Joe Mauer wins AL MVP.

[Chamillitary Click]

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=ArWCCWsr0d4JAgBt5djWviI5nYcB?slug=ap-almvp&prov=ap&type=lgns

NEW YORK (AP)—Joe Mauer(notes) became only the second catcher in 33 years to win the American League Most Valuable Player Award, finishing first in a near-unanimous vote Monday.

The Minnesota Twins star received 27 of 28 first-place votes and 387 points in balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

major props to Joe, just a fucking monster.

well deserved.

[Twentytwofifty]

Fantastic season, he deserves this.

Ben Zobrist should have been higher in the voting, he had a excellent season also. 

[thisoneguy360]

Well deserved, damn voters ain't showin no love to Ichiro though 

[J.D. Wykid, Esq.]

Well deserved, damn voters ain't showin no love to Ichiro though 

im surprised he actually cracked the top 10....he is overrated as fuck and arod, abreu, lind, cano, martinez, and longoria were easily better than ichiro. 

take away ichiros BA and what does he have? 

[Chamillitary Click]

Well deserved, damn voters ain't showin no love to Ichiro though 

im surprised he actually cracked the top 10....he is overrated as fuck and arod, abreu, lind, cano, martinez, and longoria were easily better than ichiro. 

take away ichiros BA and what does he have? 

if there was a draft tomorrow & you got a pick from 10-15 & you didn't take him, i would scratch my head lol.

if you didn't count pitchers he would be in the top 10.

[J.D. Wykid, Esq.]

no particular order, these are just players i would take before ichiro

1.mauer
2.cabrera
3.arod
4.jeter
5.youk
6. cano
7.longoria
8. vmart
9. bay
10. hunter

and if i count pitchers, he wouldnt even make the top 25. 

[Chamillitary Click]

no particular order, these are just players i would take before ichiro

1.mauer
2.cabrera
3.arod
4.jeter
5.youk
6. cano
7.longoria
8. vmart
9. bay
10. hunter

yeah, me too; but you only named four people.

[jeanmiche777]

Well deserved, damn voters ain't showin no love to Ichiro though 

im surprised he actually cracked the top 10....he is overrated as fuck and arod, abreu, lind, cano, martinez, and longoria were easily better than ichiro. 

take away ichiros BA and what does he have? 

Golden glove

[J.D. Wykid, Esq.]

no particular order, these are just players i would take before ichiro

1.mauer
2.cabrera
3.arod
4.jeter
5.youk
6. cano
7.longoria
8. vmart
9. bay
10. hunter

yeah, me too; but you only named four people.

lol...ok then, 5-10 are blank and ichiro STILL isnt on the list.  lmao

[J.D. Wykid, Esq.]

Well deserved, damn voters ain't showin no love to Ichiro though 

im surprised he actually cracked the top 10....he is overrated as fuck and arod, abreu, lind, cano, martinez, and longoria were easily better than ichiro. 

take away ichiros BA and what does he have? 

Golden glove

well ya got me there.  lol

[Twentytwofifty]

Ichiro led the American League this year in WPA (Win Probability Added) which is the difference in win expectancy (WE) between the start of the play and the end of the play. That difference is then credited/debited to the batter and the pitcher. Over the course of the season, each players’ WPA for individual plays is added up to get his season total WPA. Sounds like he was pretty valuable to me.

[thisoneguy360]

Well deserved, damn voters ain't showin no love to Ichiro though  

im surprised he actually cracked the top 10....he is overrated as fuck and arod, abreu, lind, cano, martinez, and longoria were easily better than ichiro.  

take away ichiros BA and what does he have?  

One of the best arms in the game, one of the best gloves in the game, one of the fastest players in the game (in his 30s), can make a hit out of damn near any pitch thrown his way, can swing for power when needed, and what's wrong with a high batting average?

[J.D. Wykid, Esq.]

Ichiro led the American League this year in WPA (Win Probability Added) which is the difference in win expectancy (WE) between the start of the play and the end of the play. That difference is then credited/debited to the batter and the pitcher. Over the course of the season, each players’ WPA for individual plays is added up to get his season total WPA. Sounds like he was pretty valuable to me.

wpa means jack shit.  it just means that ichiro hit singles and kept the innings going.  and thats what he does, he hits singles.  is that a bad thing?  not at all.  does that make him mvp material? not at all.

Well deserved, damn voters ain't showin no love to Ichiro though  

im surprised he actually cracked the top 10....he is overrated as fuck and arod, abreu, lind, cano, martinez, and longoria were easily better than ichiro.  

take away ichiros BA and what does he have?  

One of the best arms in the game, one of the best gloves in the game, one of the fastest players in the game (in his 30s), can make a hit out of damn near any pitch thrown his way, can swing for power when needed, and what's wrong with a high batting average?

im not debating his defense, his glove or his speed. he is a good player.  is he the best player in the al like some people believe? hell no.  he is far from it.  

everyone always says "ichiro can hit for power when he wants or when its needed".  thats such bullshit.  youre telling me over the last four seasons that theres only been 32 times when a homer was needed from him?  please. 

ichiro is a singles hitter with good defense and speed.  he isnt a power hitter and he isnt a run producer.  he is a great lead off man.  nothing more nothing less. 

[Twentytwofifty]

wpa means jack shit.  it just means that ichiro hit singles and kept the innings going.  and thats what he does, he hits singles.  is that a bad thing?  not at all.  does that make him mvp material? not at all.

Ummm, okay, guess you really need help understanding what WPA is.  Doesn't mean "jack shit", it's pretty much the definition of valuable. 

WPA is the stat that old baseball men have always wanted.

If you believe in Wins and RBIs, if you believe that certain pitchers can “pitch to the score” and certain batters are simply “clutch” and can suddenly step up their game when it’s all on the line while somehow sucking the rest of the time, than WPA is the stat for you.

The problem that so many people have with stats like Wins and RBI is not so much with what they show, as indeed, they only show what they were designed to show, and do so quite well. Rather, the problem people have is with what other people think these stats show, which is actually pretty far from what they tell us.  Namely, which player really did the most to help his team win games.

But if your goal is to find out exactly which player did the most to help his team win games, than WPA is the perfect stat for you.

Actually, it couldn’t be more elegant. WPA, which stands for “Win Probability Added,” is derived by looking at the current game situation – what inning it is, what the score is, how many outs there are, and how many men are on base – and determining what percentage chance each team has of winning the ballgame in that situation, based on a computer crunching the numbers of all previous baseball games for which complete information is available.

In any given game, the two teams each have about a 50 percent chance of winning at the start of the game (slightly more for the home team, and slightly less for the visitors). With each outcome, whether an out or a base safely reached, one team’s chance of winning increases slightly, and the other’s decreases by the exact same amount, always adding up to 100 percent.

What WPA does, is it awards each batter and each pitcher a certain fraction of a win for each outcome they are involved in, in every game they play in.  For example, if a batter gets a single and it increases his teams chance of winning by 2 percent, he is awarded 0.02 of WPA, and the pitcher is docked negative 0.02 of a win. Naturally, getting big hits in crucial situations, or (for a pitcher) getting tough outs with the game on the line, is worth much more of a win than getting hits or outs in blowouts. Over the course of the season, all players’ totals are added to determin exactly how many wins they were actually worth to their team that season. That’s WPA.

WPA differs from WAR in that WAR attempts to assess the overall value a player has provided without reference to game situation.  Basically, WAR assumes that a player has little or control over exactly when he gets hits or outs, and thus attempts to assess true skill level, while factoring out random luck.  WPA, on the other hand, doesn’t care about true skill level at all.  It only cares about how much a player actually helped his team win, based on context. In other words, how “clutch” players were.

Which is why WPA is so perfect for the old school writers and baseball men. Because it is measuring *exactly* what people always thought they were trying to measure with Wins and RBI: how much you helped your team win.

So if we think about the traditional main criteria used by old-school baseball writers to award the two major awards, MVP and Cy Young, which are of course Wins (followed, to a lesser extent, by ERA) for pitchers and RBI for batters (followed, to a lesser extent, by homers), we see that WPA is actually the best way to determine these awards, if these people actually want to measure what they say they want to measure.

Because after all, if you are a crusty old baseball writer, you don’t really care that 50 homers in 1996 was not indicative of Brady Anderson’s “true” skill level – you just know he had a heck of a year.

[J.D. Wykid, Esq.]

ichiro had a higher wpa than: h. ramirez, vmart, arod, tex, m. cabrera, and even the AL MVP mauer.  does that mean that ichiro is the best player out of this group?