A baseball peace offering

Since the debate started over whether Miguel Cabrera or Mike Trout would be the American League MVP, I've always felt it was more than the standard debate over who was the league's best player this season, but perhaps the climactic battle between old and new ways of looking at the game.

The American League Cy Young Award selections of Zack Greinke and his 16-8 record and especially Felix Hernandez and his 13-12 record in 2010 were major achievements for the sabermetrics crowd (the type I usually call "stat-geeks," but I'm not here for reasons that will be clear below), in that one of the major points is that wins are a lousy way to judge how good a pitcher is.

But if Trout had won the MVP, it would have been their crowning glory, as the guy who won the first Triple Crown in 45 years would have lost largely because of statistically based arguments that Trout's prowess in the field and on the bases outweighed Cabrera's achievements, including leading the league in two of the great scourges of the sabermetrics movement -- batting average and RBI.

However, Cabrera won, which left people like Brian Vaughn of Call to the Pen more than a little disappointed.

 First off, David Price took home the AL Cy Young narrowly over Justin Verlander without actually ever being better than him at anything. Then we have Miguel Cabrera just crushing Mike Trout in the AL MVP voting despite only topping him in one aspect of the game, and narrowly at that. Maybe we’re not quite as advanced as I was starting to think.

And then Mitch Albom got loose.

In a battle of computer analysis versus people who still watch baseball as, you know, a sport, what we saw with our Detroit vision was what most voters saw as well.

Today, every stat matters. There is no end to the appetite for categories -- from OBP to OPS to WAR. I mean, OMG! The number of triples hit while wearing a certain-colored underwear is probably being measured as we speak.

We need to slow down the shoveling of raw data into the "what can we come up with next?" machine. It is actually creating a divide between those who like to watch the game of baseball and those who want to reduce it to binary code.

As you might imagine, his comments did not meet with universal approval.

And King Kaufman was also something less than amused on the Twitter machine.
  

People are going to look back on Trout's 2012 and say, "My gosh, those idiots didn't know what they were watching!"

If you'd told me 30 years ago that one profession would come to embrace ignorance as a virtue, I NEVER would have guessed journalism.  

I bet you wouldn't be able to find me an MLB GM who would trade Trout's 2012 for Cabrera's 2012, age, etc. not considered.

I actually agreed with the main ideas of Albom's column, that Cabrera should have been MVP and that anayltics don't have all the answers, but insulting the people who disagree with you isn't going to help your argument. The same goes for Kaufman, who, to be fair, also said that Cabrera was "stupendous" this year and is headed for the "inner circle Hall of Fame," which apparently is the very best of the best.

It is in this spirit that I would like to make a peace offering to the sabermetrics crowd, including my ambassador to analytics, my guy Poopsie out in Chicago. In the interest of peace, here are the things I'd be willing to concede:

1. Batting average and RBI aren't the be-all and end-all -- If the point of the game is not making outs, on-base percentage is a more-precise way of measuring that, and RBI require having men on base in front of you, unless you hit more solo home runs than anyone else has ever hit home runs.

2. You don't have to win a lot of games to be a great pitcher -- If Felix Hernandez played for a team that had even an average offense, he might never lose.

3. Fielding percentage and errors aren't the best ways to measure defense -- We can also call this the "Yes, I know Derek Jeter doesn't have great range" concession.

4. No, I don't know exactly what "clutch" is, or even if it exists.

5. Just because I don't know how to calculate VORP, WAR and endless other statistics doesn't necessarily mean they're worthless.

And these are the concessions I want in exchange:

1 Adam Dunn is no better than a decent hitter, and often a terrible one -- It's great that he has a great eye, and when he hits balls, they stay hit, but with a lifetime batting average of .240, if a pitcher can manage to throw the ball over the plate, Dunn will make outs more than 75 percent of the time. He hit .204 this year, meaning he made outs close to 80 percent of the time in those circumstances. Dunn is an extreme example, but it shows that batting average has some value, in that it does measure what someone does when a pitcher throws strikes.

1a. If RBI are a team stat, so are runs -- If you're going to say that driving in runs is a function of men getting on base in front of a hitter, you also have to say that scoring runs is a function of the hitters behind a baserunner, unless he steals home a lot.

2. Good pitchers tend to win a lot -- There have always been Greinkes and Hernandezes, pitchers who pitch better than their records on terrible teams. Take a look at Nolan Ryan's 1987, for instance. In general, however, if a pitcher wins a lot of games, he had a good year.

3. Range is great, but so is making the plays you should make -- Call it the "At least Derek Jeter isn't giving teams four outs an inning" concession. If you can't stomach saying that, watch Eduardo Nunez play shortstop; you'll be crying for Jeter in no time.

4. If "clutch" doesn't exist, explain your first thought when David Ortiz or Alex Rodriguez come up in a big spot.

5. People are always going to be skeptical of any statistic they don't understand.

But even beyond the way we look at baseball, there's one more trade-off I'm willing to make.

I won't call sabermetric types geeks, if they don't call skeptics stupid.

Deal?

Is there a pitching Miguel Cabrera out there?

Miguel Cabrera is this year's American League Most Valuable Player, Cabrera's Triple Crown outweighing Mike Trout's all-around excellence.

Although I wouldn't have bemoaned the horrible injustice of it all if Trout had won, I thought Cabrera should get the award, and yes, it was because of the Triple Crown. Call me an old fuddy duddy, but I think batting average and RBI have some value, so to lead the league in both of those, plus home runs ... 45 years after the last guy did it ... that's an MVP to me.

Although Cabrera was the first guy to win the Triple Crown since Carl Yastrzemski turned the trick in 1967, theoretically anyone could have done it, just like a 56-game hitting streak, a .400 batting average, 73 home runs, 190 RBI or most other statistical milestones or records can mathematically be surpassed. The games are there to play; someone just has to put up the numbers.

But there's one single-season mark that I'm not sure will be reached, and it happened the year after Yaz's Triple Crown.

Thirty wins.

To explain why, let's look at some of the top pitching seasons since 1968.



Here's the last guy to do it:

Denny McLain 1968 -- 31-6, 336 innings pitched, 41 starts, 28 complete games.

Then there are the two guys who have come closest since then:
Steve Carlton 1972 -- 27-10, 346.1 innings pitched, 41 starts, 30 complete games.
Bob Welch 1990 -- 27-6, 238 innings pitched, 35 starts, two complete games.

And the Cy Young and MVP season of the guy who I believe is the best pitcher in baseball:

Justin Verlander 2011 -- 24-5, 251 innings pitched, 34 starts, four complete games.

And this year's Cy Young winners:
David Price -- 20-5 (tied with Jered Weaver for the league lead), 211 innings, 31 starts, two complete games.
R.A. Dickey -- 20-6 (second to Gio Gonzalez's 21), 233.2 innings, 33 starts (plus one relief appearance), five complete games.

In 1968, McLain won 75.6 percent of his starts, and received a decision in 90.2 percent of his starts.

Carlton (on a team that, let's not forget, won 59 games the whole season), won 66 percent of his starts, and got decisions in the same 90.2 percent as McLain. If the Phillies had been any good that year, Carlton probably would have won 30.

For his part, Welch won 77 percent of his starts, and got a decision in 94.2 percent. At the same pace, he would have gotten to 30 with four more starts. If he made 41 like McLain and Carlton, he could have won half of the six extra starts for 30.

Verlander won 70 percent of his starts, and got decisions in 85 percent of them. At that rate, he would have needed to make 43 starts to win 30 games, or nine more starts than he actually made.

And then there are Price and Dickey. To win 30 games, Price would have needed to win all but one of his starts this year, and Dickey would have needed to win all but three. At their winning rates of 64.5 percent for Price and 60.1 percent for Dickey, they would have needed to make 47 and 50 starts, respectively, to get to 30.

Simply put, between five-man rotations and pitchers working fewer innings per start (Dickey, who led the National League in innings pitched, averaged just under 7.1 innings per start, a full inning less than either McLain or Carlton), there aren't enough chances for someone to win 30 games.

And if someone did, believe me, there would be people who believe he shouldn't win the Cy Young Award. After all, wins don't matter.

My Sportsmen: Two guys who said it was OK

Every year, Sports Illustrated names a Sportsman or Sportswoman of the Year (or both, like it did last year). Sometimes, it's for someone who achieved something great during the year, like Michael Phelps in 2008 or Drew Brees in 2010. Other years, it's a combination of that year's achievement and a lifetime achievement award, like Mike Krzyzewski and Pat Summitt last year or Derek Jeter in 2009.

If I had to hazard a guess off the top of my head, I would guess LeBron James or Miguel Cabrera, maybe Gabby Douglas, but I'll also be interested in reading who SI's writers in the "My Sportsman" pieces it runs on its website. (An example, Richard Deitsch's nomination of Maya Moore last year.)

This year's pieces haven't started yet, but given recent events, I'd like to throw in a couple nominations of my own.

* * * * *

Chris Kluwe got mad, and so he wrote himself a letter. Perhaps you heard about it. It was brilliant; it was profane, and it basically set the Internet on fire. It also made him kind of famous, for of all things, smacking down a Maryland state legislator complaining about someone supporting same-sex marriage. (Quick, name three other NFL punters. I got Mike Scifres of the Chargers, Zoltan Mesko of the Patriots and Steve Weatherford of the Giants.)

Kluwe wrote some other stuff, like after former teammate Matt Birk wrote an op-edit piece against same-sex marriage. And he did it without one profanity. When he thought the stance the newspaper he wrote for took on the proposed marriage amendment in Minnesota was dishonest, he stopped blogging for them.

After the amendment failed on Nov. 6, he had this to say:

 Together, we made a statement that America is tired of division. America is tired of discrimination, of exclusion, and of unthinking oppression—the belief that people have to live their lives according to someone else's views rather than their own free will.

 Together, we made sure that the world our children will grow up in is one step closer to tolerance, love, and equality; a world where our children can make their own choices instead of being shackled to dusty hate from the past.

But let us not forget who Kluwe was defending in the letter that made him famous.

* * * * *

I've written about Brendon Ayanbadejo before, and why his advocacy of same-sex marriage got Emmett Burns Jr. all worked up in the first place, but absent a Sports Illustrated profile of him, I didn't know much about him or his motivation for supporting the cause, so I looked it up. In addition to his background, there was this:

The linebacker spent critical adolescent years living in a building designated for LGBT students at the University of California at Santa Cruz. His stepfather worked as the resident director, and the family lived in an apartment at the base of the dorm.

“It was sort of their safe haven, where the students could be themselves," Ayanbadejo said. “I was in eighth or ninth grade, and we’d do these activities with everyone, skits or plays with me and my brother and sister. Men would be holding hands with each other, and women with women, and I was so young I didn’t really think much of it. Now, I kind of rejoice when I see same-sex couples together, sharing their love, and being able to be themselves outside, not just in their homes."

I wasn't exposed to gay people in any serious way until I was an adult, when I worked on the Outer Cape in Massachusetts, where there a lot of gay people, including one of the couples involved in the lawsuit that brought same-sex marriage to Massachusetts, who I came to know through my job.

A funny thing happens when you spend time around gay people ... they stop being "strange."

When Maryland voters approved same-sex marriage Nov. 6, Ayanbadejo said, "It's like I woke up and it was Christmas."

I'm normally against any references to Christmas before Thanksgiving, but this time, I'll make an exception.

* * * * *

We are eight years removed from a presidential candidate possibly being helped in his re-election by state ballot measures restricting marriage to one man and one woman. Until Nov. 6, same-sex marriage had lost more than 30 times at the ballot box.

Kluwe and Ayanbadejo are not the only sports figures to support same-sex marriage and gay rights. Scott Fujita and Sean Avery made videos supporting marriage equality (as, by the way, did one of the daughters of the president who probably benefited from the anti-same-sex marriage initiatives). Teams and athletes have recorded "It Gets Better" videos. (I picked Sergio Martinez's because I'm a fan.)


But Kluwe's and Ayanbadejo's activism this year was during a time when the people of the states where they play football were deciding on same-sex marriage, and those states, along with Maine and Washington State, accepted it.

I don't know how much of an impact they had on the vote, but I can't imagine it hurt to have football players tell football fans, their fans, that it was OK to support gay rights.

They still ... don't get it (at least some people)

"You're a North Carolina grad. Did you take those classes when you were there? The ones that didn't exist?"

I confess, when I saw that Sports Illustrated had an article in this week's edition called "We Are Still ... Penn State" (the link isn't to the article itself, which I couldn't find, you'll have to see the magazine), I was prepared to hate it. I figured it would be a story about how everything at Penn State was fixed because the football team won a few games ... see also the Saints winning the Super Bowl or the Yankees and Mets in 2001.

However, it actually wound up being a more-complete picture of life a year after Jerry Sandusky. Yes, it notes that the team is actually pretty good, and there is some realization that something bad did happen there.

Unfortunately, there are also the "We Are ... Pissed Off" T-shirts (which you can actually buy), booing college president Rodney Erickson because he signed the consent decree that led to the NCAA sanctions against the school, the placing of flowers near the site where the Joe Paterno statue once stood.

There's the talk of "collective punishment," the idea that everyone at Penn State, even those who had nothing to do with football, has to be punished for what a few people did. First of all, people who complain of collective punishment have to realize that the scandal isn't that something happened to them.

Secondly, the football team at Penn State in general and Paterno and particular defined the university, providing a collective relevance to everyone who went there ... even if they had nothing to do with the team or any interest in football. They can't have it both ways.

Which brings us to the quote at the start of this post. The speaker was Russ Ross, the women's volleyball coach at Penn State, a 33-year employee of the school who was apparently upset about author and Tar Heel S.L. Price questioning the Penn State culture, because "That isn't the Penn State I know."

Price spends the next several paragraphs explaining that Ross sort of had a point about Penn State and North Carolina basically both believing that their stuff didn't stink, but sort of didn't for some reason or another.

What I wish Price would have written is that it takes a lot of nerve to equate an academic scandal to school officials, including the most-powerful one (hint: the guy who was the football coach) allegedly allowing a child molester ... let me say that again, A CHILD MOLESTER ... to walk around campus and covering it up.

Perhaps Ross should spend more time in Penn State's Principles and Ethics of Coaching class, which "examines the challenges of today's coaching profession through societal norms and expectations from the past and present."

It shouldn't be too hard for him.

He teaches it.