Hey, guys, I'm sorry about this but i was reading my first article and i saw some details i didnt like, so i decided to make some minor tweaks to see if i can express my point in a better way, maybe youll notice maybe not, bur i wanted to do it, so.
As we all know Jose Altuve won the AL MVP award, the reasons for that were many, among them there was the huge slump Judge had in the middle of the season, before that he was the clear favorite and after it he had no shot, that was the general consensus and in contrary to Judges rollercoaster, Altuve played at a steady nonetheless great pace, and finished the year as the best player on the best team, which bodes well for the old school voters, now I'm here to not only make the case for Judge but to prove why he shouldve won it.
While both players are superstars with tremendous upside it wouldnt be hard to make an argument that they both just had career years, which is no cause for panic, is just very hard to post 8 WAR seasons as they both did by baseball reference, Fangraphs has Altuve slightly below at 7.5, nevertheless if you look at their projections for next year, Steamer has Altuve at 4.4 and Judge at 4.0 WAR, with significant offensive decline, so this might be their best opportunity to ever win it, especially when theres a Mike Trout in your league.
But moving on, those who defend Altuve will say that while Judges power numbers are ridiculous, they get overshadowed by the fact that Altuve had a batting average .62 percentage points better than Judge all while hitting for a .202 ISO, considering this, the general consensus pick was Altuve, now I'll tell you why youre wrong.
Who never heard the phrase a walk is as good as a hit, its a nice concept with its benefits, but ultimately its a flawed concept, the more accurate notion is, a walk is as good as a single with no runners in scoring position, think about it those two plays produce roughly the same outcome the only possible dierence is a runner going first to third, which is not that big of a diference, but whos gonna put that on a bumperstick, the thing is despite a .62 head start the free-swinging Altuve finished with a .410 OBP which falls shorts of Aarons .422, but thats a lot more Judges merit then you think for a guy with Altuves skillset a .8.8 Walk Rate is very good but Judges .18.7 is just plain ridiculous, along with that, throwing aside the percentages on a matter of pure cumulative stats Jose had a total of 67 XBH, 12 less then Judge`s 79, fact that explains the diferemces in:
SLG .627 to .547
ISO .343 to .202
wOBA .430 to .405
wRC+ .173 to .160
all in Aarons favor, but despite all of this, one may say, well youre discounting the value of the singles, stat that Altuve had a huge lead in
135 to 73
But as I said before a walk is as good as a single with no RISP, and in situations with runners in scoring positions Jose had 30 singles to Judges 16 and yet had only 1 more hit total, 40 to 39 thanks to Aarons 15 HR with men in scoring position and in the end Judge drove in 67 runs to Altuves 52, but then again with such a higher number of overall hits, Jose must have had a higher impact on games, no he didnt, if you look at WPA/LI which measures Wins Probably Added while factoring in the Leverage Index of the situation Aaron leads
6.23 to 4.59
Account for Run Expectancy then, that way you`ll see that Jose had more impact, not so much, Judge led
52.05 to 38.51
So with all that in mind and the fact that Judge both scored and drove in more runs, 128 and 114 to 112 and 81 on a worse offense, Yankees 108 wRC+ to Astros 121 which doesnt really matter, but hey, why not, also that neither truly had any positive nor negative defensive value that could be a factor in this decision and even in that Judge had 9 DRS to Altuves 3, unless you wanna give Altuve the prize for his 32 Stolen Bases to Judges 9, you, my friend dont have a case. Considering all of this, there`s really no way you can argue to me that Altuve is the MVP, but overall this is only a testament to how great Judge was and I doubt that at this point, any Houston fan would care.