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Nate Silver Turns His Eye To the American League
Lasrick writes "Nate Silver is at it again. This time, instead of the presidential election, he's focusing on the baseball's Most Valuable Player race for the American league. It's a race that embodies the split among baseball fans between those who think of it from a mathematical perspective (the Moneyball generation) and those who prefer the traditional, feel-of-the-game perspective. Here's a quote: 'On Thursday, the American League will announce the recipient of its Most Valuable Player award. The winner is likely to be Miguel Cabrera, the Detroit Tigers star who won the league’s triple crown by leading in batting average (.330), home runs (44) and runs batted in (139). It might seem as if these statistics make Cabrera, the first triple crown winner in either league since 1967, a shoo-in for the M.V.P. But most statistically minded fans would prefer that it go to another player, Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels.'"
He first got well-known doing statistics-based baseball analysis (aka sabermetrics), and only moved into politics later.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
...founder of psychohistory. Welcome to the last Galactic Empire, folks.
Nate can use his statistical prowess to document and irrefutably show the bias Big 10 refs have for and against certain teams based on the number of blown calls or calls which should have been called compared to the other conferences such as the SEC and PAC-12.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Angels won more games than Tigers and are in a tougher division.
The thing that makes Nate Silver is not so much that he uses Math. Lots of people used math to predict the outcome of the election, including Princeton's Sam Wang and the pollsters at PPP (who were the most accurate polling organization).
What makes Nate Silver valuable is that he can write. He explains what he's doing and why. He describes his model in detail and lets us in on what elements go into his predictions.
There are probably a fair number of handicappers who can do as well as Nate Silver in the predicting department, but while we can make money betting their predictions, we're not going to gain any valuable insights. You can learn from Nate Silver.
You are welcome on my lawn.
He is not making a prediction on who WILL win the MVP. He is making a case for who he thinks SHOULD be the MVP, based on his analysis of statistics. However, the MVP is not awarded based on his analysis of statistics, it is awarded by a vote of the baseball writers, who may have different MVP criteria than he does.
In the presidential race he predicted who would (not should) win. Here he is saying who should (not will) win.
While TFA is a good argument, it has the feel of religion, where he keeps digging until he finds the "his" guy ahead, then stops analyzing.
I didn't get that feel at all. I saw it as a good explanation of the divide between traditional baseball statistics and the more modern sabermetric statistics. Based on the traditional statistics, Cabrera is the clear-cut MVP...he did something that hadn't been done in 45 years. Based on the more modern statistics, Trout is the clear winner.
The vote will really be a referendum on these new statistics and how well baseball writers feel they quantify a player's contribution. As a statistician, Silver has a clear bias, but it's not towards a player, it's towards the measurements that evaluate all players. Baseball's general managers have already accepted these new measurements (as covered in Moneyball), but now writers are being forced to confront the same issue. And, for them, it's a more complicated issue. Whereas GMs can rely on the on-the-field results speaking for themselves, writers have the task of making the game accessible to fans. RBIs, HRs and AVG are very easy to explain to viewers/readers. WAR and the newer statistics require what is often college-level math to grok.
This article does a good job of describing the context of this interesting vote for people that aren't already aware.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Mike Trout is a great player, no doubt. He should definitely be on the short list for MVP. The problem is that this isn't just a statistical/quantitative award, there's a qualitative measurement as well. Were you just 'good' but on a terrible team? Were you 'great' but on a great team? These things matter. Felix Rodriguez got the Cy Young award even though he had barely a winning record as a pitcher. His team gave him ZERO help but he was the best pitcher in the AL that year.
What is all comes down to is the Triple Crown. The last guy to do it was Carl Yastrzemski in 1967. Of 16 Triple Crown winners, only 14 players have ever accomplished it (two of them did it twice). In this age of hitters that are specialists, it's incredible that someone accomplished the feat. I honestly never thought I would see it in my lifetime.
So unless Nate Silver can put some weight on the psychological importance of the title - Triple Crown - then his calculation will be flawed. Knowing that Nate Silver is a baseball fan, I assume he is well aware of the importance of the feat.
CABRERA 2012!
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
As a baseball fan, I have read literally dozens of articles and hundreds of message boards rants on this subject. If you're interested, a little wading through Baseball Think Factory will allow you to relive the endless re-hashings at your leisure. More generally, this sort of statistical talk is very common among a certain segment of baseball fandom, and is (as has been mentioned before) the milieu from which Nate Silver emerged.
What's interesting about this specific issue is that Cabrera vs. Trout has been painted as a traditionalists vs. stat-heads vote, but an argument for Trout can be made with no reference to advance statistics. It goes like this:
Trout's traditional "slash line" (batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage) is very similar to Cabrera's. Cabrera hit for more power, but otherwise they are nearly equal. Trout's home ballpark is harder to hit in than Cabrera's. Trout led the league in stolen bases with 49, Cabrera had 4. Cabrera grounded into 28 double plays, most in the league. Trout grounded into 7. Cabrera is a poor defensive player, Trout is an outstanding defensive player. Trout's team even had a better record than Cabrera's, even though Cabrera's Tigers made the playoffs and Trout's Angels didn't.
Nothing in that argument requires anything more complicated than the division required to work out batting average and the like. The fact that Trout's candidacy has been painted as just the result of statistical mumbo jumbo is ridiculous.
(It should be pointed out that there is a lot of mumbo jumbo in baseball's defensive statistics. They are not at all mature yet, and are heavily influenced by very subjective inputs. This is part of why I prefer the non-statistical argument for Trout. When someone says that Trout's glove was worth 2.1 wins above a replacement player (the number given at Baseball Reference he is speaking with a false precision. Silver, it should be noted, doesn't fall into this trap, and I should say that Sean Foreman at Baseball Reference doesn't believe that his 2.1 win number is anything more than an educated guess.)