Bergman and the MVPin my mind is going to be like James Harden in the sense that he gets second 3 years in a row, but once he gets his first one it will open the flood gates and he gets 2 or 3 more right after each other.

I have 2 tickets for sale to game 1 for the ALDS. Section 433 row 3. Another couple we were going with backed out. I just want to get what I paid for them so $136 for the pair.

Email me at bearkatag@gmail

I think the thing is Trout had an incredibly strong 1st half of the season. Bregman has had an incredibly strong second half of the season. I think they balance each other out there, honestly.

One thing I am curious is how Bregman actually performed during the injury stretches. That's where his case is really to be made of those numbers are on par with his second half or even slightly below.

Also, I feel like when a writer says the fact that Trout playing on a bad team shouldn't matter in the MVP discussion, they really just really just feel bad for him that he's on a bad team even though he chose a bad team to be on. I agree with their argument, I just think it doesn't need to be mentioned.

I think it's pretty cool how today when everyone is getting a day off Hinch is plugging Bregs in at DH.

Ag_07 said:

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I think it's pretty cool how today when everyone is getting a day off Hinch is plugging Bregs in at DH.

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He knows it's a throw away game anyways with Mikey throwing BP

Rustys-Beef-o-Reeno said:

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Ag_07 said:

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I think it's pretty cool how today when everyone is getting a day off Hinch is plugging Bregs in at DH.

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He knows it's a throw away game anyways with Mikey throwing BP

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There is really no pressure on Miley now so if he craps the bed again I think that will speak volumes.

And Bregman has never even bowled a 300

He's got no shot

Ag_07 said:

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I care a shlt ton

It would be absolutely epic to have the Cy Young, ROY, and MVP on the same team.

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This X a million.

gigemJTH12 said:

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he is the MVP of this team without a doubt. He mans the whole left side of the infield and he has been available all year through a lot of injuries.

and on the point about Numbers, Trouts Numbers arent better outside of home runs and OBP. Bregman has him in every other category.

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Trout leads in homers, slugging, on base percentage, OPS, and WAR. And he's up by a big margin in OPS - 1.083 to 1.016. 17 points higher in on-base and 50 points higher in slugging. Those are big margins.

I'm not saying I want Trout to win, I don't really care either way. It's just a vote for an award that has no actual definition. But writers look at OPS and WAR like it's the gospel, and Trout is leading both.

If we're looking at straight numbers, Mookie Betts has more runs, hits, doubles, triples, and steals than either one of them. Nobody's banging his drum. Or how about Rafael Devers? He's ahead of Bregman in runs, hits, doubles (52!), RBI, and batting average.

I'd give it to Mookie because he's had to go his entire life with that name and is still somehow in the majors.

I pulled the stats as of this morning. Its really close on the first glance. The question is: do you give credit for playing an extra 20 games and 70+ PA where you actually had to produce or do you give credit for producing faster? And how much of a sabermetric voter are you?

Trout: 600 PA, 45 HR, 110 R, 104 RBI, 18.3% BB, 20.0% K, .298 BABIP, .291/.438/.645, wRC+ 179, fWAR 8.6, bWAR 8.3

Bregman: 672 PA , 40 HR, 119 R, 110 RBI, 16.7% BB, 12.1% K, .284 BABIP, .298/.421/.595, wRC+ 168 fWAR 8.1. bWAR 8.2

The counting starts are now a wash and start to reflect the differences in opportunities and PAs. The sabermetrics still favor Trout in things like OPS+, adjusted runs, adjusted wins, RE24, WPA. In RE24, Trout lapped the field and Bregman isn't even top 10. Alvarez is actually #9. Interestingly, Bregman has 8 sac flies and is tied for 5th and trout isn't top 10.

Prosperdick said:

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Rustys-Beef-o-Reeno said:

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Ag_07 said:

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I think it's pretty cool how today when everyone is getting a day off Hinch is plugging Bregs in at DH.

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He knows it's a throw away game anyways with Mikey throwing BP

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There is really no pressure on Miley now so if he craps the bed again I think that will speak volumes.

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You think so? I bet he's feeling quite a bit of pressure to perform well this game. His role in the playoffs may ride on it.

That brings up an interesting point. What criteria are they going by? I wouldn't argue that Trout is the best player in baseball, but I would argue that Bregman is more deserving of MVP. Not just based on stats, but I would factor in that he has played more games than Trout and has done so on a team that has set a franchise record in wins, and is going to the playoffs.

I liked this excerpt from Nightengale's MVP piece yesterday:

Quote:

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No one is questioning whether Trout is the best player in the game, but how can he really be the most valuable player?

The Angels, once again, stink. They are 71-86, sitting 32 games out of first place in the AL West. They are a fourth-place team. So, if Trout didn't play for the Angels, they'd be a fifth-place team.
Is that so valuable?

Or how about the fact that he has had only 20 plate appearances in September, playing his last game on Sept. 7 before undergoing foot surgery?

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The Outsiders Who Made Houston the Center of Sports Innovation
A conversation with Daryl Morey and Jeff Luhnow about building the Rockets and Astros, their shared appetite for risk and the virtues of thinking differently.

Funny, the Texans "GM" wasn't invited.

It's not just you. You are not alone.

They're not good enough to really dislike in my book. It's not their (current team) fault the game was moved there. Bud was just an *******.

Fair enough and I agree with all of that.

I just don't care nearly as much about what some schmo sportswriter's opinion of Alex Bregman's relative value (based on ambiguous criteria) is as I do about our team winning a championship.

Not to get ahead of ourselves but I do care about these awards in the sense that I know they help form a HOF candidacy, but even then I would trade Biggio and Bagwell's HOF plaques for the 2005 title.

I know that's real big of me "trading away" an incredible honor that doesn't belong to me, but I think most fans feel the same way.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/27685804/with-mike-trout-baseball-rat-alex-bregman-earn-al-mvp

Farmer1906 said:

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This has to be one of the most dominant back to back pitching performances ever.

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The Mariners did not have a runner reach 3rd during this 2-game series.

https://theathletic.com/1241082/2019/09/26/stark-handing-out-mlbs-end-of-season-awards-from-cy-young-to-cy-yuk-mvp-to-lvp/

edit: not sure why the pic shows up so small. click to enlarge

Quote:

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AL MVP: Mike Trout, Angels
Can a guy who misses the last three weeks of a baseball season really win an MVP award? Well, not just any guy can. But Mike Trout can. And should.
I should tell you right at the top, though, that this has never happened! No player has even missed his team's final seven games (or more) of any season and still won an MVP trophy, according to STATS LLC. The current standard for that sort of thing was set by Dick Allen, who missed the final six games in 1972.
But Trout will wind up sitting out the Angels' final 19 games of this season. And in a world in which September narratives have written many an MVP script, that theoretically has opened the door for Alex Bregman to steal this trophy away. But did it? Should it? I tried talking myself into that idea, just to see if it felt right.
The case for Bregman goes like this: A) He played for the best team in baseball B) He was a huge reason the Astros survived so many key injuries . C) He played 58 games at shortstop to cover the loss of Carlos Correa D) He's going to be the first American Leaguer with at least 30 more walks than strikeouts since Jason Giambi (129 BB, 83 K) in 2001 E) Thanks in part to Trout's injury, Bregman is going to wind up leading Trout in quite a few counting stats (games, runs, RBIs, times on base, extra-base hits, etc.) And F) he's fun!
So is all of that compelling and meaningful? Heck, yeah it is. And so is this: Even when Trout was on the field, Bregman still had the bigger finish.

MVP candidates' second half

But even after digesting every bit of that info, I still felt this way: To vote for Bregman, you almost had to go into this looking for reasons to justify that vote.
So why Trout, even in a season in which he missed so much time and his team wasn't within five games of a playoff spot at any point after July?
OK, first of all, he's Mike Freaking Trout. He's the best player alive. And we've already witnessed too many MVP elections in which it felt as if voters were searching for reasons to vote for somebody else, just because it gets so boring electing the same guy every darned year.
Second, we're talking about a man who leads his league in OBP, Slugging, OPS, HR ratio and Wins Above Replacement, among other stuff. And since World War II, only one player Ted Williams, in 1947 had as good an OPS as Trout, led his league in all those categories and didn't wind up with an MVP award. (Then again, I'm not sure how those 1947 voters would have checked a Wins Above Replacement leader board that hadn't been invented yet. But that's a whole 'nother story.)
So as with all Mike Trout MVP elections, this one comes down to how you define "value." If this were 1999, or 1979, or certainly 1939, Alex Bregman would have won this thing because "value" in that world revolved almost exclusively around the question: Did your team win or not? But in this world, with our advanced 21st-century mindset firmly in place, here's what I think is clear:
The most valuable player in the American League is the same dude who's really the most valuable player every year Michael N. Trout.
Most top-2 MVP finishes
Barry Bonds 9
Stan Musial 7
Albert Pujols 7
Mike Trout 7*
(* if he finishes in top two this year)
My MVP "ballot": 1) Trout, 2) Bregman, 3) Marcus Semien, 4) D.J. LeMahieu, 5) Xander Bogaerts, 6) George Springer, 7) Mookie Betts, 8) Nelson Cruz, 9) Matt Chapman, 10) Francisco Lindor.

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No team has every swept all the awards and this team is being compared to the 27 Yankees So it would be very cool to get MVP, Cy Young and Rookie big the year.

Assume all the lucroy jake stuff is behind us right? No way they try to bean one of our guys, right?

Teddy Perkins said:

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The Outsiders Who Made Houston the Center of Sports Innovation
A conversation with Daryl Morey and Jeff Luhnow about building the Rockets and Astros, their shared appetite for risk and the virtues of thinking differently.

Funny, the Texans "GM" wasn't invited.

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Or maybe he was.....

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/27685804/with-mike-trout-baseball-rat-alex-bregman-earn-al-mvp

Uhhhh..

Why is Odor being mentioned with Trout and Bregman?

Who is comparing us to the 27 yankees?

Quote:

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AL Cy Young: Justin Verlander, Astros
You know how great you have to pitch to be the best pitcher on a team that has Gerrit Cole on it? Right. Pretty frigging great. But that's how great Justin Verlander has been this year. So why does he deserve this Cy Young? I have some thoughts!
NOT YOUR AVERAGE GUY When every batter you face winds up hitting like a pitcher, that'll work. And that's what's happening against Verlander this year. Opponents are hitting .172 against him making this one of the five most unhittable seasons of the live-ball era. The only lower opponent averages in the last 100 seasons: .167 against Pedro Martinez (2000), .168 versus Luis Tiant (1968) and .171 against Nolan Ryan (1972).
WHIPLASH Here's a fun formula for winning a Cy Young: When nobody gets on base! And Verlander's 0.81 WHIP is so microscopic that only one pitcher in the live-ball era has beaten it. Yep. That was Pedro (0.74) in 2000. Greg Maddux also had a 0.81 WHIP in 1995. But that's it.
TWICE THE K FUN Here's another definition of dominance: A guy who piles up more than twice as many strikeouts as hits! Verlander's totals this year: 288 K's, 133 hits. So unless he gives up like 12 hits and strikes out nobody in his final start, he'll join this cool list:

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