Prince Wins Hank Aaron Award

[crewcrazy]

Alex Rodriguez also wins the AL Hank Aaron: link

 

Not exactly an MVP, but a nice honor nonetheless for Prince. Here's to many, many more. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

[kgbaseball]

I was looking at the list of candidates; what a joke. Maybe if they included players actually deserving f the award the voting would've gone differently, but congrats to Prince nonetheless.

[billyhallfan]

A couple minutes ago they showed the ceremony on Coors Field, and when Prince was posing for the picture next to Hank, Prince held the trophy backwards, luckily the camera man noticed and had him turn it around.

 

congratulations prince.

[AJAY]

I am very proud of our Prince.

 

Sign him to a super-long deal. Pay him what he is worth. Let's see a Fielder statue outside Miller Park someday to go along with that plaque in Cooperstown. Great franchises have great legends and this kid is going to be special.

 

We need to keep this kid in Milwaukee.

[RoseBowlMtg]

Way to go Prince on winning this very strange award. Great year but to have the fans say you are better than Jr, Chipper, Reyes and Pujols. What is strange imo is the nation knows Prince partly because of his name recognition and Prince disses his dad and doesn't want him involved with his family. Unfortunately since the nation is well award of Prince along with Scott Boras when Prince is 27 he is going to be demanding above ARod money. Prince will be able to get a 5 yr deal for 150 mil range and get a bigger deal when he's 32. When 50 HR's with 119 RBI's beats 36 HR's and 137 RBI's a small market team is in trouble. Prince's 11 extra solo shots over Holliday is weighed very heavily by the voting public. How much does it add to his future contract is what hurts Milwaukee.

[endaround]

Maybe the voting public realizes that RBIs are the worst measure of a player possible?

[patrickgpe]

i love it how we are worrying about him being a free agent in 4 years. Alot can change. While I doubt we will able to keep the all the young core players here once they reach free agency, there is no reason to think we can't throw some jack at them and keep them. What we need to worry about now is continue to draft well so that if we loose a Prince or Braun in free agency we can have a replacement. Nobody thats a fan team of this team doesn't know that we won't be able to pay to keep all these players here for 10 years. Teams like Oakland and Minnesota made good stretches even after loosing players by smart drafting. Thats the only way we are going to succeed.

 

I don't think we should give up and say Braun and Fielder are unsignable once they are free agents, but we need to be realistic and have a back up plan.

[JJHardy7]

I'm not going to worry about Prince and his future in Milwaukee for quite some time. He's playing outstanding. Where will he be in 4 or 5 years? I don't know. I just hope he has a great 2008 and we see this award being given out at Miller Park to him next year!

[RoseBowlMtg]

Maybe the voting public realizes that RBIs are the worst measure of a player possible?

 

endaround you are so correct which is unfortunate imo.

 

For ex: If RBI's are so uninportant the difference btwn Holliday's 137 and Prince's 119 would be meaningless which some stat heads think.

 

So what if Prince hit what Holliday hit and vice versa with 2 outs and risp.

 

Prince was 11-15 1 HR 15 RBI's hitting .220

Holliday was 23-72 3 HR's 27 RBI's hitting .319

 

If Prince hit .319 he would have had 16 hits x 1.364 = 22 RBI's or 126 for the year.

If Holliday hit .220 he would have had 16 hits x 1.174 = 19 RBI's or 128 for the year.

 

Something as simple as keeping a rally going (as Colorado witnessed from Boston) with two outs would have made their RBI total virtually the same------but Prince only hit .220 thus he was 18 RBI's behind.

 

Yes RBI's can mean little but if you look deeper than HR's which the voting public does you would notice that Prince had 29 solo HR's vs 18 for Holliday thus meaning Prince had 21 HR's with runners on vs Holliday's 18. Are 11 more solo shots that important?

 

So of the 21 HR's Prince hit with runners on he had 90 RBI's

And of the 18 HR's Holliday hit with runners on he had 119 RBI's

 

So 29 RBI's more with 3 fewer HR's so that kind of negates the 11 solo HR advantage for Prince. Hollday was more productive with runners on than Prince if you look at it closer. It's strange that people get ripped for looking at RBI's as a stat when you look closer it does tell a story.

[endaround]

So apparently its Prince's fault that Ryan Braun was batting ahead of him driving in runs and that Yost was foolish enough to keep batting Hardy 2nd.

[Fatter than Joey]

Yost was foolish

 

Prince got Yosted

[Baldkin]

RBI's are a function of guys getting on base before a batter, they are also a function of pitchers wanting to pitch to the hitter.

 

Prince had a .415 OBP with men on and 2 out this year.

 

You can't fault him when pitchers weren't pitching to him because Johnny Groundout was hitting behind him.

 

Scoring position and 2 out, his OBP was .435.

 

He didn't exactly have Todd Helton hitting behind him.

[endaround]

Yost was foolish

 

Prince got Yosted

Well everyone has been Yosted at least once.

 

[RoseBowlMtg]

RBI's are a function of guys getting on base before a batter, they are also a function of pitchers wanting to pitch to the hitter.

 

Prince had a .415 OBP with men on and 2 out this year.

 

You can't fault him when pitchers weren't pitching to him because Johnny Groundout was hitting behind him.

 

Scoring position and 2 out, his OBP was .435.

 

He didn't exactly have Todd Helton hitting behind him.

 

True Prince didn't have much of a hitter behind him with the catcher behind him but Hart was pretty good. Your stats are correct about his obp being .435 but when you say nobody wanted to pitch to him then give him credit for the walks you are giving both to him. He had 18 walks and 11 were IBB. Take the automatic walks out which you blame on Johhny Groundout and his earned obp was .328 compared to Holliday's .424 taking his 1 IBB out.

 

All I am saying is you can't just blow off the RBI stat saying it is worthless. Take a deeper look and you can get some info out of it. Prince had 11 hits and 7 non IBB and one hbp in 58 PA. If he hit better the Brewers would have been better.

[RoseBowlMtg]

He didn't exactly have Todd Helton hitting behind him.

No he didn't but what is interesting is that:

 

Helton hit 17 HR's from the 4th position batting behind Holliday

 

and

 

Johhny Groundout hit 6 HR's

Corey Hart hit 6 HR's

Geoff Jenkins hit 7 HR's

 

Those three Brewers hit 19 HR's batting after Prince compared to Helton's 17.

 

So it is true he didn't have Helton but he did have players who hit 2 more HR's than Helton.

[TooLiveBrew]

RBM, come on. Don't try to paint such a polarizing picture of the RBI debate. To say, "RBI are more a product of your teammates' OBP and situational hitting" is simply not akin to saying, 'Prince is better than Holliday even though he has less RBI.' The Rockies led the NL in OBP this season. Look across their roster. They have guys with high RBI totals. No surprise.

 

EDIT: before you make a claim like above (re. the HR behind Prince/Holliday), who are the other Rockies to hit behind Holliday? What are their HR totals in that slot?

[RoseBowlMtg]

EDIT: before you make a claim like above (re. the HR behind Prince/Holliday), who are the other Rockies to hit behind Holliday? What are their HR totals in that slot?

2live I will try to answer your question but it is hard to be accurate completely:

 

Helton batted 4th 151 times with 17 HR's

 

Here are the Brewers 5th slot hitters:

 

Estrada: 57 games: 6 HR's

Hart: 32 games: 6 HR's

Jenkins: 19 games: 7 HR's

Hall: 36 games: 4 HR's

 

Total: 145 games 23 HR's

 

The Brewers batting 5th hit 6 more HR's in 6 fewer games. I am not saying that Helton was less of a threat only that the Brewers did better at HR's than Helton did.

 

Now this is what is interesting:

 

Holliday batted;

 

3rd 133 times

4th 2 times

5th 23 times

 

So the stats can't be exact without a much deeper look but Helton wasn't the HR threat the Brewers were.

 

As for Prince:

 

53 games batting 3rd: .262 ave, 869 ops 4 IBB

102 games batting 4th: .304 ave, 1.101 ops 17 IBB

 

So actually Prince batted much better in the 4th slot and his IBB didn't hurt him much at all. So why did he hit .220 with 2 outs and risp? The great thing for Brewer fans is that Prince will get better but the unfortunately if Prince would have hit better in the clutch that would have kept drives alive and maybe would have been the different in two games.

 

Interesting:

 

 

[Tbadder]

I've always found this argument kinda funny. Of course RBIs mean something. They're an expression of the relationship between a particular player and the team around him. Describing this team dynamic is obviously important, more important (if winning's important) than an individual stat because it's a far more sophisticated stat, a more complex stat because it demands the need for even more stats to give it perspective. But alas, the new paradigm says they're not important, so they mustn't be then.