Monday, November 17, 2008

Albert Pujols is the MVP

As he should be. But, in keeping with the theme of the season, there's something stupid, and that's someone voting Pujols seventh.

Seventh!

My view: it's far more defensible to leave Pujols off the ballot entirely out of some misguided contenders-only policy than it is to vote him seventh. Voting him seventh means that you don't disqualify for non-contenders and that you think there were six players better than Albert. If you exercised that kind of logic in any other area, you'd be subject to becoming a ward of the state.

OK, I'll chill out now. We'll have forgotten about that tomorrow. For now, let's be happy that the right guy won.

10 comments:

bigcatasroma said...

Thank *goodness* Pujols won. I couldn't begin to imagine the outcry if he didn't.

But, seriously, how can Utley only garner 1 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and a few 9th and 10th place votes? How does Delgado get 5 3d place votes???

So in all of the National League, 5 voters thought there were only TWO players better than Delgado? FOUR thought, what, 17 starts from CC Sabathia made him better than EVERY SINGLE NL PLAYER save one????

This gets absurd, but man, I really wish they would either change the voting structure, or have yearly or semi-annual qualification screening. This is like not having people over 65 have to renew their driver's licenses -- yes, we get it, you've been driving for a long time, but sometimes the skill set just diminishes.

There should be like a 50 question multiple choice test to screen -- several on sabermetrics, several on history, several on MSM types (who led the league in RBI in 1999), SOMETHING. No more free investment banking like passes to nincompoops!!!

Congrats to Pujols, by the way. Talk about your "feared" slugger. Just look at his career stats. My god.

Anonymous said...

Highest OPS since Barry Bonds '04

That'll do Albert, that'll do.

Jay said...

It is quite amazing that Manny & CC came in 4th and 6th respectively. Sabathia made half of his starts with the Indians and Manny played two thirds of his games with the Red Sox. I know that the definition of "valuable" is debatable, but good God, can't we all agree that a half or a third of a season is not as valuable as a whole season? Seems like writers are highly aware of this with this when it comes to injuries (Chipper Jones came in 12th), but not when it comes to being traded across leagues.

And also, the CY Young winner finished 23rd.

Daniel said...

Craig, thanks for the link, but next time, try to find a site that's a little less green. My monitor blew up and my eyes are still recovering.

As for the MVP, the voting is always going to be flawed and I don't know how they can fix it without completely revamping the process. The right guy won and we should be happy about that.

Unknown said...

I'm very happy Pujols won, but there's no reason Chipper should have finished out of the top-10. I'm not nearly talented enough to judge the math used here (http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2008/11/11/655975/top-fifty-players-of-2008), but their analysis seems reasonable.

Anonymous said...

well, we found who voted Pujols 7th. He used the rationale I figured he would, but it's still really weak. And, if he's voting for playoff contenders first, then how is Delgado 4th?

I never liked Haurdricort, and now I like him even less. He's a grumpy old sportswriter, and very stuck in his own mindset.

Anonymous said...

sorry, forgot to put the link in:

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/34594194.html

Anonymous said...

It's insane that the BBWAA's website looks like that. Don't any of these writers have kids they can pay $50 to re-do their site? Or at least not make it green? I'm surprised there aren't any rotating, flaming baseball GIFs.

Anonymous said...

http://wisconsinsportsblogs.blogspot.com/2008/11/tom-haudricourt-fills-out-drunken-mvp.html

Tom Haudricourt shouldn't get any more ballots to fill out.

Daniel said...

Whoa! That was the BBWAA's site? I thought it was just some random site that had the voting results tabulated before any other site did. I didn't even look at the link.

Wow, that's bad.