Baseball Wrap Up

This is going to be a long one folks. If you have no interest in baseball, I would suggest ignoring this and waiting for later when I tell you all about a funny thing that happened to me the other day (no, I did not get to wrestle a badger).

The season ended and the Pirates obviously sucked. Lets start off with the MVP Watch. I recap their week using these stats: Hits/HRs/SB/BA/OBP/SLG/R/K/BB/Team Record for Week.

NL
Pujols: 13/0/2/.310/.388/.381/4/4/6/3-8
H-Ram: 7/1/1/.194/.326/.361/6/6/6/6-4
Fielder: 15/6/0/.326/.429/.761/9/11/9/6-6
Braun: 21/3/5/.389/.414/.648/9/13/2/6-6
Howard: 19/4/1/.365/.421/.654/11/12/5/5-8

Obviously some guys stepped up their game for the close of the season, but lets see if it helped.

Rank
Pujols: 176 (25)
Howard: 159 (34)
Braun: 155 (34)
Fielder: 154 (37)
H-Ram: 152 (24)

An abysmal week for H-Ram, which cost him a few spots. Pujols is still the leader and will probably win the MVP, so lets have a look at their final season stats (instead of team record, I will include RBIs):

Pujols: 186/47/16/.327/.443/.658/124/64/115/135
Howard: 172/45/8/.279/.360/.571/105/186/75/141
Braun: 203/32/20/.320/.386/.551/113/121/57/114
Fielder: 177/46/2/.299/.412/.602/103/138/110/141
H-Ram: 197/24/27/.342/.410/.543/101/101/61/106

If you look at those lines, each one of them is worthy of a MVP season. Hell if you blacked out those names and had to choose, it would be difficult. I do believe that Pujols wins it though. Why? If you take Braun’s and Fielder’s stats and kinda create one super player, what do you get? Basically, Albert Pujols. He does everything well. All these guys have over 100 Ks in a season, he has 64. I think Adam LaRoche had that many in a two-week period before…I honestly believe it would be hard for people to argue for Howard, when Fielder has almost identical numbers only slightly better. I wish there were some kind of weird stats out there that could combine all this stuff into one number…oh well, I guess they do not exist.

AL
Mauer: 14/0/0/.292/.460/.375/6/5/15/10-3
Cabrera: 14/4/0/.250/.344/.500/8/9/8/7-7
Texeira: 11/2/0/.324/.425/.529/6/5/5/7-3
Jeter: 13/1/4/.419/.526/.516/3/6/6/7-2
Abreu: 10/2/1/.270/.341/.541/6/10/4/6-4

Rank
Mauer: 199 (36)
Texeira: 176 (34)
Cabrera: 170 (30)
Jeter: 169 (39)
Abreu: 156 (26)

Jeter had a fantastic week, hell almost enough to surpass Cabrera. By my very scientific calculations it seems Joe Mauer should win the MVP. Let us look at the final stats.

Mauer: 191/28/4/.365/.444/.587/94/63/76/96
Cabrera: 198/34/6/.324/.396/.547/96/107/68/103
Texeira: 178/39/2/.292/.383/.565/103/114/81/122
Jeter: 212/18/30/.334/.406/.465/107/90/72/66
Abreu: 165/15/30/.293/.390/.435/96/113/94/103

The argument against Mauer is the fact that he only played 138 games this season (Abreu played 152, and as you can see, did not really come close to matching Mauer’s season). Now, I am going to propose something insane here. During our arguments recently, it seems that everyone thinks Texeira should/will win (except Ryan, who thinks Bobby Abreu is the best player in the AL). However, I believe that Derek Jeter should win the MVP. In my opinion if it were either he or Mauer, that would be quite fair.

This could come as quite a shock to many of you, but I was always one of the guys who thought Jeter was overrated. He just keeps impressing me year after year by his ability to take the things he does poorly, and getting better at them. If he wins the award over Mauer, I would completely understand and back it. Should I now look at some of those fake/made-up stats to maybe support my idea? Why the heck not, it’s my blog. There are a few stats that would put Jeter 2nd behind Mauer (such as WAR, but I will not post the numbers or anything). If you want, go to fangraphs and check it out.

Our Picks
I cannot seem to find Offord’s or Gideon’s picks anywhere on my blog or the pancake. But without reposting everything, let me just say this. I had 16/30 teams correct. I had the AL wild card correct. Kern, 7/30. Way to go buddy.

Amidst all that research, I ran across this quote from January from Gideon, regarding Jeter as a HOFer:

Blogger The Gideon said…

I refuse to accept “I thinks” when it comes to stats. DO YOUR RESEARCH, GRRRRRRRRRR. At exactly 3400 hits a player would be in 9th all time. 3420 hits would bump them up to 6th.
Besides the hits though, his stats aren’t really HOF worthy. Captain ain’t nothin’ but a title. A bunch of other people were on all those championship teams, but I don’t really see any of them getting in, except for maybe Paul O’Neill – and that’s just because the voters will be scared of the wrath that will ensue should he not make it.
Perhaps I’m just hatin’ because I’m pissed we’re still paying him all this money. He’s like the 4th highest paid player in the league. I think…

Gideon, do you still believe that?

Fantasy Baseball Results
In Ryan’s league, his friend Dave won it over Offord. Gideon beat Ryan for third place, and I unfortunately finished in fifth.

Over in Offord’s smaller league, I finished third by beating Jason I. Ryan won the league by beating Dave. Offord finished in fifth place. The BatmanObviously guys did not fair so well. Although, I do not think they paid much attention.

I suggest one league next year. I do not mind multiple leagues, but I think paying attention to two leagues burnt people out, especially if you did not like the stat set up in one league as opposed to another. Maybe next year I will commission the league. Or if we do a secondary league, it should be with crappy stats. You have to pick the worst players. Batting stats: GIDP, Ks, CS. Pitching Stats: L,BS…we can work the details out later. Obviously averages would still apply, just the other way. That could end up being pretty fun. Imagine some of those trades? Ugh, I am stuck with Albert Pujols, I will trade him for Adam LaRoche.

And that ends this ridiculously long baseball post.

Author: Ngewo

8 thoughts on “Baseball Wrap Up

  1. Damn, I forgot to post Marco Scutero’s final numbers, what are the odds that he had a better season than Abreu’s MVP caliber season?

  2. The only thing I picked this year was the Mets to finish last. I believe in the SI/Madden/Mets Are and Always Will Be a Second Rate Team curse. I was wrong. But they finished closer to last than to first, so that’s good.

    Bad stat league=nobel prize idea. I’m down. And we should also have stats that have no significance at all. Like “Holds”. You know a pitcher can get credit for both a hold and a loss in the same game? Why is it even a stat?

  3. Holds were pretty much guaranteed points for me during the latter half of the season.

    And regarding Jeter, I still have some animosity towards him. Not for the HOF induction though, that should be a given, but more so the salary part. I won’t look it up now (hypocrisy, I know), but if he is indeed the 4th highest paid person in the league, that’s just horsefeathers. Sure we’ve got the dough to burn, but that’s like saying Abreu should be the 4th highest paid player in the league.

  4. He is actually the third highest…

    I will say that he definitely has stepped up his play the last few seasons, I guess he feels he needs to earn that dough.

  5. Jeter needs the money to buy hookers and drugs. You heard it here first…

    Holds aren’t a terrible stat. How could they get a loss if they hold the lead? That is counter intuitive…Only way I can think of is if maybe they got an out while their team had the league, then they put someone on base, got pulled, then the next pitcher gave up that run they inherited, which would be credited to the first pitcher. I still don’t know if he would get the loss though?

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