MLB All-Star Break Awards / Predictions

It is not even worth responding to this drivel. Gonzalez is having a great year no doubt but bautista is having a better one. Your reasoning is awful. Look at Bonds' great years and tell me how many times he came close to leading the league in hits and RBI's. He has 63 less at bats because he walks more, how does that make OBP easier to achieve. By your logic Ichiro was more valuable to his teams then Bonds ever was. Ridiculous.

And please don't link Bleacher report to back up your argument it does not help your credibility.

 

Exactly. Home runs and slugging shouldn't be counted when evaluating a player? But RBI should? My 7-year-old had second-grade classmates who know baseball better this past year.

 

Gonzalez has been unbelievably good, and the Red Sox are in first place, so he's cited by many authorities as first-half MVP. But Bautista has been a better hitter. He had an historic first half.

 

I don't know who this Mark McGuire guy is that you speak of.

Yes HR's by itself are a bad way to judge MVP. Any one statistic by itself is a bad judge for MVP. You have to take all of them into account. The simple fact is Gonzalez beats Bautista at two. The other half dozen Bautista wins.

And yes hits are important. However looking at hits+walks and slugging is a great way to determine it. That factors in how much the guy reaches base without recording an out and at the same time how much power he hits for. The last is very important because is a double is much better than a single, a triple much better than a double and a home run much better than a triple.

The fact is Bautista as reach base safely 11 more times than Gonzalez this season and has done it while getting a heck of lot more extra bases due to hitting more HR's ... etc (I have already said this once).

As someone else already pointed out (as did I in my first post) the main reason Bautista has less at-bats is because he has more walks. You do realize that a walk doesn't count as an at-bat right? It's a plate appearance but not an at-bat.

If you want to talk slumps how about Gonzalez hitting .250 for the first 13 games? Or how he was OPSed under .800 for the first 23 games of the season.

 

Exactly. If you want to give the MVP to the Gonzalez, fine, but Bautista has been the better hitter. I can't believe the value Chris puts on hits and RBI's. His logic is just so flawed.

 

"He has 63 less at bats because he walks more, how does that make OBP easier to achieve."

First of all, he has 63 less at bats for a combination of reasons. First, he's played less games. Has 27 fewer plate appearance, 4 more IBBs, and yes, significantly more walks. Secondly, walks do, by definition, make OBP easier to achieve. You get points in the OBP column without swinging the bat. See previous posts - by some of these same people - about how overweighted the walk has become in stats.

Gonzalez has more singles, more doubles, and more triples than Bautista. Significantly, not just minor advantages. Singles are 79-53, doubles are ... pardon the pun... nearly doubled at 29-15, triples are 3-1. You cannot tell me that 27 more plate appearances would make up for those huge margins. Bautista's unrealistic SLG margin is because of the unrealistic weight of HRs on that statistic. He leads in HRs and OBP, HRs have way too much weight (how many examples on huge HR hitters can we think of that weren't worth much to their teams), and while walks are great... I would NEVER take more walks over more hits. Ever.

"Home runs and slugging shouldn't be counted when evaluating a player? But RBI should?" Ummmm.... yes. When evaluating how valuable a player is to his team (which is what the MVP is all about), then yes. RBI is more important. First of all, all of those HRs are already included in RBI. And the slugging percentage is overinflated by those HRs. Yes - in the "who benefits his team more" debate (aka the MVP debate), RBI's should carry more weight than HRs or SLG.

 

Gonzalez and Bautista have both had an incredible season thus far. As a Sox fan, it is a treat to watch Gonzalez on a nightly basis, both at the plate and in the field. That said, I think I'd give Bautista the nod thus far.

What he is doing for the Blue Jays is insane. He leads them in runs (73), hits (100), HR (31), RBI (65), total bases (210), BB (74), batting average (.334), OBP (.468), Slugging (.702) and OPS (1.170). In most of those categories, nobody on the team is really very close to him at all.

While Gonzalez similarly leads the Sox in many of the same categories, there are other players in the lineup who are right behind him. In many cases, there are multiple players in each category.

The Red Sox would still have a good lineup if they lost Gonzalez for a spell. If the Blue Jays lost Bautista for a spell, they are a Triple A lineup.

 

Alright, obviously this is getting a bit heated. I'm new here, and don't want to start shit. But you're arguing under completely false premises, and I want to point that out.

"The fact is Bautista as reach base safely 11 more times than Gonzalez this season and has done it while getting a heck of lot more extra bases due to hitting more HR's ... etc (I have already said this once)."

That's simply false. Check the stats. Gonzalez has more extra base hits, EVEN WITH Bautista's huge HR margin. Gonzalez has 49 extra base hits to Bautista's 47. That's because he hits absurdly more doubles and triples.

"But Bautista has been the better hitter." Again, simply not accurate. Who is the greatest hitter who ever lived? You could argue for Pete Rose or for Ted Williams, but who here wants to argue for Hank Aaron? "The better hitter" has always and will always be defined by batting average. Gonzo is 20 points better. That's a massive margin.

OPS - while a valuable stat - does not determine how good a hitter is, how consistent a hitter is, or how valuable he is to his team. The amount of Runs you cause to cross the plate - referred to as RBIs - is of much greater importance to your team. Period. Hence my emphasis on that stat.

I enjoy the healthy debate, honestly. All the best.

 

If we were in a baseball course you would fail miserably. Your logic is just plain wrong. This is some of silliest reasoning I have seen on this sight and that's saying something.

 

In what fucking planet can you argue that Pete Rose is the best hitter to ever play?

You are acting like Bautista doesn't hit for average and that all he does if gwet HR's. Me makes fazr less outs as well that Gonzalez. Jesus this is just even more insane now.

 

Seahawks original argument makes complete sense. That the Blue Jays are nothing without Bautista. That I agree with.

I don't agree with the notion that Bautista has been a better hitter this year. See info above.