The "Trout vs. Cabrera" MVP debate last year often came down to advance stats (Trout, the WAR king) vs. traditional stats (Cabrera, the triple crown guy). It was interesting to note, then, this bit from Hardball Talk. Now, it was preceded by a long look at how Trout kills Cabrera in WAR. But still:

Zaidi and I were talking about this when he told me something that I found utterly staggering. He said that Oakland's objective model for measuring a player's value — remember now, we are talking about the Oakland A's, the Moneyball people, Jonah Hill and so on — found that Miguel Cabrera, NOT Mike Trout, was more valuable in 2012.

Well, that's not exactly right. He was quick to say that the difference between the two was so slight as to be almost invisible — they were, for an intents and purposes, in a virtual tie. But their system did have Cabrera ahead by the tiniest of margins.

I thought that was a pretty big deal. I know last year, a lot of people were spending a lot of energy trying to find a convincing statistical model that showed Cabrera was better than Trout. If there was one, I didn't see it. Now, it turns out that Oakland (Oakland!) has such a statistical model.

If all of this just makes you want to scream NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDS even louder, that's your business. If you are intrigued, here is the link.