I read the headline and think to myself, "Good krikies, Celizik found logic."

And then I read the excerpt.

Pujols is the better choice.

I read the headline and think to myself, "Good krikies, Celizik found logic."

And then I read the excerpt.

Me too. I was really excited, read the excerpt, and now I am back to normal.

Andruw Jones led the majors in home runs with 51...The Atlanta center fielder also won his eighth straight Gold Glove and led the NL in RBIs with 128.

If I were voting, I’d give it to Jones. But I’m silly enough to think the award is about value HR and RBI, not about statistics value.

Fixed. It's baffling to me how someone can be so lacking in self-awareness. How does he think he came up with who's most valuable? It couldn't possibly have been those statistics he just cited, could it?<strike>

Does anyone actually think Lee has a chance at winning? I would say there's NO chance of that happening. It will probably go:

Pujols
Jones
Lee

And I wouldn't be totally shocked if Lee doesn't even finish third.

Logical inconsistencies! Wheeeeeeee!

To the consternation of many, Jones is going to win, and it will not be nearly as close as the AL Vote. After getting one right, the writers will be back in their "stupid" box very shortly.

I disagree.

I think Pujols will get it as sort of a reward for his past three seasons.

Sure, that's not how the award is supposed to work, but like the voters care about details like that.

I'm sorry but lee has no chance. I'm a cardinal fan and if I'm voting as a pure baseball fan Lee gets my vote, If I'm voting as a cardinal fan of course pujols gets the vote, if I was a braves fan, Pujols would get the vote, just so I can justify giving andruw jones a second place vote(mind you justify andruw jones a second place vote is equivalent to still believing in weapons of mass destruction are still in iraq)

Lurking Jays fan, Lee had a great year, and was unarguably the mvp, but there is almost nil chance of him wining, as a thinking fan the only hope you have is that he finishes second. (heck I'm still hoping that ensberg finishes third ahead of jones... I know that isn't going to happen either...but my god he has such a stronger case that it's ridiculous that we haven't seen 15 articles for it)

And I wouldn't be totally shocked if Lee doesn't even finish third.

I will dance naked down Hollywood Boulevard if Lee doesn't finish third. I don't know which of Jones or Pujols will win, but I guarantee you that they will be the the top two, and Lee will certainly be #3.

Actually, I don't think Lee was unarguably the MVP. I'm not partisan to any of these players' teams, and I consider the award properly given for this year's performance only and for individual performance only. Still I voted for Pujols #1 in a close call over Lee #2 on my IBA ballot.

At least one common statistical system, Win Shares (THT's version, anyway), saw it that way. While I agree that what's done is done, and the award should not be about picking a player for next year (is there any question Pujols would be preferred?), I do consider one of the fundamental principles behind the award the hypothetical "Which of these players would one rather have had?" I.e., if you could have played the season getting what the other guy was giving instead of what your guy was giving, would you have done better? Even without devaluing what Lee gave based on what he'll probably give in the future, I suspect some degree of luck was in play. Did Wrigley help him out a bit more than normal for parts of the season? It played more hitter-friendly this year, no? Did Lee get some HRs against Pujols's 2Bs that, if the two players had switched environments, would have been HRs for Pujols and 2Bs for Lee? Knowing that Pujols is more likely to hit the ball better in general makes this thought more plausible. I suspect Pujols would have enjoyed slightly better numbers and Lee slightly worse had they been switched. Yes, that is directly a matter of value, since each player's value is necessarily measured relative to what a replacement would have done.

Add to that Pujols's apparently excellent defense and baserunning (two areas where Lee is no slouch, either, of course, but anybody who might have expected Lee to gain in these areas may be surprised at just how well Pujols did), and when the batting lines weren't that far apart to begin (Lee EqA .347, Pujols .344), it's really not so unreasonable to see Pujols as the slightly better choice without needing to invoke irrelevant (but too often used by the real voters) team results.

Let me see if I understand Celizic's logic ...

The MVP award by definition should always be given to the best player on a team that makes the playoffs by less than 5 games ... because he's obviously the player with the most (marginal) value in the league. I guess we can call it the MMVP award ...

Of course, even by that standard, the MVP should go to Roger Clemens, not Andruw.

Is it wrong that, despite being a Cardinals fan, there's a tiny part of me that's rooting for Jones to win a terrible, completely undeserved MVP tomorrow? The sole reason being that I think Lee was the MVP this year, but there's no chance of him winning--and when Albert finally does win his MVP, I want it to be untainted, uncontested, a year in which he really was dominant over every other player in the league. I'd kind of hate to see him win one that he didn't really deserve when you know that a year like that has to be coming up sometime.

I think post 13 has something there. 40 years from now it would be a shame to see people on a board such as this talking about Pujols' cheap MVP count.

Wrigley played just about neutral this year MLB.

Just trying to clarify are you saying Pujols's defense and baserunning was better than Lee's? I know Pujols is quite good at those too, but I can't see his being better than Lee's.

MVP voting results (you heard it here first from the guru)

A Jones (16)
A Pujols (12)
D Lee (4)

& 4th place is far distant

I read the headline and think to myself, "Good krikies, Celizik found logic."

And then I read the excerpt.

So it wasn't just me who thought that...

If Pujols loses this year, St. Louis won't be fit to live in.

So nothing will change? :-)

Pujols used to handle 3B okay, no? I've heard enough credible accounts of his excellent defense and seen him look good enough myself to believe he could get the edge over Lee there.

I don't have full baserunning data (1st-to-3rd, advancing on flies, etc.), though I believe such "stats" are drawn from such small samples of events that the specific nature of each event (if that fly ball was 10 ft. deeper ...) weighs too heavily to draw firm conclusions. Just by their SB, Pujols was successful one more time in the same number of attempts. I also wouldn't conclude from this that he was clearly better, but I wouldn't give Lee credit, either.

The main thrust is that luck / flukiness suspicion. Lee's BA/BIP was .349; Pujols's was .318. It is true that this number is considered under the control more of the batter than of the pitcher, which is part of why we consider it for pitchers. But it's also partly a product of fielders and "luck": shifts in wind, pressure, humidity, and lighting; field conditions; millimeters this way or that that, for a better batter, are more likely to line up in just the right spot but remain beyond the precise control of even the best adjusted human machine. Is that the "real" difference in BA/BIP between the two, or did Lee get luckier with those conditions this year? Anybody who believes he can repeatedly achieve a BA/BIP .031 higher than Pujols's, we have a bet.

Again, I understand the appeal that the MVP is properly awarded not for future expectations but for what they did this year. Lee got those hits. But the point of breaking down hit results into "how he hit it" and "how the conditions affected its flight and how the fielders reacted and whether it resulted in a hit (not to mention whether the scorer awarded a triple on what I would have called a 3-base error)" is not only to predict future hits but to assign proper credit for those that happened. Most folks here don't pay much attention to RBI in these discussions, despite the claim that the runs actually driven in are what matter for the team rather than the hit totals. However, just as RBI are a "result" stat largely disconnected from performance--i.e., from that part of a player's contribution for which he deserves the credit--hits are also a "result" stat, not as largely disconnected, but still somewhat disconnected from that part of a player's contribution--hitting the ball on a certain initial vector--for which he deserves the credit.

I will not see it as another voter failure if either of these two wins. They should be 1-2. Of course, I don't expect the BBWAA voters to have anything close to Bay #3, Clemens #4, Wright #5, etc., as on my IBA ballot (opening a can of worms: AJones was not in my top 10), so I fully expect to see another voter failure.

How does a guy win the silver slugger and gold glove at first base and lose the MVP to another first baseman?

But I’m silly enough to think the award is about value, not about statistics.

ie. "I'm silly/stupid enough to think there is only one way to measure value"

One thing I hate is when guys write an article, include factual information and then don't bother to use the net (baseball-reference or otherwise) to look the information up.
He forgot Albert Belle in 1995 wiht 103 extra base hits. And while not more than 99 he should mention Belle's 99 extra base hits in '98, Pujols last year and Carlos Delgado with the same in 2000.

"He (Jones) also had only 78 extra-base hits, a total ... that pales in comparison the numbers put up by the other candidates."

Yeah, Pujols' 81 XbH left Jones in the dust.

Is it wrong that, despite being a Cardinals fan, there's a tiny part of me that's rooting for Jones to win a terrible, completely undeserved MVP tomorrow?

As a Cardinals fan, I'm thinking it may be a good idea to deny Albert an MVP award just to make him angry. Opposing pitchers don't want to see Albert angry.

There's not a doubt in my mind that Lee is a better defender than Pujols. I believe the most accepted metrics concurred with my eyeballing. Baserunning, I'd agree that they're about even on.

I agree with you that Pujols and Lee should definitely be #s 1 and 2, and I'd have a hard time being upset with Lee losing it to Pujols.

Instead I'll wind up very upset with Andruw Jones.

The previous awards — both Cy Youngs and the AL MVP — went to the stats, not the value, and if the NL voters follow suit, Derrek Lee is your NL MVP.

A week ago, Mike Celizic argued that Clemens rightly did not win the Cy Young award, despite his ERA and lack of run support, because "no starting pitcher... has ever won it for a full season with fewer than 16 wins." That's not really an argument, but nevermind. Only wins matter.

Two days ago he made the opposite argument for David Ortiz:

In the conservative world of professional baseball writers, if something has always been done one way, no other reason is needed to justify continuing to do it that way. Rivera couldn't be the Cy Young winner because someone else with an ERA nearly two runs higher had won 21 games, and baseball tradition says that if a starter wins 20-plus, a reliever can't win. And if a player is a DH, he can't win the MVP. That's the rule.

So Clemens shouldn't win because he doesn't have enough wins, and that's the way it's always been. Rivera, however, should have won, but didn't because the stupid writers only care about wins.

And David Ortiz should win the MVP, but the conservative sportswriting establishment (of which Celizic was a part last Thursday but apparently is no longer) will stubbornly not vote for a DH.

Now he says he would vote for Jones, even while recognizing that Pujols and Lee were better, because "Jones may have been more valuable in absolute terms."

What does that even mean?

Bush should withdraw Alito and nominate Mike Celizic. Clearly he has a keen mind and values logic and consistency above all else.

But it's also partly a product of fielders and "luck": shifts in wind, pressure, humidity, and lighting;

See, that's Pujols' problem: he exudes too much moisture into the atmosphere.

I want to know what the American Sign Language convention for Pujols is.

His RBI total was just 107, but considering he was playing for the Cubs, that’s an impressive figure.

Ouch.

How does a guy win the silver slugger and gold glove at first base and lose the MVP to another first baseman?

Yep, as Hamlet would say "that is the question."