A Quest Called Tribe

So here is the question - is Asdrubal Cabrera your American League MVP?  AzCab certainly looks it after knocking both his 10th dinger of the season and the go-ahead double in a 3-2 victory.  Let us take a look.  Asdrubal ranks in the top 8 in all three of the triple crown categories, .312 (8th), 10 HR (T-4th), 34 RBI (T-4th).  On a team that seems to feature a different offensive hero on each given night, these are pretty gaudy stats.  He is also tied for 16th in the AL with 7 stolen bases (0 CS) and is 7th with a .919 OPS. 

All of these numbers sound awesome, but they are a whisper to thin.  Why?  His name is Jose Bautista.  Joey Bats (.353, 19 HR, 32 RBI, 1.330 OPS) is destroying the ball.  Many argue that there is no possibility that he maintains this pace for the entirety of the season.  Well, the same could be said of Cabrera.  At heart I am a stat guy and these days I put the most weight into WAR.  There are a number of different calculations for this metric and I prefer that of BaseballReference.com.  So far in 2011, Asdrubal has accumulated a WAR of 2.5, good enoguh to tie for 7th in the AL.  Bautista is far and away the leader at 4.4. 

Others argue that there are factors that these numbers do not take into account.  The Indians are 15 games over .500 (Wow!), while the Jays are just a single game up.  The Indians have had to deal with injuries to several key starting pitchers and their two best known offensive cogs.  The Tribe has put this run together with Jack Hannahan at third and their 3 and 4 hitters mired in season long slumps.  I will point to the fact that Most Valuable Player directly implies that the winner should be the player who has added the most value to his team.  What do we call value in baseball?  We rename it as wins.  Thus, the question boils down to which player has added the most wins to his team.  Supposing that you accept the objective validity of the WAR measure as I do, then, while Az has had an All-Star campaign, he falls just short of the MVP threshhold.

Amazingly, there are other players on the team and some of them are drawing a fair amount of concern.   am looking at you Chris Perez.  Chris seems to have conjured the spirit of the all-mighty Bob Wickman in putting together a Picasso of a season.  When you do not take the time to look closely 1-1, 13 saves and a 2.70 ERA seems to be a pretty nice campaign.  I choose to dig a bit deeper.  Since beignning 2011 with 8 straight scoreless appearances, Perez's ERA is 4.38 and he has walked more (10) than he has struck out (8). Over his last four appearances just 36 of his 68 pitches have been for strikes and he has put 8 men on base in four innings.  I will not nitpick the results, but we all should be wary of the fact that these tendencies may tip the scales against a team that has played 26 of its 45 games within 3 runs, including 16 of 30 wins.

Here's to hoping that Fausto Carmona can deliver the same sort of start that he did in his first try against Boston (7 IP, 0 R, 2 H) and not the kind of crap he has coughed up versus those other Sox.

Cheers.