Was Dante Bichette the least-deserving MVP runner-up in history?
Posted by Andy on August 9, 2010
Check out the 1995 NL MVP voting:
| Voting Results | |||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Tm | Vote Pts | 1st Place | Share | WAR | ||||||||||||
| 1 | Barry Larkin | CIN | 281.0 | 11.0 | 72% | 5.9 | |||||||||||
| 2 | Dante Bichette | COL | 251.0 | 6.0 | 64% | 0.3 | |||||||||||
| 3 | Greg Maddux | ATL | 249.0 | 7.0 | 64% | 8.7 | |||||||||||
| 4 | Mike Piazza | LAD | 214.0 | 3.0 | 55% | 6.3 | |||||||||||
| 5 | Eric Karros | LAD | 135.0 | 0.0 | 34% | 3.6 | |||||||||||
| 6 | Reggie Sanders | CIN | 120.0 | 0.0 | 31% | 6.7 | |||||||||||
| 7 | Larry Walker | COL | 88.0 | 0.0 | 22% | 3.5 | |||||||||||
| 8 | Sammy Sosa | CHC | 81.0 | 0.0 | 21% | 5.3 | |||||||||||
| 9 | Tony Gwynn | SDP | 72.0 | 0.0 | 18% | 2.6 | |||||||||||
| 10 | Craig Biggio | HOU | 58.0 | 0.0 | 15% | 6.6 | |||||||||||
Dante Bichette came in a close second despite a WAR of just 0.3. He had +17 batting runs that year (career high) but also -18 fielding runs (holy crap--he had -92 fielding runs for his career--I never realized what a terrible fielder he was!) and also got -7 runs from positional scarcity thanks to there being lots of good right fielders.
Would you ever think that Dante Bichette has a career WAR of just 2.0? He does, thanks to those terrible defensive numbers.
Anyway, more to the point, has anybody else ever ranked so high in MVP voting with such a low WAR? I doubt it.
August 13th, 2010 at 8:02 am
I noticed Dave Parker in 1986 was similar. 5th place MVP and 0.1 WAR.
August 13th, 2010 at 8:31 am
Advanced defensive metrics are somewhat volatile season-over-season and generally require a little bigger sample size than one season to be confident. Bichette has fairly volatile defensive numbers (maybe a park effect), and if you average the seasons surrounding 1995, Bichette looks more like a -10 fielder than a -18 fielder. -10 sounds pretty reasonable for a slow corner OF (and if you saw him play).
I would be happy to count 1995 as a -10 defensive season rather than a -18, which would put Bichette at 1.1 WAR, somewhat closer to average than replacement. This makes sense: he was about 10 runs above the average LF at hitting, cost himself 5 runs on the bases/DP, and let's say was -10 at defense, which puts him at -5 runs vs an average LF.
August 16th, 2010 at 5:25 am
look at Bichette's 1999 season.
how many guys can drive in 133 runs and have WAR of -2.8! A: only this guy.