Where might Ketel Marte end up in the MVP race
This week sees MLB give out its top honors, so there’s your topic. Will Ketel Marte finish second and equal Paul Goldschmidt for the highest MVP finish in team history? Should awards move back to take post-season performance into account? What changes would you make to the current system? Have at it…
Makakilo: Ketel Marte is one of three finalists for the MVP award. He is NOT a lock for runner up.
- For 2024, Shohei Ohtani and Fancisco Lindor have more WPA (7.31 & 4.44 vs 3.26) and bWAR (9.2 & 7.0 vs 6.8).
- For 2024, Francisco Lindor earned more defensive OAA than Ketel Marte (16 vs 8).
- “Along the way, Lindor further established himself as a leader, most notably calling the players-only meeting that his teammates credited for their dramatic turnaround and run up the standings.” – Anthony DiComo
Let’s focus on all-time Diamondbacks. Ketel Marte’s 2024 season ranked #5 with 6.8 bWAR, and #18 with 3.3 WPA. Ketel Marte’s career ranked #3 with 28.7 bWAR, and #5 with 7.8 WPA. Data from Baseball Reference.
Steak85: In my opinion, Marte is a lock not to be runner-up. The season that Francisco Lindor had was superior, plus Lindor plays in a much larger market. Marte might get some second place votes from voters who believe that a DH should not win MVP, but those are getting fewer and fewer, and he’ll likely be third on everyone else’s ballots.
But he was first-team all MLB second baseman. Given that there really are not two separate leagues any more, those all-MLB awards should be valued more highly, and likely they eventually will be.
I would add an award for the best utility player. It would be called the Tony Phillips Award, and have a requirement of at least ten starts at no fewer than three different positions, including one infield and one outfield position, or catcher/infield/outfield. And if you don’t know about Tony Phillips, look him up. Certainly the most underrated player of the last fifty years.
1AZfan1: Agree with everyone else that Marte is likely to be the ‘bronze medalist’ in the NL MVP race. He very likely would have finished with more WAR than Lindor if he didn’t have the stint on the IL late in the season. He may have even finished close enough to Shohei in WAR to make the voters really think about the whole DH as MVP thing. Looking at the WAR leaderboards, Ketel was the only player in the Top 10 in both bWAR and fWAR with under 152 games played (he played in 136). Ketel was a monster this year and I’m glad he’s getting the recognition that he is.
Regarding possible MLB award changes, I wouldn’t mind going to a single MVP and Cy Young award to cover both leagues. Now that both leagues play by the same rules with the universal DH, I don’t think there’s an appreciable difference between the NL and AL to justify separate awards, other than tradition. I think having All-MLB teams is a step in that direction. One of these years, we’re going to have 2 players at the same position winning NL/AL MVP, but only one can be First Team MLB. If those rules were in place this year, my MVP ballot would go Judge, Witt, Ohtani in order and Cy Young I’d go Sale, Skubal, Skenes.
Ben: I would be shocked if he ends up higher than third in the overall voting. It wouldn’t shock me if some voters give him some second place votes to reward the kind of leadership or intangibles that Marte brought to a team that was still relatively young. I tend to agree too that his injury limited him and the fact that the team failed to make the playoffs doesn’t help his case either. In context, Marte’s 2024 season is a touch less valuable than his 2019 campaign, the latter of which netted him a fourth-place finish in the MVP voting that year, but that was the same year that featured a bevy of worthy contenders. On a franchise level, Marte now owns two out of the top five single seasons by bWAR for position players and has fully cemented himself as a franchise icon – especially given that he’s still just 31 and is signed through his age-35 season.
Honestly, I like the fact that the award voting occurs before the postseason. It’s a regular season award that shouldn’t be impacted by the success or failure of a player or team in the playoffs when the sample sizes are so much smaller and the stakes are that much higher. Unfortunately, I suspect that Marte will be the only one to get much consideration for any of the awards. The team’s strength was its overall depth rather than having any singular player besides him shine individually. My biggest frustration with the current award system is having foreign players in their first season competing with genuine rookie players. I would much prefer that there be a “newcomer” category that’s separate from the rookie of the year award. In my opinion, it’s not fair to compare players who might be in their mid-20s with multiple years of professional baseball with early-20s players who might be experiencing the big leagues for the first time.
What would you do if you woke up tomorrow and the year is 2005?
ISH95: Go to Yahoo! Answers and ask “Am I pregernate?”
Makakilo: Talk to my congressman about immediately starting DARPA grants to expand existing development of mRNA therapies (for both cancer and infectious diseases). In the old timeline, DARPA grants started in 2008, which allowed enough years for BioNTech/Pfizer to be ready so that when the crisis hit in December 2019, they could quickly develop their mRNA Covid vaccine. What if Covid starts a few years earlier in the new timeline? If Covid starts earlier, the immediate start of DARPA grants would save millions of lives.
I-phones were introduced in 2007. It’s 2005, so why not invest 100% of my savings in Apple stock and hold that stock until retirement?
Steak85: While it’s tempting to say that I’d find myself and beat some sense into myself, if I did that, I probably wouldn’t have my kids, so I’ll take what I have. But I’d definitely tell myself to bet on the Steelers to win the Super Bowl a couple of weeks before the NFL season ended, and the Cardinals to win the World Series in late August of 2006. And invest in Justin Verlander rookie cards. The Biff Tannen route, hopefully without being a terrible person.
1AZfan1: Haha at Yahoo! Answers. I remember using ChaCha for fun a couple times, but that may not have been 2005.
Ben: Selfishly, I would love to tell my 13-year old self to be more confident. I was such a self-conscious child that a simple piece of advice like that might have made me a much happier person. I also love the idea of buying any piece of real estate or land somewhere and just let it accumulate value.