Sim Dynasty Baseball: 2008 MLB MVPs will be Albert Pujols and Jermaine Dye

Sim Dynasty Baseball: 2008 MLB MVPs will be Albert Pujols and Jermaine Dye

Minneapolis, MN (PRWEB) October 24, 2008 -- Over the years, the MVP formula in Sim Dynasty's baseball simulation has been a sticking point for many users. As with real life baseball awards, many team owners have debated or questioned the simulation's selection of the MVP winner.

Recently, we began to take a fresh look at our MVP formula. The goal of Sim Dynasty's MVP formula is to award a league MVP using the same set of criteria that the writers use when voting for the MLB MVPs. We took a look at how our formula did from 1995 to 2006. Our MVP formula picked the correct MVP winner only 7 out of 24 times. We went back to the drawing board and took a close look at how MVP races have played out since 1995. This resulted in a new formula that correctly picked 22 of the past 26 MVP winners.

What factors were found to contribute to a candidate's chances of winning the award? There are a few things that one may not consider at first glance.

Statistics

Obviously, statistics such as home runs, RBIs, and batting average are among the most important factors. You can't win the award without putting up big numbers. But what else goes into it?

Team Performance

Did a team make the playoffs? Did they win 90 or 100 games? Did they win the division by a landslide? Did the team do better than they did the previous season? If a team didn't make the playoffs, did they at least come close? Were they involved in a tight playoff race? All of these are factors. Making the playoffs is important; only 4 MVPs have come from non-playoff teams since 1995, and half of those were involved in tight playoff races (Barry Bonds in 2004 and Ryan Howard in 2006). The other two put up monster numbers when compared to the competition (Larry Walker in 1997 and Alex Rodriguez in 2003).

Defensive Position and Gold Gloves

The voters tend to build in a bonus for players that play traditionally defensive positions, such as middle infielders and catchers. And they tend to build in a penalty for designated hitters. Surprisingly, there seems to be a bit of extra love for right fielders that can't be explained by other factors. In addition, voters logically give a player an additional bonus if he has recently won a Gold Glove.

Repeat Winners

It is difficult to repeat as MVP. One might think that voters would tend to favor a guy who has won the award before, but it seems to be just the opposite. There are 3 cases in our model where we feel a former MVP should have won but did not: Barry Bonds in 1997, Jeff Bagwell in 1999, and Albert Pujols in 2006. The data shows that writers typically tend to spread the wealth and give another guy a shot at the award.

The Colorado Factor

People often talk about hitter's parks and pitcher's parks. The basic premise is that some baseball parks are more beneficial to hitters (or pitchers), and players who play 81 games (half the season) in these parks tend to have skewed statistics. We have not yet seen evidence that this shows up in the voting, with the exception being Colorado and Coors Field.

Looking beyond Coors for a minute, during those 8 seasons, Chase Field and U.S. Cellular Field finished in the top 10 in all but one year. Rangers Ballpark was in the top 10 in all but 2 years. During that time, there have been few legitimate MVP candidates from these teams besides Alex Rodriguez and Luis Gonzalez. In 2002, Alex Rodriguez put up MVP caliber numbers on a bad Texas team but did not win the MVP. We think this had more to do with the Rangers than their park. So do the voters apply a park penalty outside of Coors? It hasn't appeared that way, but if Jermaine Dye doesn't do well this year in the voting, we may have to revise that thinking.

Okay, so what about Coors? Larry Walker is the only Rockie to win the MVP; he did so in 1997. He had to put up monster numbers to overcome the writers' discrimination against Colorado players. There are 5 other cases where we feel a Colorado player would have won the MVP, if not for the Coors penalty: Dante Bichette (1995), Larry Walker (1995 and 1999), Todd Helton (2000), and Matt Holliday (2007). Justified or not, this is how the writers tend to vote.

A Fresh Face

Sometimes a team will add a new piece of the puzzle that will help it make the leap to the next level. The real effect of this can be debated, but the voters tend to like players that were not on that team the previous season. In other words, if a team was good this year but bad last year, the voters tend to attribute that to a new player in town.