Neyer: Tex the MVP?

Rob Neyer, responding to Tyler Kepner’s tweet that Mark Teixeira is the de facto MVP:

No question? Honestly? Maybe Kepner just means that Teixeira will win, rather than that he should win.–

Look, Teixeira’s having a great season. Obviously. But I count, at the moment, four viable MVP candidates: Teixeira, Miguel Cabrera, and a couple of Twins.

Granted, if the season ended today, Tex probably would win the award. But if the Tigers or the Twins win the American League Central, don’t the voters have to look real hard at the best players on those teams?

–

Maybe Tyler is right. Maybe if the ballots were due today, Teixeira would win. But I’m not quite convinced that’s true. And if it is true, I’m not convinced that it’s right.

Frankly, I’m worried that the baseball writers are already conspiring to rob Joe Mauer — for the third time — of an award that should rightly be his.

There is a lot of assumed bias at play here.  Not necessarily on the part of Neyer or Kepner, but in the perception of the BBWAA and how they will vote.

Teixeira was the big positional free agent this past winter.  He landed in the biggest market.  He’s put up gaudy home run and RBI numbers for a team running away with the toughest division in baseball.  All of that adds up to the perfect storm of MVP credentials.

I agree with Rob, though.  That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the most valuable player in the league.

Neyer referenced FanGraphs for defensive stats, but there’s something else of interest there: player value in terms of dollars.  It’s a bit literal when talking about the most valuable player (and I’m sure many will agree to disagree about what value means), but it does present a balance look at what players have done.

Simply, FanGraph’s value accounts for offense, defense, positional difficulty, replacement level, etc.

What happens to the MVP race when looking at those numbers?

UZR doesn’t apply to catchers since their need for range is pretty limited so Mauer has no value in that field.  The Fielding Bible +/- system has Mauer ranked 2nd defensively among catchers this season.

There’s a few names on here that you would expect (Mauer, Longoria, Youk) and a few surprises.

Marco Scutaro probably isn’t on too many people’s radar, yet he’s put up a very solid season at shortstop for the Blue Jays.  His value in this list comes not from being great offensively or defensively, but being very good at both at a weak position like shortstop.

Ben Zobrist is an interesting case because he’s basically a utility man that has played in 108 of the Rays 116 games.  Zobrist has logged 241.1 innings in the outfield and 597 innings in the infield while posting an impressive 139 OPS+.  His lack of a true position might actually hurt him a bit in voting but his ability to play above average everywhere except shortstop (-0.2 UZR) actually makes him that much more valuable.

Probably most interesting is Derek Jeter showing up on this list six positions above Teixeira.  Offensively, Jeter is rebounding from a solid, if average, 2008.  His splits show that the new Yankee Stadium has definitely helped his home run total, which has already surpassed his 2008 total.  Most interesting is Jeter’s 5.6 UZR rating, the best of his career by far.  Thirty-five year old shortstops don’t typically post their best defensive season of their careers, but Jeter is doing just that (+/- has him at 6 as well).

Can we conclude that, at the very least, Teixeira isn’t the most valuable player on his own team?  A lot of that depends on how much value you place on UZR as a defensive metric.  +/- puts Teixeira at +2 for the season at first, 2.8 higher than UZR and enough to creep him up the list.  Also lost in these numbers is the benefit Teixeira has provided to Jeter and the rest of the Yankee infield to their defense with his ability to handle errant throws.

If you place a lot of faith in the positional variable used by FanGraphs, which gives a value to each defensive position and adjusts total value, Jeter has been the better player.  Jeter has also been a bit more consistent:

* Has Jeter really not walked in the month of August yet?

Both players have obviously had their ups and downs.  Such is baseball.  The extremes for Teixeira have been pretty extreme, though.

You can’t reasonably crown Mark Teixeira the MVP of the AL so early when it’s not totally clear he’s the MVP of his own team.  Neyer’s assertion that Joe Mauer is the best candidate at the moment is a fair assessment.