Virginia Political Economy

Cole Hamels: team player or self-centered?

This week, we discussed Mancur Olsen's theory of collective action which attempts to explain why certain groups are more successful than others in attaining their goals.  One such example of a group is the Philadelphia Phillies, the reigning world champions of Major League Baseball.  Finding themselves in the World Series once again, the Phillies have the collective goal of winning once again for the the benefit of the team.  However, one crucial component has been stalling the team's effort thus far: left-handed "ace" Cole Hamels.

Last postseason, Hamels was lights out for the Phillies, going 4-0 with a 1.80 ERA in five postseason starts along with being named the MVP of the NLCS and World Series.  However, as AP reporter Rob Maaddi describes, Hamels entered the season boasting of Cy Young potential and throwing no hitters.  Thus far this season he has been a flop, and has had an earned-run average (ERA) above 6.00 this postseason.  In addition, Hamels had to leave a game early to rush to the hospital to witness the birth of his son.

Olsen would likely declare that Hamels is more likely to pursue his personal interests and goals rather than help the team to win another championship.  His interest in promoting his own ability is obviously not a team-oriented goal; in addition, he is likely distracted (justifiably) by the birth of his first son just a few weeks ago.  His individual interests seem to be superceding the team's goal of another world championship, and his erratic play reflects this assertion.  

Hamels will be starting game 3 for the Phillies saturday night with the series at 1-1.  In order for the Phillies to be succesffuly, they need to bring Cole's personal interests in line with the team; otherwise, they may find themselves in a rather large hole against the Yankees. 

Re: Majority vs. Borda in Sports

I think that this is an interesting point. I think its false to conclude that because Magic lost in every other voting method that the wrong method was employed. Maybe that voting method captured their preferences correctly and in this case chose the right winner.

I do think voting methods for MVP balloting are really interesting to study. This is because so many people have different conception of what an "MVP" is, and you should choose the voting method in light of this.

There are different philosophies of baseball player analysis. One is a new, heavily statistical method, that relies on simulations and studies to determine the contributions of every player, and to try to determine how many wins they contributed to their team. (This includes defensive performance, and is heavily waited on recently popular stats such as on base percentage, slugging percentage, and their sum). fangraphs is an example of a site that uses these methods.

There are baseball purists who rely heavily on classic stats such as HRs, RBIs, stolen bases, and strikeouts. New statisticians see these statistics as very overrated. For example, strikeouts are equally as bad as ground outs or fly outs because of the reduced chance of double plays).

People also differ as to whether the MVP is the "best performance by a player in a year" or "player that most improved/is most crucial to their team" or "most important player to a team on a team that actually made the playoffs"

If you look at this article by Keith Law, who represents the new guard. You can see his AL and NL MVP rankings. He basically predicts that the winner in the AL might not have been in his top 10(Morneau), and the second or first place MVP in the NL is also not in his top 10 (Ryan Howard). You actually can't read the full article unless your an espn insider and a dork like myself, so if you want to read the full article, email me and ill send you my account name and password, you can get the gist of it without it though).

This is more interesting in examining the question, what voting method should you choose if voters can't even agree on the voting criteria? Maybe certain methods or new methods lend themselves to this. Maybe you suggest criteria to voters, who knows?

(also, i didn't post this is a comment because I didn't think I could put hyperlinks in there, I might just be a noob).