Those years, the MVP buried by the traditional school: Frank Thomas-MLB-Baseball



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Frank Thomas believes that friends who have seen baseball since the 1990s, or who have followed American professional baseball after the turn of the 21st century, know how powerful this cannon is. As the scariest and most powerful hitter in the 1990s, Thomas has often hit an impressive big home run in his career, and some haven’t even landed yet!

Nicknamed “The Big Hurt” (Thomas), his career eventually gave up .301 / .419 / .555 to hit the measures, 521 home runs. The 154 wRC + score is ranked 19th in history, and will be similar to the legendary names of Willie Mays, Hank Greenberg, Frank Robinson and Hank Aaron. The guarantee rate of 16.5% is ranked 25 in history. The .555 long shot rate is also 21st in history, even higher than famous modern cannons Alex Rodríguez, David Ortiz, Vladimir Guerrero, Jim Thome and Albert Pujols. And Thomas, based primarily on first base and designated attack position, built on this fierce firepower, racked up 72.1 fWAR (Fangraphs version of the WAR value), ranking 11th in history. This shows how important Frank Frank’s position is in the history of the big leagues.

Thomas used to be the MVP of Zhuang Meilian in 1993 and 1994. His 1994 success data can also be said to be an epic performance. In the same year, despite the player’s hit resulting in a quarterfinal cut, Thomas paid .353 / .487 / .729 attack measures, 38 bombs, 205 wRC + (105% more than attack capacity league average) and 7.0 fWAR Performance Among them, the 205 wRC + data, in addition to deducing those ancient beasts in history, only two people in modern times have played better results in a single season, one is Barry Bond, the other is in 1994 The Nations League Most Valuable Player is also Jeff Bagwell, who recently joined the Hall of Fame; The .487 base rate is also the best record in modern times, except for Ancient Beasts and Bonds. His guaranteed delivery rate of 21.1% and strikeout rate of 11.8% were also excellent.

However, apart from 1993 and 1994, maybe Thomas should have a chance to win the MVP in 1992, especially when we review modern advanced concepts and data, we will find that the voters at the time were really very unfair

That year Thomas played .323 / .439 / .536, 24 Hound, 175 wRC +, and 7.1 fWAR. Although there weren’t many home runs, Thomas’s ability to hit the base, choose a rescue (17.2% rescue rate), and avoid strikeouts (12.4% strikeout rate) was indeed one of the best in the league. However, he only scored 108 points, ranking eighth.

Looking back at the voting situation at the time, we found that the reporters at that time really focused on the record. Only five of the top eight players came from the Toronto Blue Jays and Oakland Athletics, which later made the playoffs. And the winner was athlete Dennis Eckersley.

Eckersley voted 7 wins and 1 loss, 51 saves, 1.91 defense rate (1.72 FIP), totaling 3.1 fWAR, which is pretty good. However, why would a rescue launcher be chosen as MVP of the Year? The reason is that, in addition to the team’s history, voters can see the exquisite defense rate and so many rescue hits, that they can feel that Eckersley has contributed a lot. However, is this really the case?

We often hear the presenter or ball commentator talk about the rescue success on the broadcast, and then we use the number of rescue hits as one of the measures of a bullpen thrower. However, let’s remember the conditions for a successful rescue:

1. You must be the last pitcher on the winning side
2. When you play, the gap must be less than three points (inclusive)
3. When you play, the runner at your base, the batter in the strike zone, and the batter who follows may be evenly tied.
4. Regardless of the odds, you voted at least three entries

But as Keith Law mentioned in Smart Baseball, the data created by baseball journalist Jerome Holtzman in 1959 showed serious flaws. First, the conditions required to obtain this data are much more complicated than others. Again, why so-called bullpen pitchers, only pitchers who “finish the game” have special design data to record their accomplishments. You can say, “Yes, there is a relay point.” However, the relay point is not official official information from the major leagues, not to mention that the recording conditions are also very complicated. Therefore, the success of the rescue or the rescue point will make pitchers in seven or eight innings able to shoot 18 goals and strike out six people in a row, but there is no special data record, and in the nine innings, two home runs. they were hit but still with the leading rescue launcher I have the rescue point. The question is, from the previous example, who is contributing to the team? And let’s not forget that the role of the boss often only faces the last three hitters, but who are the three hitters? In other words, the situation rescuers / launchers often have to protect is not necessarily as dire as we imagine.



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