I'm not going to specifically reply to the long post re: bill james for the sake of reading ease.
But the analogy doesn't really shed much light on anything new aside from Bill James agreeing with you. If you believe Mike Trout is the best player, he would be most likely to add the most value to a team, since he has the most talent. Overall, hes most valuable. He'd be most likely to get a team to the playoffs in an average situation. I get this argument. But "value" can be seen as circumstantial, as situational, whether you like it or not. If Trout (the ace) happens to find himself in a situation where he has a 2, 6, 8 and jack on his team, he really doesn't have that much value to the team in this hand...I mean, year.
The 7 of diamonds, in this particular instance, has a lot of value, as does the other cards in that hand. They all have the same value in this situation, they lead to a winning hand. The analogy doesnt really work here because the "ace" would help you win in baseball more than a "7" would, but it doesn't help in this hand. That really doesn't make sense from a baseball standpoint.
Actual value to his team. Not overall to any team in the league. That's how a lot of voters look at it, possibly because it's written that way in what's mailed to voters.