In 1987, Ozzie Smith had a fine season for the St. Louis Cardinals. The Wizard, one of the most popular players of his era, hit .303 and scored 104 runs. He stole 43 bases and walked 89 times, and though he hadn’t hit a homerun since his Game 5 walk-off in 1985 NLCS, Smith collected forty doubles and four triples, driving in a career-high seventy-five runs. He won the Gold Glove at shortstop, as you might’ve guessed.
The Cardinals won their division with 95 wins, sneaking ahead of the Mets (92 wins) and the Expos (91 wins). They beat the Giants in a close NLCS, and then lost to the Twins in the World Series.
Stepping back a little bit: for those of you who don’t remember this, 1987 was a strange season. A lot of players had sudden power spikes that year: twenty-eight hitters popped 30 or more homers, and two players (McGwire and Dawson) ended up a single homer short of fifty. Even some low-power guys got in on the fun: Wade Boggs poked 24 homers, three times higher than his previous best. The claim going around was that they had changed the baseball somehow...tightening the seams or switching from cowhide to camel. It doesn’t matter, really. It’s not relevant to our conversation today.
The 1987 MVP Awards are among the most maligned in baseball's long history. George Bell and Andre Dawson, two brawny sluggers who paced their leagues in RBI’s, took home the tropies. Dawson hit 49 home runs, but he drew only 25 unintentional walks, and scored just 41 runs when someone else was driving him in. George Bell did a little better on the walks front (30 unintentional walks!), but neither man added much as corner outfielders. The current consensus is that both men were elected because they had impressive RBI totals.
That’s a reasonable interpretation of events. I mean, I can roll with that notion: RBI’s were a big part of the reason Dawson and Bell won their MVP’s.
But if Bell and Dawson were bad selections, it seems worthwhile to point out that 1) both selections weren’t close to unanimous, and 2) the guys who came in second in the votes were great choices. George Bell won the AL MVP with 16 first-place votes, but Alan Trammell received 12 first-place votes, and did better on down-ballot votes than Bell.
And Andre Dawson didn’t even get a majority of first-place votes: he received eleven of twenty-four first-place votes. The second-place finisher, Ozzie Smith, received nine first-place votes.
So while the results of the 1987 MVP vote are pretty bad, the thinking behind those votes is a little more sophisticated than the outcome suggests. Which is worse, really? Andre Dawson getting 11-of-24 first-place votes (46%) to win the 1987 MVP over Ozzie Smith, or Miguel Cabrera receiving 22-of-28 first-place votes (79%) to win the 2013 MVP over Mike Trout?
Really, what is worse? In 1987, the BBWAA voters didn’t have reams of data tabulating the exit velocity of each batter’s line drive. Nevertheless, they were legitimately torn between giving the MVP to a guy who led the league in homers and RBI’s by a comfortable distance, and a slick-fielding shortstop who hadn’t popped one in two calendar years. That was a coin-flip call for them…and the coin came up ‘slugger.’
By 2013 we had FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference. We had OPS+ and FIP and WAR. We had Moneyball and Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski. Hell, Bill James was hanging out in the Executive Suite, counting diamonds on World Series rings. We had more knowledge, and that knowledge was disseminated on platforms that everyone could access. We had a myriad of ways to quantify defense and baserunning, and we starting to count things like a catcher’s ability to frame pitches. We had a lot more.
And when it came time to pick between a sluggardly slugger and a once-in a generation talent, the writers went ‘slugger.’ It wasn’t a coin-flip: it was decisive. They did it the next year, by the same score. The slugger won the Triple Crown: he has to win the MVP, right?
No. For most the BBWAA’s history, the Triple Crown winner didn’t win the MVP. The BBWAA took over the MVP award in 1931. In 1933, Jimmie Foxx and Chuck Klein both won the Triple Crown. Foxx got the MVP, but Klein didn’t. Gehrig earned a Triple Crown in 1934…Cochrane got the MVP. Joe Medwick collected the last NL Triple Crown, and received the MVP award. Ted Williams collected Triple Crowns in 1942 and 1947…but he didn’t win the MVP either year. That’s six Triple Crown seasons, and just two MVP awards.
We judge that, from our vantage, as ignorance. It’s stupid to give an MVP award to a catcher with four homers, when Lou Gehrig is having a Lou Gehrig season. It’s dumb. It’s dumb to keep giving an MVP’s to Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, when Ted Williams is having Ted Williams seasons.
It’s not ignorance. The people who voted for the MVP back in 1934 or 1947 thought just as deeply as we do about the game of baseball. They had the same arguments that we had, debating the same concepts we discuss. In some ways, their thinking was narrow and reductive. In other ways, they did a better job of juggling complex variables than we’ve managed. They weren’t fools, and anyone who suggest that we have some edge in understanding because we have better measures is someone you should probably ignore. We have better tools, certainly, but that doesn’t mean we’re better at using them.
* * *
Okay…still circling the point of things.
Ozzie Smith was incredibly famous during his career. I don’t know when he became famous, but I know that by 1987 Ozzie Smith was one of the most ‘known’ players in baseball. I started paying attention to baseball in 1987, and I knew that Ozzie was a STAR. His baseball cards were expensive. He was a fixture on This Week in Baseball. He started every All-Star game from 1983 to 1992…ten years in a row. That’s remarkable, right? Ten years in a row, the folks punching voting cards in the stands went with Ozzie Smith.
Here is Ozzie Smith’s average batting line over that decade:
|
G
|
R
|
H
|
2B
|
HR
|
RBI
|
SB
|
BA / OBP / SLG
|
OPS+
|
|
144
|
73
|
144
|
25
|
2
|
49
|
33
|
.275 / .353 / .348
|
95
|
Please know, before we go any further, that I am in no way trying to denigrate Ozzie Smith here. I love Ozzie Smith. When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was a slick fielding guy like Ozzie Smith. I think he was an absolutely brilliant baseball player, and I’m glad that he was recognized for his greatness.
But it is sort of startling that he was so recognized, isn't it?
Go and look at Ozzie Smith’s career batting line. He was, in his early years, a weak hitter. He didn’t have a batting average higher than .258 until he was in his thirties. He started slow, at least as a hitter, and worked to get to passable. He had a good on-base percentage in his later years, but it wasn’t generally elite. He wasn’t Brett Butler. His two real areas of skill were 1) defense, and 2) baserunning.
How many guys with those skills sets get super famous in baseball? Anyone? Can you think of any player who was treated as a superstar who was like Ozzie Smith? He’s Mark Belanger, if Belanger had a really sharp PR behind him.
Ozzie Smith’s fame is peculiar, too, because it didn’t come at a moment in history when people were suddenly evaluating defense in a new way. Ozzie Smith looks great now because a lot of our metrics give credit for his incredible defensive contributions, but in the mid-1980’s, they were still using fielding percentage and double plays to evaluate a defender. And it’s not like those tallies were listed in the sports page every week: you’d have to dig around to find the leaderboards that Ozzie dominated.
But Smith was famous. He was in the category of players who everyone knew about: him and Ripken and Mattingly and Schmidt and Gooden and Strawberry and Canseco and Brett and Boggs. He was a big star. Fans in the 1980’s knew that Ozzie Smith was special, without any kind of metric existing to tell them that he was a great player.
And the MVP voters recognized the same thing. The voters almost gave him an MVP award in 1987, and it wouldn’t have been any kind of travesty if they had.
* * *
All of that is precursor to the subject I want to talk about, which is Andrelton Simmons.
It is my opinion that Andrelton Simmons is a very legitimate candidate for the MVP this year, for the same reasons that Ozzie Smith was a very legitimate candidate for the MVP in 1987. What I find interesting is that no one in baseball is talking about him like that.
Let’s take a step back.
The Angels, at this writing, are on the bubble of postseason play. Who has been their best player this year?
It’s Mike Trout, of course. Mike Trout has missed a third of the season this year, but he’s been transcendently great in the games he has played. He’s the best player in the world, so by the transitive property of best-ness, he is the best player on the Angels.
But Andrelton Simmons isn’t too far behind him. FanGraphs’ WAR has them at 6.1 and 4.6 respectively, with Trout ahead. And Baseball-Reference’s version of WAR has Simmons ahead of Trout, 6.5 to 6.0. Baseball-Reference actually rates Simmons as the third-best position player in the league, behind Altuve and tied with Aaron Judge.
And if you hold that ‘good’ and ‘valuable’ are different concepts, an argument exists that Simmons has been the more valuable player to the Angels this year.
Go and look at the Angels team page on Baseball-Reference: they are a bad baseball team. The only regulars on the squad with an OPS+ over 100 are Trout, Simmons, and C.J. Cron, who has played half-a-season. Simmons has been hitting fifth most of the year, because it is actually reasonable for the Angels to slot a guy with a .376 career slugging percentage in an RBI slot. They have no one better.
And Simmons has risen to the challenge: he is having the best offensive season of his six-year career, by a wide margin, and he hasn’t given up anything on defense to do it.
How did he do during Trout’s absence? Did he lift up his game as an offensive player, or did he struggle?
He lifted his game. During Trout’s DL stint, Simmons hit .303 with an on-base percentage of .346, and a slugging percentage of .500. He scored 23 runs and drove in 19 over those thirty-eight games, was nine-for-ten in stolen bases, and he struck out just 16 times in 153 plate appearances. He didn’t ‘carry’ the offense, but he was an efficient hitter in Trout’s absence.
Judged in whole, Simmons is having a season that feels a lot like Ozzie Smith’s 1987 season. Both men played on ‘red’ teams. Both were passable hitters having strong years. Both men batted high in the lineups because their teams had few offensive weapons relative to their leagues. Both players were overshadowed, a bit, by the presence of a great hitter who missed some time (Simmons has Trout, while Ozzie Smith had Jack Clark posting a monster year in 1987). Both of them played peerless defense at a crucial position.
The difference is that while Ozzie Smith was judged as a legitimate MVP candidate in 1987, no one is going to give the same attention to Andrelton Simmons. If the Angels reach the Wild Card, it is possible that Simmons will get a few late-ballot nods from West Coast voters. If the Angels lose to the Twins or the Yankees, I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t get any votes.
And Andrelton Simmons hasn’t received a fraction of the attention that Smith received at this juncture in their careers, even though Simmons is, in all likelihood, a superior player. Ozzie Smith at 27 was a great defensive player, but his career OPS+ was 69. Simmons is at 90. Use any new metric you’d like to use: Andrelton Simmons holds his own as a defensive player, and outpaces Smith with the bat. Despite this, Simmons has never been an All-Star.
This is a note I probably hit too often, but I’m going to hit it again: we like to believe that we live in enlightened times, but we are wallowing in the same swamps of ignorance as the souls who have preceded us. We just have the benefit of not having a generation after us calling us out for our failures.
The lack of attention Simmons has received speaks, I think, to our blindness: it speaks the ways that our perceptions in this moment are limited. How is it that no one is appreciating the brilliant season that Andrelton Simmons is having? Why hasn’t his name been mentioned as a dark-horse MVP candidate? Why aren’t we applauding the strides he’s made this year as a hitter? The Angels managed to go 19-19 with Mike Trout on the DL, which is remarkable for that lineup. Where were the articles praising Simmons for helping to carry an anemic offense through Trout’s absence?
They don’t exist. No one has noticed Simmons, and there is a chance no one will notice him.
That’s okay. Sometimes we miss things. Sometimes brilliant players get recognized in their time, and sometimes it happens later. There are a lot of baseball players to follow, and we can’t give attention that is perfectly aligned to merit.
But I think the guiding belief, at least in the circles of baseball fandom that I follow, is that we are in a moment of particular enlightenment; a moment when we are seeing the game with a vision that surpasses the tired prejudices of earlier generations. We see Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw, and we understand them. We see the stupidity of wins, we know the value of a walk. We are enlightened.
And I think we are enlightened. We know a great deal more about baseball than we knew ten years ago, or twenty years ago. We count more things. We have a myriad of tools at our disposal that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.
But I think that the knowledge we have has led to a narrowing of our vision, a limit of our understanding. It is certainly laudable that so many of us understand the principles underlying a metric like Fielding-Independent Pitching, a notion that wasn’t in the mainstream in 1987. But it is just as significant that we haven’t noticed a year in which a historically great defensive shortstop has made strides as a hitter, and is now one of the best players in baseball.
I am not a Luddite. I am not suggesting that we smash the machines that create our spreadsheets and tables. I am not trying to critique WAR or FIP, and I am not trying to save the win, or win something for saves. I am only trying to point out that we have our own areas of blindness, our own flawed biases and attitudes.
We are not better thinkers than the people who gave an MVP award to Andre Dawson, or the people who gave an MVP to Mickey Cochrane: we’re just lucky enough to live in later days. The generations of fans and writers and analysts who follow us are going to find the same flaws and prejudices in our work, and they are going to interpret us through whatever lens seems apt to their cause. We aren’t going to be ‘right’ about a lot of things.
In light of that, I’d remind us that we should try to be a little more generous in how we interpret the thoughts of our predecessors, and a little more conscious that we should hold to our beliefs with a light hand.
Dave Fleming is a writer living in western Virginia. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.