Atlanta Braves starter Max Fried ignored in mid-season MVP discussions
Sure, it’s only been thirty games, but the Atlanta Braves have been riding on Max Fried‘s arm.
It’s a tradition, I suppose: the middle of the baseball season and people want to project MVP’s. Except that there’s always some names missing, and the Atlanta Braves certainly have reason to gripe.
Now granted: if your world view philosophy is that only hitters should win the MVP awards, then perhaps you should move on to the next column. That tends to be the norm for this trophy, but it also clearly hasn’t been a hard-and-fast rule, either.
Naturally, ESPN is firmly in that camp regardless:
Tatis Jr., Harper, and Betts. 3 NL hitters. As it happens, it’s arguable (and we’re gonna make the argument) that two of them don’t even belong on their ballot.
Let’s look at the current state of the stats, shall we? Let’s start with the current MLB hitting leaders in WAR, according to Fangraphs:
- 2.1 Fernando Tatis Jr.
- 2.0 Mike Yastrzemski
- 1.9 Brandon Lowe
- 1.7 Mookie Betts, Anthony Rendon, Kyle Lewis, Trevor Story
For the record, Bryce Harper is well back at 1.4, admittedly with only 25 games played. The others noted above all are at 30+, excepting Rendon’s 27.
How about the pitchers, though?
- 2.1 Shane Bieber
- 1.6 Jacob deGrom
- 1.5 Max Fried, Lucas Giolito, Yu Darvish, and Sonny Gray
Looks like Bieber should be in the thick of the conversation, eh? But all we hear are crickets from ESPN on this.
There’s a catch, though: fangraphs leans heavily on strikeout prowess for pitchers (and by extension, FIP – Fielding Independent Pitching) when calculating WAR… so let’s also check baseball-reference.com, which considers things like… oh, Earned Runs allowed as being more important.
So in looking at Baseball-Reference’s numbers, here’s what you get (combining pitchers and hitters for sake of some brevity):
- 2.5 Max Fried
- 2.3 Bieber
- 2.2 Betts
- 2.1 Tatis
- 2.0 Lance Lynn
- 1.9 Jose Abreu
- 1.8 Trevor Story, Aaron Nola, and Yaz.
Big difference, eh? But this gets to my long-standing argument that FIP ignores roughly 2/3rds of the game: the batted ball and the quality of the stroke as the ball leaves the bat.
This is also why pitchers like Luis Castillo of the Reds have a 1.4 fangraphs WAR despite a 3.62 ERA. He strikes out a bunch of hitters (12.53 per 9), but he’s also 0-4 on the season with an opponent’s .400 batting average on balls in play (BABIP). But I digress.
Thus Fried should be standing alone as he does in the B-R WAR rankings: he’s tied with Bieber for best ERA (1.35), has a higher ground ball percentage, and lower BABIP thanks to inducing hitters to make weak contact.
Yes: I could argue some stats that Bieber has been better than Fried, but it’s really pointless as both pitchers should now be leading the discussion for MVP in their respective leagues.
Why Fried is the Mid-point NL MVP
So let’s concentrate on the NL side now and the very definition of ‘MVP’. In other words, who has been most valuable to their team?
- TATIS. He’s got the strongest argument, since he’s arguably carrying the Padres: hitting .300, OPSing over 1.0000, a wRC+ of 174 with 13 homers and 30 RBI (unwritten rules of grand slams aside).
- His bWar is still well below Fried
- His team is certainly helping on offense: 2nd in MLB in run-scoring and 123 in OPS+
- In other words, he’s very valuable, but take him out of the lineup and the Padres are still doing pretty well.
- BETTS. Likewise, the Dodgers don’t necessarily need him in this stacked lineup.
- They’ve outscored the Padres by 9 and out-homered them, too.
- Their run-differential is staggering
- They also have the lowest team ERA in the majors… and it’s not that close.
- Ergo, Betts is being Betts, but that’s just icing on the Dodger cake: they would still be in first place without him.
- YASTRZEMSKI. Here’s an argument: think the Giants would be in third without him?
- 23rd in pitching ERA
- Only 11th in Runs per game
- Still, he has others in the lineup (Donovan Solano, Brandon Belt) hitting around him.
- That’s pretty valuable, but not ‘first place’ valuable.
- HARPER.
- The Phils are 4th in runs per game
- Harper is hitting like a madman (1.091 OPS), but is he even the MVP of his own team?
- J.T. Realmuto has a .933 OPS with more homers (9 to 7) and more RBI (25 to 20)… and he’s an everyday catcher.
- STORY.
- Eh, call me when the Rockies are relevant again.
- deGrom?
- Not a terrible choice, but Max Fried has out-pitched him (1.80 ERA).
By contrast, can you imagine how bad things would be for the Atlanta Braves without Fried?
While the rest of the Atlanta pitching staff (the rotation, at least) is being held together with duct tape and baling wire, he’s taken them all up on his shoulders and kept marching along.
Fried is making every start and giving up virtually nothing: his worst outing was 2 earned runs against the Mets on the second day of the season. Since then: 1 or none over six more starts.
The Braves have won all seven of those games: 39% of their 18 wins.
He’s been the rock that hasn’t moved while the landslide has continued around him.
So… pick a mid-season MVP if you want. Pick hitters, pick pitchers… I don’t care. The numbers and the results point to one guy… and he’s an Atlanta Brave.