With two potential triple crown winners - one which will come from the Central division winner? (Hoping Infante does not get the plate apperances to ruin that.)

I'm scared to read the comments on the article itself...

But the M.V.P. award has not gone to a starting pitcher since Vida Blue in 1971

O RLY?

BTW, I love Stu Freeman's comment, which pulls off the trick of being ignorant and incredibly condescending at the same time, as if our pal Sean just discovered baseball yesterday instead of creating an Internet site that dwarfs anything Stu Freeman's ever done for baseball.

Trivia: the last unindicted AL starting pitcher to win the MVP was Bobby Shantz.

By my quick math, Infante needs to average 4.43 PA over the last 35 games to qualify. So far in August he's started every team game and averaged 4.63 PA per game.

Well I'm no longer excited for the triple crown race between Pujols & Votto. It's pretty likely Infante is going to #### it up.

I love this comment from Stu

As things now stand, Cano should win the AL award. He's been the one "constant" for the Yankees this year (whereas Hamilton has gotten consistent help from Vlad Guerrero).

I guess the 3 other guys in the Yankees lineup with 20+ HR already, including Tex's 28, hasn't helped Cano carry the Yankees. Wasn't Tex the NY pick for MVP last year? The only difference between 2009 Texeira and 2010 Texeira is about 30 points in BABIP. So it's not like Cano has been a 1 man show in NY this summer.

And don't forget Pedro's back-to-back MVPs in '99-'00.

Remember our WAR discussion a couple of days ago?

Sean mentions 4 hitter in the NL MVP race. On BBRef, they rate:

Pujols 58 RAR
Gonzalez 55 RAR
Huff 52 RAR
Votto 48.5 RAR

But at fangraphs, they rate:

Votto 58.5 RAR
Pujols 57.8 RAR
Huff 48 RAR
Gonzalez 46.1 RAR

Part of the difference is how the two sites rate defense - Votto is -4 runs fielding at bbref, but +3.5 at fangraphs; Pujols is 3.8 runs better by fangraphs; Huff, however, is nearly 10 runs better at bbref. What's surprising to me, though, is that Gonzalez is 7 runs better hitting at bbref than at fangraphs.

Here's Sean's premise in the article:

Sabermetricians back to the 1980s and before have been working on “one-number” measures: a statistic that takes every contribution from players of different skills and positions and runs it through a variety of formulas ending with one number. This number typically known as wins above replacement or WAR endeavors to tell us how many wins a player was worth to his term over replacement talent.

and

There are many wins-above-replacement formulas, but the one used here is found on the player and team pages at Baseball-Reference.com.

But - how useful is WAR if the two most commonly cited versions differ on player value by 16-17% on 2 of the top hitters in just one league?

By the way, his article doesn't mention Josh Hamilton in the AL. BBRef has Hamilton as 4th in the AL with 57 RAR, but fangraphs has him first by an entire win over Longoria - Hamilton's defense is rated 13 runs better by fangraphs.

Maybe the most surprising thing in this piece was the mention of Aubrey Huff, who's spent most of the past three years at DH, as a strong defensive player. That and the wildly differing opinions of Josh Hamilton's defense just reinforce that there's a long way to go before these numbers can be considered definitive.

Rays third baseman Evan Longoria (6.2) has been stellar on defense, and his offense has been typically good

Personally I thought Beltre was the most valuable 3B in both leagues. Fangraphs WAR has Longoria only a tick higher. I don't feel like digging into it right now, but memory/eyeball test tells me Beltre's D hasn't been it's usual stellar self this season.

For AL I'd vote for either Hamilton or Cano. Very close call, but those are my frontrunners.

In the NL it's very tough. There is a lot of baseball to be played. A monster September by Pujols that vaults the Cardinals over the Reds would make him my favorite, but as of now he's had a down year by his own standards. I see that pitchers have dominated the WAR leaderboards for the NL all season long. But between Halladay, Johnson, Wainwright, Hudson, Jimenez, etc. there isn't much separation, and it changes from start to start. If Wainwright were having one of his better years with the bat that would put him over the top in my opinion, but he's not. This is the first year Wainwright has a at least one PA but has not hit a homerun. And his batting average is barely over Brandon Wood's career line.

I love Stu Freeman's comment, which pulls off the trick of being ignorant and incredibly condescending at the same time, as if our pal Sean just discovered baseball yesterday instead of creating an Internet site that dwarfs anything Stu Freeman's ever done for baseball.

Way over-complicated.

And his batting average is barely over Brandon Wood's career line.

Thumbs up.

I see that pitchers have dominated the WAR leaderboards for the NL all season long.

Again, only at bbref. Fangraphs has only Halliday (6.5 WAR) above Votto, Pujols (both 6.0) and Torres (5.7).