Could an Average Hitter Win the MVP?

Spencer Weisberg
Sep 5, 2018 · 6 min read

This year’s AL MVP race has a lot of intriguing candidates. The stars in baseball this season are showing fans what true all around players are. Mike Trout, Jose Ramirez and Mookie Betts are great at nearly every aspect of the game. Then sneaking in the race are two players having historical seasons at their specialized skills. Matt Chapman and J.D. Martinez possess an elite glove and bat respectively, but Martinez has spent the better part of this year as a designated hitter and Chapman as a very good hitter but does not have the counting stats to make him stand out in the media like the others. Although viewed by the average baseball fan as specialty players who stand out in one thing, they still remain in the MVP discussion.

Last week I was asked a question by my friend Ethan Moore (check out his Twitter @Moore_Stats) about how much weight batting, fielding and baserunning had on award races. We assumed it was around 85% hitting and 10% fielding roughly, but then it got me thinking about a player we have never actually seen. How good would an average hitter have to be to win the MVP? I dove into this question recently and found out this could happen, but, admittedly, in ridiculous fashion.

I assume if you are reading this, you know about Wins Above Replacement(WAR). If not, it’s an all encompassing statistic to estimate how much value a player brings to a team over a typical easily acquirable player. It takes in how many runs you produce by looking at batting, baserunning, fielding, position, how the league was each year, and playing time. I will be going over different formulas in which these are calculated but won’t spend much time on the theory behind why these are the formulas. If you want to learn more, feel free to DM me on Twitter or simply look it up. I will be trying to find the maximum WAR an average hitter can generate in a season. So without further ado…

Batting Runs:

This should be the easiest portion, we know the hitter will have to be average. This means his runs generated should be 0 for the batting portion. An example of what a 0 run batting season would look like is Pedro Feliz in 2004 in which he slashed .276/.306/.485 with 22HR, 84RBI and a .334 wOBA. In a simple way, this number is derived by looking at the how much higher or lower the player’s wOBA is compared to the league and then multiplying by plate appearances. So for reasons that will later become obvious, we want to find a way for a player to get on base as many times as possible but still have a league average wOBA. There are a few steps to coming up with this:

1. Determine the highest ever league average wOBA. In 1930, the league average wOBA was .356.

2. Find the most PA in a single season. Jimmy Rollins had 778 PA in 2007.

3. Run Value = wOBA*PA = .356*778 = 276.968. Divide this by the weight given from an unintentional walk (.69) to get 401 times on base.

Did you catch that? Yes I am saying this player would have to reach base 401 times all via the walk giving him a .515 OBP for the season. This still would give him 0 batting runs for the season but maximizes opportunity to gain runs on the base path.

Base Running Runs:

The base running portion of WAR is one of the more complicated calculations and I won’t dive to deep into it. I will just use the best base running season of all time and then extrapolate for our mystery player. I determined who had the best base running season of all time by looking at the highest base running runs above average per time on base. This distinction of best of all time goes to 2008 Willy Taveras who had 14.1 base running runs above average and reached base 161 times.

14.1/161 = .088*401 = 35.12

We then take that number and multiply it to the times on base of our MVP hopeful and find his base running runs to be .088*401 = 35.12. Lets add that to the table!

Fielding Runs:

Using the Fangraph version of WAR, we determine fielding runs by observing a player’s Ultimate Zone Rating(UZR) which looks at how many runs a player saves or allows by looking at the players ability to turn double plays, limit errors, throw people out from the outfield, and get to difficult balls. UZR has been present since 2002 and the highest UZR per inning for a player at a premium position is Franklin Gutierrez in 2009 while the most innings played in a single year by any team was the 1964 Yankees who played a total of 1506.2 innings. Using the same method as baserunning, we will look at how many runs Gutierrez would have saved if he started over Mickey Mantle in the ’64 Yankee outfield.

Fielding Runs = UZR per Inning*Inning = 0.023*1506.667 = 34.52

Positional Adjustment:

Some positions are obviously more difficult than others. Catchers should not be judged on an equal level defensively as first basemen and that’s what positional runs adjusts for. Using a center fielder like we did for fielding runs (I figured out it was the best way to maximize this rather than for a shortstop) and the ’64 Yankees innings, we get the following:

Positional Runs = ((Innings/9)/162)*PositionValue

Positional Runs = ((1506.667/9)/162)*2.5 = 2.58

League Adjustment:

Not all leagues are equal. Neither are seasons. Some seasons, like 2018, we have a boatload of talent and some years we have a good chunk of the league fighting in a war (no pun intended). The 1936 season is, by league adjusted values, the worst modern season in history and this is the baseline we will use for this portion.

League Adjusted runs = LeagueRunsAboveAveragePerPA*PA

League Adjusted runs = .004*778 = 3.10

Replacement Runs:

Now we know our player is 75.32 runs above AVERAGE but we want to find runs above replacement. We must adjust for the difference between average and replacement level now. To do so, we need to find an optimal runs per win total in the league and the lowest full season plate appearance post the most recent expansion in 1998 which occurred in 2015 with 183627 plate appearances league wide. Furthermore, in 1963, the runs per win total was 8.13 which will lead to the greatest WAR total in the long run. So to calculate:

Replacement Runs = 570*(8.130/183627)*778 = 19.63

Converting to Wins:

Converting to Fangraph’s version of war is very simple and it is simply to divide the total number of runs above replacement by the league wide runs per win. We know our runs above replacement total and we will continue to use the same runs per win total since we can not mix seasons for the same numbers.

WAR = RAR/Runs Per Win

WAR = 94.95/8.13 = 11.68

Could He Win the MVP?:

This is a very high WAR for a player who was a phenomenal hitter let alone someone who is an average hitter for an entire season. It would place him at the 14th highest WAR season of all time right between Ted Williams’ Triple Crown season of ’42 and MVP season of ’46. So to answer my own question, I believe it is very possible to win the MVP while being an average hitter, even a below average hitter could make a run at it with these numbers. Although possible, this is a ridiculous scenario that would likely never happen, but a scenario I would love to see the voters have to make a decision on.

WoBA: Weisberg on Baseball Analytics

Just a guy chasing his dream to a front office

Spencer Weisberg

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WoBA: Weisberg on Baseball Analytics

Just a guy chasing his dream to a front office

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