In 1998, Mark McGwire led the league with a record 70 home runs, 162 walks, a .470 OBP, and a .752 slugging average. He received only two first-place votes for MVP, however, finishing far behind near-unanimous winner Sammy Sosa, who himself hit 66 home runs and led the league in runs and RBI.
Sosa’s season was great, but McGwire’s was better. Sosa’s superiority in runs and RBI were a function of his teammates. While Sosa scored four more runs than McGwire, McGwire reached base 48 more times. And while Sosa drove in 11 more runs than McGwire, Sosa had 94 more at-bats with runners on base. Moreover, McGwire made 89 fewer outs than Sosa, giving his teammates additional opportunities to create runs.
History may be about to repeat itself. Barry Bonds leads the league with 63 home runs, 149 walks, a .499 OBP, and an .838 slugging average. He is on pace to threaten McGwire’s home run record and Babe Ruth’s record of 170 walks and to post the highest OBP since 1957 and the third-best slugging average ever.
Meanwhile, Sosa is having the finest season of his career. His .428 OBP and .719 slugging average are career highs far in excess of the .377 OBP and .647 slugging average he posted in 1998. Like in 1998, Sosa leads the league in runs and RBI. He’s on pace to become the first player ever to hit at least 60 home runs three times.
Yet Sosa’s OBP and slugging average pale in comparison to Bonds’ performance. Furthermore, while Sosa has scored 10 more runs than Bonds, Bonds has reached base 26 more times. And while Sosa has driven in 18 more runs than Bonds, Sosa has had 59 more at-bats with runners on base.
Sosa is batting .346 with a .478 OBP and .747 slugging average with runners on base and .325 with a .513 OBP and .717 slugging average with runners in scoring position. Awesome as that is, Bonds is batting .376 with a .577 OBP and .916 slugging average with runners on base and .363 with a .627 OBP and .963 slugging average with runners in scoring position. Bonds has made 63 fewer outs than Sosa.
Given Bonds’ historic performance, why is he not the consensus for MVP? Probably the biggest reason Sosa beat McGwire in 1998 was that Sosa’s Cubs won the wild card and finished 6-1/2 games ahead of McGwire’s Cardinals. This season, though, Bonds’ Giants are two games ahead of the Cubs for the wild card.
His advocates have advanced the argument that Sosa is more valuable to the Cubs than Bonds is to the Giants. At least offensively, this contention has merit. Sosa has scored 18 percent and driven in 21 percent of his team’s runs, while Bonds has scored 16 percent and driven in 17 percent of his team’s runs.
There are a couple of flaws in this approach, however. First, it assumes that a player’s value relative to his team’s offense is the same as his value relative to his team as a whole. This isn’t an accurate assumption because a team’s offense is only one side of the coin in determining its success.
Indeed, the Cubs are contending because of their pitching, which ranks third in the league in runs allowed, and in spite of their offense, which ranks 11th in the league in runs. Conversely, the Giants are contending because of their offense, which ranks third in the league in runs, and in spite of their pitching, which ranks 11th in the league in runs allowed.
Given that the Cubs’ offense has played less of a role in their success than the Giants’ offense has played in theirs, there is no reason to assume that Sosa has been more valuable to his team just because he compares better to the Cubs’ offense than Bonds compares to the Giants’ offense.
Second, comparing a player to his club’s offense in order to select the league’s MVP wrongfully rewards a player for having poor teammates and punishes a player for having good teammates. In fact, this logic has the perverse effect of making a player on a great team unlikely to win the MVP unless he has a truly remarkable season, and almost nobody has ever had a season as remarkable as Bonds this year.
There is nothing inherently more valuable about Sosa because the Cubs’ Ricky Gutierrez and Matt Stairs have driven in 107 runs between them. And there is nothing inherently less valuable about Bonds because the Giants’ Jeff Kent and Rich Aurilia have driven in 177 runs between them. To deny Bonds the MVP because Kent and Aurilia have outperformed Gutierrez and Stairs makes no sense.
Even if you believe a player’s value should be measured relative to his club’s offense, however, Bonds should still be the MVP over Sosa. Using the simplest runs created formula, which is OBP * slugging average * at-bats, Sosa has created an estimated 155 runs this season. By this method, Bonds has created an estimated 179 runs.
In the same number of outs as Sosa, the average National League rightfielder has created an estimated 86 runs, or 69 fewer than Sosa. In the same number of outs as Bonds, the average National League leftfielder has created an estimated 72 runs, or 107 fewer than Bonds.
If you replaced Sosa with an average right fielder and Bonds with an average left fielder, neither the Cubs nor the Giants would have scored as many runs as they’ve allowed, which means they’d likely both be below .500. Indeed, take 69 runs away from the Cubs and they’d be outscored 607-580. Take 107 runs away from the Giants and they’d be outscored 670-598, which is much worse.
You don’t have to use runs created or any empirical formula, however, to figure out that neither the Cubs nor the Giants would be in the playoff picture without Sosa or Bonds. And if you believe that the MVP should come from a contender, then it doesn’t matter whether the Cubs would be worse off without Sosa than the Giants would be without Bonds, even if that were true. They’d both be playing out the string right now.
That cuts to the heart of the issue: both Sosa and Bonds have been indispensable in carrying their teams toward the postseason, and both have played brilliantly. Bonds is having a Ruthian season, though, in every sense of the word, and deserves his fourth MVP award no matter how badly baseball writers want their season-long deification of Sosa to result in the trophy landing in Wrigleyville.
Out of Gas?
After leading the league in batting much of the summer, Moises Alou has seen his average drop by 26 points since August 18. Alou’s freefall has prompted accusations that he can’t handle playing more than, say, 130 games in a season. (Of course, Alou has only played 122 games this season, so he must be hitting the wall earlier than normal.)
Looking at Alou’s month-by-month career totals reveals some decline late in the season, although there’s a dip in May as well (counting statistics are per 162 games, and March/April and September/October are combined):
Month Avg OBP Slg 2B 3B HR R RBI BB ------------------------------------------------ Apr .349 .408 .628 42 6 34 99 132 60 May .297 .371 .451 41 4 14 86 92 66 June .294 .349 .517 29 3 34 103 126 55 July .309 .376 .548 36 5 32 95 117 62 Aug .304 .373 .540 34 3 32 110 118 66 Sept .294 .363 .482 31 3 20 79 96 54
So Alou does tail off in September. This is a little misleading, however, since Alou, who some people might call injury-prone, hasn’t played as much in September as in other months. In seasons when Alou has missed many games due to injury, he could be fresher in September than other players who’ve played many more games.
Thus, here are Alou’s numbers since 1994 broken down by number of games played in the season (again, counting statistics are per 162 games):
Games Avg OBP Slg 2B 3B HR R RBI BB --------------------------------------------------- 1-40 .323 .389 .551 45 3 28 98 121 65 41-80 .306 .373 .520 31 3 31 102 124 66 81-120 .319 .389 .590 36 5 38 114 135 68 121-162 .282 .365 .433 24 0 21 78 84 76
Quite a decline there as well. Alou has never actually played 162 games in a season. Since 1994, he has played 159 games in 1998, 150 games in 1997, 143 games in 1996, and 126 games in 2000. Those four seasons and this year are his only recent forays into the 121-162 category. Thus, there are only 100 games to judge Alou’s 121-162 performance. How has Alou played in those seasons?
Year Avg OBP Slg G 2B 3B HR R RBI BB --------------------------------------------------- 1996 .247 .297 .412 23 5 0 3 7 11 6 1997 .279 .353 .462 30 1 0 6 16 20 12 1998 .307 .409 .436 39 9 0 3 22 15 24 2000 .304 .385 .304 6 0 0 0 2 4 3
That’s clearly not the Alou we’ve grown to love during much of the season but, at least in 1997 or 1998, not someone you’d bench. The moral of the story is that Alou probably needs some rest in September, particularly at age 35, but the nasty slump he’s been in the last couple of weeks isn’t his typical late-season performance.