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Beltre for MVP

Posted by SBG on Wednesday, August 25th, 2004 at 2:19 pm

Today, ESPN has been touting Adrian Beltre for MVP of the National League. Beltre hit his 40th home run last night, tops in the NL. The Dodgers are in first place in the NL West and seem likely to be headed to the playoffs. Sounds good! Adrian Beltre for MVP!

Forty home runs on a playoff team is one criteron for consideration. Let's look at some other numbers.

Player AB HR AB/HR RBI RBI/AB AVE. OBP SLG.
Bonds 287 35 8.2 79 3.63 .369 .612 .819
Rolen 436 31 14.1 110 3.96 .326 .413 .617
Pujols 468 38 12.3 96 4.88 .323 .407 .643
Edmonds 400 32 12.5 86 4.65 .303 .419 .633
Beltre 461 40 11.5 94 4.90 .334 .380 .646

Now, let's project Bonds at 400 ABs, the least number of any other player on this list.

Player AB HR AB/HR RBI RBI/AB AVE. OBP SLG.
Bonds 400 49 8.2 110 3.63 .369 .612 .819
Rolen 436 31 14.1 110 3.96 .326 .413 .617
Pujols 468 38 12.3 96 4.88 .323 .407 .643
Edmonds 400 32 12.5 86 4.65 .303 .419 .633
Beltre 461 40 11.5 94 4.90 .334 .380 .646

Look! Barry Bonds would be winning a triple crown! The fact is that Barry Bonds has almost .200 higher OBP than any other player on this list. Subtract .193 from Jim Edmonds' OBP and you have .226, lower than every other qualifier in the NL by at least 41 points.
The closest to Bonds on this list in Slugging Percentage is Beltre (who is in fact, 2nd in the NL). Subtract .173 from Beltre's slugging and you have Brian Giles, who is not a bad player at all. He's just 35th in the NL in slugging.
Consider the following when thinking about RBIs.

Player RBI AB w/ Runners On AB w/ Runners in Scoring Position
Bonds 79 119 57
Rolen 110 225 131
Pujols 96 207 107
Edmonds 86 195 120
Beltre 94 208 122

I�m gonna call a situation when there are runners on base as a good RBI chance and a situation when there are runners in scoring position a really good RBI change. I realize that the second is a subset of the first. Let�s look at a ratio of RBIs to good and really good chances. Let's see how this stacks up.

Player RBI RBI/Good Chance RBI/Really Good Chance
Bonds 79 .664 1.386
Rolen 110 .489 .840
Pujols 96 .463 .897
Edmonds 86 .441 .716
Beltre 94 .452 .770

What does this all say? Well, it appears that Rolen, Pujols, Edmonds, and Beltre are all about the same when it comes to capitalizing on scoring opportunities. And Bonds is way out in front of all of them.

So, go ahead and tout Adrian Beltre for MVP. Just don't look too closely at the numbers, or you might change your mind.


This entry was posted by SBG on Wednesday, August 25th, 2004 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. It is one of 928 entries by the author. We are no longer accepting Letters to the Editor on this post. Why?

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