The AL MVP race seems to have been whittled down to two major candidates, Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees and Jose Altuve of the Houston Astros. Both players have had fantastic seasons, and their respective stats bear that out. Here are the résumés:
Altuve: He leads the league in hits (203) and batting average (.350), has 32 stolen bases, a .415 on base percentage, 24 home runs and 81 RBI. He’s also an excellent defensive second baseman, whose WAR is 8.5.
Judge: He has broken the record for most home runs by a rookie in baseball history with an AL-leading 51 thus far, while also having 112 RBI, a .284 batting average, a .421 OBP and a 1.046 OPS. Although he leads the league in strikeouts with 205, he also leads the league in walks (125)
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Judge (6-foot-7) is one of the the biggest players in the league and Altuve (5-foot-6) is one of the smallest.
Although Altuve has power, he’s not intimidating. He’ll hurt you, but he won’t scare you. Judge is the most menacing figure in the game, as his stat cast home runs and exit velocity line drives are already legendary. Opposing pitchers know Judge is incredibly dangerous, which is why he draws so many walks, more than twice as many as Altuve (and Judge has 11 intentional walks to Altuve’s three).
Ask a baseball general manager which player he’d rather build his team around, and you’d probably get an even split across the board. Pick your poison; both players are still young and
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The Yankees probably aren’t a playoff team without Judge and his overall presence and power he delivered to their lineup all year.
Here’s another intangible in Judge’s favor: he came out of nowhere. It was very questionable in spring training if Judge would even make the Opening Day roster, much less carry the Yankees the way he has in 2017. Altuve, through no fault of his own, is a given. He’s going to be excellent every year. He’ll give the Astros 200 hits. He'll be dynamic, steal bases and play great defense. But, his consistency is what ultimately hurts him. His consistency is his curse.
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By the 1950’s the New York Yankees had already experienced previous decades of glory and high levels of success over the rest of Major League Baseball. However, the 50’s had began a new decade of a higher level of dominance. The Yankees were supported by big name players like Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio and a younger, less-experienced pitching staff. In this storied decade the Bronx Bombers were able to win eight American League Pennants and six World Series. (Yankees Baseball)
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Baseball statistics are meant to be a representation of a player’s talent. Since baseball’s inception around the mid-19th century, statistics have been used to interpret the talent level of any given player, however, the statistics that have been traditionally used to define talent are often times misleading. At a fundamental level, baseball, like any game, is about winning. To win games, teams have to score runs; to score runs, players have to get on base any way they can. All the while, the pitcher and the defense are supposed to prevent runs from scoring. As simplistic as this view sounds, the statistics being used to evaluate individual players were extremely flawed. In an attempt to develop more specific, objective forms of statistical analysis, the idea of Sabermetrics was born. Bill James, a man who never played or coached professional baseball, is often credited as a pioneer in the field and for coining the name as homage to the Society of American Baseball Research, or SABR. Eventually, the use of Sabermetrics became widespread in the Major Leagues, the first team being the Oakland Athletics, as depicted in Moneyball. Bill James and other baseball statisticians have developed various methods of evaluating a player performance that allow for a more objective view of the game, broadly defined as Sabermetrics.
...n out of the ball park. Cobb batted a career .367, he hit 117 homeruns, he had 4191 hits and he stole 892 bags. Cobb is second in career hits and second in runs scored with 2245. Ty Cobb only batted less than .320 in his career once! Cobb holds five Major League records that still stand today and they’ll probably never be beat. Cobb holds the record of highest career batting average, most steals home in a single season, most career steals home, most batting title including 9 in a row from 1907 to 1915. Cobb also batted over .400 three times in his career.
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Giants in the World Series. Babe was not a factor at all in this pitiful series
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