2006 NL MVP: You Decide

There’s a lot to like about Ryan Howard. He’s new to the baseball world as before this season he only had roughly 350 AB’s, with most of those AB's going towards a Rookie of The Year effort in 2005. He put on a mammoth of a show for the Homerun Derby this year. He has a loveable personality that seems to be the type where he can make a friend wherever he goes. And to top it all off, he still holds the possibility to break 61 and claim what many consider to be the “true” homerun record. Howard’s 2005 and 2006 campaigns have been electric to say the least with posting a .923 OPS in 2005 and up to this date, a 1.085 OPS in 2006. We all know about the power and from what I’m told, chicks dig the long ball, but he’s not deserving of the MVP even though it’s likely he could get it with his league leading 57 bombs and 140 RBI's. But is that enough to earn him the National League Most Valuable Player award? No, that award goes to the machine who will reign supreme, Prince Albert Pujols. In this article, I plan to show a comparison of statistics and reasons why Pujols is deserving of his second straight MVP despite serious competition from Howard.

This is a close race in many ways, much closer than it should be had Pujols stayed healthy and was able to more closely match the number of plate appearances Howard saw in his major injury free season. Even though I believe Pujols to be the more valuable player, this is truly a case where you are letting a friend flip a two sided coin that you call in the air knowing the unfair advantage, either side it lands on is ok by you. Yes, I will argue the numbers and what I feel to be valuable, but I think it’s fair to look at least one common argument for the MVP Award. Let’s take the old school approach first by seeing where the teams are and how they were impacted by their respected players: St. Louis (80-69, 1st in NL Central), Philadelphia (78-73, 1 GB in NL Wildcard). The Phillies have the unfortunate luck of playing in the best division in the National League, but both teams are left with similar records and an either guaranteed playoff berth (St. Louis) or a potential playoff berth (Philadelphia.) So both are on contenders (this isn't an argument of mine as it's something I do not believe it, but I thought it was worth mentioning.)

How about issues of uneven play? Really, there are none. Looking at the splits for both players, you will fine that on the whole, they could care less about falling into the trap that are splits. (For simplicity, I will just look at OPS here as that will address the issue fine):

Name	Home OPS	Away OPS	Righty OPS	Lefty OPS
Pujols	1.129	1.091	1.137	1.035
Howard	1.063	1.107	1.161	.934

Howard is a bit more uneven, but not even close to the point where you could fault him for it (a .934 OPS tops what he produced in his RoY season overall.) There are no extreme examples of favoring for example a cozy home ballpark, only lefties, etc, so we’re still not getting anywhere with determining their value in comparison to one another.

Both being first basemen, there are no issues of the other having more value at a offensively weaker position, so let’s look at their fielding (Explanations for FRAA, Rate2, among others, can be found at the bottom of the post):

Name	FPCT	E	RF	FRAA	Rate2
Pujols	.996	6	10.59	14	111
Howard	.990	14	.941	-13	91

Based on the stats, Pujols is having a fantastic year on the field defensively, a career year. He's been well above average at his position as indicated by his FRAA +15 rating and an asset to the Cardinals in getting the big plays done. Howard on the other hand is essentially the NL’s Big Papi, except the Phillies can’t stick him at DH like the Red Sox can with Ortiz. So this lack of defense from one of the simpler positions on the field must be troubling to those who would discount a DH, because 13 runs below average for his FRAA rating shows he hasn’t been anything but a defensive sore spot for the Phillies. His 14 errors trail only Nick Johnson in all of baseball for first basemen errors.

So far, Pujols seems to be the favorite. His team is playoff bound without a doubt and he’s shown nice work with the glove out at first, but now we’re to the heart of the matter, batting. Browse virtually any message board, or just talk to a 14 year old who watches Sports Center on occasion and the likely response you’ll see/hear to the mention of Ryan Howard is something along the lines of “He’s beast!” (yes, likely that would have been typed with improper capitalization, too much punctuation and possibly a mis-spelling of “beast”… but you get the idea.)

Name	TPA	BA	OBP	SLG%	HR	2B	XBH	GDP	RBI	VORP	WARP1	RC27	RC
Pujols	581	.331	.430	.680	46	31	78	17	128	81.0	10.9	10.09	130.8
Howard	649	.313	.414	.671	57	22	80	7	140	76.0	7.9	10.02	143.6

We all know that Howard has the homeruns and the runs batted in locked up in the NL (and if he found a machine to merge him and Pujols to become one, they would capture the NL Batting Crown as an ungodly creature), but take a look at the stats. I am not denying that Howard has had a FANTASTIC sophomore season to his RoY campaign, but the main question that I ask myself is this: Are 12.8 more runs created over the course of 68 AB’s enough to justify Howard over Pujols despite his below average defense? I realize that Pujols has his faults (time on the DL, 10 more GDP’s than Howard), but for him to be so close in production to many of Howard’s numbers despite suffering an injury and missing time is quite amazing. Howard has been downright dominant over the past two months (1.214 OPS in August, an other-worldly 1.488 OPS so far in September). That still doesn't change the fact that Pujols is tied for the MLB lead in VORP and as mentioned, nearly all of his numbers are painfully close to Howard's.

12.8 runs created just due to more playing time is not enough for me to overlook Howard's defensive efforts. In the AL I have no problem with considering a DH for the MVP as it is a CREATED position, we should abolish it and go with traditional play if some choose to consider it non-eligible position. But this is the NL and you have to play defense so this is a factor in this case and one that I belives tilts the scale in favor of Pujols. Despite that though, I am interested to hear your thoughts as I can honestly see this being justified for Howard just as easily as this is a quite close race. For me though, the Prince reigns supreme yet again.

[missionhockey21]

Just a few things to note:

Originally Posted by BaseballProspectus.com, Citations, and other notes Citations: All stats provided were from either ESPN.com or BaseballProspectus.com Note: There are other potential canidates (Miguel Cabrera, Carlos Beltran, potentially even Alfonso Soriano), but these were the two that seemed most obvious and showed just how tight and interesting an MVP race can be given two players who in many ways, match up to be very similar outside of a few key difference, it's how you want to value those differences that you can determine who your personal choice for the 2006 National League MVP will be. Stats: FRAA: Fielding Runs Above Average. Rate2: A way to look at the fielder's rate of production, equal to 100 plus the number of runs above or below average this fielder is per 100 games. A player with a rate of 110 is 10 runs above average per 100 games, a player with an 87 is 13 runs below average per 100 games, etc. Rate2 incorporates adjustments for league difficulty and normalizes defensive statistics over time. VORP: Value Over Replacement Player. The number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances. VORP scores do not consider the quality of a player's defense. WARP1: Wins Above Replacement Player, level 1. The number of wins this player contributed, above what a replacement level hitter, fielder, and pitcher would have done, with adjustments only for within the season.

[Dry1313]

In sooth, I'd love to vote for Miguel Cabrera. He's carried the Marlins. But he just can't be the MVP this year, not with the year these two mammoths are having and carrying their team.

[General]

Bob Wickman.

[DirtyKash]

Excellent writeup missionhockey.

Here is my NL MVP ballot if I had a vote:
1. Ryan Howard
2. Albert Pujols
3. Carlos Beltran
4. Alfonso Soriano
5. Miguel Cabrera
6. Lance Berkman
7. David Wright
8. Jose Reyes
9. Chase Utley
10. Chris Carpenter
11. Andruw Jones
12. Dan Uggla
13. Carlos Delgado
14. Hanley Ramirez
15. Trevor Hoffman
16. Adam LaRoche
17. Aramis Ramirez
18. Garrett Atkins
19. Jason Bay
20. Matt Holliday
21. Brandon Webb
22. Rafael Furcal
23. Jimmy Rollins
24. Roy Oswalt
25. Brian McCann

[Dry1313]

Uggla should be at least top 5. You call yourself a baseball fan

[DirtyKash]

Is Bubba Crosby top 10 on your AL MVP ballot?

[Dry1313]

Actually, he's Top 15.

Shows how much you know.

Matt Stairs is #7.

[Kingdom_of_Zito]

Ryan Howard, if only because Pujols is going to win the next 10 MVPs unless Jesus or God developes in someone's farm. Seriously though. Everyone loves David Wright, but he's proven to be vulnerable to slumps and shotty defense. Miguel Cabrera plays in front of six fans during home games. Pujols is like Chuck Norris, he has no flaws. He is Albert Pujols.

[CincyRedsFan30]

Nice work mission.

Pujols clearly wins, IMO. His superior offensive performance(I can't fault him for being hurt for a short period thus having a lower Runs Created) and better defense puts him over the top. He leads in pretty much every area except HR, which again would be much closer had he been healthy all year.

So cast a vote for Jocketty Methodology yet again and stare in awe at the incredible job he did in signing a player of his caliber.

[realmofotalk]

It was the Marlins' pitching that carried that team. Miggy Cabrera is putting up relatively the same numbers he did last year when his team fell short even with A.J. Burnett, Josh Beckett, and Dontrelle Willis in the same rotation.

Ryan Howard singlehandly won ballgames with his home runs.

[redsrbetter]

Yep very nice work mission.

You said that Howard is like the Big Papi of the NL. Well I think he could be compared to Papi, but not as much as Pujols can. In fact, I think Pujols is superior to Papi. But beyond that, their comparison is imployed by the fact that they are the biggest clutch performers for this generation. Howard is clutch as well, but Pujols is insane with it. On the level as Papi? Possibly not. But he is comparable. More comparable than Howard is IMO.

My vote goes for Pujols as well. This guy has destroyed many teams and for the first time in his career, he may feel like he has had to carry a team on his back. The Cards of the last few years have been dominate. But this season, they seemed to fall apart. Pujols just carried them to the playoffs and will go as far as he can with it. Comparable to Cabrera? Not likely, as the Marlins were not expected to be close at all this season. Cabrera, Ramirez, and Uggla have been tremendous. But Pujols has almost done all of this by himself. The Cards pitching has fallen apart and tehre have been many injuries to the team as well. Duncan has been a bright spot, but other than that, it has beenthe Pujols show.

Pujols for NL MVP!

[brewersfan19]

pujols... he seems to be hitting in the late innings when the Cards need him the most.. He seems to deliver a knock out punch most times than not... plus he missed 3 weeks this year, so his numbers probably would be similiar if not better than Howard's... Pujols was on a tear before his injury... He was on record pace himself, do we all recall that! Pujols performs throughout the entire year, including being just lethal in the late months of the year too..