Why Michael Brantley Should Win the MVP

We already covered which players could be up for significant post-season awards this year, but two of those players deserve some extra consideration, Michael Brantley and Corey Kluber. Brantley should be a candidate for an outfield Silver Slugger, Gold Glove, the AL MVP and Hank Aaron Award. This will just focus on his attempt for the American League MVP, an award he has little chance of winning due to the non-MVP winning 2012 and 2013 seasons from Mike Trout.

Thanks to the great baseball statisticians around the world, we now have a single number that can compare players from different situations, who play different positions with different styles together. Wins above replacement (WAR), is the perfect stat for starting the MVP discussion as it includes offense, pitching and defense and compares every player in the league on an even level. The top ten in the American League are on the right. That particular list comes from baseball-reference.com and while WAR is calculated differently on different sites, fangraphs.com has a similar top ten although Brantley is third, Gordon fourth with Phil Hughes, Jon Lester and David Price breaking into the top ten and Adrien Beltre, Chris Sale, Robinson Cano and Jose Altuve kept out.

For the sake of this article, we will assume a position player will win the MVP this year as there are multiple worthy candidates and generally, a pitcher grabs both the Cy Young and MVP only when that is not the case. With that condition in place, the top contenders are now Trout, Josh Donaldson, Brantley, Alex Gordon and Jose Bautista. All five of these players were listed among the top ten in both lists and were worth at least six more games than a replacement player. Of course, the MVP voters don’t vote based on WAR alone (last season, Miguel Cabrera won the award despite finishing behind Trout, Donaldson and Cano in WAR), so we’ll have to bring some more numbers into this.

For the old school voters, above are the more traditional stats used to determine greatness. Added in on the right, however, is Ultimate Zone Rating, a defensive metric used to show runs saved compared to the average fielder. This is more useful than fielding percent for many reasons, but here mostly as it can compare across positions. This is especially important as four of the five players are outfielders (a position that generally leads to a fielding percent above .990) and the other is a third baseman with a fielding percent of .952. Going completely old school, a few arbitrary numbers were hit by those leaders including 35 home runs, 100 runs and 100 RBI by Bautista and Trout along with 200 hits, a .300 average and 40 doubles by Brantley. One thing worth noting is that Brantley is the only one in question with at least 20 steals, giving him that very rounded out 200/40/20/20 line that voters love. If he had scored six more times and knocked in three, he would really have been off the charts.

The chart above is similar to the first, but shows the rank in the American League for all those numbers. While less scientific than WAR (making it less useful, but more comfortable), the final number on the right shows each players average rank across the stats listed. One thing easily notable is that there are quite a few number one’s missing. Most of these belong to Jose Altuve, who lead the league in hits, doubles, steals and average. While he will likely get a few later MVP votes, he isn’t a real candidate to win the award. Also worth noting, the numbers that Trout is among the top five (runs, home runs, RBI and OPS) are generally considered more important than those Brantley is (hits, doubles and average). Looking at things this way make it seem like a three way race between Trout, Brantley and Bautista as Donaldson and Gordon lack the speed, power and production numbers of the others.

Looking at the qualities valued by voters, we can break these players down into simpler categories; best power hitter, best average hitter, best speed player, best defender and best surrounding team. While this final qualification may seem odd as it has nothing to do with the player himself, voters hate giving away the Most Valuable Player to someone on a team that was out of play-off contention early. This is one reason Altuve and Beltre are easily dismissed. Using this breakdown, it is easy to label the top two players for each trait (listed at right). To start with the team, all belonged to play-off contenders going into the final two weeks of the season, but only Donaldson, Trout and Gordon actually made it into the play-offs. Since voting takes place before October, all these players should get an equal boost from this as they were unable to see the early exits of the Athletics and Angels. The reason Gordon is ranked above Donaldson here is that he was a much larger part of his team’s success.

Like the previous five seasons (five All-Star appearances, two top five MVP finishes), Bautista looks to be on the outside looking in again. The one quality he does well, hit for power, Mike Trout does better and while he possesses some of everything else, it is not enough for him to surpass the leaders. On the other side, Gordon and Donaldson simply don’t have the power to compare, although they both should repeat as Gold Glove winners this season. This gets us back to the two man race between Mike Trout and Michael Brantley, a race with an obvious favorite.

No Indian has won the MVP since Al Rosen did so in 1953, although many have come close, including Travis Hafner in 2005 along with Juan Gonzalez and Roberto Alomar in 2001 who all finished within the top five, and it looks like this will be happening again. While there are solid arguments about how Brantley was more important (i.e. “valuable”) to his team:

*RC is runs created (RBI+Runs-HR) for Brantley & Trout

That will likely matter little to voters who will start with the argument of 100 RBI and 100 runs and end with the falsehood that Trout is a better defender than Brantley (Brantley 1 error, 12 assists, Trout 3 errors, 4 assists). In addition, voters know they snubbed Trout for the exact same reasons as they are going to snub Brantley this time, when they gave the award to Miguel Cabrera each of the past two seasons. Trout should go on to win many more MVP’s in his career while Brantley will likely miss out on his one chance in what was likely the best season he will ever have.