It's the year 2003. The Minnesota Twins are struggling. Fresh off a 94-win season that saw them reach the ALCS, the Twins are just 44-49 on July 13, in third place in the AL Central and somehow seven-and-a-half games behind the surprising Kansas City Royals. To shake things up, the Twins make a trade, sending Bobby Kielty and a player to be named later to the Toronto Blue Jays in exchange for Shannon Stewart.
Doug Fister And The 2003 AL MVP Race
The Detroit Tigers have been terrific since swinging the Doug Fister trade, in no small part thanks to Fister himself. If this were 2003, that would make Fister an MVP candidate.
It works. Stewart leads off in the Twins' next game. Over 65 games and more than 300 trips to the plate, Stewart bats .322 with an .854 OPS, and the Twins finish a major league-best 46-23. They win the Central before falling to the New York Yankees in the first round of the playoffs.
Chatter begins regarding Stewart’s candidacy for the AL MVP. It intensifies. Columnists write columns like this one, by Jayson Stark:
But in the end, “most valuable” to us means: Which player in the league made the biggest difference? Which player’s team would not have gotten as far as it did without him? And the answer we kept coming back to was: Shannon Stewart.
Those in support of Stewart for MVP see him as irreplaceable, as the catalyst behind the Twins' turnaround, and Stewart ends up finishing fourth in the balloting with 140 points and three votes for first place. He finishes with ten more points than David Ortiz, and 40 more points than Manny Ramirez.
Fast-forward. It's the year 2011. The Detroit Tigers are trying to hold off the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox. Tigers players go to bed the night of July 29 with a record of 56-50 and a 2-1/2 game lead in the Central. They wake up to find that the front office has addressed the team's weak pitching rotation, acquiring Doug Fister from the Seattle Mariners. Fister is to join Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer as the staff's best starters.
It works. Fister makes, and wins, his first start with the Tigers on August 3. He posts a 2.12 ERA in his first nine turns. The team goes a major league-best 33-14 after swinging the trade. Today the regular season isn’t yet over, but the Tigers have clinched their division, and they’ve set their sights on home-field advantage.
So then, is Doug Fister an MVP candidate, like Shannon Stewart was? Well, no. Sorry if I misled you. For one thing, it's not 2003. People have gotten smarter about this whole process. For a second thing, Fister is teammates with Verlander, who has a 24-5 record and a 2.29 ERA through 244 innings. And for a third thing, the Tigers have gone 38-18 since trading for Wilson Betemit, who's posted an .802 OPS. They've gone from tied for the division to up by 13 games. Correlation does not make for a very convincing MVP case.
But it doesn’t matter that Fister isn’t a strong MVP candidate, or a strong Cy Young candidate. The Tigers didn’t think they were trading for a Cy Young candidate. What matters is that Fister is good. Remarkably, undeniably good.
Here's a fun exercise. Presented below are the 2011 statistics posted by Fister, Jon Lester, Josh Beckett and Jered Weaver, in a randomized order. Can you spot the numbers that belong to the guy who isn't considered an ace-level starter? (Glossary: FIP and xFIP)
| ERA | FIP | xFIP | K/BB | |
| Pitcher A | 2.98 | 3.11 | 3.68 | 3.7 |
| Pitcher B | 3.15 | 3.72 | 3.59 | 2.5 |
| Pitcher C | 2.50 | 3.38 | 3.56 | 3.5 |
| Pitcher D | 2.41 | 3.14 | 3.82 | 3.4 |
Actual order: Fister, Lester, Beckett, Weaver. The same order! I tricked you with words!
Doug Fister doesn’t look like a guy who’d be ultra-effective when you watch him, but the results are the results, and he’s been pitching out of his mind. Even though his stuff isn’t the best, he throws it exactly where he wants to, and he releases the ball from a high arm slot about 20 feet away from the plate.
And there’s no reason to think that Fister’s about to slow down. He won’t keep running a low-2’s ERA like he has since the trade, but the command isn’t going anywhere. The height and the mechanics aren’t going anywhere. Doug Fister might not intimidate like some other pitchers do come playoff time, but he does confound. That’s why Jim Leyland is going to feel confident when Fister takes the mound in October.
Doug Fister’s only 27 years old. He isn’t on track to become a free agent until November 2015. In Fister, the Tigers found a weapon for the future. The Tigers also found a weapon for the present. Don’t let anybody tell you that the Tigers will only go as far as Justin Verlander can take them. Verlander has support in the lineup, and now he has support on the staff.
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