Some interesting analysis on the American League MVP race by Dave Cameron at FanGraphs Baseball. Cameron started the conversation earlier by discussing the Ranger’s candidates for MVP. You will probably want to do some reading on the stats WPA and WPA/LI to make sense of the discussion if you don’t already know what they mean. It’s enough to make your head spin, but still makes for interesting reading.
Using these statistics and others like them is a popular replacement to more traditional stats like batting average and RBIs. While MVP voters are unlikely to look too closely at this type of information, it does provide some interesting fodder for thought about the players who are truly most valuable. It is interesting that players who could finish well below a player like Hamilton in traditional stats such as average and RBIs could come up ahead in this analysis.
