In tonight’s game between the Reds and the Cubs, Cubs starter Rich Harden had already run up a pitch count of 103 through 4 innings of work, despite only allowing 1 run, so Cubs manager Lou Pinella opted to remove him from the game (wisely, I would say, given Harden’s legendary fragility). Harden left with a 4-1 lead, but obviously could not get the win, since he had not pitched the requisite 5 innings.

Rookie reliever Jeff Stevens thereupon entered the game to start the 5th frame, pitching one inning and earning his first ever career win.

The only problem was, in his one inning of work Stevens gave up two singles and a three run bomb to Johnny Gomes, erasing the Cubs’ lead and leaving the game as a 4-4 tie.

The Cubs promptly came back and scored a run in the bottom half of the fifth, and scoreless relief by three other Cubs relievers, including 2 innings of hitless, 3-strikeout work by Aaron Heilman, preserved a 6-4 victory for Chicago, and saved the “win” for Stevens.

This is one of the worst cases of “vulturing a win” that I’ve seen in a long, long time. Stevens was far and away the worst Cubs pitcher in this game, posting a -.265 WPA whereas all the other four pitchers were positive, and yet he was awarded the win.

I know I’m just beating a long dead horse here, but why again do so many people hang so much of their evaluation of a player (not to mention Cy Young Awards), on this incredibly flawed stat?

WPA is the stat that old baseball men have always wanted.

If you believe in Wins and RBIs, if you believe that certain pitchers can “pitch to the score” and certain batters are simply “clutch” and can suddenly step up their game when it’s all on the line while somehow sucking the rest of the time, than WPA is the stat for you.

The problem that so many people have with stats like Wins and RBI is not so much with what they show, as indeed, they only show what they were designed to show, and do so quite well. Rather, the problem people have is with what other people think these stats show, which is actually pretty far from what they tell us.  Namely, which player really did the most to help his team win games.

But if your goal is to find out exactly which player did the most to help his team win games, than WPA is the perfect stat for you.

Actually, it couldn’t be more elegant. WPA, which stands for “Win Probability Added,” is derived by looking at the current game situation – what inning it is, what the score is, how many outs there are, and how many men are on base – and determining what percentage chance each team has of winning the ballgame in that situation, based on a computer crunching the numbers of all previous baseball games for which complete information is available.

In any given game, the two teams each have about a 50 percent chance of winning at the start of the game (slightly more for the home team, and slightly less for the visitors). With each outcome, whether an out or a base safely reached, one team’s chance of winning increases slightly, and the other’s decreases by the exact same amount, always adding up to 100 percent.

What WPA does, is it awards each batter and each pitcher a certain fraction of a win for each outcome they are involved in, in every game they play in.  For example, if a batter gets a single and it increases his teams chance of winning by 2 percent, he is awarded 0.02 of WPA, and the pitcher is docked negative 0.02 of a win. Naturally, getting big hits in crucial situations, or (for a pitcher) getting tough outs with the game on the line, is worth much more of a win than getting hits or outs in blowouts. Over the course of the season, all players’ totals are added to determin exactly how many wins they were actually worth to their team that season. That’s WPA.

WPA differs from WAR in that WAR attempts to assess the overall value a player has provided without reference to game situation.  Basically, WAR assumes that a player has little or control over exactly when he gets hits or outs, and thus attempts to assess true skill level, while factoring out random luck.  WPA, on the other hand, doesn’t care about true skill level at all.  It only cares about how much a player actually helped his team win, based on context. In other words, how “clutch” players were.

Which is why WPA is so perfect for the old school writers and baseball men. Because it is measuring *exactly* what people always thought they were trying to measure with Wins and RBI: how much you helped your team win.

So if we think about the traditional main criteria used by old-school baseball writers to award the two major awards, MVP and Cy Young, which are of course Wins (followed, to a lesser extent, by ERA) for pitchers and RBI for batters (followed, to a lesser extent, by homers), we see that WPA is actually the best way to determine these awards, if these people actually want to measure what they say they want to measure.

Because after all, if you are a crusty old baseball writer, you don’t really care that 50 homers in 1996 was not indicative of Brady Anderson’s “true” skill level – you just know he had a heck of a year.

So, looking at the WPA leaderboards for each league in this particular season (minimum 4.00 WPA), we get the following:

National League
Albert Pujols – 7.22
Prince Fielder – 7.06
Ryan Howard – 5.38
Chris Carpenter – 5.08
Joey Votto – 4.76
Chase Utley – 4.43
Tim Lincecum – 4.27
Andre Ethier – 4.04

American League
Zack Greinke – 4.81
Justin Verlander – 4.31
Johnny Damon – 4.27
Jason Bay – 4.04

No big surprises in the National League, where if you went by WPA, you’d wind up with Albert Pujols as MVP and Chris Carpenter as Cy Young, both of those players being the odds-on favorites to win if the season were to end today.

But the American League is a different story, as WPA shows how Wins and RBI fail to tell the whole story of who happened to be the most clutch. Zack Greinke is first overall in WPA, despite being behind the pack in Wins, and Johnny Damon is your leader among position players in WPA.

Indeed, WPA suggests that Zack Greinke was actually the most valuable player in the American League in this particular season, and probably should be the MVP, but if we adhere to the traditional rules that pitchers should not be MVPs and the MVP has to come from a playoff-bound team, than by all rights Johnny Damon ought to be your American League MVP frontrunner.

But in any case, Zack Greinke is far and away your AL Cy Young this year. Not only is he leading the league in WPA, showing his “clutchness,” but he’s also leading all AL players in WAR, showing his “true” skill level!

Guys like Bill Hall and J.J. Hardy have taken a lot of heat for the Brewers’ failure to make the playoffs this season. But a quick look at the Brewers WAR pie shows that the team’s biggest problem was a lack of pitching.

Just how bad was the team’s pitching in 2009? Milwaukee pitchers had the lowest WAR of any team in the majors this year (yes, including the Nationals). In fact, the Brewers pitchers were worth a full win less than the Nats.

Fangraphs says the Brewers pitchers were worth a total of $9MM in 2009. Meanwhile, Jeff Suppan alone was paid $12.5MM (and he’ll make $12.5MM again in 2010!).

Here’s a fun fact: Yovani Gallardo’s WAR is 2.8, but the Brewers’ pitchers combined WAR is only 2.2. How is that possible? Milwaukee can thank guys like Braden Looper, David Bush, Suppan and Carlos Villaneuva, who combined for 91 starts and a -1.4 WAR.

Thanks to terrible pitching performances from just about everyone not named Gallardo or Hoffman, Milwaukee was forced to rely heavily on its position players. Just look at this insane breakdown of pitchers’ WAR vs. position players’ WAR:

That pretty much says it all right there, doesn’t it? Despite outstanding seasons from Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun and Mike Cameron, the Brewers never really had a chance. You simply can’t win when your pitching contributes less than 10 percent of overall team WAR.

What should the Mariners do with Ken Griffey Jr. next season? The fans love Junior, and the Mariners love his positive impact in the clubhouse, but his declining performance hinders the ability of an otherwise pretty decent team to contend for a postseason berth.

Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times speaks to some of the value Griffey has had in the clubhouse this season:

He has been the godfather to the parade of young players who have come into the clubhouse. He has been a close friend to the veterans. He has offered advice on pitchers’ and hitters’ tendencies….

He has been good for the club, good for the city and great to have around again.

The thing is, there is a perfectly good way for the Mariners to get all of these benefits without wasting precious at-bats on him: they should simply make him a coach.  They could even pay him the exact same salary, if they think he is that worth it, but please, don’t waste precious at bats on a guy which could be given to better performers just because you like the advice he gives to younger players or his friendly presence in the dugout.

That’s the sensible part of my plan for Griffey. Now here is the slightly crazy part.

The Mariners should sign Griffey to a $1 million “personal services” contract or whatever, and then use him as a coach.  He’s not on the active roster, but he travels with the team, wears a uniform, sits in the dugout, gives advice, etc.  And as long as the Mariners are in contention, they should only put their very best players on the field.

But if Griffey is still interested in playing, here’s what you do.  Let him play in spring training. Let him take batting practice with the team during the season if he wants to. And then, if the Mariners actually do actually fall so far out of contention that they can’t possibly come back, the team should cut its worst player and install Griffey as the DH.  Or else, when the rosters expand in September, add Griffey to the 40-man and put him on the team for a few at-bats down the stretch.

Look, this plan is pretty silly, but if Griffey is already under contract as a coach, the only thing he really costs you is a roster spot, and only a 40-man roster spot at that, if you wait until September.  It’s still probably not the optimal use of resources, but in this darkened age of steroids, Ken Griffey Jr. is the one player who has emerged as still being beloved by pretty much the entire nation, and if he still wants to play a bit, and the fans still love to watch him (which they do), and the Mariners players and staff all love him, I say let him play a bit.

In any case, it’s a decent compromise with the foolishness of giving him so many at-bats this season when the Mariners actually had a shot at contention.

The Giants and the Rockies are battling it out for the National League wild card, but both teams are refusing to put their best lineup on the field.

Seth Smith is the second best hitter on the Colorado Rockies. In 251 at-bats, he has compiled a .909 OPS, and his .394 wOBA is second on the team only to Todd Helton’s .397. And yet on most nights Smith rides the pine behind obviously inferior hitters like Ryan Spilborghs and Eric Young Jr.

Fred Lewis is the second best hitter on the San Francisco Giants. In 273 AB, he has compiled a .360 OBP, and his .339 wOBA is second on the team only to Pablo Sandoval’s .395. And yet on most nights Fred Lewis rides the pine behind obviously inferior hitters like Nate Schierholtz and Eugenio Velez.

Both of these players are clearly superior to the other options at hand, at this point in the season, and both are the second best hitters on their team, and it’s not particularly close. Plus both players have the pedigree and the at-bats this season to suggest that their numbers are not just a sample size issue. Lewis’s numbers in particular are almost dead on his career marks across the board.

It’s pure foolishness for these two teams which each harbor playoff hopes to both make their second-best hitters sit in crucial stretch-run games. I can’t remember the last time I saw even one contending team do this kind of thing, let alone two.

This is what a really good team’s WAR pie looks like:

What immediately jumps out, in looking at the Yankees WAR pie, is how balanced this team is in terms of how many different players have made significant contributions. An amazing 15 players have contributed at least one full win of value so far this season, making most of the slices in this pie nearly equal in size.

The pie also speaks to how lucky the Yankees have been in avoiding injury–only 25 players have combined to provide a ridiculous 48 wins above replacement already this season. Indeed, the Yankees are still on pace to have at least 8 players hit at least 20 home runs this season, which has never happened before in baseball history, and a big reason why is that the starting lineup has been incredibly healthy all year long, with the exception of A-Rod’s hip injury.

The WAR pie also gives lie to the notion that Mark Teixeira has been far and away the obvious MVP candidate this season. Indeed Mark Teixeira hasn’t even been the most valuable player on his own team, and it isn’t even all that close. Derek Jeter’s new flexibility workout regimen and his resultant resurgence on defense plus a hot year at the plate have helped him post MVP-type numbers, and CC Sabathia has been a rock in the rotation.

Another thing this graph underscores is how much more valuable Brett Gardner is in centerfield, over Melky Cabrera. Although their offensive contributions are similar, as Melky has fattened up, he has lost a step or two on defense, whereas Gardiner is one of the premier defenders in center field by most measures.

Finally, a look at the Yankees balance between offense and defense reveals that like the Phillies, the Yankees are heavily reliant on their offense (although not anywhere quite as bad as the Phils’).  However, this chart is heavily affected by the disastrous performance of the Yankees bullpen in the early months of this season, and would probably not look nearly as unbalanced if you based it only on the performances since June…

This WAR pie struck me as by turns satisfying and shocking. First, satisfying because it reveals the contributions of Jon Lester — who, earlier this season, was subjected to an embarrassing debate amongst fans over whether he was even a decent No. 3. But even so, it may be a shocking pill to swallow for Sox fans that Lester has contributed more to the team’s performance than Josh Beckett.

That big slices of pie have been gobbled up by Beckett, Kevin Youkilis, and Dustin Pedroia will not surprise observers of the team. But seeing JD Drew so high will come as a surprise to many, I fear; his playing seems to have been very underrated by Red Sox fans.

What shocks me, however, is seeing Brad Penny right behind Tim Wakefield. This is the guy Boston just released? For nothing in return? Oof. And Mike Lowell’s recent hot streak had left me assuming he’d take up more of the pie; same for Jason Bay. But their defense has eroded so much that they give up almost as many runs with their gloves as the produce with their bats. (Much to the chagrin of the aforementioned Mr. Penny.)

What should not come as a surprise, from the nice distribution of position players and pitchers above, is the even split between Boston’s hurlers and hitters in their overall pie:

Clearly, Boston can kill you on both sides of the ball. So why are they stuck 6 games behind New York and clinging to a tenuous Wild Card lead? I blame that crappy, crappy defense. Oh well.

Today, Rob Neyer says let’s not anoint Pujols just yet, and poses the following question:

Maybe Pujols really is the best player in the National League. He probably is. But there’s a .365-hitting shortstop with power, playing for a contending team. Shouldn’t we at least take a deep breath and think a few thoughts?

Don’t worry, Rob. I’m on it.

The MVP Award is always tricky, because nobody can agree on the best way to measure “value.” One very good way to measure value is to look at a player’s wins over replacement, and his contribution to overall team WAR.

Let’s do this thing.

We’ll start with Pujols, whose WAR is 6.4, which represents 22 percent of the Cardinals WAR.

Then there’s Chase Utley, whose WAR is 6.8, which represents 22 percent of the Phillies WAR.

Finally, there’s Hanley Ramirez. Behold, the Marlins WAR pie. As you can see, Ramirez’s WAR is 6.9, which represents 27 percent of team WAR.

That’s right, Ramirez has the highest WAR in the league among position players, and the highest percentage of team WAR. And that’s a pretty good indication that he’s been the most valuable.

But guess what? There’s another guy worth mentioning. Tim Lincecum and his 7.2 WAR should be in the discussion for NL MVP. He’s responsible for 25 percent of the Giants WAR. Without him, San Fran would be totally screwed.

Of course, Lincecum won’t be a serious candidate despite his league leading WAR, because he’s a pitcher. But he should be.

And Ramirez won’t win the award, because Pujols has more RBI and home runs, and those are stats that voters traditionally care a lot about.

But while Pujols is great and has had a great season, there are clearly more deserving candidates.

NOTE: All WAR values come from the always awesome Fangraphs.