Friday, September 17, 2010

Jose Bautista vs. George Bell

In terms of power, the definitive Blue Jays' season belongs to George Bell.  In 1987 he led the league in RBI's and total bases and was named the American League MVP.  What's interesting about the 1987 MVP selection is that it's become a great example of how new statistical measures have changed the way we look at player value; Bell had 332 votes compared to Alan Trammal's 311, a pretty close race.  Side by side, the MVP outcome shows pretty clearly which feats were the most important at the time.  Bell had 47 HR's, 134 RBI's, and a 54 point advantage in slugging % (.605 vs. .551) compared to Trammell's 28 HR's and 105 RBI's.  Bell also hit .302 so yeah, great year for sure (all numbers are from Baseball-Reference.com).  Except that now things have changed; we value RBI's a lot less and are concerned more with the offensive performance relative to the player's position.  RBI's, of course, have lost panache because, and this is pretty intuitive, they really have more to do with how good your teammates are at getting on base.  So while Bell had a higher slugging %, Trammell had a higher on-base percentage (.402 vs. .352), drawing him almost even for OPS (.953 vs. 957).  Trammell did this as a shortstop; that's a fantastic season for a middle infielder.  Bell had a great year but played an easier defensive position (and played it a lot worse when you compared range factor), walked a lot less (39 vs. 60), didn't steal many bases (5 vs. 28) and had less hits overall (188 vs. 205).  All this stuff is summed up nicely in a stat called W.A.R.P., or Wins Above Replacement Player.  It basically looks at how many more wins a player contributes over the course of a season above what an average or Triple A player could contribute .  It's complicated but it concludes that Trammell contributed an 8.5 WARP (anything over 8 is considered an MVP season) while Bell put up a 5.0 (an All-Star season, but nothing to raise eyebrows over).  But what's done is done.

So George Bell's 1987 MVP may be in dispute, his team record for homeruns has not.  At least until Jose Bautista hits one more.  They're currently tied at 47 and with 16 games left in the season, Bautista has a pretty good shot to get to 50, let alone to the top of the team's homerun heap.  But, again, who's had a better season?  Comparing Bell and Bautista is actually a little easier considering they're both corner outfielders.  The games played won't quite line up, but here's the basic rundown so far:

Bautista:  145 games, 47 HRs, 134 hits, 32 2Bs, 111 RBIs, 8/10 SBs, 93 BB's, 106 K's, .262/.381/.613, .994 OPS, 165 OPS+, 313 total bases

Bell: 156 games, 47 HRs, 188 hits, 32 2Bs, 134 RBIs, 5/6 SBs, 39 BBs,  75 K's, .308/.352/.605, .957 OPS, 146 OPS+, 369 total bases.

So Bell had 54 more hits but Bautista had 54 more walks.  That doesn't quite even out obviously, since a hit can mean more than just one base, so close edge to Bell.  Way more RBI's for Bell but, again, this isn't really important unless you believe in magical powers, called "knacks," that turn themselves on in only the clutchiest, team-neediest situations.  "Knacks" for things don't exist when players have 600 plus at-bats; huge sample sizes are why baseball numbers are so statistically meaningful.  ANYWAY, Bautista does have way more strikeouts and while a popular opinion suggests strikeouts are no worse than any other type of put-out, I think that logically that's wrong.  At least if the ball is in play the possibility for a productive out exists.  Possibilities for errors, runners' advancing on a fielder's choice, that sort of thing.  Of course if the ball is in play then you can also have UN-productive outs, like double-plays.  So, I guess, um, shut up.  I don't like strikeouts.  ANYWAYS, Bautista's walks give him the advantage in on-base percentage and OPS, but Bell retains the advantage, at least at this point in the season, in total bases.  So far the best indicator is probably the difference in OPS+, which takes into account park factors and compares a player's numbers against the rest of the league's.  Bautista's had a much better year relative to his peer's than Bell, so offensively we award a split decision to Jose Bautista.

2 comments:

Ian said...

Gotta talk about defense too. Bautista has played a reasonable percentage of the games at third base instead of right field. Somewhere between 20 and 30%? and despite that, he is almost the leader in the AL for outfield assists. I'm sure he has the most per game. George Bell's defense was always considered "below average".

Ian said...

Just checked. He's played 30% of his games at third base, but he's still in second place for outfield assists, with 12 in 108 games vs first place Choo who has 13 in 138 games.