With the way that sabermetrics and analytics have taken over baseball I’m not really surprised at anything that comes out. I’m to the point now where I’m more humored or curious on how they got to this conclusion. That was the case this week when I read one story and the heard a report on MLB Network that has Texas Rangers outfielder Joey Gallo as an MVP candidate.
To be fair I haven’t followed Gallo closely this season except to plug him into my FanDuel home run derby line up; so I thought we could go over his numbers and see if or how he’s starting to be mentioned as an MVP candidate.
Gallo has played in 43 of the Rangers 48 games this season. Gallo is hitting .285; he came into the season as a career .203 hitter over the first four seasons of his career. He’s had 151 official at bats this season. Of his 43 hits this season 11 of them have been doubles, he has 1 triple and 15 home runs. At least right now he has more singles 16 than home runs. Gallo also has 35 RBI’s this season. His strikeout rate is still very high and he’s on pace to strikeout about 228 times this season. Gallo has walked 35 times and you can also add 3 stolen bases to his stat line.
To be honest his numbers are better than I thought they would be, but is he an actual candidate for MVP?
I can see why people would have Gallo in the MVP conversation right now. There really aren’t a lot of candidates in the American League. If I had to guess right now I’d say that George Springer of the Houston Astros is the front runner for the award. I’d think that Springer’s teammates Alex Bregman and Michael Brantley would garner some votes as well. You could add Gallo in as the 4th contender and just to round out a Top 5 you could throw Gary Sanchez of the New York Yankees in the MVP race.
It is a bit of a down year right now in the American League. The Yankees have had a lot of injury to their key players who would grab a lot of those MVP votes from the East coast writers and at this point of their season there’s no one on the Boston Red Sox who’s an MVP candidate.
If this situation was to continue I’m not sure who all of those writers would cast their votes for; so that might make Gallo a viable contender for the MVP award. If I had to guess those writers would end up pushing Sanchez o the award as there would be no one else to vote for.
Gallo is tied for 2nd in the AL in home runs. He’s tied for 6th in RBI’s and his average puts him 27th out of all qualifiers. He is tops in OPS right now which is a big stat among the analytics community; so I’m sure that’s one of the main reasons we’re hear his name mentioned as an MVP candidate.
Now there’s still a long way to go in this season. Gallo and the Rangers still have 114 games to play, but right now I can understand why they have him in the MVP conversation. Will he win it? I guess will just have to wait and see how the rest of the season plays out.
I wanted to drop in a quick update on the Sports Time Radio podcast instead of waiting to the end to do it. We’re going to be off the next five Sunday’s as Mr. Fantasy is on a European vacation. Then of course since Monday is the Memorial day holiday will be off because Dan the Man likes his holidays, but other wise will be rolling along like usual.
The podcast can be heard live on BlogTalkRadio.com. We’re on Monday thru Thursday from 5:30 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. Then on Friday we start 30 minutes earlier as we’re on from 5:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m. The podcast is also available for you to listen to any time you’d like at TuneIn.com.
Sports Time Radio also has a Facebook page; so you should check that out and give it a like while you’re there. The podcast also has it’s own Twitter account @SportsTimeRadio. If you’re interested in following that. The hosts also have Twitter accounts if you’re interested in follow us. Dan the Man is @DanZeeeMan, Mr. Fantasy is at MrFanofSports while I am @Burketime. Sadly Schaumburg Stu doesn’t have a Twitter account, but maybe someday he’ll start one.
Feel free to interact with us on social media or by calling into the podcast and talking to us.
The Golden State Warriors are still waiting to find out who they’ll be facing in the NBA finals and tonight there’s a chance that they might get that answer.
The Toronto Raptors host the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals. The Raptors hold a 3 games to 2 lead in the series and with one more win will advance to the NBA Finals for the first time in team history.
If Milwaukee finds a way to win Game 6 on the road the series would head back to Fiserv Forum for a Game 7 on Monday.
No matter how this Eastern Conference series plays out the NBA Finals will start on Thursday May 30th. It also won’t matter which Eastern Conference teams wins as they both had better regular season records than the Warriors; so they’ll be hosting that Game 1.
With the finals on the horizon this brings up an interesting question. Would you rather be Golden State or the team that wins the Eastern Conference?
It seems as though the biggest advantage that Golden State has is they can get healthy; but besides that is there anything else that helps them being off this long? Golden State hasn’t played a game since May 20th when they swept the Portland Trail Blazers out of the Western Conference finals. That means that the Warriors will have 10 days between games. Now I’m sure they will have practices and scrimmages, but that doesn’t recreate an actual game. I mentioned earlier that health could be the Warriors one advantage, but even with this time off it’s being reported that Kevin Durant won’t be ready for the start of the NBA Finals; so that advantage might not mean anything.
Is it at all possible that it’s better to be the team still playing? That of course would be as long as one of your players doesn’t suffer an injury before the NBA Finals.
I don’t think that either the Raptors or the Bucks will beat the Warriors for the NBA title, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they look better than them when Game 1 rolls around. It wouldn’t even be a huge shock to me if that Eastern Conference team picked up a Game 1 win.
Feel free to let me know what situation you’d rather be in heading into the NBA Finals.
Have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend.
Sports Time Radio 