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1. HGM Posted: November 21, 2011 at 08:06 PM (#3998678)I wonder if Ellsbury gets it if the Sox hold on.
He didn't win, but in the 1999 vote, Alomar got four first-place votes while also being left off one of the ballots. Then there's Ted Williams being omitted by one voter in his triple crown year of 1947. I assume there must be others.
Half the votes had probably been sent in before the Sox missed the playoffs.
Someone else gave Young a first place vote? Are these statement votes or simple idiocy at work?
Hey, I like Michael Young and have even argued that his positional flexibility and steady performance gives him slightly more value than his raw numbers would suggest but the notion that he is one was one of the 10 most valuable players in 2011 is just plain daffy.
Well, according to some, he doesn't really play baseball.
Well, Evan P Grant of the Dallas Morning News disagrees:
1. Michael Young, Rangers
2. Justin Verlander, Detroit
3. Miguel Cabrera, Detroit
4. Curtis Granderson, New York
5. Jacoby Ellsbury, Boston
6. Adrian Gonzalez, Boston
7. Jose Bautista, Toronto
8. Robinson Cano, New York
9. James Shields, Tampa Bay
10. Adrian Beltre, Rangers
What a farce.
SEVENTH PLACE?!
Yes, Jay fans still are thankful for that Bautista for Robinzon Diaz trade.
George Young, come on down!
That's an historical artifact. It's weird, but there's no denying the MVP is THE most prestigious award you can win. Excluding pitchers from the highest honor because they also have some other award for them doesn't make much sense to me.
What an amazing coincidence that the most prominent and much-discussed awards are chosen by people who have the power to make things prominent and much-discussed!
Verlander had a pretty great season, though. It was better than a run-of-the-mill CYA season, given the combination of high IP and high ERA+. In the DH era, only 19 AL pitchers have had more than 230 IP and more than a 160 ERA+. Only four beat Verlander in both categories (Clemens '97, Guidry '78, Saberhagen '89, and Stieb '85. Special mention to King Felix for coming close last year.)
Verlander basically had a comparable season to Lee in '08 but he threw an additional 28 innings.
And I'm not saying to exclude pitchers from the MVP. Ideally, the Aaron and the Cy would be on the same level, and then everyone dukes it out for the MVP.
I don't know... he led the league in virtually every other pitching category of note, including several of the advanced metric ones. He seemed to come up "big" late in the year if "value has to mean winning important games for a playoff team" type voter.
I think my ballot would have probably had him 3rd or 4th behind Bautista (for sure) and maybe Ellsbury/Granderson depending on my mood.
Seems to me that there's usually a pitcher that sneaks in win-place-show vote or two, if you take away a few wins - Verlander was still the best in the league. If Michael Young gets a first - I feel pretty confidant Verlander would have, too.
I'm not anti-SP winning the MVP - but I tend to agree with DCW3 in #14 - I probably wouldn't vote an SP first without a truly other worldly outlier season.
Its funny that Michael Young gets credit for being valuable and the heart and soul, yadda yadda, the season after he was perceived by many as being whiny about playing time and requesting a trade.
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This is actually a pretty good point. Don't writers have a vested interest in having a really crazy ballot? I don't know what the answer is - probably a wider mix of voters - but its probably time to end the monopoly the writers have on award season.
I suppose.
I tend to be of the mind that the MVP should be the player who performed the best, period, regardless of team performance... I guess if there were a bit more separation between Batista and Miguel Cabrera (brain quake in 37... I'd have had Cabrera and Bautista in front of Verlander, as well as Ellsbury/Granderson) I'd be more upset.
If Miguel Cabrera didn't some of the personal baggage - does he rate higher to the voters?
How about because they are "pitchers", not "players"?
It might work with some of them, but the MVP award belongs to the BBWAA. You can't take it away.
They also have a vested interest in everyone else thinking that the awards are important.
It's not a run-of-the-mill Cy season, but it wasn't really a historic one, either. Just two years ago, Zack Greinke had a year that was by pretty much any comprehensive standard superior to Verlander's season this year, and he finished 17th in the MVP voting. Now, it's easy to understand why the BBWAA voters didn't give Greinke much support, but I don't remember a lot of stathead types complaining about Greinke getting overlooked (some of that was because Mauer had such a huge season, true, but Greinke was surely one of the two best players in the AL that year).
Verlander basically had a comparable season to Lee in '08 but he threw an additional 28 innings.
Oh, if Verlander had had this kind of season in 2008, I'd have said he deserved the MVP, hands down. There was just more competition this year.
23 separate writers thought Michael Young was one of the 10 best players in the American League this year. That's the really insane part, to me.
The last pitchers to get 1st place votes were in 2008 when K-Rod and Lidge inexplicably picked some up. The last starter to get a first place vote was Santana in 2006, and it's not like Verlander's 2011 season is head-and-shoulders above the top starting pitcher years in the years since.
I mean, maybe he would have got a first place vote or two, but I have a hard time believing that he'd have come close to winning if not for the wins.
I'm not sure Cabrera's baggage has a lot to do with it--he had plenty of baggage in 2010, too, and finished second despite playing for a .500 team. I think he didn't do better because there's the perception that he does this sort of thing every year (even though this was probably his best season) whereas Verlander was more of the breakout story. Plus Cabrera was "only" tenth in the league in homers and 6th in RBIs despite playing at a power position.
I think it's just because he covers the Rangers.
Even if you really value the "playing on a good team", there's countless players on the RANGERS that would be better choices than Young. I have something like 8 players on his own team that were more valuable than him (Napoli, Kinsler, Hamilton, Beltre and Wilson for sure, and then there's Andrus, Harrison, Ogando and Holland that have cases).
Grant is justifying his vote with positional versatility. He probably decided first to vote for Young and then decided what made someone valuable.
People believe they are important because the BBWAA awards have tradition on their side. Sometime in the distant future, when his career has long been over, Dustin Pedroia will do an autograph show, and the promoters of the event will advertise having "2008 AL MVP Dustin Pedroia" on hand. Nobody will care one bit or remember who won the SBN or Baseball Prospectus or BTF awards.
As a collective whole sure, but individually, they all have a vested interest in attracting readers.
I'm sure that's it, but it does raise an interesting point though. SOSH is right though, its the BBWAA's baby, and I can't see any rival organization creating an award that has the same kind of cache, at least for a generation or so until there is no such thing as "baseball writers" and the award given out is the "Baseball Twitter Account Association MVP."
Sure, but the tradition wouldn't be as strong if not for the built-in promotion mechanism - the writers' stories.
And then there's all the whining about having to switch positions, even to the point of demanding a trade....yeah, total team player
You can say some of those things about Bautista, though. He played 3B when the position was a wasteland for Toronto before Lawrie's promotion, he mentored Yunel Escobar and other players, and he was a much better player than Mike Young. If Grant was based out of Toronto he'd have voted for Bautista and just changed the names in his column.
I like this because it seems to imply that pitchers aren't actually playing the game, as though they just throw the ball and then go back to surfing the internet for the next thirty seconds.
But no, he only sees their stats.
He should have his vote taken away - or at least not given one again. The guidelines that the BBWAA give the voters specifically state that all players, including pitchers and DHs, are eligible.
-- MWE
I haven't studied the numbers enough, but Verlander led the league in Baseball-Reference WAR (although he was behind in Fangraphs WAR, which tries to correct for defense and luck in BABIP). For position players as well as pitchers. Is there some reason you think those numbers should be discounted?
It's not a run-of-the-mill Cy season, but it wasn't really a historic one, either. Just two years ago, Zack Greinke had a year that was by pretty much any comprehensive standard superior to Verlander's season this year, and he finished 17th in the MVP voting. Now, it's easy to understand why the BBWAA voters didn't give Greinke much support, but I don't remember a lot of stathead types complaining about Greinke getting overlooked (some of that was because Mauer had such a huge season, true, but Greinke was surely one of the two best players in the AL that year).
Tango did suggest that he should get consideration for the MVP award. (Incidentally, despite Greinke having a fairly comfortable lead in WAR, some theorized that Mauer's excellent catcher's defense was not sufficiently rewarded by WAR, and that actually closed the gap.) I don't remember what the arguments were like at the time, but I'm assuming nobody really considered Greinke given his team and his win total.
Yes he should. At the very least, he should be prevented from voting on MVP (and RoY, if he holds the same bias there).
This. Never mind that Bautista is hailed in Toronto for being able to connect with both stars & scrubs, Latin & American ballplayers, that he's always there to deal with the media & take part in the Jays' marketing efforts, that he'll switch to a position he's less comfortable with for the good of the club. All he is to Evan Grant is WAR & OPS. If Grant really wants intangibles to matter in MVP voting, he's got to find some way to fairly apply them to everybody, not just the guy he covers every day.
Yeah, whether or not you get into the whole VALUABLE! INTANGIBLES! semantic arguments, I think it's not quite fair to give Young credit for all these intangibles that other writers didn't see because they weren't covering him... and then not give credit to all the other players for the intangibles that they presumably also have, which he didn't see because he wasn't covering them.
That's socialist talk right there, and I don't have to listen to it!
Strange indeed. I guess people are saying that Cabrera had better intangibles, Detroit was a playoff team and Boston wasn't, and/or Cabrera was one of 2 star players on his team while Boston had lots of them making each one slightly less valuable.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Ellsbury wins if the Sox make the playoffs. "Leading" your team to the postseason is still huge amongst msm voters and Ellsbury would've ended up with around 280 points and Verlander around 240. Good news for Sox fans though is that without the MVP hardware in the cabinet maybe he'll come a little cheaper when negotiating the new contract.
Different sets of voters: writers versus managers/coaches.
Like Ross Gload, for having the name that sounds most like a slang term for pooping, or Marc Rcezpzysnsssksksi for letting Larussa get his pitching change urges out.
I think that's it. If there was one standout position player, he'd win. If there were 2 or maybe 3 clear candidates, it'd be tougher for Verlander. But when it's this hard to separate the position players, and none of them is really dominant, then Verlander is the one who looks like the "standout", and has the more compelling narrative.
I guess a win after a loss counts more than a win after a win.
FTFY, those pages aren't going to hit themselves...
For the writers, it's the 24 in the win column. He'd have been near-unanimous if it were 25.
The writers act as if there are static conditions, like the year-in, year-out excellence of Cabrera or Pujols, and then there are performances which somehow get added on top of those, like Verlander, and only the latter have any (marginal) value. It also fits the "best story" narrative they're always looking for.
Verlander 8.6
Bautista 8.5
Ellsbury 7.2
Miguel 7.1
Adrian 6.9
Pedroia 6.8
Wieters 4.0
D. Jeter 0.7
Verlander gets MVP credit for the other Tiger pitchers sucking?
That's like giving Bautista extra credit for hitting 27 home runs with the bases empty.
Does Fangraphs WAR for batters try to correct for defense and luck in BABIP? Didn't think so.
Welcome to the MVP vote, where the most important thing you can do is be on a team that's fatally flawed, but just good enough to be rescued by you and make the playoffs.
These justifications always crack me up. "You had to watch every game to realize how valuable he was." Well, if you watch every Rangers game, you are not able to watch every Blue Jays, Tigers or Red Sox game... don't they realize the silliness here?
His blackballing from the post-season awards is appalling.
Of course, the Tigers won the division by 15 games, so Verlander's win doesn't really fit that narrative (although there are people who will claim the Tigers would have missed the playoffs without him).
The only votes should have been given to those two guys trapped in the box by MLB and forced to watch every game all year.
1. Young
2. Granderson
3. Gonzalez
4. Longoria
5. Kinsler
6. Sabathia
7. Teixeira
8. Bautista
9. M. Cabrera
10. Ellsbury
I don't think this is a dumb argument at all--it wouldn't be a great argument that Verlander IS the MVP, but I think it's a good argument that it's fair for a starter to be in the mix.
Ellsbury over Bautista -- What.The.####. That is ridiculous.
Voter ommitting Verlander -- agree, he shouldn't be allowed to vote if he ignores the rules; this also applies to people who left off Ichiro/Matsuit and vote for DOn Larsen/Jack Morris/etc for the HOF. I don't care what your opinion is of the guidelines, you have to follow them if you want to vote.
Jimmy Rollins won an MVP based on a quick quip he gave reporters in the pre-season.
Yeah, that "great defensive shortstop plays every day, posts 40/30/20" had nothing to do with it. I'll grant that Rollins was an MVP based in large part on narrative, but it's because Rollins backed it up on the field. The Mets' collapse just made the Phils look better.
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