Hart Trophy Chase December 11, 2024

 

Photo credit: Santeri Viinamäki

The MVP Chase is normally about playing great in victories. A quarterback could throw for three touchdowns and run for three more, but if his team loses, that performance doesn't count. What matters is contributing to team success, which means winning.

In the NHL, however, overtime losses count for something. As opposed to losing in regulation, a loss in overtime earns a team one point in the standings (wins count for two points), the way a tie used to count (when NHL games had ties). OT losses contribute to team success, so player performances in those games count in The NHL MVP Chase.

For the NHL MVP chase, or The Hart Trophy Chase, I'm counting the total number of "MVP Games:" An MVP Game is: 

Points scored plus +/- equalling 2 or more in a win or OT loss.

("Points scored" is the player's total number of goals and assists in the game, and "+/-" is the number of goals the player scores minus the number of goals his team allows while the player is on the ice.)

An MVP Game for a goalie is two goals or fewer allowed in a victory, although the leader (Connor Hellebuyck of the Jets) is one game short of the top ten.

Here is the top ten list for the Hart Trophy as of games played through December 11, 2024. Note that a player's overall season points and +/- determine the ranking of players tied in the number of MVP games.

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! You may contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.

The MVP isn't the Heisman Trophy

 

On December 8, 2024, Josh Allen passed for three touchdowns and ran for three more, accounting for all six of Buffalo's touchdowns for the game. Just by putting up great numbers in that game, he strengthened his position as the MVP favorite.

But not in the eyes of The MVP Chase, because the Bills lost. 

While it can be pointed out that Allen's not the reason they lost, he's also not the reason they won. Because they didn't. At the MVP Chase, we look for winners. That's because the most valuable player is the one who contributes the most to team success. And "success" means "winning." The more a team wins, the more successful it is. And the more a player contributes to those wins, the more valuable he is.

The MVP doesn't go to the "best" player, or the "outstanding" player as college football's Heisman Trophy does. And if the MVP was just about stats, Joe Burrow of the 5-8 Bengals should perhaps be the favorite, not Allen.

That said, Josh Allen does remain in the thick of the MVP Chase which values contributions (usually in the form of stats) in victories. That's because the Bills have a lot of wins and he played well in most of them. And had the Bills won on Sunday, he may be in 2nd place or just a hair behind Jared Goff. 

But I don't take into account what players do in losses. That's why Burrow's far behind in the MVP Chase. And it's why six touchdowns in a loss doesn't help Allen.

Here are the MVP Chase standings after Week 14. There are no more bye weeks and every team has played an equal number of games.

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! You may contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.

College Football Chase Final

 

My schedule prevented me from providing the final MVP Chase in the wee hours of the morning before the Selection Committee made their selections for the 12-team playoffs. For the most part, however, I was able to avoid news about the Selection results when I got a chance to finalize my Playoff Chase tabulations in the afternoon after the announcement. Even as I write this part of the newsletter, I don't know all the teams the Committee selected.

The playoff chase was based on four categories: number of wins, strength of wins, strength of losses, and number of points/possessions away from going undefeated. In short, you had to win a lot, beat good teams, avoid losing to bad teams, and avoid getting blown out.

Here are my initial results, ranking all 30 teams with three losses or fewer and accounting for the five conference champions. ("CC" means Conference Champion, "AL" means at-large).

 

The results were… incorrect. Specifically, Army doesn't belong in the playoffs because the Black Knights were uncompetitive in their one loss and had a weak schedule otherwise. Although my formula took blowout losses and strength of schedule into account, Army's 11-1 record would still get them into the playoffs. 

So, my system was wrong. I removed the number of wins into consideration while retaining the other three categories. Here are my adjusted results. After I made the adjustments, I then looked at who the Committee chose. Their ranking is in the last column.

Considering that the committee was compelled to rank or seed the top four conference champions, their selections aren't far off from my results. The only significant difference is that the Committee chose Tennessee over Miami FL. I can't say they were wrong. While my numbers had Miami, there would have been an uproar if the SEC had just two teams in the playoffs while the ACC had three. And one thing I did not factor into my rankings was the strength of the conferences. I may tinker with that next year. 

Every year, the last four or five spots are going to be debated. The Committee this year set a positive precedent in refusing to select any 3-loss team (except conference champ Clemson). Frankly, no such team "deserved" it as all the contenders (especially in the SEC) had bad losses. I predict that in the future, any three-loss team that gets selected (and not a conference champ) will have losses in close games against very good teams; the candidates this year didn't meet that standard.

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! You may contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.

NBA MVP Chase Standings Dec 7, 2024

Photo: Public Domain

The philosophy of the MVP Chase is that a league's MVP isn't some combination of great individual stats factored with team success, but that the MVP makes significant contributions to the greatest number of victories.

In basketball, the "value" of a player to a team's victory can be seen in measurables:

• Minutes Played (MP): this indicates how important a coach think the player is to secure the victory

• Plus-Minus (+/-): This indicates how effective the team plays when the player is on the court.  As there are only five players on the court, as opposed to nine or eleven on the field, +/- can suggest how valuable a player was by how efficient the team was while he was on the court.

In the NBA MVP Chase, I looked at players who were shown to be proficient offensively (a Player Efficiency Rating of 20 or more)  and counted the number of games in which:

• The team won

• The player had a +/- of 10 or more

• When the player had a +/- of less than 10, the sum of Minutes Played and +/- was forty or more (for example: 36 MP and a +/- of 6 is 42).

As of the games completed December 5, 2024, here are the Top Ten:

1. Jayson Tatum, Celtics

2. Evan Mobley, Cavaliers

3. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Thunder

4. Franz Wagner, Magic

5. Karl-Anthony Towns, Knicks

6. Jalen Williams, Thunder

7. Darius Garland, Cavaliers

8. Donovan Mitchell, Cavaliers

9. Jalen Brunson, Knicks

10. Jarrett Allen, Cavaliers

I'll mention that four Cavaliers are in the Top Ten, but only one in the Top Five, and the official NBA MVP ballot has only five slots.

Team or injury struggles have kept several traditional PER leaders off the list like Jokic, Giannis, Embiid, and Doncic. There is plenty of time for a couple of them to re-emerge. But as it is, Jayson Tatum has shown himself to be the guy who has the most good-to-great games in victories, and the MVP should have no other standard. 

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! You may contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.

NFL MVP Chase entering Week 14

In 2023, eight receivers were in the Top 20 in yards from scrimmage. In 2024, through thirteen weeks, only two receivers are. 

In 2023, no team ran at least 50% of the time; in 2024, five run at least 50% of the time, with the Eagles running 58% of the time.

According to The Football Database, median rushing yards has increased by five yards per game (109 to 114) while median passing yards have descrased by the same amount (225 to 220).

In any case, the MVP leaders are on teams that run the ball effectively. 

Note that in the MVP Chase, player performances in losses, no matter how impressive, do not count, only how well they've performed in victories. Here is the latest update after Week 13.

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! You may contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.

Penultimate Playoff Chase Standings

 

Below are my rankings for the College Football playoffs. I included all teams with nine wins or more.

• WinsR is wins ranking. 

• SWR and SLR stand for Strength of Wins and Strength of Losses Rank.

• PDR ranks teams based on how many points they were from going undefeated. 

As was demonstrated last year, the Playoff Selection Committee can change its mind from week to week, so their standings released later today will have little meaning. 

I can, however, make some safe predictions:

• My final Playoff Chase rankings for next week will differ from the Selection Committee's. The winner of Lousiana-Marshall, for instance, is bound to move up just for the victory in an extra game against a winning team.

• The winner of the Moutain West championship game (Boise-State-UNLV) will receive a bid and the loser will go home. The winner of the AAC Championship will not be invited.

• It's unlikely that any Big 12 team will be invited aside from the championship game winner.

• I may have heard this on the Cover 3 Podcast: As with the AP Poll (last column above), the Selection Committee will be inclined to favor 3-loss SEC teams over 2-loss teams (and perhaps one-loss teams such as Army or Indiana) from any other conference. Therefore, Penn State and SMU must win the championship game to get an invitation, despite their better records than Alabama, Ole Miss, and South Carolina.

• Teams that are safe to get in barring a championship game blowout loss: Oregon, and Texas. Notre Dame is also a lock, and I think Tennessee, Ohio State, and Indiana will get in as well.

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! You may contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.

The 2024 Baseball Awards

 

Photo credit: Tage Olsin

If you're reading this on the publishing date or shortly after, Happy Thanksgiving! Otherwise, have a happy day anyway!

This came a few weeks later than I had planned, but I hope you will find this enlightening.

IN THIS ISSUE

• World Series MVP

• NL and AL MVPs

• CY Young Winners

WORLD SERIES MVP

The MVP Chase would have voted for Freddie Freeman of the Dodgers as the World Series MVP, using the same criteria I used for the regular-season MVPs below. Freeman, of course, did win.

NL AND AL MVPS

As selected by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BWAA), Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge were unanimous choices for NL and AL MVP, respectively. While the buzz was about their home runs and (in Ohtani's case) stolen bases, the reason they would have earned their first-place votes from me was because of Bases Gained, a concept I introduced last month:

Bases Gained is Total Bases plus Bases on Balls (walks) plus Stolen Bases. It measures a player's productivity on offense independent of the batting production of teammates; it's what he does by himself with his bat and his feet.

In 2024, Ohani had 411 Total Bases, 81 Bases on Balls (walks), and 59 steals. That sums up to 551 Bases Gained, 124 more than NL second-place finisher Elly De La Cruz. In the AL, Judge had 535 Bases Gained, 71 more than second-place finisher (and teammate) Juan Soto. (Data compiled from Stathead.)

Although I'm the only one using it, Bases Gained is the most important stat because it's about actual production. Averages, percentages, and comparisons to hypothetical replacement players are useful in determining the "best" player, but production is what wins games.

Production and winning games are the foundations of the MVP Chase philosophy across all sports: the most valuable players are the ones who made significant contributions to the most number of victories with the greatest frequency.

That's why Bases Gained, by itself, wouldn't have determined my votes (if I had the privilege of voting for the MVP) for Ohtani and Judge. It was Bases Gained in victories that mattered. After analyzing the data, I concluded that if a player had at least three bases gained, by any means (including, for example, three walks), he made a significant contribution to the win. He was probably not the only one on the team who did; there may have been two or three other guys who also had at least three Bases Gained. It's not how often you were the very best on your team in a given victory, but how often you were one of the top 2-4 guys in a victory. Three Bases Gained (BGs) is a reliable predictor of that. 

The BWAA voters submit ten names to the MVP ballot, so ten names are in my final ranking. Although both the NL and AL each have a pitcher in their top ten, in my view no pitcher pitched enough innings to qualify for the MVP in the way they might have a generation ago.

NATIONAL LEAGUE MVP CHASE LEADERS

Seven of the top eleven in Bases Gained found their way onto the MVP Chase ballot, as they were in the top ten in 3+ Bases Gained in victories. Although in a different order, seven of the top top finishers in BWAA voting were also in the top ten in BG. 

AMERICAN LEAGUE MVP CHASE LEADERS

The American League rankings are more striking. While eight of the top ten BG leaders would have been on my ballot, all nine of the top nine finished in the top ten of the BWAA vote, along with a pitcher.

I don't know the rationale for each BWAA voter; some may be caught up in the moment ("Ohtani is the first 50 HR/50 SB guy! He's my MVP!") But I do think my Bases Gained ranking and, arguably, my 3+BG Games in Wins ranking, could be valuable guideposts for voters in future seasons. Most voters are already, unconsciously, favoring BG; it should be a recognized stat.

CY YOUNG AWARD WINNERS

The Cy Young award is about the best pitcher of the year, not necessarily the "most valuable." I looked at:

• Innings Pitched (IP): regardless of number of games or starts

• Bases Allowed (BA) and Bases Allowed Per Inning (BAP) - Like Bases Gained, BA is a stat I made up and is its opposite. Unlike WHIP (Walks Plus Hits Per Inning), BAP accounts for whether those hits were singles, doubles, triples, or home runs. It also takes into account stolen bases, which pitchers are partially responsible for allowing.

• Earned Run Average (ERA)

I incorporated both BAP and ERA into my Cy Young voting because they measure slightly different but important things. Pitcher Al gives up two singles and three walks but no runs for a BA of 5; Pitcher Bob gives up nothing but one home run for a BA of 4. Assuming nine innings pitched, Al has an ERA of zero for the game, but he faced more batters and probably threw more pitches, which probably affects his efficiency in upcoming games. Bob was probably more efficient overall, but he allowed a run.

It's like evaluating a football's defense: you can't just look at yards allowed, you need to look at points allowed. Similarly, bases allowed and runs allowed both have to be taken into account.

I looked at the top two hundred pitchers in innings pitched from each league, and ranked them by IP, BAP, and ERA. By adding together their respective ranks, we got a total rank number. The player with the lowest number would have received my first-place Cy Young vote. As BWAA voters have only five names on their ballots, I'm providing the top five finishers in the last column.

NATIONAL LEAGUE CY YOUNG

AMERICAN LEAGUE CY YOUNG

The MVP Chase would have agreed with the top three NL vote-getters and the top two AL vote-getters. The chief difference in the AL was Emmanuel Clase finishing third in the BWAA voting. The reliever had a very low BAP and ERA, and even a top ranking in both might not indicate the dominance. 

My Cy Young system is a work in progress but I do think it quantifies the right things for the voters to consider.

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! You may contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.