OBP, walks (each by plenty), OPS, and he might slug .800, which has only been done three previous times (Ruth twice and Bonds). Oh, and he already has broken his own single season record for intentional walks by 8 and has 36 more intentional walks than any other team in the league.
Loading ...
No Letters to the Editor yet.