Sports: A Game Of Inches

We are four humble men who love sports, but hate sports commentary. Peter Gammons is our hero and John Madden is our enemy. If you were to ask us our purpose, our answer would be simple: "We are forever locked in Mortal Kombat for the souls of sports fans everywhere. Statistics are our science and 'the immeasurable character of men' is the obsolete religion of blind faith. Our job is to prove that God doesn't exist and that athletes are merely cold, metal machines with no hearts or souls."

The difference between Justin Upton and Dustin Pedroia

Last season, Dustin Pedroia hit 17 home runs and won the AL MVP. Why was his win, even if deserved based on his all around contributions on the field, so unsatisfying? Well, as the chart below indicates, Pedroia did not hit a single 400+ foot home run last season. On the other hand, Justin Upton, who hit 15 home runs last year, only hit one homer that was under 400 feet long. Upton's got 9 this season and only one of them is again short of the 400 foot marker.

DUSTIN PEDROIA (2008)

JUSTIN UPTON (2008)

Oh yeah, and Pedroia can't hit the high inside fastball.

3 comments:

Adam Kaplan said...: I reject your underlying assumption that "Dustin Pedroia did not deserve to win the MVP last year"

As FJM so aptly put it, you need to be high in VORP in order to even be in consideration. And while Fangraphs does not have VORP exactly, they do have something analogous- dollar worth. Last year Pedroia was #1 in that along with Runs Created.

Pedroia was 4th in Replacement, 10th in wOBA, 11th in OBS, 2nd in wRC, stole 20 bases and was only caught stealing once. yes Pedroia was actually just average in HR but he had decent power to go along with his speed and ability to get on base. Yes, as these graphs accurately stated, Pedroia seemingly barely hit HRs, but he DID end up with 17 HR and no matter how hard they flew, they still counted.

1) I'm not necessarily advocating that Pedroia deserved to win MVP. You could have made great cases for Carlos Quentin, Kevin Youkilis, ARod, and Grady Sizemore to all win it. But really, 2008 was a really weak year for AL MVP and I'm not upset that DPed won it. I'm especially not JRoll in '07 upset.

2) DPed's MVP seemed unsatisfying because he wasn't top ten 10 in OBS or OPS which seems weird for a legit MVP candidate and winner. But I had no qualms (as an objective baseball fan and not as a White Sox fan) with Pedroia winning it.

3) Despite all my comments and implications, I do think this chart and post is pretty informative. While this is something we have talked about many times before and really Justin Upton and DPed should never really be comparable (that's like ESPN thinking 'Michael Vick met with his parole officer' is Headline-worthy news), these charts are pretty informative

These show that Upton's power is legit and for real and Pedroia's probably isn't, but again, let's not take anything away from DPed and his great 2008 campaign; May 22, 2009 at 7:23 PM
Adam Kaplan said...: also i used "OBS" instead on "OBP" SOOOOORRRRRRYYYY TBO. my bad.; May 22, 2009 at 7:48 PM
The 'Bright' One said...: thank god you corrected yourself with the OBP. I thought i was gonna have to come over and syler your brain; May 22, 2009 at 8:45 PM