Cameron: Trout and Cabrera, here we go again
From Dave Cameron at FanGraphs on August 5, 2013:
Last year, the AL MVP debate turned into something resembling a culture war, with Miguel Cabrera representing the traditional methods of player evaluation while Mike Trout was the darling of the sabermetric community. In the final tally, Cabrera won in a landslide, receiving 22 of the 28 first place votes, but Trout and Cabrera were #1 and #2 on 27 of the 28 ballots submitted, with Trout sliding to third on just one ballot. While there was disagreement over which of the two was more valuable, there was broad consensus that they represented a tier unto themselves, with everyone else looking up to their excellence.
Well, it’s happening again. If you pull up the leaderboard for American League hitters, there’s Mike Trout at #1 (+6.9 WAR), followed more closely than last year by Miguel Cabrera at #2 (+6.4 WAR). While Trout blew away the field by WAR last year, Cabrera’s having an even better season in 2013 than he did a year ago, while Trout is just a little shy of last year’s remarkable pace. This year, instead of the big gap in WAR being between Trout and Cabrera, the gap is between Trout/Cabrera and everyone else; Chris Davis, at +5.1 WAR, is a distant third.
Once again, though, Cabrera has the advantage in all of the things that WAR ignores but voters do not.
Read the full article here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/trout-and-cabrera-here-we-go-again/
Originally published: August 8, 2013. Last Updated: August 8, 2013.