Sportsbooks haven’t convened MVP odds yet because I haven’t posted them myself. This is an obvious observation to anybody that visits this blog on a yearly basis. I think we’d all agree on this. (I use the terms “we’d all” and “nobody in particular” interchangeably).
The formula behind setting a probability on a given player’s chances can be expressed as:
If a player doesn’t register a positive number of MVP points, the variable v, then he is simply ignored. The points are calculated slightly differently in the NL and AL, and the years 2000-2010 were used to fit the data. This has already been explained on multiple occasions.
For AL batters and pitchers:
The “PLAYOFFS” variable is either 1 or 0, and in season playoff projections are essentially current standings.
For all NL batters and pitchers:
The motivation for using WAR and WPA as primary coefficients stemmed from this post, which I found quite interesting.
At the bottom of the post I’ve attached some relevant excel files. I’m not going to post anymore about this (I’ll do Cy Young this weekend and attach the necessary files), there really shouldn’t be any reason for me to have to. I also never want to have to use or look at an excel file ever again. But if I get enough requests via twitter/email/comments I’ll make a dedicated page that updates daily, probably using my own WAR calculations instead of bRef’s mess of drivel, and some server-side scripting.
Last year the formula picked Ryan Braun and Miguel Cabrera. Verlander I think can we all agree should not have won the MVP.
NL MVP
| NAME | Team | bWAR | WPA | PROB | ODDS |
| Andrew McCutchen | PIT | 5.1 | 3.2 | 52.15% | -108 |
| Ryan Braun | MIL | 3.9 | 3 | 33.73% | 196 |
| Joey Votto | CIN | 4.5 | 5.2 | 33.42% | 199 |
| Melky Cabrera | SFG | 3.8 | 2.7 | 18.64% | 436 |
| Johnny Cueto | CIN | 4 | 2 | 15.18% | 559 |
| Carlos Gonzalez | COL | 1.6 | 1.8 | 8.73% | 1045 |
| Carlos Beltran | STL | 2.3 | 1.8 | 6.49% | 1441 |
| Matt Holliday | STL | 3.6 | 2.8 | 6.32% | 1482 |
| Buster Posey | SFG | 2.8 | 1.5 | 5.44% | 1738 |
| Ian Desmond | WSN | 2.3 | 3.5 | 5.41% | 1748 |
| Pedro Alvarez | PIT | 2 | 1.1 | 5.29% | 1790 |
| Jay Bruce | CIN | 1.1 | 0.2 | 4.13% | 2321 |
| Giancarlo Stanton | MIA | 3 | 2.5 | 2.34% | 4174 |
| Ryan Vogelsong | SFG | 2.8 | 2.1 | 2.18% | 4487 |
| Brandon Phillips | CIN | 2.2 | 0.8 | 0.55% | 18082 |
AL MVP
| NAME | TEAM | bWAR | WPA | PROB | ODDS |
| Mike Trout | TBR | 5.3 | 0.5 | 34.66% | 188 |
| Robinson Cano | NYY | 5 | 1.6 | 31.16% | 221 |
| Josh Hamilton | TEX | 3.2 | 1.2 | 22.88% | 337 |
| Adrian Beltre | TEX | 3 | 1.6 | 22.13% | 352 |
| Mark Trumbo | TBR | 3.2 | 0 | 18.48% | 441 |
| Josh Reddick | NYY | 3.8 | 4.2 | 14.96% | 568 |
| Alex Rios | TEX | 2.6 | 1.7 | 14.61% | 584 |
| Miguel Cabrera | DET | 3.5 | 2.2 | 14.42% | 593 |
| David Ortiz | BOS | 2.7 | 2.5 | 6.46% | 1448 |
| Matt Harrison | TEX | 4.1 | 2.5 | 5.95% | 1581 |
| Fernando Rodney | TBR | 1.9 | 2.8 | 5.87% | 1604 |
| Justin Verlander | DET | 5 | 3.1 | 3.51% | 2749 |
| Chris Sale | CHW | 4.7 | 3 | 3.18% | 3045 |
| Edwin Encarnacion | TOR | 3 | 2.5 | 1.72% | 5716 |
Here are the files. The “NLMVP_ODDS” and “ALMVP_ODDS” files require a data refresh and some sorting. Feel free to change the coefficients, I don’t care. Some files may be irrelevant, not sure. I just threw a bunch of seemingly related files in an archive.
