Josh Hamilton: The Benchmark for a Revolution
by Asher B. Chancey, BaseballEvolution.com
July 14, 2008

The Bill James Revolution, which in turn became the SABRmetric Revolution, may not have taken as strong a hold as we think. Perhaps the Revolution needs a new name – perhaps it should be called the “Don’t Just Look at the RBI” Revolution.

Josh Hamilton’s Great Story has become Josh Hamilton’s Great Season, but I think his Hero status is sweeping the baseball viewing and commentating public in the wrong direction. Google search “AL midseason MVP” and see what you get – way too many professional baseball writers placing Hamilton atop the league, and atop the Texas Rangers. Why? He leads the league in RBI, and has over 90 at the All-Star Break.

But while this is an enormous achievement, RBI continue to be one of the most overrated statistics in baseball – it is as true now as it was in the mid-to-late 1980s when Bill James first started saying so. Hamilton’s performance is as likely to be a product of his snug spot in the batting order – ahead of the better-performing Milton Bradley, and behind and behind Ian Kinsler and Michael Young - as it is to be a result of his obviously fantastic talent. It appears as though any player batting third for the Rangers would be having a good season.

Every year, a Texas Rangers outfielder has a good year, and every year baseball people go gaga over him. Usually it is some mediocre talent like Gary Matthews or Kevin Mench. This year, the Rangers acquired some good players, and they have responded in kind, but this is still a home-field issue. In case you think I am wrong, check out his home/road splits for evidence of the kind of player Hamilton is – that .768 road OPS is not very good, and puts Hamilton in the same company as Bobby Abreu (road OPS: .762), and behind guys like Casey Kotchman (road OPS: .799), David DeJesus (.854), and Adrian Beltre (.841). Who thinks any of these guys should be the AL MVP?

As with so many other players on good offensive teams in hitters parks, Josh Hamilton is having a very good year and racking up some gaudy RBI numbers. But it doesn’t make him one of the most valuable players in the league. In fact, Hamilton isn’t any the most valuable player on his own team. Consider, even with the home-field advantage, it isn’t Hamilton dominating the American League, but rather Ian Kinsler (league leader in batting average, at-bats, plate appearances, runs, hits, total bases, and doubles) and Milton Bradley (league leader in on-base, slugging, and OPS). Bradley has hit a higher percentage of his homeruns at home (15 out of 19, compared with 14 out of 21 for Hamilton), but he has been much better overall on the road (.867 OPS, .404 OBP) than Hamilton has. Kinsler’s OPS on the road is also far better than Hamilton’s (.898), and unlike Hamilton, Kinsler actually hits most of his homeruns away from Arlington (11 out of 14 homeruns on the road). And David Murphy would appear to be less valuable than Hamilton overall, but on the road his OPS is also .768, equal to Hamilton's. Of Rangers regulars, only Michael Young, a notorious Ballpark at Arlington split-performer, seems to be under-performing Hamilton on the year this year.

Perhaps the best indicator of how overstated Hamilton’s value has been this year is Ramon Vazquez. Vazquez has not been a regular for the Rangers all season, playing 69 games and starting 55 of them. Vazquez has hit .308 on the road for the Rangers this year, and has an .859 OPS. In practical terms, this means that if I had to chose between Ramon Vazquez and Josh Hamilton in a road game in 2008, I would choose Ramon Vazquez. Yikes. To me, playing 81 games in which you are your team's fourth best option is not league-MVP caliber talent.

Alas, there are times when I have been accused of getting too wrapped up in one aspect or another of a player’s statistical accomplishments, and failing to see the big picture. I get that. To that end, I will openly admit that, regardless of ballpark, Josh Hamilton is having a great year. And I also recognize that my willingness to dismiss Hamilton’s accomplishments starts right here: if Hamilton’s stats are solely the result of his home ballpark, then why isn’t David Murphy, whose road stats are the same, also having such a monster year? I get that, and I agree – clearly Hamilton is a great offensive talent.

However, when evaluating a player’s value (the award is named, after all, the Most Valuable Player), I do think, as most people do, that all factors should be considered. In this case, I think we have pretty compelling evidence to show that Josh Hamilton’s performance, i.e. his incredibly high RBI total, is significantly impacted by both his home ballpark and his great lineup, to the extent that it is distorting his overall value.

I am not saying he isn’t having a good year. But I am saying that he isn’t having a better year than many players around the American League whose value is just as high but whose numbers aren’t just as good. Anybody who looks at the seasons that Carlos Quentin, Josh Hamilton, Justin Morneau, Jermaine Dye, Grady Sizemore, Alex Rodriguez, Ian Kinsler, Milton Bradley, and Evan Longoria are having and concludes than Josh Hamilton is having the best year is simply not looking at the statistics objectively.

Which brings me to my final point – last season, I entertained the notion of Jimmy Rollins’ NL MVP Award, and I defended it as a valid subjective award choice. And I still do. I concluded that some years, when there is no clearly dominant offensive player, a subjective choice, i.e. a player who meant a lot to, or symbolically stood for, his team’s success is a good choice. And I concluded that Jimmy Rollins in 2007 was such a scenario. Given Josh Hamilton’s great comeback story, and the fact that the Rangers just acquired him this season, an argument could be made that Hamilton, too, would be a good subjective choice. But such an argument would be a poor one.

The Texas Rangers are currently in third place in the American League West, and if the season ended today, the Rangers would have the eighth best record – out of 14 teams – in the American League. It is incredibly difficult to justify the subjective awarding of an MVP to a player who played on a team that was not in the top half of the league. Hamilton’s story is a great one, but this is why we have the Comeback Player of the Year Award.

The wealth of articles, blogs, forum-posts, and commentary anointing Josh Hamilton as the First Half AL MVP, while misguided, presents us with an opportunity. If the baseball viewing public takes a moment to respond to this phenomenon, and gives Hamilton’s first half an honest look, perhaps we can avoid giving him the MVP at the end of the year.

Whether or not we do will say a lot about how far we’ve come during this so-called “Revolution” and whether we’ve come very far at all.


Questions? Concerns? Comments? Asher lives in Philadelphia, PA, and can be reached at asher@baseballevolution.com.