whosmvp

Who's Really MVP


Jimmy Rollins of the Phillies	Matt Holliday of the Rockies

(Photos courtesy of Yahoo Sports)

by Jimmy Russotto

10/5/07

One of the best things about the end of the baseball season is the annual debate over who'll be rewarded the singular honor of Most Valuable Player in each league. This year, while the American League honor is pretty much a done deal, as Alex Rodriguez 's numbers are untouchable, whether or not the Yankees prevail in their first-round series against the Indians (and at this writing they are down 1-0), the National League award could be (and maybe should be) a virtual tie between two truly outstanding baseball players in every sense of the word. They are Matt Holliday of the Colorado Rockies and Jimmy Rollins of the Philadelphia Phillies. Although I don't have a vote, I thought it would be fun to really try to choose between them, to analyze the statistics and interpret them in such a fashion as to be truly meaningful in terms of "value".

For those of you who may wonder, I am not including David Wright, the terrific third-baseman of the Mets, in this competition. The Mets total collapse at the end of the season prevents me from considering him (This is not totally fair but David really didn’t play that well down the stretch, especially in the field).

The reason this battle so intrigues me is that both players, in addition to being great overall players, are really “clutch” guys, both practically willed their teams to the top of their respective divisions, and both do all within their respective abilities to win each game. Both are excellent fielders as well. The fact that Rollins also fulfilled his own prediction in the beginning of the year by stating that the Phillies were the class of the NL East is a factor I definitely won’t count, but it is interesting.

Rollins, of course, is a shortstop, a leadoff hitter and a good runner while Holliday plays left field and bats third behind two good hitters in their own right.. That makes it difficult to measure their relative importance outside of batting stats that are more-or-less absolute such as the averages. If you throw out runs, rbi’s and the like, Holliday is the better hitter for average and for power. Even his on-base pct. is better than that of Rollins, a strange anomaly.

How about consistency as a measure? Holliday was unbelievably consistent throughout the year. His batting average at the end of each month of the 2007 season varied very little. From the end of April through the end of September, for each month his BA was as follows: .385, .345, .348, .336, .335, .340. For Rollins, his matching numbers were .297, .273, .283, .296, .296 and .296, not as consistent in the beginning of the year but certainly just as consistent down the stretch.

What about performance in the clutch? The Rockies went 7-7 from the first of September through September 15^th. From 9/16 through 9/30, the Rockies went 11-1. Holliday was consistent throughout the month but his OPS went from .968 to a whopping 1.011. He had 12 HR’s and 30 ribbies in September. Rollins Philly team won 13 games and lost just 4 from 9/13 through 9/30. During this period Rollins scored 14 runs, had 12 rbi’s and stole 10 bases.

What about fielding? Shortstop obviously is a more challenging position athletically than is left field, and it’s surely a lot tougher to find a shortstop than a left fielder. But we can’t hold that against Mr Holliday. We could, however, try to compare their individual fielding percentages versus the average shortstop and outfielder, or, since that’s an obscure number we’ll never find, we can compare each fld pct to similar position players, those with whom we are familiar. For our purposes, we’ll compare Holliday to Hideki Matsui and Manny Ramirez, who is a notoriously bad fielder, Rollins to Jose Reyes and Jhonny (that’s not a typo, that’s how he spells it) Peralta, whos.never impressed me with his fielding. Holliday’s FPCT is .990. Matsui’s is .986, Manny’s is .990. So this proves nothing, but to continue, Rollins FPCT is .985, Reyes’s is .982, Peralta is at .972. How about outfield assists as a measure? For example, Alfonso Soriano had 19 outfield assists while Holliday had just seven. For fun, Manny had just 8 but he had 17 in 2005 when he played practically an entire season. Well, if nothing else, and I don’t think many would dispute the fact, Rollins is probably a better shortstop than Holliday is a left fielder.

So let’s look at the overall numbers first:

Ab R HR RBI Avg OBP SLG OPS SB

Holliday 636 120 36 137 .340 .405 .607 1.012 11

Rollins 716 139 30 94 .296 .344 .531 .875 41

Obviously, Holliday is the better power hitter. The slugging percentage says it all really, being total bases divided by at-bats.But not by that much, given that Holliday bats third while Rollins bats leadoff. Holliday is preceded in a powerful Rockies lineup by Kaz Matsui and Troy Tulowitzki, who batted .288 and .291 respectively. Rollins follows the pitcher while the 8^th position in the Phils lineup was held by players of much less distinction. Holliday was followed in the lineup by heavy hitters Todd Helton, Garrett Atkins and Brad Hawpe while Rollins was followed by the arguably equally potent Victorino, Utley and Howard.

How about percentages of the total team’s productivity? The Rockies batted .280 overall with 823 ribbies, 171 homers and 860 runs scored, the most potent lineup in the National League. They stole 100 bases. The Phillies batted .274, had 213 homers and 850 rbi’s. They scored 892 runs and stole 138 bases. Percentage-wise, Rollins had 18 ½% of the runs scored by the rest of the Phillies while Holliday had 20% of the rbi’s of the rest of the Rockies and a huge 26.7% of the rest of the team’s home runs. Rollins had 42.3% of the ret of the Phillies stolen bases. Geez, still not overpowering evidence either way except that they’re both really valuable.

It seems clear that Holliday’s an even better hitter than Rollins. Rollins is more of a force in the field than at the plate.

Could I assign a factor to this additional fielding productivity in terms of batting statistics such as runs and rbi’s? If I examine runs scored against a team and relate that to errors made by that team, I could probably assign a factor to that and call it runs produced by errors or the inverse, of course, runs prevented by NOT making errors.

Okay, after all these gyrations too boring to relate here, Rollins probably saves about 10 runs per season more than an average major league shortstop, while Holliday’s run-savings would be minimal. Adding ten runs to Rollins’s numbers makes him that much more valuable but still isn’t a deal-killer for Holliday.

Ah hell, let’s just call it even. If they tie for MVP, I’ll be a very happy fella.