He STILL wouldn’t be bringing it up to justify himself. He has the pulpit to have the last word on this, and obviously, he has the St. Petersburg Times’ support on this. He was attacked unmercifully, yes I admit I was one of them. Problem is with the Bartlett argument, you could apply that argument to Shields, Howell, Pena and Longoria AT LEAST. I know how good of a baserunner Bartlett is, he did miss time last year, but I say he is nothing more than a solid complementary piece. Not an insult to Bartlett, because without him, they wouldn’t be there, BUT the same would have been true to those 4 other players too.

He really needs to watch the fine line between offering an opinion and being a statistician to try to “sell” facts to create an argument. When he does that, he is no longer a beat writer, but more of a columnist. My problem with Marc is obviously myself and others apparently got to him, and 6 months later, he still feels he needs to justify himself. I don’t think of Bartlett as an all-around player, but rather a good above-average player. He is by no means the team’s anchor player. Sure that isn’t the criteria for MVP, but how many times does a Mo Vaughn get an MVP when they aren’t justified.

I give Topkin credit for giving his BBWAA vote for Bartlett for AL MVP, but his SOLE vote obviously means he missed the boat, as his other peers didn’t see Bartlett in the same breath, at least league wide.

1. I did not agree with the selection of Bartlett as MVP, nor do I now, but I think it is defensible, particularly from a beat writer, for reasons I have reviewed many times in the past. Summarizing, if the argument is legitimate that the Rays’ improvement was largely due to defense and the bullpen, and that there was no one player who clearly was a dominant force, Bartlett as shortstop (rather than Harris or Wilson et al) could represent the defensive upgrade as well as anyone. The very point that one can identify at least 4 other candidates who have equal (to each other) claim to the title makes the selection of a representative figure from the defense reasonable. I also think Topkin’s access to the clubhouse played a role in this thinking, and while as I note below, that is not always relevant, it is not necessarily to be dismissed out of hand either. There are other arguments as well, but enough of that for now.

2. I do not think Topkin waited until now to answer his critics (He actually did so at the time anyway), nor do I think he was influenced by pique at individuals criticizing him. That is arrogating a lot of importance to oneself with little support for such a claim. Rather, he has been featuring various players during the spring, and coming to Bartlett, it makes sense to review the argument over his MVP award. As for his mixing commentary with reporting, there is nothing inherently wrong with that; he is in no way violating journalistic norms. Calling him names (“yellow journalist” or using extreme language (“pandering”, "disgraceful"), intimating ulterior motives and engaging in indirect character assassination is foolish, suggests a vendetta and calls the reliability of the writer into question.

3. I was disappointed in the article for a few reasons. I don’t like the phrase “stat-possessed critics” because it suggests silly cliches about progressive analysts such as that they do not value or recognize “intangibles” at all. I also do not like the point about winning % while Bartlett was out; it is a silly argument even if he does not do more than point it out. And I think the mixing of meaningful and meaningless stats is the bane of mainstream journalists. As is nearly always the case, they will base their arguments on non-stat factors and then adduce all sorts of irrelevant and random data to support their claims. In that, Topkin seems no better (but also no worse) than the general run of journalists. Of course the reliance on cliches about numbers not being important (and then using the wrong ones) and doing the little things to win are merely tiresome. Not necessarily totally invalid, but not particularly enlightening either. I think Sheehan wrote a terrific article about why interviewing players and managers about what makes them valuable is ordinarily fruitless.

4. On a side note, as much as I admire Posnanski, his article about the selection of Bartlett was one of the worst he ever wrote, in fact a downright poor post exhibiting none of his usual broad mindedness and effort to examine an issue in the round. Indeed, he wrote 3 articles or comments on the Rays last year that were ill-informed and narrow. In one, he evidently did not know that Raymond was female (hardly significant, but an error nonetheless in the context of his point). In the other, he criticized the nickname “Big Game James” without knowing how or why Shields acquired that honor, and his arguments against it were petty and narrow. I truly respect Posnanski and read him every day, but was disappointed in his attack on the selection of Bartlett, an attack more worthy of FJM at its snarkiest than of him.

5. For all my criticism of Topkin’s logic and use of data, I think it might be more reasonable to consider the positives in the article than the negatives. He addresses the stats without mocking them and defines (well, identifies) VORP. He cites both BP and Stats, Inc. as sources. He presents the “detractors” without negative comment. While he mixes useful and less useful stats, he does include less traditional (if by now superceded) ones. I suppose you might say he is doing harm in confusing readers as to what is important to consider, but to me he is introducing the general public to stats and even ways of thinking not ordinarily found in mainstream articles. That is a huge step, and if you were in the company I keep (not all of it old), you might be far more grateful to anyone who helps legitimize approaches to analysis, however slight or sketchily, to a public that remains by and large insulated from it. The very presence of VORP and Posnanski’s excerpt may raise questions and open doors that can smooth the transition to acceptance of progressive analysis.

On balance, as much as I disagree both with the opinion and how Topkin arrived at it, I think the article has a great deal to recommend it, and judged by the standards of mainstream journalism rather than those of progressive analysts, is actually quite excellent. Whether rgglass is right or not (and I think he makes excellent points in the last paragraph) that sort of analysis is not going to appear in most newspapers, nor could the general public make much sense of it.