This’ll mess with your head
I just checked out, on a whim, Fangraphs’ data on batters, sorted by value according to their "wins above replacement" metric, which includes both offensive and defensive contributions, and also a positional adjustment. It’s pretty much what you’d expect. Albert Pujols and Joe Mauer — your soon-to-be NL and AL MVPs — are 1 and 2. After them, a list of exactly the guys you’d expect: Utley, Jeter, Han-Ram, Longoria, Zimmerman, Fielder, so on. Pretty standard stuff.
Except that I lied. I told a pernicious lie. Albert Pujols and Joe Mauer are not numbers 1 and 2 on this list. They are 2 and 3. Number 1? Get this:
Yeah, that Ben Zobrist. It turns out he hit really, really well this year, and also fielded his position(s) like an insane crazy man. Everybody agrees that Zobrist was super-good this year, but it’s totally wild that Fangraphs has him as the most valuable player in all of baseball. For what it’s worth, BP does not agree — they have him tabbed at 7.7 WARP3, which is incredibly, shockingly good for Ben Zobrist, but not better than Mauer (8.8) and Pujols (12.7).
Just a little bit of baseball weirdness to cheer up your evening.
