Baseball MVP Talk

“I felt like the MVP was also who was most valuable to the game as a whole.” – Buster Olney

September is a great month for sports- baseball pennant races, beginning of football, and, one of my favorite things, baseball award debates. It is fun for me to argue about ridiculous topics like Charles Woodson winning the 1997 Heisman over Peyton Manning, so it is fun to argue every year about baseball awards. The most interesting debates usually involve the MVP awards because MLB has purposely written the criteria for “value” vaguely. As a consequence some (or a lot) of the criteria are left up to each voter’s individual criteria.

Some voters refuse to vote for a pitcher for MVP because they have their own award, which absurdly lead to Ivan Rodriguez winning the 1999 AL MVP award over Pedro Martinez (and Manny Ramirez and Derek Jeter as well). In 1995 Buster Olney voted for Mo Vaughn over Albert Belle because baseball did not need an ornery guy like Belle winning the award the year after the strike. Many voters are also greatly biased toward players on teams heading to the postseason..

This year Miguel Cabrera probably has no chance of winning the AL MVP because the Tigers are out of the race, and the probable postseason teams, Yankess, Rays, Rangers, and Twins, all have strong choices. It is possible that Cabrera could lead the league in, the diametrically opposed, RBI and Win Shares, but finish fifth behind Hamilton, Cano, Longoria, and Mauer. Cabrera will most likely finish third behind Hamilton and Cano but he is clearly more “valuable” to the Tigers than Hamilton is to the Rangers or Cano is to the Yankees.

Cabrera, who stopped drinking in the offseason, has taken his play to another level and leads the AL in OPS+. His teammate with next best mark is the immortal Brennan Boesch and he ranks 40th. Conversely Hamilton is second to Carbrera in OPS+ but teammates Vladimir Guerrero and Michael Young are 20th and 25th. Cano gets even more help offensively with Nick Swisher ranked 8th, Mark Teixeira ranked 9th, A-Rod ranked 19th, and Brett Gardner ranked 26th, all having better seasons than the Tigers second best offensive player. Defensively Cano and Hamilton are more valuable because they play at second base and center field but it is hard to argue that Cabrera is not more crucial to his team’s offense and chance to win games than those other two.

As interesting as the American League MVP debate is this year, it pales in comparison to the National League debate where Albert Pujols and Joey Votto both have a serious chance of winning the Triple Crown, a feat which has not been accomplished since 1967. ESPN even has a Triple Crown tracker watch on its MLB homepages so this is a pretty big deal. After the first game of September Pujols leads the league with 35 home runs and Votto is third with 32. Votto leads the league in RBI with 97 and Pujols is second with 95. Carlos Gonzalez leads the league in AVG at .329 but Votto is second and nipping at his heels at .325 while Pujols is fifth at .313 (and don't forget about Omar Infante). So both players could do something that has not been done in forty-three years.

And if Pujols wins the Triple Crown and doesn’t win MVP, because the Cards are eight back of the Reds, then he will be the first player to do that since Ted Williams in 1967. To me that would be the most interesting scenario. Who do voters choose? The guy who has not done something in 43 years or the guy whose team ran away from a division race that was neck and neck a mere two weeks ago? For me the decision is easy, I would choose the guy who had the better year, and that would most likely be the guy who won the Triple Crown.

A couple of weeks ago, I thought that most voters would just simply choose Pujols if the Cardinals won the division and Votto if the Reds won the division because their numbers are so similar. That made me think of a bunch of rhetorical questions like, what if the two teams were in a one game playoff and the stats were pretty much a wash, but one player goes 0-4 and his team wins but the other goes 4-4 and his team loses? Who gets the nod there? Or what if one team wins the division by two games but there is a significant difference in the counting stats like 4 home runs and 10 RBIs?

Now, unless Pujols wins the Triple Crown, I think Votto has it locked up because of the Reds’ eight game lead. But I don’t think that is fair to Pujols who has been playing well during the Cardinals nose dive. On August 11th the Cardinals beat the Reds 6-1 to complete a series sweep and take a two game division lead. Since then the Cardinals’ record is 4-14 and the Reds’ record is 14-4. That is a remarkable ten game swing in the standings in less than three weeks(…something only Mets and Phillies fans can relate to). As the Reds continue to widen their lead, Votto continues to widen his lead over Pujols. But should he?

A brief look at the numbers since August 11th:

Pujols: 64 AB; 14 Runs; 20 Hits; 6 Doubles; 6 Home Runs; 10 RBIs; 10 walks
Votto: 63 AB; 11 Runs; 23 Hits; 5 Doubles; 4 Home Runs; 20 RBIs; 9 walks

The numbers are pretty close except for Votto’s lead in RBIs, but as most of us know that is also a reflection of how well other players on the team are doing. If no one is getting on base for the Cardinals then Pujols cannot drive in runs despite having two more runs and one more double compared to Votto having six more singles. So if the MVP race was close two weeks ago, I still think it should be a close race now. If a voter wants to give some weight to the guy on the postseason team, I would have to say that is better than flipping a coin, but I worry that they are giving the winning criterion too much weight.