Baseball writer Jeff Passan never thought of it before and says it's revolutionary:
"Valuable. What is value? Is it gaudy stats? Is it leadership? Does it increase with a spot in the postseason? Does it decrease because of mediocre teammates? Is it some weird amalgamation of all of the above and more? For the 60 baseball writers who vote annually on the MVP award, the definitions vary, and considering the directions emailed out with the ballot – 'There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means' – that is perhaps by design.
An exchange on Twitter this week with Chris Long, a quantitative analyst who consults for the San Diego Padres, brought up a fascinating point that I'd never before considered: Since free agency created the salary imbalance that exists in baseball today, have we been missing what should be one of the chief criteria of value?"
I remember one year where Alfonso Soriano was (more or less) making league minimum while hitting (more or less) 40 HRs and stealing (more or less) 40 bases. So Soriano was more valuable per dollar than Barry Bonds who was sporting a near-.600 on-base%.
I also remember when Don Mattingly instantly went from most-productive-per-dollar to least-productive-per-dollar ... simply because he signed a big free agent contract between seasons.
That is what the big revolutionary analysis will reveal every time: free agency is the dividing line between good value and bad value.
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