The Triple Crown is nonsense

看板MLB作者abc12812時間13年前 (2012/09/24 09:09)推噓121(124推 3噓 85→)

留言212則, 64人參與討論串1/1

http://tinyurl.com/97a23br I like the Triple Crown. Really, I love its place in baseball history and how it's one of the exclusive clubs of the immortals. I also like giving the Most Valuable Player Award to the best player in the league. Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers -- Triple Crown or not -- is just not that guy. 我愛三冠王我也愛投MVP 只是肥卡步不是我的菜 In the late 1800's, Henry Chadwick, in an effort to figure out who was good and who wasn't in the game of baseball, began tabulating batting average. Walks and extra-base hits didn't figure in and were not included in what was to become the primary measurement of a player's offensive contribution. Let's cut Chadwick some slack. In the early days of the game, walks were considered to be the fault of the pitcher, and home runs were rarities. Chadwick was doing this, by the way, in roughly the same era when doctors stuck leeches on sick people, and the Army thought throwing thousands of foot soldiers directly into artillery fire was a good idea. Medicine and military strategy have since advanced. Baseball is another story. As Cabrera has vaulted to the top of several random categories, a quaint bit of nostalgia has come roaring back to blind those still clinging to the stats rooted in Civil War-era tabulations: the Triple Crown. 三冠王阿 It's not that batting average, home runs, and RBIs are meaningless. It's just that they are NOWHERE NEAR the three most important offensive categories in baseball. 但打擊率全壘打和打點完全不事三個最重要衡量打擊的數據 Let's just deal with batting average, since it is one of the three categories that some believe should almost automatically bring an MVP to Cabrera. John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball, called batting average a "venerable, uncannily durable fraud" in his book The Hidden Game of Baseball. 打擊率是歷久不衰的騙局 "Time has given the batting average a powerful hold on the American baseball public; everyone knows that a man who hits .300 is a good hitter while one who hits .250 is not," Thorn wrote. "Everyone knows that, no matter that it is not true. You want to trade Bill Madlock for Mike Schmidt? BA treats all its hits in egalitarian fashion. A two-out bunt single in the ninth with no one on base and your team trailing by six runs counts the same as Bobby Thomson's shot heard 'round the world." 大家都知道三成是好打者二成五則不是但這不是真的你想用Bill Madlock換Mike Schmidt? 打擊率把所有的安打等價不管他是無用的鳥安還是Thomson的驚天一擊 Thorn wrote that in 1984. He must be amazed, as a pioneer in sabermetrics, to see analytic departments in Major League front offices while the media clings to batting average. Let's go through the rest of the big three. The weakness of RBIs are obvious. It is very much a team-dependent stat. Certainly driving in runs is important, but it is very much a result of the number of times your teammates get on base. 打點的問題就明顯了固然打回跑者很重要但這很大部分也和隊友上壘次數有關 Home runs are important to tabulate. But what about doubles? Or triples? Don't those count? Adam Dunn has more home runs this year than Robinson Cano, Andrew McCutchen, Mike Trout, Chase Headley, and Prince Fielder. To borrow Thorn's methodology, do you want to tell me you'd take Dunn over any of those five? Not a chance. So let's not blindly follow any of these stats, let alone all three thrown together. 全壘打很重要沒錯但二壘打三壘打呢? Dunn幹了比Cano/McCutchen/Trout/Headley Fielder還多轟這表示他的火力比這些人都強嗎? Now that, hopefully, we see the Triple Crown to be the antiquated throwback that it is, we can also admit that anyone winning it has had a monstrous offensive season. So the real question is: Who's having the better season, Cabrera or Trout, the Angels' rookie outfielder? 所以真正的問題是 Cabrera和Trout 誰的球季比較好? The first two numbers to look at are on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Cabrera began the day at .398/.616, Trout was at .395/.558. That's a sizable advantage in power for Cabrera. The Detroit slugger also led the league with 356 total bases, while Trout had 290. That's 66 more bases. Trout was kept in Triple-A until April 28 and has 58 fewer plate appearances, but that's not Cabrera's problem. Cabrera有長打方面的優勢 But while Triple Crown devotees look to three stats and shut it down, someone actually doing some MVP analysis should look at the whole game -- including baserunning and defense. 但比賽的其他面向 - 包括跑壘和防守 - 也該列入考量 It's easy to say Trout is better on the basepaths than Miggy, but the actually quantifiable difference is staggering. Trout has 42 net steals. Cabrera has three. Beyond stolen bases, it's possible to at least get a good idea of a baserunner's effectiveness by measuring extra bases taken. XBT should appeal to the old-timey, computer-hating scout types -- it counts every time a player goes from first to third or second to home on a single, or they score from first on a double. Trout has 55. Cabrera has 30. Twenty-five more bases is a sizable difference. The rookie's percentage of successful extra bases taken, by the way, is as high as Willie Mays' career mark. Mays has the best percentage of anyone I've been able to find in the history of the game, and by a wide margin. Trout跑壘顯然較好不僅盜壘數大勝也多拿了25個壘包 Trout搶壘的能力幾乎可和Willie Mays相提並論 Adding net steals and extra bases taken, Trout is 64 bases better than Cabrera. Sixty-four! Cabrera's advantage in total bases earned from hitting, which was 62, is essentially wiped out by Trout's running superiority. This is rough math, but extra bases taken while running are ignored by on-base and slugging (and of course by the Triple Crown stats). Trout跑壘上比Cabrera多拿了64個壘包 One more running/hitting stat -- grounded-into double plays. Cabrera has 28. Trout has seven. That's 21 more outs that are not accounted for in Cabrera's hitting line. Notice I'm talking double plays, going from first to third and scoring from second on singles. Wins Above Replacement will not be brought up in the analysis. We don't need new math, only a logical progression of thought. When you put it together objectively, Trout -- EVEN MISSING THE FIRST MONTH OF THE SEASON -- is the better offensive player in 2012. 再加上雙殺打簡單分析之後可發現Trout是進攻較好的球員 The issue of "clutch" hitting, is another column. Cabrera certainly excels in that area. Trout does, as well, and his job, is to set up the "clutch" run-scoring opportunities. Once there, as we have seen, he's the among the best ever. 兩個人關鍵表現都很好 So that's half the game of baseball. Want to venture into the other half, Triple Crown fans? Cabrera certainly deserves credit for moving to third base for the good of his team. He has not been a disaster, despite predictions from almost everywhere. Let's just use one defensive metric, Bill James' runs saved and call this a day. Cabrera is currently at -5 runs saved at third. Trout is at +25. That means over the course of the season, as best as we can decipher, Trout has saved 25 more runs than the average player at his position. This is an immense number of runs saved. So we have the best defensive center fielder in baseball (tied with Michael Bourn of the Braves), or the 28th-best third baseman. Center field and third base have roughly the same value defensively, so this, too, is a blowout. Trout防守完勝Cabrera By things we can easily measure, Trout is about dead even with Cabrera in total bases while hitting and running at a higher level, doing so in 58 fewer plate appearances, and making 21 fewer outs via double plays alone. He is also 30 runs better defensively. It's just not close. 綜合以上所述 Trout是遠勝Cabrera的球員 Look, if Miguel Cabrera wins the Triple Crown this year, he deserves to be put alongside Carl Yastrzemski, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams and Lou Gehrig. It just doesn't mean, on its own, that he was the best player in the American League. He's not. Mike Trout is. Cabrera是應該以三冠王的身分和神獸們相提並論但他不是美聯最好的球員 Trout才是 Good analysis asks the question, then answers it based on evidence. Lazy analysis has a conclusion, then looks for anything to back it up. When you ask, "Who is the best player in the American League?" the answer this year, even with the possibility of a Triple Crown, is inescapable. -- ※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 140.112.25.133

推