AL Least Valuable Players

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We have begun the discussion of the Most Valuable Playoff award and will continue to do so for quite some time. What stats should count most? Should pitchers be eligible? How much does your position count? Should it be necessary to play for a contender? Statheads like me would prefer we use ‘advanced metrics’ over lineup-dependent counting stats like RBI, but even if you agree with that (and probably think Curtis Granderson shouldn’t be MVP this year) there is still going to be contention over which metrics are quote-unquote best. One sticky question in particular will come up: should we be trying to find the most talented player or the player who has meant the most to his team this season? The second option seems to be the one that would fit best with the concept of a “valuable” player – and suggests that we need to look at situational (clutch) hitting (and, potentially, pitching) in addition to stats that are purely individual and designed to be independent of game stats and therefore unbiased – like OPS or WAR.

WPA is a great measure of just how “valuable” a player has been – but even assuming you like the idea that it is situationally biased it leaves out the player’s contributions on defense or on the basepaths and ignores the fundamental fact that certain positions are much more difficult for a manager to fill. By WPA, Jose Bautista is leading the AL by a mile with over 8 wins added. If we look at WAR – which does include all of those things that are missing from WPA in addition to ignoring game states – Jacoby Ellsbury beats out Bautista by a third of a win. The reason is simple, Ellsbury plays a more difficult defensive position and does it well.

Of course, you saw the title of this piece and you know that most valuable players are not really what I want to talk about… what I’m interested in looking at is which players have been the worst this season, contributing the least to their teams and filling their fans hearts with misery and grief. You all probably have some ideas already (Brandon Inge?), but follow through the jump and we’ll see how the players of the American League stack up using those advanced metrics:

Now since those two metrics – which both equally “valid” depending on what you think the proper way to evaluate a player’s performance is – can give such different results, I’m going to have to do this twice: first by WPA and second by WAR.

So without further ado, the 2011 American League All-Scrub Team!

1B: Adam Dunn, CWS: -2.46 wins. [MVP Miguel Cabrera +7.04]

No big surprise here, the big donkey’s horrible season at the plate has been the talk of the league all season long

2B: Gordon Beckham, CWS: -2.00 wins. [MVP Robinson Cano +2.49]

By the numbers alone, this really should belong to Aaron Hill (he of the GIDP) for his horrible 4 months in Toronto, but he has actually hit very well after being traded to the Diamondbacks. Becks has been bad overall, but much worse in the clutch – a common theme for anyone with a WPA so low.

SS: Alcides Escobar, KC: -5.08. [MVP Yunel Escobar +2.13]

Sure, Alcides Escobar is a defensive specialist that tends to hit near the bottom of the order, but he still has an OPS higher than Adam Dunn! The fact that he has cost his team 5 wins at the plate is solely to do his amazing ability to choke.

3B: Chone Figgins, SEA: -2.41. [MVP Evan Longoria +2.94]

Figgins used to be able to hit, right? What happened?

C: Kurt Suzuki, OAK: -3.31. [MVP Alex Avila +2.71]

Suzuki’s numbers don’t look that bad – if your stats are situationally independed. Kurt Suzuki has the lowest clutch stat of any qualified batter in the AL this year – that’s the number that compares how well you hit when it counted to how well you hit when it didn’t – making him the only player more likely to choke than Alcides Escobar.

LF: Carl Crawford, BOS: -1.92. [MVP Josh Hamilton +5.32]

You knew that the Crawford signing hadn’t gone well. Now you can attach a meaningless number to it. If anyone cares, his runner-up is Delmon Young…

CF: Alex Rios, CWS: -3.82. [MVP Jacoby Ellsbury +5.38]

Noticing a trend on this list?

RF: David DeJesus, OAK: -1.94. [MVP Jose Bautista +8.13]

Another entry on the All-Scrub list, another guy I wanted the Tigers to acquire. Don’t listen to my advice when it comes to filling out the roster.

SP: Brad Penny, DET: -2.81. [MVP Justin Verlander +5.01]

I want to make one thing clear: Brad Penny is not the worst starter in the American League. He’s just the worst starter in the American League to make 30 starts. Brian Matusz, who was battered and abused by the Tigers this afternoon, is runner up in WPA despite making only 11 starts. He is clearly pitching worse than Penny, still stats are what they are and they aren’t exactly lying. Penny has contributed little to nothing to the Tigers pennant run.

RP: Fernando Rodney, LAA: -1.87. [MVP David Robertson +4.32]

We all remember Rodney pitching (mostly) well wearing the Olde English D, but this year he hasn’t quite been himself. To put it in terms you’ll all understand – his numbers look an awful lot like David Purcey’s, but he’s been used a lot when the game was on the line.

Based on WPA alone, we’d say that the Least Valuable Player in the AL this year was Alcides Escobar – but that is a textbook case of the weaknesses of WPA compared to WAR. Not only is Escobar’s low score more a function of his poor clutch performance than his (very real) offensive ineptitude – he is a very good defender at a premium defensive position. So before we decide on one single AL LVP, follow through to the next page to see the WAR All-Scrubs.

Before I show the numbers, I want to remind you all for the purposes of scale that WPA is relative to average (it has to be) whereas WAR is relative to some theoretical replacement level baseline. Therefore extreme low numbers are rare in WAR, in a sense they are deflated already.

1B: Adam Dunn, CWS: -2.8. [MVP Miguel Cabrera +6.7]

Big surprise. Defense is a big component of WAR, and by far the most contentious one statistically speaking, so we will often see guys at the bottom of the league who are weak at the plate and abysmal with the glove. So the real surprise here is that Dunn makes the top (bottom) despite only playing about 30 games in the field at first. The kicker: he has been so bad when he has put on a glove that his fielding component is still among the worst in the league.

2B: Cord Phelps, CLE: -1.0. [MVP Dustin Pedroia +7.7]

Normally a guy has to fail repeatedly over the long grind of a full season in order to wind up at the bottom of the league in WAR – but on certain rare occasions a guy can see limited play but be so bad in all facets of the game that he is outshined by every single other player at that position. Cord Phelps has been one such case in 2011.

SS: Tsuyoshi Nishioka, MIN: -1.4. [MVP Jhonny Peralta +4.8]

It’s past time that we add Nishioka’s name to list of colossal failures among last year’s free agent deals, if you count all the money that Minnesota paid just to get the rights to talk to Nishioka he was anything but cheap. He hasn’t played a full season, but he has been bad in the field, bad on the basepaths and has a wOBA currently sitting at .234. As we start to pick through the bones of the Twins 2011 season, bear in mind that it isn’t just the guys they lost to injury or free agency that made them so bad – it’s the spectacular failure of their replacements a la Nishioka.

3B: Chone Figgins, SEA: -1.2. [MVP Adrian Beltre +5.3]

Admit it, you’re surprised it wasn’t Brandon Inge. Inge has been bad, and his overall WAR is negative, but Figgins has underhit (is that the opposite of ‘outhit’?) Inge in every single relevant category – winding up with a .218 wOBA to Inge’s .247. Just remember, Tigers fans: it could be worse.

C: Drew Butera, MIN: -0.9. [MVP Alex Avila +5.6]

Catcher is, of course, a premium defensive position and Drew Butera is actually quite a good defensive catcher – something you can’t usually say about players with negative WAR numbers. The problem? Offensive incompetence so extreme it led to a wOBA of .197. Surely the Twins should have had some other warm body that they could stick in there to play catcher, right? Well, they did. His name Rene Rivera and he wound up third lowest among AL catchers with an OPS lower than Butera’s and an identical .197 wOBA.

RF: Magglio Ordonez, DET: -0.9. [MVP Jose Bautista + 8.5]

Finally another of our very own 2011 goats, the withered husk of Magglio Ordonez. Started out with an ice cold 5 months, but has started to hit like a 35-year-old again in the month of September. His defense on the other hand, is experiencing no such renaissance and is a major factor in his terrible WAR overall.

CF: Alex Rios, CWS: -0.9. [MVP Jacoby Ellsbury +8.8]

Rios has had an amazingly bad season, “mitigated” only by 13 home runs, and he continues to see his name written on the lineup card. He plays a difficult defensive position, but he no longer plays it well. It seems that the whole reason that Rios fares so much less badly using WAR than WPA etc… is that it really is awfully hard to find a good center fielder – which, coincidentally, is why Jacoby Ellsbury’s WAR is so very, very high. How important should that really be for ranking the value of a player? I’m undecided.

LF: Felix Pie, BAL: -2.1. [MVP Alex Gordon +6.4]

Of course Pie has been bad, but to say that he cost his team 13.6 runs relative to the average right fielder – while playing part time??? That kind of extreme variance is what makes a lot of people skeptical of the defensive component of WAR. Carl Crawford is merely mediocre on defense, but since his awful WPA was due more to failures in the clutch (his season has been bad but not Rios bad) he does not make an appearance.

SP: Brian Matusz, BAL: -0.9. [MVP (tie) Justin Verlander, C.C. Sabathia +7.0]

Ranking by WAR as opposed to WPA, every player is compared to that replacement level baseline so it isn’t possible to go negative simply by playing more replacement level baseball – like Brad Penny. This gives Matusz the edge, since he hasn’t been on the mound as much but has been really, genuinely awful when he has.

RP: Jon Rauch, TOR: -0.6. [MVP David Robertson +2.7]

Rauch is a pure flyball pitcher, so when things aren’t going well it tends to result in a lot of home runs. That’s what happened this year. In general I don’t like WAR as a way to rate relievers, since situational pitching is fundamentally what they do – but look at that freaking David Robertson… He leads AL relievers in WAR and WPA and he’s just ‘some other guy’ behind the Yankees’ big money top two? It’s worth noting that while the Twins don’t have the worst reliever in the AL by WPA or WAR they do have a number of relievers with negative scores in one metric or the other. So… it has been a team effort to make the Twins ‘pen as bad as it has been.

So… you’ve seen the numbers, who do you think deserves to be the 2011 AL LVP? It should be, at least in my mind, someone who looks bad no matter what metric you use. Alcides Escobar, though he has the worst WPA, actually has a WAR of 2.1 due to his good defense, the position he plays, and the fact that the measure ignores clutch performance. Escobar is still on the list, though, because clutch performance isn’t something that we should ignore. AND, his WPA is soooo bad that if we give him the almost 1 win benefit his good glove gives him in WAR, he would still have a lower WPA than anyone else on the list. Kurt Suzuki, likewise, doesn’t look that bad using WAR (and certainly doesn’t compare to Drew Butera’s all-around play). Of course, there are some guys who look awful by any measure – but not quite at the bottom of the league at their position. Many of them are Twins. Only one entry from that list will make it to our poll: Matt Capps, standing in for the rest of the Twins bullpen.

There are, of course, a lot of things to consider… How much does position count? Should pitchers be eligible? Should it be necessary that a guy played at least most of the season, or can he have done so little in such a short time that he undershoots the other dregs? And perhaps most importantly: must it be a team that could have been good, if only that one guy had carried his weight? [You know I’m talking about Dunn and Rios]

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