Plunk Everyone

Earlier this week, the BBWAA gave out the 2008 MVP awards to Albert Pujols in the National League, and Dustin Pedroia in the American League. Those were some nice choices, but every year we argue about who had the best season and never take a broader look at things. What would happen if they awarded these things based on the last 5 seasons, instead of just the last 1 season? At the least, it might be interesting. 5 years is the approximate length of most players peak production, and it’s a pretty popular contract length. Granted, the length of time is arbitrary, and the focus solely on each league will ignore some people who switched leagues but had a great 5 year span, and we’re going to ignore pitchers arbitrarily too, but hey, we all know the real MVP voters make up rules as they go along anyway.

So lets take a look at the league leaders in some popular statistical categories, using the combined totals for the past 5 seasons:

HBP leaders – 2004 to 2008

Hits leaders 2004 to 2008

Home Run leaders 2004 to 2008

RBI leader 2004 to 2008

Batting Average leaders 2004 to 2008
(2500 AB minimum)

On Base Pct leaders (OBP) 2004 to 2008
(2500 Plate Appearance minimum)

Slugging Pct leaders (SLG) 2004 to 2008
(2500 AB minimum)

OPS (OBP + SLG) leaders 2004 to 2008

Taking a look at those numbers, there’s a pretty clear choice in the National League – it really jumps off the screen at you, doesn’t it? Obviously it has to be – Chase Utley. Sure, Albert Pujols led the 5 year span (pentaseason?) in batting average, OBP, Slugging Pct, OPS, and RBI, and missed the 5 year triple crown by 1 home run, and came in 2nd in total hits for the 5 year span as well, just 3 behind Jimmy Rollins. But Pujols only got hit by 32 pitches. Utley got hit 77 times in 5 years, and that’s pretty good, even if it doesn’t rank any where near the top 5 year spans in HBP history (Hughie Jennings had 202 in his best 5 years, Ron Hunt had 152, Baylor 123 and Biggio 117). But it was the best in the National League from 2004 to 2008. Aaron Rowand got hit 82 times in that span, but he had 31 of them in the American League. But okay, I can see the argument in favor of Albert Pujols as well. And behind Utley and Pujols, Lance Berkman has had a pretty impressive 5 year run.

In the American League, there are a lot more choices. Jason Giambi led the pentaseason by getting hit by 73 pitches in the AL, but it’s not clear if he was still using BALCO brand performance enhancing drugs at that time, which obviously would have inflated his HBP numbers. Also, he hasn’t brought much else to the table besides HBPs, unlike Chase Utley in the NL who still made the top 10 in several categories. Then you’ve got your choice between David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez. I’d pick Ortiz, since he’s the only player other than Pujols to but up an OPS above 1.0 for the 5 year span. The 2 World Series rings make his regular seasons seem a little more impressive too. Rodriguez got hit by more pitches, but he also plays for the Yankees and has an annoying nickname, instead of a cool one like Big Papi. Rodriguez had more homers, but Ortiz had more RBI. Rodriguez had more hits and a better average, but not by much, and Ortiz beat him in OBP and Slugging.

The other arguable choice is Ichiro. When people were listing Pedroia’s MVP resume this year, many mentioned the he tied Ichiro in hits for 2008. Well nobody tied Ichiro in hits for the span of 2004 to 2008 – nobody in history. The previous record for most hits in a 5 season stretch was 1,142, buy Ichiro from 2003 to 2007. He had one more in 2008 than in 2003, but we seem to forget what he’s doing in any season in which he falls short of the single season hits record. Well, he just broke the 5 season hit record this year. Only two other players have ever managed a 5 year stretch with over 1100 hits – Chuck Klein with 1,118 from 1929 to 1933, and Bill Terry with 1103 from 1928 to 1932. Ichiro now has FOUR such pentaseasons, which means the least productive 5 years span of his career was 2002 to 2006 when he only had 1,112 hits. He had 1,130 from 2001 to 2005. That’s really just another way to say he’s had the best 8 year stretch of hitting ever (by 86 hits). Ichiro is so far ahead of all of his contemporaries in the hits category that if he’d sat out 2004, and had 0 hits instead of setting the single season record with 262, he’d still have 12 more hits than any other player between 2001 and 2008. As it stands, he’s 274 hits ahead of Albert Pujols for the most since the beginning of 2001.

So anyway, since Pedroia is the 2008 MVP than the AL must be the small-ball league, it seems like Ichiro would be a good choice for the 2004 to 2008 5 year AL MVP.

With Tim Lincecum’s victory in the National League Cy Young award voting for 2008, we now have three straight years in which the NL Cy winner hit 6 batters that season. Jake Peavy plunked 6 in 2007, and Brandon Web struck 6 batters in 2006. Also, Roger Clemens won the award in 2004 – a season in which he hit 6 batters, so that makes 4 of the past 5 NL Cy Young winners with 6 plunks on the season.

On the other hand though, 13 other pitchers hit 6 batters in the National League in 2008, but did not win the Cy Young Award.

Much has been written about the historic nature of this years presidential election, because obviously we need to declare right away what’s historic or not, rather than leave it for Trigonometry to decide. Or History, if it ever gets around to it. But there’s one interesting trend that’s being ignored by most of the media, and it actually did NOT hold true for this election.

Prior to this year, when the National League averaged more HBPs per game than the American League in an election year, the Democrats won the white house 71.4% of the time. When the American League got hit more, the Republicans won 63.2% of the time. But this year, the American League got hit by more pitches per game than the National League, 0.36 per game to 0.33 per game, but the Democratic Party’s candidate still won the Presidential election.

But it just goes to show you, you can’t always use HBP statistics to predict the future. With the American League getting hit by more HBPs per game in 2008, the numbers pointed to a Republican victory in the election, but that’s why we vote instead of just picking our president based on plunk statistics (for now).