Originally Posted by struggles_mightily
Pujols can be wrong about stuff. He seems like a nice, humble guy and not the sort to blow his own trumpet.
Anyway:
Ryan Howard ranked 29th (!!!!) in the NL in VORP. 47th (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) in OBP. Even in SLG, he was only 6th. 21st in WPA. Didn't crack the top 10 in OPS+, and BB-Ref's leaderboards don't go any further (I doubt he'd make the top 15 either). He did all this whilst playing below-average defense at the diamond's easiest position. Ryan Howard was the Philadelphia Phillies' 4th Most Valuable (Position) Player. If you want to make the 'the MVP must come from a successful team' argument; then I will disagree with you but concede that it has some validity. Bloodying Heck, though, at least choose a good player from a winning team.
Interesting factoid: Of the 11 full-time 1B in the NL with 500 PA or more in 2008, Howard had a better OBP than only two: Mike Jacobs and James Loney. And how many points did RH whip Loney's ass by? 1. 1 'points'.
Albert Pujols led the league in VORP, SLG (by 62 points!), MLV, OPS and OPS+. He trailed Chipper Jones in OBP by a barely-significant 8 points. He was second in WPA to Lance Berkman. He is by far the best defensive 1B in the league. If you're into trad stats then he was the only player to finish in the top 5 of all three Triple Crown categories.
I'd like to invite you all to play a little game. It's called the 'Name Baseball Playing Men Who Were More Betterer at Playing the Baseball Game in the 2008 National League of National Baseball Playing Competition than Mr. Ryan James Howard Was' game.
Anyone can join in the fun! (I've bolded first basemen and italicised Phillies. I have also included players who were traded into / out of the league in midseason -- just because they split time between two teams, it doesn't make Howard any better than them).
Albert Pujols, Hanley Ramirez, Chipper Jones, Lance Berkman, David Wright, Chase Utley, Jose Reyes, Matt Holliday, Carlos Beltran, Ryan Ludwick, Brian McCann, Nate McLouth, Manny Ramirez, Adrian Gonzalez, Aramis Ramirez, Jimmy Rollins, Carlos Lee, Andre Ethier, Stephen Drew, Prince Fielder, Dan Uggla, J.J. Hardy, Ryan Doumit, Carlos Delgado, Russell Martin, Troy Glaus, Matt Kemp, Joey Votto, Shane Victorino, Derrek Lee, Chris Iannetta, Mark Teixeira, Randy Winn.
More debatable inclusions:
Cristian Guzman: Depends how much you think mediocre defense at a premium position is worth over bad defense at a low-end position.
Ryan Braun: How bad does a slugger's defense have to be before he's not really that valuable?
Geovany Soto: Does horrible defense mitigate itself somewhat if you get it from a good-hitting catcher? Can a catcher redeem himself through vital, yet intangible, contributions to a team?
Alfonso Soriano: Defense?!
Conor Jackson: Is the gap between a mediocre defensive 1B and a bad one enough to bridge the gap in their relative offensive production? A lot of 'flattening' must occur at first: not many guys are really that great; not many will really kill you.
Jasyon Werth: I'm actually almost sure he's better.
For me, the definition of value is just some version of "making one's team better". Pujols made his crappy team more betterer than did Howard for his (really good) team.
Hahaha -- yep.
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