Yankees amazing and inconceivable season at the 40-game mark

MVP Starlin Castro

It might be hard to believe this after reading about the Judge. It’s true that Castro is second on the team to Judge in RBI’s, 27 to 30. And it’s also true that Starlin is second on the team to Judge in run’s scored, 31 to 35. Castro is only third on the team in home runs, 7, and in OBP (.383).

But gaudy numbers and magazine covers only win awards for players in football and basketball. Baseball is played every day and wins only pile up when the best players play the most games and do the thousand, thousand little things it takes to win every game, every day.

Here are some areas where Starlin does lead the team. He’s first in games played at 40. That means he has played in every game and is the only player to have done so. Starlin leads in hits with 58 and doubles, with 10. He is also first in plate appearances—175—but has a lower strikeout to appearance ratio than Judge, Aaron Hicks, Matt Holliday or Brett Gardner; the only player with a better rate is Jacoby Ellsbury.

Getting his Uniform Dirty

And Starlin’s fielding is at least half the reason he wins the MVP. Again he has logged the most innings in the field (350). Judge is second with 317 and Gardner is fourth with 285; as they say, you gotta play to win.

Castro does have four errors to Judge’s two, but almost every other advanced metric shows him a better fielder than Judge, including fielding percentage. And Starlin is involved in a lot more quick-thinking, high pressure plays. Here again, he leads the team. He has helped turn 19 double plays; only Chris Carter has been involved in more than eight, and it is hard to consider him integral to the process.

Before we move on to the MIP, let me give those of you who are not convinced that Castro should win this award over Judge one more good baseball stat. Judge has hit into nine double plays, which should be an opposite stat to RBI’s. A RBI is most often produced when a hit allows another player to score. We can set aside walks and solo home runs for now.

A double play is most often produced when a hit erases both you and a runner who was on base and might have scored later, if not for your hit. That means we have to subtract some points somewhere from all of those fabulous Aaron Judge numbers; I’m just not sure where.

Castro, on the other hand, has only hit into 3 DP’s. Those numbers have to be considered when evaluating offensive production and helped tip the scale in favor of Starlin Castro.