Kuzul

On Wednesday, the Baseball Writers Association of America will announce the National Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2011. There’s no telling how the results will shake out, but after seeing how the voters have gone the last few years, one thing’s for sure: they’ll get it wrong.

Roberto Alomar missed induction by eight votes last year, and Bert Blyleven fell just five ballots short. In 2009, Jim Rice earned enshrinement while Tim Raines is still waiting for his turn. And some of the best players of our generation will never reach immortality because of PEDs. Whether or not you agree with the BBWAA, it’s easy to understand why others don’t.

With voters like Dan Graziano and Terence Moore already saying preposterous things like that they didn’t vote for Jeff Bagwell because they have unfounded hunches that he took steroids, it looks like this year’s election has the potential to again exude massive amounts of stupidity.

So Bleacher Report’s Featured Columnists decided to take it upon ourselves to decide who gets into the Hall of Fame. Forty-two writers checked off their ballots for a mock Hall of Fame vote, the results of which are in this slideshow.

We played by the same rules as the real BBWAA. Each voter could name up to 10 of the 33 eligible players. Candidates needed at least 75 percent (32 votes) to make it into Cooperstown, while five percent (three votes) was necessary to remain on the ballot for 2012.

In addition to the full results (listed at the end), we’ve featured the 17 players who received at least three votes with arguments from both people who supported them and those who didn’t explain their votes. The result, we hope, is a thorough analysis of each candidate’s strengths, weaknesses, and chances for induction.

So read on and be sure to tell us what we got wrong!

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It’s been a busy couple of days on the MLB Hot Stove.

We’ve seen Adrian Gonzalez traded to the Boston Red Sox.

We watched the Washington Nationals sign Jayson Werth to a seven-year, $126 million contract.

And that’s before the annual Winter Meetings, which start today in Orlando.

One of the big names who’s most likely to find a new home this week is the Kansas City Royals’ ace Zack Greinke. The 2009 AL Cy Young winner has two years left on his contract, and the Royals don’t expect to be playoff contenders before he hits free agency, so they’re trying to maximize their return by dealing him now.

Here are 10 hypothetical deals that could be made for Greinke, one for each team. I did my best to make them realistic, but remember that it’s all only speculation.

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Over the course of the 2010 MLB season, when the conversation turned to the upcoming free agent market, little attention was paid to Derek Jeter.

The fates of Carl Crawford and Cliff Lee have inspired countless articles and debates, but few writers spilled ink on his pending free agency because it seemed unfathomable that the Yankees captain would ever play anywhere but New York.

Now, with the two sides reportedly separated by as much as $100 million in contract negotiations, there is a very realistic possibility that Jeter could be suiting up somewhere else come 2011.

Of course, the Yankees aren’t likely to let that happen; assuming Jeter relents at least a little bit from his unreasonable demands, they’ll want to keep the face of their franchise in pinstripes. But now that Jeter leaving looks like a real possibility, we should take the time to wonder if New York really needs him.

In this slideshow are 10 reasons why the Bombers could survive if they let Jeter walk.

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One of the few bright spots of the Red Sox’ 2010 season was Adrian Beltre’s triumphant return to stardom.

In 154 games with Boston, Beltre hit .321 with 28 homers, 102 RBI and a .919 OPS. He combined his newly rediscovered offensive prowess with his Gold Glove defense for a whopping 7.1 Wins Above Replacement. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the Red Sox might have finished below .500 without him.

Now a free agent, Beltre will leave a huge hole in the Red Sox’ depth chart if he doesn’t re-sign with Boston. If he doesn’t return to Fenway in 2011, word on the street is that the Red Sox will try to pry first baseman Adrian Gonzalez from the Padres.

With Victor Martinez heading to Detroit, it’s especially important for the Red Sox to upgrade their lineup. The question is: Which Adrian should they pursue?

The answer is pretty clear: Beltre. In this slideshow are 10 reasons why Boston should try to re-sign him instead of trading for A-Gone.

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Today’s announcement of Josh Hamilton as the American League’s Most Valuable Player means baseball’s annual end-of-season awards series is over.

Few times of year breed as much controversy and debate amongst baseball fans as awards season. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen countless arguments for who should win what and why, starting with Derek Jeter’s Gold Glove and running nonstop until now.

The Rookies of the Year, Cy Youngs and MVP are voted on by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America; in each league, two writers for each team cast their ballots for the league’s best players.

Now that all is said is done, it’s time to ask: How’d they do?

In this slideshow are my grades for both the BBWAA’s choices and their total votes for each award. What do you think—would they be proud to bring home this report card?

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When the Seattle Mariners’ Felix Hernandez was announced as the winner of the 2010 American League Cy Young Award, it was hailed as a victory for statheads. And in a sense, it was—by selecting Hernandez over New York Yankees ace CC Sabathia, the Baseball Writers Association of America did not make the mistake of judging the best pitchers in the game by their win-and-loss records.

But while the BBWAA avoided the logical fallacy of holding hurlers accountable for the performance of their supporting offenses, they failed to distinguish the Cy Young candidates’ performances from those of their backing fielders.

While King Felix led the Junior Circuit with his 249.2 innings pitched and his 232 strikeouts were just one whiff away from Jeff Weaver for tops in the league, the main reason for his victory was his 2.27 Earned Run Average—the best in baseball.

But was Hernandez really the best pitcher in the league? Strikeouts and walks are the two things over which the guy on the mound has the most control; Hernandez’s 8.4 K/9 rate and 2.5 BB/9 were very good, no doubt, but they were good for just seventh and 14th in the league, respectively.

In fact, Hernandez’s 3.3 K:BB ratio was less than a third of the mark posted by the rightful AL Cy Young: Cliff Lee.

How can Lee have been better than Hernandez? King Felix had the edge in ERA (2.27 to 3.18), IP (249.2 to 212.1), strikeouts (232 to 185), BAA (.216 to .246), and yes, even wins (13 to 12).

But while there’s no denying Hernandez’s superiority in the cumulative categories, his advantages in the rate stats are simply the result of luck.

Fielding-Independent Pitching is an estimator of ERA that ignores the issue of defense—it’s based solely on strikeouts, walks and home runs allowed. Lee’s 2.58 FIP was the best in the game; Hernandez’s 3.04 mark was over three-quarters of a run worse than his real ERA.

The most common counterargument to using FIP to judge performance is that it’s a measure of what should have happened, rather than what did happen. But to say this is to exhibit a fundamental misunderstanding of the statistic—think of it as the measure of how well a pitcher performed, superimposed into a neutral context.

What’s the cause of the discrepancy? The culprit was Batting Average on Balls in Play—the proportion of balls hit inside the stadium that fall for hits. The average BABIP is around .300, and major departures from the norm are usually due to luck.

Lee’s BABIP: an even .302. Hernandez’s: a fluky .273.

Of course, not all batted balls are equal; a line drive is much more likely to fall for a hit than an infield fly. Using Hernandez’s batted-ball profile, his true-talent BABIP is .287—so his edge over Lee isn’t all luck, right?

Wrong. Lee’s xBABIP is .283, meaning that, with a .302 BABIP, he’s had a fair bit of misfortune.

Still not convinced that Hernandez’s batted-ball profile doesn’t absolve him? His tERA (like FIP, but it takes into account the types of hits he gave up) was 2.95—68 points above his ERA. Meanwhile, Lee’s tERA was 2.65.

The more balls get through the hole, the more hits are allowed. The more hits are allowed, the more runs score. It’s a domino effect that ripples through all the rest of a player’s numbers.

So we’ve established that Lee pitched better than Hernandez, but Felix still did pretty well for himself, and he did it through 37.1 more innings than his former teammate. Doesn’t that count for something?

Of course it does. But Lee’s talent more than made up for the innings discrepancy.

According to FanGraphs’ Runs Above Replacement calculations, Hernandez saved 57.1 runs compared to a replacement-level pitcher. That’s great, until you see that Lee was worth 61.6.

In spite of his early-season injury, Lee was worth 7.1 wins—the best mark of any pitcher in baseball—while Hernandez was worth 6.2. That means his lack of innings shouldn’t be a major detriment to his case; if anything, the fact that Lee was able to achieve that kind of production in limited time makes his numbers even more impressive.

And yet, Lee finished a distant sixth in the Cy Young voting. He was named on only six of the 28 ballots, and the highest he was named was third.

So forget what they say in the press releases, or whose name they engrave on the trophy. Cliff Lee is the real AL Cy Young.

For more of Lewie’s work, visit WahooBlues.com.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Over the last four weeks, Bleacher Report’s Featured Columnists have released the results of our mock vote for every significant MLB award, from Gold Gloves and Silver Sluggers to Rookies of the Year and Cy Youngs.

Yesterday, we reached the apex of our American League awards with the announcement of Josh Hamilton as our AL MVP. Today, our series comes to a close with our choice for the National League Most Valuable Player.

This time, the top 10 vote-getters are featured here, with commentary from the writers who chose them. The full list of results—featuring 41 players who were picked on our ballots—is after the No. 1 pick.

Thank you to all the writers who voted and contributed commentary. I hope it’s been as fun for all of you to read these as it’s been for me to write them. If you missed one of the previous 15 slideshows, the full list with links is at the end.

So read on, see how we did, and be sure to tell us what we got wrong!

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Today, the Baseball Writers Association of America will announce its picks for the American and National League’s Managers of the Year.

Most fans will mark the occasion with indifference. It’s not just because the winners are chosen by reputation instead of quantitative measurement—it’s because the sabermetric movement has changed the way we look at the traditional art of managing.

Game frameworks and win probabilities have shown that intentional walks and sacrifice bunts are overused as best, that stolen bases are usually not worth the risk and that the shot in the arm a team gets from shuffling the batting order is just a coincidence. People seem to notice the skipper only when he screws up.

Of course, there’s no way to quantify the off-the-field boost a manager gives his team, right? Right?

When Buck Showalter arrived for his first day on the job as the Baltimore Orioles’ manager on August 3, the Birds stood at 32-73. They had the worst record in the baseball, and it wasn’t particularly close.

Then Showalter showed up and everything changed. Baltimore went 34-23 the rest of the season. That’s right—the O’s won more games in August and September than they did in the first four months of the season combined.

Before Showalter came, Baltimore’s winning percentage was just .305. In the time after he took the helm, it nearly doubled to .597.

Of course, the sabermetric movement has also taught us not to overreact to small sample sizes. Was this really enough of a sample to prove anything conclusive about a change in the team’s talent?

A basic statistical analysis says yes. In order for a team to have a statistically significant chance of losing 73 games out of 105, their true-talent winning percentage cannot be better than 38.6 percent; for a club to win 34 of 57, it can’t be any worse than a 47.9 percent true-talent team.

At the bare minimum, that means the Orioles upped their true-talent winning percentage by 9.3 percent—that’s almost an extra win every 10 games.

I’m not saying that Showalter is responsible for the Orioles’ improvement. I’m just saying it happened the day he showed up.

Even at the bare minimum value for the difference—and given the foolishness of blindly attributing the full improvement to Showalter, this conservative figure is a fair working number for our purposes—that means he was worth 5.3 wins in his 57 games in Baltimore (put that way, this estimator really does seem cynical).

That translates to 15.1 wins over a full season—enough to bring the 2010 Orioles up to a .500 record.

Compare his 15.1 wins added to Josh Hamilton’s MLB-leading 8.0 wins above replacement (WAR), and you’ll get some idea of the immensity of his contribution. Take any two other players in baseball, and none of them will have a combined WAR over 14.7.

What does that tell you about how amazing Buck Showalter is?

But in spite of his incredible accomplishments, Showalter has virtually no chance at being named Manager of the Year because the Orioles didn’t make the playoffs. That’s how the cookie crumbles.

Of course, Manager of the Year is beneath him anyway. Buck Showalter could be the MVP.

For more of Lewie’s writing, visit WahooBlues.com.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

It’s almost over.

It’s been more than three weeks since Bleacher Report’s Featured Columnists began unveiling the results of our end-of-season mock awards vote. We’ve worked our way up from lowly Silver Sluggers to mighty Cy Youngs and everything in between.

Today, we release the results of the final award in the American League, but we saved the best for last: the Most Valuable Players.

This time, the top ten vote-getters are featured here, with commentary from the writers who chose them. The full list of results is at the end.

So read on, see how we did, and be sure to tell us what we got wrong!

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Today, the Baseball Writers Association of America will unveil its choice for the 2010 National League Cy Young Award, making this the first time in the more than three weeks since Bleacher Report’s featured columnists began to release the results of our end-of-season awards poll that Major League Baseball has had the decency to coordinate their announcement with ours.

Yesterday, we did the AL Cy Young, they did the Rookies of the Year. Last week, they announced the Silver Sluggers and Gold Gloves, a full fortnight after we did. And while we’ll be all done by Thursday, they’re going to drag their results out until just before Thanksgiving.

But I digress—here are the results of B/R’s NL Cy Young vote.

As always, the top five vote-getters are featured here, with commentary from the writers who chose them. The full list of results is at the end.

So read on, see how we did, and be sure to tell us what we got wrong!

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