FJM is a closed forum, but we welcome reader feedback. We're especially interested in corrections of our work, and research (usually number-crunching) that we may not be able to do ourselves. Please check the comments section as well, where we often post readers' opinions, and, less frequently, announce that we were wrong about something.
You can e-mail dak,Ken Tremendous,Junior,Matthew Murbles, or Coach individually.
Except they're paid to give professional opinions about baseball. Opinions like these:
One scout says not to worry about Jimmy Rollins' atrocious spring (.188 with zero homers).
So I shouldn't panic and trade the reigning National League MVP because of meaningless spring training statistics. Good advice, scout! You are hereby promoted to Head Scout of Scouting. Hey, high-concept movie pitch: Life Scout. Tom Berenger stars as a crusty old baseball scout whose instincts are so good, an underachieving twenty-something hires him to "scout" his "life"! The scout scouts out women ("That one's got crazy boobs but also crazy eyes, steer clear!") and job opportunities ("Beer and video game tester -- score!), and over the course of the movie, Mark the underachiever teaches Jim the scout a few things about life, too.
But enough about my billion-dollar movie ideas. What else does this scout have to say about the guy voted the Best Player in His Baseball League in 2007?
"He's a solid underrated player. I don't see any change.''
You're right. He didn't win the AL MVP or the Cy Young or the Rolaids thing or the thing you win for coming back from cancer. He didn't win the NBA Sixth Man of the Year Award or the Caldecott Medal for best illustrations in a children's book. Underrated.
Your move, scouts.
[Troy] Tulowitzki appears determined to win the Gold Glove after losing out to Jimmy Rollins last year.
Oh, that's right -- Rollins won the Gold Glove, too. That poor, solid, unappreciated, underrated orphan child. Jimmy Rollins needs a hug and a higher rating.
"He has a swagger about him -- like Jeter,'' one AL scout said, paying about as high a compliment as you can pay.
Dr. Baseball Boss Guy: Ralph Scoutman. Good to see you. Come on in, sit down. Ralph Scoutman: Thank you, boss man. I been rill busy scouting all over. Rill busy. BBG: So you've been driving an old pickup truck all around America, picking up colorful local stories, getting dust in your wrinkles and putting crow's feet in the corners of your eyes. RS: Exactly, boss. Just like you done told me to. BBG: Excellent, Ralph. You are quite a scout. I mean, look at your eyes. So wise and knowing. It's like you can see inside me, right into my soul. RS: Aw, shucks, boss. Just doin' my job. Seein' folks' souls -- that's just part of scouting. BBG: Now what have you got on this Tulowitzki kid? I've never seen him before, but I've heard he's playing baseball up in the Rocky Mountains. What will they think of next? RS: Oh, I seen him all right. Crashed my pickup right into their dugout and took out my bye-noculars. I got the dirt on Tulo. BBG: Come up real close, whisper it into my ear. RS: (whispering) He has a swagger. BBG: Scoutman, you've done it again, you old fox! Call the mayor! Plan the parade route! We are the champions of baseball once again! Scoutman, you'll sit on the biggest float of all in the parade! RS: Oh no, count me out, boss. I'm no parade-sitter. I'm just an old scout, scouting the best I can until I scout my way into the next world.
(Scoutman puts his hat back on and shuffles out of the office. As he leaves, he gradually fades away.)
BBG: Well, I'll be damned. He was a ghost all along.
I Just Made A Man Invent The Derogatory Term "VORPies."
It's a historic day. For years, man has waited for just the right term to use when insulting other men who love baseball numbers just a little too much. (What are they, gay for numbers? Probably.) And now, just like the wait for Shrek 3, that wait is ogre.
I can't decide what the funniest voice to read this in is. Prohibition-era gangster? '80s-movie-antagonist-and-eventual-ski-race-losing-preppy? Daniel Plainview?
Rollins acknowledged that his brash "team to beat'' prediction probably helped him win the MVP. Of course, it didn't hurt that he hit 30 home runs, scored 139 runs and slugged .534 while batting leadoff and playing a superb shortstop for a division champion.
He had a very good year and an even better storyline. That he won the MVP was wholly unsurprising, I suppose. But I am a VORPy, sir, and VORPies wear the VORPy family crest (a ThinkPad with a griffin's tail) and sing the VORPy national anthem ("God Save PECOTA (Not That We're Certain God Exists)") and by God (if He exists), above all a VORPy abides by the VORPy code, which we sing thunderously from the mountaintops and tattoo onto our left biceps:
Be reasonable, and be reasonably objective. Please. At least try.
We're working on pithy-ing it up.
The Rockies' great slugger, Matt Holliday, finished second, but even a Rockies person told me in the playoffs last October that Rollins deserved the MVP, just as that Rockies person believed their shortstop Troy Tulowitzki deserved the Rookie of the Year (the Brewers' Ryan Braun wound up winning a close vote for that award).
Hear that? Hear that, VORPies? One person -- a Rockies person! -- would have also voted for Rollins! Disband the VORPies! Cancel our convention (VORPyStock 2K8) at the Twentynine Palms Holiday Inn! Defenestrate in perpetual shame!
A Rockies person quietly whispered softly in Jon Heyman's ear, and like that, the debate was over.
That person believed that great offense combined with stellar shortstop play should have been enough to take the awards, not a bad thought at all.
Not a bad thought, maybe. Not really a great thought, either, if you think about what kind of thought it is.
Great offense + stellar shortstop play = MVP
What about Even greater offense + stellar catcher play? Or Best offense in history + okay left fielding? Or Slightly better offense + slightly worse shortstop play?
Even non-VORPies might admit that we need a more versatile equation than
Great offense + stellar shortstop play = MVP
if we're going to be serious about discussing the MVP. But that's me talking. I'm trying to be reasonable and reasonably objective. Such is my burden. I am a VORPy.
Even so, I wasn't shocked that stats people
Please -- VORPies.
have taken issue with Rollins winning the MVP award.
Very diplomatic of Heyman. Even though ONE ROCKIES PERSON told him he preferred Rollins, he refuses to be shocked that anyone else would disagree. Open mind full heart can't lose.
There are numbers crunchers
VORPies
out there -- including a firejoemorgan.com author
That's me! Please, "firejoemorgan.com VORPy" will do next time. Whatever I am currently doing, "authoring" is way too generous a term to describe what it is. who wrote a guest piece in Sports Illustrated last week -- who believe baseball writers rank somewhere between morons and idiots for voting Rollins as MVP over David Wright, who had a higher VORP.
To be fair to this firejoemorgan.com VORPy, the piece was a little more indignant about Juno, Crash and Forrest Gump. Rollins over Wright is wrong, I think, but within earshot of being debatable. It's not Dawson-wrong or perhaps even Morneau-wrong.
But you're right, David Wright had a higher VORP than Jimmy Rollins. And a higher EqA. A higher OBP. A higher OPS. More Win Shares.
The stat people
VORPies. Come on, not that hard -- you're about to mention VORP in four words -- seem to believe VORP -- a Baseball Prospectus statistic that stands for Value Over Replacement Player -- defines a player,
Sure, I'll look at VORP. And EqA. And OBP. OPS. Win Shares. Various fielding assessments. Games played.
Somewhat counterintuitively, the Additional Credo of the VORPies along with the "Be reasonable" one is "Don't just look at VORP. That would be stupid."
but why haven't many of them championed last year's VORP leader (Hanley Ramirez) as MVP instead?
Hanley Ramirez is terrible at defense. All of the different fielding metrics and all of the guys who judge fielding-type things often disagree to the point of cacophony, but they seem to be pretty in sync on this point: Hanley is a Bill the Butcher-level butcher in the field. (Yo, two DDL characters in one post. Big ups, yo!)
So yeah, H-Ram led Wright by 8 runs of VORP (which already makes a positional adjustment), but by most estimates he gives that away and more in the field. Reasonable, huh?
I assume the stats guys favor Wright because he played for a contending team. I guess the rule is this: Highest VORP wins unless the VORP champion is playing for a loser.
Nah. Defense.
If Wright's offensive stats were slightly better than Rollins', and I will accept that they were,
Sweet. I know about this club. It's pretty exclusive. We have an awesome secret building, though, and on Thursdays we get drunk and watch Yahoo! Gamecasts. If you're open-minded enough about baseball, we just might let you start the application process.
What's the name of our club? I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with WORPies and is VORPies.
shouldn't Rollins get points for playing a superb shortstop compared to Wright's slightly-above average third base?
Yes. Defense counts. And both Rollins and Wright are very good at it. Rollins is probably a little more valuable in the field. By Win Shares and WARP, which both include defense, Wright still comes out significantly ahead. By John Dewan's Revised Zone Rating and Out of Zone plays made, Wright and Rollins both score relatively well, which doesn't indicate that Rollins should overcome a pretty large offensive deficit.
And shouldn't Rollins get credit for showing extraordinary initiative and leadership?
To the extent that you believe he leadershipped J.C. Romero to a 1.35 post-ASB ERA and initiative-d Ryan Howard to a 1.043 September OPS, sure. You can give him some credit. Me, I'm not doling out entire wins for that kind of stuff. Maybe in the case of a tie? I don't know. Trying to be reasonable here. KT would kill me for even suggesting intangibles could break a tie.
For helping his team barrel into the playoffs from seven games back with 17 to go, as opposed to Wright's team, which perpetrated a historic choke?
Very enjoyable to read "perpetrated a historic choke" followed immediately by the words:
Though the Mets' collapse was no fault of Wright's,
A little gunshy, huh? Just go the whole fucking hog: blame Wright for the choke. Do it. Feel the dark power coursing through your veins. Yes. Feels good, doesn't it? Soon you will be able to shoot lighting bolts from your hands. Unlimited power!
for the MVP to come off the all-time choke team, he'd better have a greater advantage in stats than this: Wright outhit Rollins .325 to .296, but both hit 30 home runs and Rollins beat Wright in Runs Created by 13.
Heyman is using Runs Created in the sense of Runs + RBI - HR. This is bad. Do not do this. There's an alternative: actual Runs Created. That's right. It's the one you get if you type "Runs Created" into Google and click I'm Feeling Lucky. You're already arguing using a stat called Runs Created. Why not simply use a better one?
According to their Baseball Referencepages, Wright out-run-created Rollins in the better sense of the term Runs Created, 146 to 135. This is, completely unsurprisingly, in line with their standings in essentially every other semi-robust offensive statistic ever invented.
Wright's big advantage apparently comes down to the fact he got on base more often (his on-base percentage was significantly higher, .416 to .344),
Yes! Hooray! You've been inducted into the VORPies! (Pops champagne cork, cues Handel's "Messiah.") usually via a walk (he had 94 walks to Rollins' 49). To the stat guys, walking is more thrilling and much more valuable than actually winning the pennant.
Ooh. (Stuffs cork back in champagne, cues comedy record scratch sound effect.) Jon, as one VORPy to one near-VORPy, let me just say: for us, it might not ultimately be about what's more thrilling. We, the VORPies, are sort of trying to figure out who was more valuable at playing baseball, and sometimes this means looking at things that aren't that thrilling. Non-VORPies are telling us this all the time: taking the extra base, sacrificing, hit-and-running -- these things aren't thrilling, yet they're constantly heralded as intensely, team altering-ly valuable.
Well, walking is definitely kind of valuable. It means you're not out-ing. David Wright was spectacularly, thrillingly good at not out-ing last year. And he hit the ball far. And he ran the bases well. And he was a good defender. And hey, his team wasn't unconscionably shitty. I think he was good enough to be MVP. I guess we could agree to disagree, but there's no fun in that. Let's disagree to agree.
Thanksgiving? More Like Nothanksgiving (I'm Talking About Bill Conlin)!
Hey, Bill Conlin just wrote an article about Jimmy Rollins winning the MVP. Guess what? Squanto could have written a better article. That's right. I said it. Squanto. (I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, can't I read just one sabermetrically-inclined meta-commentary "comedy" blog without running into a Squanto joke? The answer: no, you cannot. Squanto.) Bill Conlin | Rollins' winning numbers
I'm guessing Conlin didn't write this headline. Numbers can't win, dummy! Teams win. Players win. Guts win. The only numbers that matter are the numbers that measure the size of your heart (and guess what: these numbers don't exist because heart can't be measured!!!)
TO APPRECIATE the sheer scope of Jimmy Rollins epic run to yesterday's MVP award, you almost have to forget he plays a position where defense has always been the No. 1 priority.
Keep this in mind while you read this article: Jimmy Rollins did not -- emphatically did not deserve to win the MVP award, because he was indisputably not close to being the most valuable of players. He was, humorously, something like 9th or 10th, or hell, if we're being friendly, maybe in the top 5. Maybe.
And while the American League has had two freaks of nature who have put up engine room numbers at shortstop - Cal Ripken and the pre-third base Alex Rodriguez - the National League hasn't seen anything quite like the season the Flying Fireplug regaled us with last season since Ernie Banks. Not from a shortstop.
Yes, perfectly valid, except for the fact that Rollins was offensively outplayed by a shortstop in his own league this very year. 2007. The year we're talking about.
Shitty Assplug plays for the Florida Marlins. So yeah, instead of saying "the National League hasn't seen a season quite like this one since 1842!" a better thing to say would be "a season like this hasn't been seen since a season happening at this exact same time, only totally better in almost every way!"
No middle infielder has ever stocked a trophy case in one season with a record 716 at-bats, 212 hits, 139 runs scored, 38 doubles, 20 triples, 30 home runs, 41 stolen bases, 380 total bases and a big man's slugging percentage of .531.
Shitty Assplug, Redux: 212 hits, 125 runs scored, 48 doubles, 6 triples, 29 home runs, 51 stolen bases, 359 total bases, and a shitty man's slugging percentage of .562. Fewer at bats, and 68 fewer outs.
Jimmy Rollins made more outs than any MVP in the history of the National League.
I defy anyone to show me the trophy you get for having a slugging percentage of .531. In my imagination, it's shaped like the numbers 531, made of osmium, and totally invisible, because it doesn't exist EVEN IN MY IMAGINATION.
Rollins became just the fourth player in big league history to have 20 or more doubles, triples, homers and stolen bases in a single season, joining the 1911 Cubs' Wildfire Schulte, some guy named Willie Mays and 2007 Tigers centerfield dervish Curtis Granderson.
Another guy who played this year. And this quadruple-20 shit is so meaningless it's embarrassing. How many baseball writers do you think allowed that to influence their vote? All of them? I say all of them.
Do you know only one man in history has accrued 16 doubles, 83 runs, 6 walks, 42 hit by pitches, and 134 caught stealings? That man is Alan Alda (2004 Diamondbacks).
Jimmy Rollins is what you get when you cross a ballet dancer with a bulldog.
The other thing you get when you cross these things is a horrifying pornographic film. Then boom, Rollins pops out.
Despite his defensive contribution being backhanded by Red Sox front office stat man Bill James - baseball's most influential cybergeek - the league's managers and coaches awarded him a Gold Glove.
Apparently, James decided that a Range Factor based on successful chances (putouts plus assists) times nine innings, divided by number of defensive innings played is more important than the result - for example, a friggin' out. Despite his No. 3 fielding percentage of .985 (behind Troy Tulowitzki's .987 and Omar Vizquel's .986) Rollins rated No. 15 in the James Range Factor. Fortunately, the baseball men who vote for the Gold Gloves depend on what they see, not laptop science. Jose Reyes, a nimble windshield wiper, ranked No. 25 in RF.
And "laptop science" goes directly into the Label bin. Thank you, Bill Conlin.
The diminishing criticisms revolved around an on-base percentage that just didn't equate to the demands of a table-setter.
How were we to know that what Rollins had in mind was not only setting the table, but consuming the meal and then clearing it with a dish-scattering flurry of offense?
Food metaphors. Gold mine. Loving it. Hey, Bill, also, great point you're making here that totally undermines your article. Jimmy Rollins was fucking 47th in the NL in OBP. 47th. Shane Victorino out-OBP-ed this flying fireplug. Rollins was 7th in the league out of 14 qualified shortstops. Lower than Jack Wilson.
Now Conlin gets really crazy and starts comparing Jimmy to Ernie Banks.
Banks was superb in 1958-59, leading the league in homers and RBI, but Rollins scored more runs this year, had more hits, more steals, doubles and triples. Banks had 32 errors in '58, just 12 in '59 but his range was starting to erode by then.
Since you're really close-minded to new ideas, I'm going to be super ageist and assume you're very, very old -- that you reek of embalming fluid and Centrum Silver, that you give out buckwheat pennies at Halloween -- so I'll speak up: YOU CAN'T COMPARE COUNTING STATS ACROSS ERAS AND BALLPARKS.
The league OPS in 1958 (adjusted for Banks' home ballpark) was .752. This year it was .794 (adjusted for Rollins' home park). If you insist on getting really dumb, the batting average in 1958 was .267, compared to .279 this year. I feel dirty just writing that, but maybe, just maybe, it will help Bill understand what he's doing wrong. PEOPLE SCORED MORE RUNS THIS YEAR.
Banks OPS+ 156 Rollins OPS+ 118
This is stupid.
I was concerned that Rockies hitting dynamo Matt Holliday, the close runner-up, might steal the election with the hanging chad of his heroic batwork in the Rockies dramatic comeback playoff victory over the Diamondbacks. I could envision BBWAA ball writers ready to e-mail the results of a season extended to 163 games, needing just to fill in lines 1 and 2.
And just when you think Bill Conlin is done -- just when you think he can't top the inanity, uninformeditude, and just plain willful ignorance he's exhibited in the first 95% of the article, he slams you with the hanging chad reference. Well played, Conlin. You may not be knowledgeable about baseball, but you're a hell of a comedy writer. You've just made a believer out of me.
