Tyler Kepner, who covers the Yankees for the New York Times, sparked a mini-controversy with aninnocent little tweetfollowing Mark Teixeria’s heroics in a 4-2 win over the Mariners on Friday night.
“By the way, this is probably obvious by now, but Teixeira’s the AL MVP. No question, as Joe Torre would say.”
Rob NeyerandJoe Posnanskihave already whacked him on the head for suggesting that anyone besides Joe Mauer could realistically win the award. I’m with them. As I watched him go 3-for-3 against the Indians on Friday night, raising his batting average to .375 for the year, I was hard-pressed to think of another player even remotely worthy of the distinction. After all, Mauer enters play on Saturday tops in the league in batting, on-base percentage (.444), slugging percentage (.622) and OPS (1.067), all while playing the most demanding position in the league.
But, in my quest to find his nearest competition, I decided to look at two leading metrics for evaluating players:
Wins Above Replacement (WAR) Leaders - AL:
1. Joe Mauer - 5.7
2. Ben Zobrist - 5.4
3. Evan Longoria - 5.3
4. Derek Jeter - 4.7
5. Marco Scutaro - 4.6
VORP Leaders - AL:
1. Joe Mauer - 64.0
2. Jason Bartlett - 49.9
3. Ichiro Suzuki - 43.0
4. Carl Crawford - 42.0
5. Michael Young - 41.8
6. Derek Jeter - 41.5
7. Kevin Youkilis - 41.1
8. Justin Morneau - 39.9
9. Ben Zobrist - 39.4
10. Marco Scutaro - 37.9
You know, just in case you needed any more evidence that Mauer is far and away the best player in the league this season. It shouldn’t be close, really. But I suspect that Kepner is focusing on an old-fashioned idea like winning baseball games. And as the Twins currently sit in third place with an 18.3% chance of making the playoffs, according toCool Standings, Mauer could, but shouldn’t, lose a few votes if they miss out come October.
But if we want to use Kepner’s argument, Teixeira might not even be the most valuable player on his own team. With an improved UZR (+8.3) to go along with an excellent .318/.387/.456 line and the metrics shown above, Derek Jeter has a stronger case for some individual hardware.