Art, science meet in Pujols

By Bryan Burwell
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/cards
Wednesday, Nov. 25 2009

If baseball actually was the absolute science that some haughty new-age hardball intelligentsia believe it is, then surely someone would have already created another Albert Pujols by now. For even baseball's new brigade of pseudo-intellectual sabermetricians seem to understand that there are no highfalutin' formulas that would deny the painfully obvious truth that the Cardinals slugger has become a near-perfect standard of baseball excellence.

The sabermetric clan just love them some Albert. If they could shove all of their ultimate exotic measures like VORP, WHIP, RAR, DIPS, SNW, OPS and WAR into a statistical blender, out would pop Virtual Pujols, a spectacular hitting machine even Keith Law could unconditionally love.

And I say thank goodness for Pujols, because he is the perfect baseball creation who, at least for the moment, has allowed the game's stubborn old-school traditionalists, new-school deep thinkers and baseball's statistical moderates, too, to meet on some common ground.

I woke up Tuesday morning with a slight case of uncomfortable dread bubbling in my stomach, wondering who and how someone armed with a Baseball Writers Association of America National League MVP ballot in one hand and a sabermetric crib sheet in another was going to use the rigid language of science to explain why Pujols didn't deserve to win his third NL MVP.

Much to my surprise and relief, no one went rogue on the MVP voting, with Pujols receiving all 32 first-place votes, becoming only the sixth NL player to win the award by unanimous vote ... and sanity was once again restored to Baseball America.

I think.

I hope.

I pray.

After the turbulence of last week's Cy Young balloting, where we saw a seismic shift in the way baseball writers measured what constitutes greatness in their game, an angry debate ensued.

In this corner, Old School intuition.

In this corner, New School sabermetrics.

And oh, what a nasty war of words came spilling out of both corners of baseball's hottest debate.

And in spite of some unsettling stubbornness on the part of Law, ESPN's new-age statistical prince who fought his battle armed with mind-numbing formulas and obtuse alibis, steadfastly resisting the urge to rely on anything beyond his spread-sheet meanderings to quantify something so wonderfully intuitive as the athletic gift of excelling at baseball, I think some progress was made.

As my new-school buddy Matthew Leach of MLB.com says, even if you don't agree with Law's inflexible logic, we shouldn't shut him out of the conversation. In fact, it might do baseball a world of good to let more of these voices — as insane as they might be — scream on the mountaintop.

This is an important debate that has been on a slow rise from a steady simmer to an all-out boil for some time now, even with moderates like Cards general manager John Mozeliak trying to bridge the gap. "I believe in analytics," Mozeliak said Tuesday. "There's a lot of value in them. But I also realize that baseball-card stats (batting average, home runs, RBIs, wins and losses, ERA) tell you a lot, too, and to ignore that wouldn't be very smart, either."

I am with Mozeliak on this. It can't be all old-school intuition and traditional numbers any more than it should be all new-school sabermetrics. I am not an anti-numbers traditionalist. I am not some athletic Neanderthal who wants to swing a cudgel upside the head of anyone who dares to bring an intellectual analysis to the game. I just happen to believe that you can overthink yourself when all you do is rely on numbers in evaluating athletic greatness.

Numbers are not an absolute tool like the sabermetric worshipers would have you believe. You do not calculate the baseball genius of any great player solely with a spreadsheet any more than you would judge the musical genius of Chuck Berry or Miles Davis by an elaborate math formula.

Sports is more art than science. It is about improvisation and instinct as much as it is about technique and calculations. I can teach 100 men to mimic Pujols' batting stance and swing, and a hundred more to copy Tim Lincecum's pitching motion, but how many will produce the same results?

I can come armed with any number of potent analytical data to prove that Pujols is better than Prince Fielder, and that's just fine. I love the stats as a useful tool, not an absolute, can't-miss measuring stick. At some intuitive level, can't I simply go to a few games, sit in the stands and rely on my eyes and instincts to do the same job with considerably fewer high-minded calculations?

There is of course some science in sports, and it has created some dramatic improvements in terms of training, equipment, coaching and performance. And it's no different when it comes to the demanding world of talent evaluation, too. Give me a radar gun, a video camera and a thick booklet of revealing stats to grade any number of players.

But every time I hear these stat freaks clinging too tightly to their rigid formulas and reciting an exhausting litany of sabermetrics to describe athletic greatness, I am reminded of a conversation I had several years ago with NFL Hall of Famer Barry Sanders.

I once asked Sanders, who is generally regarded as the greatest pure runner in the history of the game, what he saw when he was zig-zagging his way through all that heavy traffic and finding daylight during a game, and I was expecting a dramatic recitation that might have been best-suited for a kinesiology class.

Instead, Sanders let out a soft chuckle and gave me the simplest description of athletic greatness I've ever heard:

"I see the same thing you would," he said. "The only difference is, I can get there."

In other words, sports just isn't that darned complicated.


Unanimous vote is fitting tribute for Pujols

By Jeff Gordon
STLTODAY.COM SPORTS COLUMNIST
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/cards
11/24/2009

Albert Pujols is the greatest position player of his generation. His early-career production is unmatched in baseball’s modern era.

He should have four or five National League Most Valuable Player awards at this point in his remarkable career. He became a hitting machine early in his rookie season and he sustained that high level throughout his career.

So it was only fitting that Albert won this third MVP award -– and his second in a row -– in a unanimous vote by the Baseball Writers Association of America. He became just the fourth National League player to win the award three times and the 10th ballplayer to win back-to-back MVPs.

“I am really humbled,” Pujols said at his MVP news conference. “There are so many great players in the NL who deserve this award, too. It is a very special day today.”

Pujols doesn’t need these MVP awards to validate his career, but the honors are appropriate. This hardware underscores how he has dominated his peers.

He finds significance in every honor that comes his way.

“Every award you win is special,” he said. “That tells you the dedication that you put into the offseason. I take every award . . . and I keep it in a special place. It means a lot to me.”

Albert admitted it will take a few days for the historical significance of the third MVP to sink in. And he finds the comparisons to Cardinal great Stan Musial to be a bit overwhelming.

“He is ‘The Man,' ” Pujols said. “I keep saying that. I hope by the time I am done in the game I can put up half the numbers Stan Musial put up in his career.”

That is going to happen. Nothing can stop his hitting, as we’ve see for nine consecutive years.

It is impossible to compare baseball eras, but it is possible to compare achievements WITHIN eras -– and in that framework, Albert ranks as one of the best ever.

This time around he got all 32 first-place votes. That was a suitable sign of respect, even in a year when Marlins shortstop Hanley Ramirez had an outstanding statistical season.

When you look at some of the weird voting, the unanimous vote is all the more impressive. Derrek Lee got a second-place vote, for goodness sakes. Andre Ethier got two of them. Pablo Sandoval got a third-place vote.

So when these guys agree on something, that is notable.

Pujols isn’t just the league’s best position player. He is THE presence in the NL, one that towers over opposing pitching staffs.

Some of the stat nerds argued that Ramirez and Chase Utley had comparable impacts this season, but neither player terrifies rivals as Albert does.

Manager after manager after manager pitches around Albert as much as possible. Most teams refuse to deal with him with the game on the line.

Albert plays hurt, battling on through injuries that require surgical repairs. He is one of the game’s great leaders. He is baseball’s most aggressive first baseman and he makes game-winning plays in the field.

When injuries decimated the Cardinals attack early last season, he carried the offense and kept the team in contention.

Some fans complain that Albert doesn’t run out routine grounders at full speed, but he earns a pass on that by playing through his myriad injuries.

Yahoo! Sports columnist Tim Brown put it well:

“Sometimes, amid the noise and the statistical warfare, the best player is the most valuable player, no more complicated than that. Sometimes the guy who looks like the best player . . . is. The eyes agree with the bottom line. The pitchers say he is the best hitter. The players say he is the best teammate. The manager says he’s never had one quite like him.

“He hits and his team wins, and wins even more than most predicted it would. He’s the most productive hitter in the National League and the pivotal player for the Central Division champion, and therefore Albert Pujols is the Most Valuable Player.”

Hear, hear.