Everyone Is Talking About It, Why Not Me?

This Mark Teixeira vs. Joe Mauer for AL MVP has really sparked quite a stir over the internet. Not a bad stir either, nobody is getting personal or anything and its cool to have these conversations over the old internets. What I add or try to add to this conversation likely won't get commented on or critiqued by someone else, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't give my take.

So, Mauer vs. Teix who should win? The easy answer is obviously Mauer, but I'll talk about it anyways.

Mark Teixeira is arguably the best player on the best team in baseball. He has an impressive .280/.382/.557 line. If you can add you will see his OPS is a great .939 so unsurprisingly his wOBA is great at an even .400. His defense is normally well above average but according to UZR it's essentially just average. He's first in the AL in XBH, third in RBI, 2nd in HR, 5th in OPS. He's having an MVP-like season, nobody would argue that.

Joe Mauer on the other hand is arguably the best player in the league on an average team. His line is an incredible .377/.444/.626. His wOBA is .452. He plays catcher, the most demanding position on the diamond and by all accounts he's very good at it. He leads the league in batting average, OBP, and slugging which translates to league leading OPS and wOBA...at catcher.

Fangraphs' Wins Above Replacement helps tell you all that a player does with one easy number to look at. Joe Mauer leads the AL in WAR with 5.9, Mark Teixeira is 13th with 3.8. WAR uses UZR to factor defense so if you want to give Teixeira more credit for his defense (because UZR says he's been about average while everyone still raves it's been remarkable) he'd still be behind Mauer by a considerable amount. Also, WAR doesn't give catchers credit for their catching ability. It gives Mauer bonus points for playing catcher and takes away from Teixeira for playing first, but it doesn't distinguish catchers from other catchers, and Mauer is a great catcher. Lastly, WAR is not a rate statistic so Mauer missed the first month of the season and still leads the league, unbelievable. Certainly you may have some issues with WAR as a way of judging players, but Mauer's lead is very very significant. Maybe if he was at 5.9 and Teix 5.6 you can call it a wash, but it's not.

I say all this to point out that Mauer has clearly been better this year. MVP is not awarded to the best overall player, but the point so far has been to show Mauer has been the better overall player. There is even more stuff to show like Teixeira's home/road splits: OPS of 1.031 home and .848 away. Mauer is 1.166 home and .983 away. And as we all know, New Yankee Stadium is a hitter's paradise, especially for someone who often bats lefty.

Now MVP isn't about who's the best it's about who's the most valuable, a very tricky question. This is a stupid exercise but let's say Mauer and Teixeira switched teams. The Yankees would move Posada to 1b and Mauer at catcher the Twins would have to find a replacement catcher and put Teixeira at 1b and Morneau at DH. I dunno about you but I'd say the Yankees are still in first place while the Twins would love to be just 5 games under .500. You can't underestimate position and it's not like we are using it to justify Mauer's inferior stats, he already has better stats than Teixeira, he just isn't on the better team.

When people vote on MVP they always resort to the same thing, best player on best team. But is Mark Teixeira even the Yankees best player? Going back to WAR, Mark Teixeira as we know checks in at 3.8, but Derek Jeter is at 5.0. Derek Jeter isn't the hitter that Teixeira is, but he plays SS and has been quite good at it this year. So it's even a debate as to if Mark Teixeira is the most valuable player on his own team.

But, he has those homers and RBI and voters love those two somewhat outdated statistics. Joe Mauer bats behind Denard Span and Orlando Cabrera. Mark Teixeira bats behind Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon. It should be no surprise then that Teixeira has more RBI especially considering he didn't miss a month of the season. But wait, he has 15 more RBI. That's right just 15 more than Mauer with over 100 more plate appearances. And what about those homers! Well Teixeira does have more (30 to 22) but he's slugging worse as I said earlier, and slugging is significantly more important than homerun totals. On base is more important than slugging and Mauer's got him owned there too.

Essentially the team around Mauer is hurting him while the team around Teixeira helps him, yet Teixeira is the one getting more of the credit for helping out his team the most. The Twins are out of playoff contention and some people think that is grounds for being left out of the MVP race, but should an injury to Kevin Slowey and a horribly ineffective Liriano be the reason why Mauer is shafted the MVP? If you replace Teixeira with any ok 1b the Yankees will be fine, and likely be leading the division by a couple of games. If you replace Mauer with any ok catcher, well the Twins would really suck. Being the Most Valuable Player, doesn't mean you have to be on a great team, it just means you have to be the most valuable, and this year in the American League nobody has been as valuable or as good as Joe Mauer.

Mauer is having a historic season, literally one for the ages. When our kids are looking back at some old stats on a futuristic BaseballReference.com they will ask us about Joe Mauer's 2009 season. None of our kids are going to ask about how good Mark Teixeira's season was. Unless of course it's in reference to someone stealing the MVP from Joe Mauer for a third time, and I sure hope my kid doesn't have to ask about that.