The Terrible Trout Travesty

I think we can all agree at this point that Miguel Cabrera will win the MVP this year. He won the first triple crown in over forty years and no player has ever won a Triple Crown and not won MVP. However Mike Trout is my vote for AL MVP although it's pretty close.

Winning a Triple Crown is an awesome accomplishment but in this modern age we all can pretty much agree that RBI is not a great stat. It is batting position dependent and relies on what guys before you are doing, you can be the greatest hitter in the world but if the batters before you don't get on base, you won't have any RBI. So what Cabrera really did was lead the league in average and home runs. Let's compare Cabrera and Trout in those two categories. Miggy hit .330 on the season while Trout hit .326. This is essentially a push. The difference between those averages is three hits which is essentially meaningless. In homers Trout trails significantly with only 30 homers to Cabrera's 42. Trout however has a shorter season with about 60 less AB's than Miguel. Trout was hitting about one homer per 18.5 bats which gives him about 33 homers if he had the same number of AB's as Cabrera. Trout makes up for it a little with 49 steals (he was also an incredibly efficient stealer, only being caught 5 times), plus defensive skills and playing a difficult position. 

On the advanced metrics end, Trout pretty much passes Miggy on every end. The simplest way to compare two players is WAR. Below is a table that shows how the two players matched up using three popular WAR  metrics.

Player	fWAR	rWAR	offensive WAR
Trout	10.4 (1st)	10.7 (1st)	8.6 (1st)
Cabrera	7.5 (tied 6th)	6.9 (6th)	7.5 (tied for 2nd)

As you can see Trout is leaps and bounds ahead of Miguel. Trout was the top in baseball in all three and several wins ahead of Cabrera in f and r WAR. These stats represent a total package of offense and defense and tell a pretty compelling story. Trout had a higher OPS+, a higher OBP and led in my personal favorite stat, Win Probability Added by about .5 percent. I think that any statistical study would show Trout was the better player. However MVP is not awarded by statistics it is awarded by baseball writers who will no doubt choose the history making Cabrera. Miggy is not a bad choice at all but when it comes to value, I am taking Trout, even though he is a Phillies fan.