Michael Brantley’s September surge may put him in the MVP conversation
Michael Brantley has been an absolute beast this year, but he’s taken it to a whole new level with his .954 OPS the month of September. His latest surge comes at a time where his team, the Cleveland Indians, are making a late-push for a playoff spot, as they entered Tuesday 4.5 games out of the second Wild Card spot. Obviously his “hot-streak” has come at a crucial juncture, however, bear in mind that we’re dealing with a very small sample size. To be precise, Brantley has only played in eight games this month, allowing him to only amass 34 plate appearances so far in the final month of this action-packed season.
He’s been tremendous over this past week, yet, like I previously said, he’s been stellar all year. In 599 opportunities in ’14, the speedy outfielder has compiled an exquisite .316/.374/.495 slash line and 5.7 fWAR. The latter number, Brantley’s fWAR, places third in the American League behind only Mike Trout and Alex Gordon, and fifth in all of baseball.
Now, unlike Gordon, a large part of Brantley’s WAR has not been defensive-metric-driven. No, in fact, he’s actually delivered negative value on the defensive spectrum. Why this matters is because a lot of baseball pundits are extremely skeptical of defensive metrics and penalize, often to a fault, players who have good defensive numbers. Gordon is/was one of those guys who was heavily-scrutinized for his tremendous defensive marks that at one point brought his WAR neck-and-neck with A.L. MVP front-runner Mike Trout. Subsequently, this led to a fascinating debate in the baseball community about the value of WAR and defensive metrics, and how much stock should be put in each. Fangraphs’ Dave Cameron — in my mind, at least — wrote the most comprehensive, logical piece on this the other day.
Anyway, unfortunately sabermetricians, or, as I like to call them: “sensible and unbiased thinkers,” typically aren’t members of the BBWAA. Rather, the voting is done by beat writers who subjectively vote for the Most Valuable Player based on which players happen to have good teammates and ones who hit the ball far. In a way, their criteria completely contradicts what the BBWAA guidelines say how one should vote, which is the “actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.” But that’s a debate for another day, so let’s get back to how this is pertinent to Brantley’s MVP case.
Brantley seemingly has done everything voters look for in an MVP. He’s hit the ball with force with an outstanding 148 wRC+ — which ranks tied for fifth (with Edwin Encarnacion) in the American League –, has stolen 19 of 20 bases successfully, and is playing on a contender.
Take a look at Brantley’s statistics compared to his biggest competitor for the award.
Mike Trout: .287 AVG, .372 OBP, .552 SLG, 163 wRC+, 6.8 fWAR, 14/2 SB/CS, 2.4 BsR, -7 DRS, -6.3 UZR
Michael Brantley: .316 AVG, .374 OBP, .495 SLG, 148 wRC+, 5.7 fWAR, 19/1 SB/CS, 6.4 BsR, -1 DRS, -1.2 UZR
Right now it’s evident Trout’s been the more valuable player, but it’s closer than one might initially suppose. It only takes one hot month and one cold month to change the course of this race. Oh, and the Indians would have to make the playoffs, of course, because that’s just how things work.