If you have a strong stomach and a desire to learn about the Dark Side of baseball thinking, you should read Jayson Stark's loathsome article about Alex Rodriguez's Most Valuable Player candidacy.

Stark concedes that A-Rod "may have the prettiest overall numbers in the American League," but argues that he isn't the MVP because he failed to carry the Rangers and their awful pitching staff to the playoffs, or at least to a winning record. (My research indicates that, during the 2003 season, A-Rod also failed to walk on water and redeem the sins of the world by rising from the grave after three days.) This is nothing new. I already covered this objection in my September 3 post, and I won't bother with it further, except to quote Salon's King Kaufman: "Rodriguez has the same value on a last-place team as he'd have on a first-place team in the same way that a $100 bill has the same value in my pocket that it does in Bill Gates'."

But Stark adds a new wrinkle:

OK, suppose we accept the argument that it is possible to have value on a non-contending team. Obviously, Andre Dawson, Ernie Banks and Cal Ripken all won MVP awards. So it must be possible, at least in some years.

But if you're going to be "valuable" on a last-place team, then you'd better be really, really, really valuable. You'd better be start-to-finish valuable. You'd better be able to demonstrate that, as your team fell apart all around you, you were the guy towing the boat with the rope in your mouth.

Well, unfortunately for A-Rod, we can't say that about him -- not this year.

Stark goes on to complain that from May 30 through June 23, A-Rod went 2-for-23 with runners in scoring position while the Rangers went from nearly .500 (27-29) to way, way under, losing 20 of 22 games. He had only one home run and two RBI during the first 16 games of that stretch. His league ranking in home runs, RBI, and slugging percentage slumped during the months of May, June, and July, when his team needed him most. "So as the ship sank, he sank with it," Stark concludes.

Kilgore's Third Law of Bad MVP Selection states: Beware of sportswriters bearing highly situational stats. There was a lot of this going on last year, when various writers and bobbleheads scrambled to justify Miguel Tejada's MVP award by pointing out that he went 12-for-15 with runners on first and third against Dominican left-handers in May and August, or whatever. All players' performances rise and fall over a long season, and it's easy to distort a player's production by highlighting his slumps and ignoring his hot streaks, or vice versa. (For example: Stark conveniently forgets that A-Rod batted .355 with 9 home runs and an 1117 OPS in April, when his team needed him at least as much as they needed him in May, June, or July.)

Apart from the obvious idiocy of boiling a 162-game season down to 22 games and 23 at-bats, Stark is wrong when he argues that A-Rod played badly during May, June, and July. A-Rod posted an 867 OPS for those three months, and from May 30 through June 23, while the Rangers crashed, he had an 861 OPS while batting .296. These are not the brilliant numbers that A-Rod put up the rest of the year, but they are still very good. If A-Rod had performed as horribly all season as he did from May 30 through June 23, he would have ranked second in OPS -- barely behind Nomar Garciaparra at 870 -- among American League shortstops.

The Rangers' season-crushing 2-20 slump had nothing to do with A-Rod and everything to do with the worst pitching staff in the major leagues, which allowed 150 runs (6.8 runs per game) during that stretch. But let's say that A-Rod had performed a little better and gone 12-for-23 with runners in scoring position, instead of 2-for-23. What difference would it have made? The Rangers might have won one extra game, maybe two. They would had a 4-18 slump and Jayson Stark would be writing that A-Rod couldn't be the MVP because he only hit .190 in Wednesday and Saturday away games on artificial turf after the All-Star break.

There's just no pleasing some people, you know?

+posted by Lawrence @ 10/02/2003 01:47:00 PM