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Both Curtis Granderson and Jimmy Rollins have earned national attention for their sparkling 20-20-20-20 seasons (20 homeruns, 20 doubles, 20 triples, 20 stolen bases). Both hit leadoff for their respective teams and both scored a lot of runs. But Rollins is an MVP candidate while Granderson is still labeled as a future star. Is that fair? Is Rollins really the better hitter? Let’s take a look at how their 2007 seasons actually stack up against each other.

Here are some raw numbers:

Name          G   PA    BA   OBP   SLG  wOBA  RBI  RUN  SB
Rollins     162  778  .296  .345  .531  .367   94  139  41
Granderson  158  676  .302  .361  .552  .381   74  122  26

Both players played every day, although Jimmy was taken out less often and gained some plate appearances thanks to the awesome Phillies’ lineup. Rollins also stole more bases and scored and drove in more runs than Granderson.

Granderson’s advantage is in the rate stats, where he got on base more frequently and posted a higher slugging percentage. wOBA is weighted on-base average, a statistic that measures a player’s overall production per plate appearance, and is measured on the OBP scale (.330 is average, .400 is really really good). wOBA is a more accurate cousin of the OPS family.

Playing more often is generally a good thing, but Rollins also piled up some hurtful numbers with all that playing time:

Name        CS  GDP  Out
Rollins      6   11  522
Granderson   1    3  432

Rollins’ five more caught stealings mostly neutralize his stole base advantage of 15. Rollins also grounded into eight more double-plays than Granderson, “helping” him accumulate a league-leading 522 outs. That’s right, in 102 more plate appearances, Rollins made 92 more outs than Granderson.

So Granderson was a better offensive player when he played, but Rollins played more. We need to find the proper way to weight quantity and quality.

Runs created measures how many of a teams’ runs were due to the production of individual players, and both Rollins and Granderson created a lot of runs. But you also have to account for how many outs were used up to create those runs. If you give at-bats to a scrub player he’ll still create a few runs. In fact, a team of scrub players would score about 3 runs per game. (In contrast, a team of 2007 Jimmy Rollins would score 5.6 runs per game and a team of 2007 Curtis Grandersons would score 6.4 runs per game.) We want to know how much better each player was compared to a scrub.

In the chart below, RC is runs created and RAR is runs-above-replacement, the difference between how many runs each player actually created and how many runs a scrub player would have created given the same number of outs.

Name         RC  RAR
Rollins     115   51
Granderson  109   57

As you can see, Granderson’s ability to create runs without making outs outweighs Rollins advantage in playing time. It’s like a free-throw competition where I’ve made 25 out of 50 shots and you’ve made 26 out of 60. You’ve sunk more shots, but it’s only fair that I get to shoot as many times as you do. Even if the rest of my shots are taken by someone half as good as me, I’m going to catch your total. Replacing Jimmy Rollins with a scrub would not have hurt the Phillies’ offense as much as replacing Curtis Granderson would have hurt the Tigers.

Now, a lot of the push for Rollins’ MVP candidacy is because the Phillies made the playoffs and the Tigers didn’t. But if you’re asking whether Rollins or Granderson was the more productive offensive player in 2007, the answer is Curtis Granderson.

(Defense? You want defense? Granderson’s well above average in center field while Rollins is mediocre, at best, as a shortstop. The gap widens…)

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