The Shrine

The season is coming to a close this week and its been a wild ride. I played Little League ever since i was 9 and all through high school. I didnt play any college ball, although looking back it would have been neat to try for a smaller division 2 college or something. My parents werent big motivators in pushing for sports, and it might be me being delusional, but i think that maybe i could have played someplace. Anyways, the glory days are in the past, but i'm a huge fan but we dont talk about it much here and DC isnt the biggest baseball town, so i hardly get to rant about the game. Here are some of the more interesting things to have happened and the debates you will see on the sports shows this week.

- Who will win the AL MVP? Rookie Mike Trout or the first triple crown winner (maybe!) since 1967, Miguel Cabrera? Trout is a freak of a rookie who is hitting out of his shoes and can field and steal bases. His batting stats are almost as good as Cabrera, but its Cabrera who might be int he record books by the end of this week if he keeps his lead in batting average, home runs, and RBI. Now, some people argue that these stats are historic, but not exactly the biggest indicators of how good a player is as opposed to using modern day stats like OPS and WAR. Cabrera doesnt field or run as well as trout, but the Tigers will probably be heading to the playoff while Trout's Angel will not. Now, i think the MVP is a very subjective and to be the most valuable player on your team, your team should be doing well. Trout, obviously, isnt that valuable if the Angels cant make the post season with him, but then again they are in a harder division than the Tigers. This one is a tough call.

- The Orioles and Yankees are tied in the AL East with only 3 games to go. This is a big deal because the Orioles are historically terrible and havnt made the postseason in 15 years and they are tied with everyones hated team the Yankees. With the new wild card system, both teams will make it in the playoffs, but the new 1 game wild card play in is a joke and a toss up of a baseball game. You really need to win your division to give yourself any chance.

- The surprise Washington Nationals (yay!) only need to win one more game to wrap up a touch NL East. I'll probably go to the game tonight to see it happen. The east has usually been dominated by the Braves or Phillies, but this year the plucky Nats pretty much ran the table and have been in first since i think May. Again, you def want to win your division and immediately go to the divisional series and not have to worry about the 1 game wild card play-in. The Braves will probably have to Cardinals in that one game winner take all wild card game. Growing up, i was a Yankee fan because i liked Don Mattingly, but when the Expos moved to DC i switched. Northern Virginia/DC has never had a team when i was growing up and Baltimore was a little too far away to root for the Orioles.

- Will R.A. Dickey win the NL Cy Young? His knuckleball is sick this year, but thats one of the reason the 'purists' might not give him the award! I think he deserves it, and should have deserved to start the all star game, but we will just have to see. At one point, he was pretty close to the pitching triple crown in wins, strikeouts, and ERA.

This new wild card has made things nuts. Lots of teams can still sneak into the playoffs, especially from the AL. But what does it matter when if you win the WC you have to play just 1 game to advance. Thats really hard for a manager to manage his pitching staff to put you in the best position to win that game. Baseball isnt meant for a 1 game series. Regardless, atleast now it puts more emphasis on winning your division. The divisional series, this year, will be a strange 2-3 set up where if have home team advantage you actually play 2 away and then 3 home in the best of 5 games. Usually its 2 home -2 away -1 home. They did 2-3 because they fucked up the schedule and ran out of days when they added the extra wild card and 1 game play in. Next year they plan to start the season a tad earlier and go back to 2-2-1. Of course, the championship series and world series are best of 7's, not 5. I already looked at the Nats tickets prices and the usual $20 tickets would be $135 if they make the world series... i'll be broke if the Nats make a good run.

I think that I'm the only other one who actually follows baseball here.

As for your points:

- if Cabrera wins the Triple Crown, I think he gets it. Trout has insane number and any other year it's his. But the first one since '67 to do it and the fact his team makes the playoffs? It would be hard not to give it to Cabrera who has decent fielding stats too. With just 3 games left, Cabrera may get it anyways. As a consolation, I think Trout may have a decent shot at the Rookie of the Year award :-)

- Orioles are proving they can maintain it which is the real shock. After so many years of Tampa-ing it they were able to stockpile so many good players and they finally put it together this year. Good on them, now let's hope my Jays can join them in the next year or two. On a side note: I despise the one-game-playoff shit with the two wildcard teams. Should be at least a best of 3. This ain't football, it should be Any Given Friday

- Nats, like the Orioles and As, finally put it all together (except they also have a decent-sized payroll and filled in some holes with some big signings). Good on them. Baseball is proving that there really can be parity (look how long the Pirates were in it 'til they faded) with the current system in place and it's nice to see teams being able to compete (don't think KC is far behind, they have some amazing players) against the NY teams, Philly, Boston, etc.

- haven't looked at the stats in a while but is Dickey that far ahead of Gonzalez on your Nats? If their stats are relatively comparable, it'll go to Gonzalez (helluva trade the Nats made for him; gave up a lot but he's a cornerstone for a while) because they're in the playoffs.

I may try to go to a game or two in Detroit if they make the playoffs. It's a ton of fun watching games in Comerica

Last time I checked there are 8 other guys on Baseball. This isn't like Basketball where LeBron + 4 random guys can still make the playoffs easy. The Angels and the Tigers don't have the same SOS as well due to being in different divisions. I don't follow the numbers but I'm pretty sure the argument is that Cabera is NOT a good fielder based on advanced metrics which brings down his WAR. The point to calculate defensive stats is that it's pretty hard to look at someone and decide who is good at defense or not which is why they go through all the trouble of calculating everything else to figure it out.

Don wrote:Last time I checked there are 8 other guys on Baseball. This isn't like Basketball where LeBron + 4 random guys can still make the playoffs easy. The Angels and the Tigers don't have the same SOS as well due to being in different divisions. I don't follow the numbers but I'm pretty sure the argument is that Cabera is NOT a good fielder based on advanced metrics which brings down his WAR. The point to calculate defensive stats is that it's pretty hard to look at someone and decide who is good at defense or not which is why they go through all the trouble of calculating everything else to figure it out.

I'm hate WAR. It's an actuarial's dream number but in reality, don't mean too much and based way too much on subjectivity. Wins Above Replacement? There's so many factors there it's nuts and impossible to judge one player versus another....especially when you start comparing different positions with each other with some overall number that means nothing. I like certain sabermetrics (OPS, WHIP, holds, etc) but WAR is so far out there it actually means nothing at all.

Cabrera doesn't have very good range but he's very solid there, far better than people thought. There's a reason you haven't heard much about his fielding, he's actually been shockingly strong (http://www.mlive.com/tigers/index.ssf/2 ... ra_15.html). It's not like they went out there and rushed to find a way to replace him (in the field; make him a DH). To go with that kind of overall batting is just a bonus

There are a few different WAR calculators out there, too, that use different calculations. BaseballReference.com's is one, but i'm not sure the other... both are regarded with skepticism. Regardless, MVP, to me, doesnt necessarily mean you have to be the best player in baseball. Other intangibles matter like how your team is doing and how you helped contribute to that team. To be the most valuable player, you must show VALUE. The Tigers came back, in the last month of the season, from like 3 games to win their division last night and Cabrera has been on a tear. Hugely contributing. He is more valuable to the Tigers than Trout is to the Angels, IMO.

I'm pretty sure the defensive argument boils down to due to Cabera's lack of range there's plays where other people would've got it and he wouldn't be close to get it, so it doesn't look like he missed the play but a normal guy in that position could've at least made an attempt and possibly catch that ball.

I'm not going to try to argue what terminology is correct, but the WAR picture basically says batting + baserunning Trout > Cabera by a decent margin and there's no comparison on defense. I won't pretend to know how they assign those values for baserunning/batting but while I think it's the end all stat the numbers seem to be pretty sound. And we're not talking about a small difference in WAR either. I don't believe in PER either for example but LeBron has a way higher PER than anyone else does confirm his status as the top of basketball, though in this case it's easy to see with normal stats too.