I recently put up an entry as a review essentially of the MVP voting and David Ortiz vs. Alex Rodriguez.
One interesting way to apply win shares is look at their proportionate distribution amongst a team.
For example.
David Ortiz earns 31 win shares. The Red Sox as a team, collect 285. Hence, Ortiz was worth 11% of the wins, roughly a 10 game swing. That's pretty hefty.
Here's how the percentages break down (Player and Win Share Percentage) amongst the most productive players on each team in both leagues:
AL
BAL (Mora) 12.6%
BOS (Ramirez) 11.9%
CHA (Konerko) 8.0%
CLE (Hafner) 9.7%
DET (Inge) 8.0%
KC (Brown) 11.9%
LAA (Guererro) 9.5%
MIN (Santana) 9.2%
NYA (Rodriguez) 13.0%
OAK (Ellis) 8.0%
SEA (Sexson) 13.0%
TB (Lugo) 11.9%
TEX (Teixeira) 13.5%
TOR (Wells) 8.6%
Based on this list, Mark Teixeira should be the AL MVP. The voters thought he belonged 7th. Sexson, who is tied for 2nd in this list, was 15th overall in the voting. Obviously in this format, it helps when you're a good player on a bad team. Then again, that makes you valuable. The opposite must be true in real life, seeing how Mariano Rivera beat out Sexson in the voting with a WSP of less than 6%. In 2003, A-rod won the MVP with an WSP of 15%. Last year, Guerrero took it home with 10.5%.
Now, the National League.
ARI (Glaus) 10.0%
ATL (Furcal) 10.0%
CHN (Lee) 15.6%
CIN (Dunn) 12.8%
COL (Helton) 12.9%
FLA (Delgado) 12.4%
HOU (Ensberg) 10.9%
LAD (Kent) 14.1%
MIL (Clark) 9.9%
NYM (Wright) 11.2%
PHI (Abreu) 10.6%
PIT (Bay) 16.9%
SD (Giles) 14.2%
SF (Alou) 8.9%
STL (Pujols) 12.7%
WAS (Wilkerson) 9.5%
What's interesting is the higher overall percentages in the national league. In a league where pitching is supposedly a more important, the hitters in the NL are generally doing more to win games for their clubs than the hitters in the AL. Go figure.
Based on our NL list here, Jason Bay is your MVP. The voters decided he should be 12th. Even Jimmy Rollins (8.7%) placed higher. Pujols, this years MVP, finishes 7th.
Another anomoly in the stats is the appearance of only one pitcher, Minnesota's Santana. I suspect this is mostly because no one else on the team did enough to earn the most win shares rather than his pure performance. Pitchers in general are probably undervalued by win shares, but that's a problem to tackle later.
Then again, its a pitcher that holds the mark for most win shares in a season; Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn in 1884. Radbourn earned 89 win shares, a 35.3%. Pretty safe to say that in those days, the pitcher was ALWAYS the MVP. His numbers for the 1884 Grays are just ridiculous. I'd say he would've been voted in just for his 73 COMPLETE GAMES that SEASON.
The greatest season by a position player is a 59 by Honus Wagner in 1908 (20.06%). Babe Ruth in 1923 is second at 55 (18.7%); Bonds' 2001 season is third (20.0%). Both Bonds and Ruth won the MVP in their respective seasons.
Once again, Not that I buy into this theory of ranking wholesale, I simply desire to learn more about the voting habits of the writers. We can thereby conclude that they did NOT use this method of analysis.