Fear and Self-Loathing In the Blogosphere

End-of-season awards almost always inspire debate, most of it useless. When faced with many viable candidates, it's human nature to think about what seems most recent or, perhaps, the image with the most mental repetition. That's why you don't generally see the Academy honoring films that were released in February come Oscar time. And, honestly, a truly egregious slight will follow the laws of karma, ultimately sullying the reputation of wrongfully feted.

(Let's all appreciate the continued sanity of Terry Pendleton, please. If I had to hear about how I was a non-deserving scrub at the end of every season, I'd snap like Dewey Cox flipping over the car in the Walk Hard trailer.)

Well, in the 72 hours since Jimmy Rollins won the '07 National League MVP award it seems like everything is spiraling out of control. Daily News columnist Bill Conlin (a dead ringer for Peter Griffin) started what seemed like the familiar print journalist v. blogger flame war: old journalist insults sabermetrics, sensitive bloggers accuse journalist of being crotchety and inaccurate, journalist fires back by citing "professional" credentials, bloggers act smarmy, life goes on.

Conlin, however, has taken the usual objective-versus-subjective scrum to new, disturbing heights by basically proposing that we need a Gestapo to "regulate" free speech on the Internet. His comments directed at the folks at Crashburn Alley are a weird kind of scary, like an online commenter emerging from the basement and chatting with Michael Barkann every evening. (Full, concise summary of the ongoing incident at Deadspin)

I've never been a Conlin fan and I'm not about to come down on his side here. But I don't think I can heartily endorse what Crashburn Alley is doing, either. Conlin's original swipes at the statistical analysis crowd are hardly anything we haven't seen before. I guess I would expect Fire Joe Morgan to give him the smackdown, but it made me uncomfortable to see a growing J-Roll MVP backlash. And as measured and objective as Crashburn's critique of the NL MVP race is, it also hints at something Phillies fans have always had in abundance: self-loathing.

It's hard to point fingers and complain and say "Why can't they just let us have something?" when your own fans aren't even on the J-Roll party bus. Fandom doesn't mean that when you see the colors you must always smile and obey. In Philly, it often means the exact opposite. But sometimes I think we question too much, to the point that our team's legacy and our own sense of pride as fans begins to suffer. We all get pissed off at pitching changes, roster moves, baserunning gaffes, whatever. But when we start raising doubts when one of our most popular and talented players is named MVP, compiling exhaustive bodies of statistical evidence (for a division rival, no less), then we really need to re-examine what we're rooting for in the first place. With Ryan Howard last year and J-Roll this year, we've earned the right to be a little happy--it's our own damn fault that we're too guilty about shedding our miserable, born-loser identity to accept it.

Finally, in J-Roll's defense:
- He makes more outs because he's a leadoff man. I'll admit his OBP is too low for comfort, but 30 HRs eases the pain a bit, plus leading the freaking league in runs shows that he's still getting the job done even if he doesn't have the eye of Kevin Youkilis.

- Crashburn Alley uses the fantastic Wins Above Replacement Player stat as part of its case, where David Wright has a 1.2 WARP advantage over Jimmy. That's great, but you really have to look at WARP in context. What does it matter when Wright is worth 1.2 wins more than Jimmy while Wright's team is 1 win worse than Jimmy's? This is why FJM can talk about Hanley Ramirez all they want and why I can continue thinking that he's basically the star point guard on the Washington Generals. Which brings me to my next point...

- It's not the "Player Who Had the Best Statistical Year" Award. It's a "Most Valuable Player" Award. Arguments like "Jimmy was a top ten player, but technically not the best player" remind me of when we were all wringing our hands over whether or not A-Rod should be MVP on a below-average Texas Rangers team. Unless the guy is an absolute hammerhead in a school of guppies, I don't see how you can justify snubbing a player from a successful team. Playing well while there are actual stakes involved magnifies and raises a player's value to his team, period.

So why still not Wright instead of Jimmy? It goes back to the post that immediately precedes this one. I like that "Most Valuable" is open to interpretation, my own interpretation being that both men were the respective emotional leaders of their teams, both had good stats when it mattered the most late in the season, both were Gold Glove-caliber defenders and Silver Slugger-caliber hitters----and Jimmy's team beat Wright's. It's that simple.

Sabermetrics are a neat, fascinating, and useful tool--but it's still the basis of a cult that won't tolerate any opinion but their own, just like the crotchety old print journalists. I won't blame the sabermetricians for defending themselves from the ludicrous number of ad hominem
attacks launched their way. But I won't support them unconditionally just because I'm young, irreverent, a blogger, or any combination of the above.