WeekEnd HaloLinks: Trout Takes Second, Again.

The MVP info you seek is below. First, I am still a few days behind with a boggled mind about RoY responses. I keep going back and reading the tears of MFY fans concerning Ohtani’s award. It’s amazing how poorly those people think about the sport of baseball. For example:

Butthurt: “...Ohtani wasn’t a rookie – he played PRO ball in Japan...” - Which is unlike Miguel Andujar playing PRO ball in MiLB...how?

Butthurt: “...He can’t hit lefties so the angels protected him...” - We covered that 2 days ago. Ohtani was mashing against lefties by the time the season ended. Better than Miguel Andujar, actually.

Butthurt: “...Ohtani was very protected IMO against whom he pitched...” - Uh, Ohtani’s season log was against: 97-win team, 97-win team, 108-win team, 103-win team, 89-win team, 78-win team, 90-win team, 64-win team, 58-win team, 103-win team. Those people are just pissy that he didn’t face the Yankees in their Nintendo ballpark. But juggling a 6-man rotation while you have starters bailing out with injuries all around is hard stuff. Don’t take it personal, Yankee fans.

Butthurt: “...Andujar played a lot more games than Ohtani...” and/or “...Ohtani had only 10 games started...” and/or “...all Ohtani’s time off should’ve disqualified him...” - This is where it requires some of that New York sophistication of which they are so proud. Baseball is mainly the interface of events between pitcher and batter. Miguel Andujar stepped to the plate 606 times. Shohei Ohtani stepped to the plate as a batter 367 times, and also faced 211 batters as a pitcher. That’s a total of 578 pitcher/batter events for Ohtani, versus 606 pitcher/batter events for Andujar. Only 28 apart. Meaningless......Most important, though, is the need to understand that BY DEFINITION a two- player will never have as many PA’s as a straight position player, nor as many game starts (GS) as a straight starting pitcher (at least, not those who work in a 5-man rotation). And the need for rest days before/after pitching appearance eats into total games played. Unavoidable facts. So comparing counting stats by focusing on only one of either bucket is absurd. In fact, had Ohtani NOT suffered his TJ injury the number of total PA’s on the season WOULD HAVE GONE DOWN! When Ohtani was shut down the first time, after his June 6th start, he had appeared in only 34 of the Angels’ 61 games as a position player, and had 129 PAs. That’s roughly 2 PA’s per team game. Once he came back into the lineup on July 3rd, he missed only 7 of the remaining 75 LAA games (some because of that final September 2 start) and had 238 PA’s. That works out to roughly 3.2 PA’s per team game. His PA rate went UP when he stopped pitching. It would have been LESS had he not gotten injured. But his production would not have gone down with those missing PA’s, because that production would have moved over to his pitching prowess. You have to be intelligent enough to know how to follow that in order to speak meaningfully about a player such as Ohtani. Being a two-way player is outside the norm, and plays funny tricks on your counting stat view of reality. If you cannot grasp that concept, Yankee fans, go back to finger painting.

Butthurt: “...a guy who’s claim to fame is being a novelty...” - No. Having a position player take the mound in a blowout to save a bullpen is a “novelty”. One that is getting out of hand. Ohtani was at least a mid-tier MLB hurler for the amount of time that he could pitch, and had his health not fail him he was tracking to be a Top 10 in the AL. Meanwhile, he was 13th in OPS in ALL OF MLB for guys with at least 350 Plate Appearances. 6th in OPS+. And one of the very fastest starting pitchers in MLB already. By the way, he also stole 10 bases and hit 2 triples. The kid is FAST. (Andujar hit only 2 triples in his 606 PA’s, and he stole only 2 bases all season.)

Have a great weekend with these Now-Less-Than-100-Days-To-Spring-Training-HaloLinks:

This is THE weekend of the event! JeffJoiner directs us all to the annual opportunity for we fans to join the Halos in giving back to our community. The Groundskeepers are hosting their 12th Annual Canned Food Drive Friday, November 16th thru Sunday, November 18th at Angel Stadium.

Nope. After all that, the Angels cancelled at the last minute. Please take your canned donations to the nearest Salvation Army.

A Little Bit Of Angels News

By the way, did any of you also notice that one of the BBWAA voters assigned to the LAA market for RoY, and then for Manager of the Year, and then for CYA, was a writer working for a Japanese media outlet? Pretty cool. (The 2nd LAA chapter vote for MVP was Sam Miller of ESPN.).........And did you see that Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs had an AL-CYA vote? Doubly cool...........(The Athletic, by the way, had a dominant position throughout the cumulative balloting. That’s a reflection of their aggregation of senior writing experience and credibility.)..........

Right when I call out our prospects in AFL for faring poorly after their All-Star break, we get this. Even something from Baldo. I should whine more often...........

A little Trout porn; Now that the season is wrapped, Mike Trout sits at 64.3 career bWAR. That is good for 99th place all-time among position players. In 2019 he will be picking off Hall of Famers almost weekly......There are only 5 active players still ahead of him: Chase Utley, Robinson Cano, Miguel Cabrera, Adrian Beltre and Albert Pujols. If we assume that Utley and Beltre retire, and since Cano and Cabrera are within about 5 bWAR, before 2019 is over we might have the top 2 active career bWAR leaders playing under the Halo.......He has 8 seasons under his belt. Of the guys still ahead of him, the shortest career is Joe Dimaggio at 13 seasons, sitting at 78.1 bWAR (in 42nd place). Trout should pass Joltin’ Joe in only his 10th season. by the time Trout finishes his 13th season, he should be in the 90 bWAR range. That is Wade Boggs territory. around 30th all-time. It took Boggs 18 seasons to get there......By the way, when you include pitchers, Trout is tied with Roy Halladay at 144th all-time..........

Everywhere In Baseball

And, yes, Mookie Betts and Christian Yelich are your AL/NL MVP’s respectively. Nothing for me to complain about there, except for how anti-climactic it was considering recent years. Betts was the near-unanimous 1st-place vote getter. Trout was the overwhelming 2nd-place choice.....In the oddities department, Jeff Wilson of the Dallas-Forth Worth Telegram voted Trout for 1st, while Dave Campbell of the AP voting for the Minnesota faction of BBWAA voted - LOL - JD Martinez. That Campbell ballot also placed Trout FOURTH, while Jon Morosi of MLB.com (voting for Detroit) and Gerry Fraley of the Dallas Morning News voted Trout FIFTH...........

Now that Betts is the reigning AL MVP, we can move on from all this silly talk about Mike Trout being a generational talent. And we can also move on from all this silly talk about MLB failing to market Mike Trout, because now we have a true Face of Baseball.....Yes, folks, that is media unleashed after years of Mike Trout Fatigue Syndrome. It has nothing to do with how history shall weigh in..........

Because, you know, it’s not as if these guys have not been trying to battle back against the meteoric rise of Trout since day 1. They wanted to crown Bryce Harper really, really bad just a few yeas ago. Mike made a mockery of those comparison’s with his charming smile and brilliant, steady, inhuman performance. So now that the data is piling up and the market is not as big a frenzy as anticipated, the walk back from the hilltop is just three shades shy of disingenuous..........

The whole idea of an MVP Award springs from the mind of one Hugh Chalmers. Years ago during this winter lull I included some Chalmers stuff in my historical reviews. But this is all of that in one place..........

Five more years of Manfred, to the surprise of nobody. But this means that Manfred is THE GUY on the hook for the looming labor strife. Good luck with that!..........

The Mariners will no longer be playing at SAFECO Field. That’s because SAFECO has cashed out.....The new sponsor is T-Mobile, which must have similar hopes that millions and millions of people flock to their local T-Mobile store and switch services just because of the power of the Mariners.....I don’t care what Jerry Dipoto wants us to call it. I am calling it the T-Mobile Home Park. Because it fits..........

Introduced into evidence as exhibit #16 as to why the Mets naming of BVW to flip from player agent to GM is a really confusing thing. Because when he was an agent he was saber-rattler of the highest order and threatening collusion claims, but now he and Rob Manfred are the best of buds..........

Oh, hey, the owners have been busy in their meetings after all, getting Millennial religion. Down come the 1960’s era shoe color restrictions on players..........

The blue-collar Red Sox are rapidly becoming the white-collar Boston Brahmin..........

We dodged a bullet there. Being thin at catcher ourselves, we just missed out on Jeff Mathis. The Rangers beat us to him..........

MLB and FOX just inked a huge, $5.1 billion, deal to extend the FOX contract all the way out to 2028. That’s a 36% jump, which is good. And everybody is stoked, but I wonder. Arte got $3 billion out of FOX all for himself. Sure, Arte’s deal was over 20 years and not 7, but Arte is only 1 of 30, while MLB is all 30. This new deal is $24.3 million per team, per year, so that FOX might reach all markets, including the SoCal market they already reach. Arte got $150 million per year independent of that so that FOX can reach all of SoCal, the 2nd largest market available................

I must be missing something. MLB and DAZN have announced live streaming OTT broadcasting, with Live Look In. But nothing is mentioned about breaking the blackout restrictions, so how is this different the MLB.TV? And, if the answer is ‘nothing’, how does mirroring the same content among 2 separate services improve anything for anyone?..........

The Duffle Bag

Do something stupid with your precious BBWAA vote, see that vote put out there in public, see the public point out how stupid you are. Click..........Trevor Bauer knows his stats well enough to know how to misuse them while on vacation. He kinda has a point, as he should have gotten more love, but we be talkin’ BBWAA here...........The Marlins are changing their logo and color combo, yet again. This will be their 12th Jersey logo since inception in 1993. In that same span, the Angels have had...2..........And the Nats just unveiled their ST logo and colors. Much, much better than their norm..........This Detroit Tigers concession worker thing started out horrible, and is concluding horribly. The TL;DR version of the sentencing is “stay out of jail for the next 18 months and don’t work around food during that time”. So there!.........