OT: Cabrera to win Triple Crown Tonight?

I think the book is still out on Trout.  No doubt he has elite speed and is an outstanding fielder, but there are already indications that pitchers have begun to catch up to him at the plate as his hitting has tailed off a bit the past two months.  Elite hitters still get on base despite pitchers knowing how to pitch to them.  Trout has yet to prove that he can do that.  In a year or two, if he's still hitting .340 and scoring 120 runs, then I will grant you that he's the next great player, and if he's still doing that, he'll get his MVP award and the Angels will be making the playoffs.

Discounting RBIs as being primarily a result of circumstances beyond the hitter's control while pumping up stolent bases, which are just as circumstantial as RBIs (the pitcher's delivery speed, the catcher's arm, accuracy, and delivery speed, the type and placement of the pitch, whether the opposing team is even concerned if you steal in that situation or not, etc...) is a tad disingenuous.

Hamilton strikes out in the 4th.

Holy crap the A's are playing some inspired baseball, that was a crazy 4th inning!

I fully agree and I hate to say this but you're probably never gonna convince many people that WAR is a useful stat. It isn't a HUGELY subjective stat, but there is a degree of uncertainty to it because of the nature of evaluating defensive ability and baserunning. People tend to either trust the stats and math that go into producing WAR or they cling to the old-guard stats. The people in the middle (like most on this board) that are willing to consider WAR but are still a little skeptical are few and far between. 

More importantly you're also not gonna convince a bunch of Tigers fans of its immense value and that is simply because right now WAR says there has been a guy with a significantly better season than Cabrera did. That's not necessarily a bad thing. WAR is easy to discount because it hasn't been widely accepted yet and because quantifying baserunning and defense is difficult to do and even more difficult to understand. The argument against WAR being the end-all-be-all makes sense because trying to condense all the things a guy does onto the field into one useful stat does seem rather impossible. 

Full disclosure, I like WAR. I think it is an extremely useful stat to guide further evaluation of a player's production. The argument about Trout vs. Cabrera will just come down to what each voter values in their baseball players though. If all a voter cares about is what a guy does at the plate the choice seems pretty obvious. If Trout wins the MVP it probably will signal a major changing of the guard in voter thinking about the MVP award (kind of like King Felix's Cy Young did). 

For the most part I agree, but one point of contention, RBI isn't the worst stat, saves is.