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November 15, 2005THE AWARD FOR BEST PERFORMANCE DURING A BASEBALL SEASON GOES TO...Rob: I was really hoping to be able to surf over to www.nyyfans.com today and read the A-Rod lovers bitch about A-Rod getting cheated out of the MVP today, but I guess I can settle for reading the A-Rod haters bitching about how he can win individual awards, but can only ground into double plays when “it counts.” As much as I dislike A-Rod, the haters are completely irrational. Well, unless they dislike him for being a prissy, purple-lipped douchebag, in which case they’re right on the money. But he did deserve the award. He put up better offensive numbers than David Ortiz and he plays his position pretty well. Though I do think Ortiz isn’t given enough credit for how well he rides the bench between at-bats. A-Rod has his put-outs and assists, but he’s got nothing on Ortiz as far as hugs and secret handshakes go. Jeff: I just can't get excited about awards anymore. These days with all the coverage available on the Internet, all the games on TV, all the crazy stats available, it's really easy to know more about the game than the people who get to vote on the awards. And if I'm going to get worked up about what some ignorant people think, than I should pick something more important than baseball awards. That said, the ignorant people probably got it right. A-Rod's overall numbers were better and he played an important position well enough. And while Papi certainly seems to have the ability to hit a home run every time he feels like tying or winning a game, it's tough to quantify. Rob: What's funny is how right the final tally ended up being. A-Rod had a just slightly better offensive season than Papi, and accordingly, he won the ballot by a pretty small margin. I just don't know if it worked out that way for the right reasons. Probably a few voters marked Ortiz down because he's a DH, which I don't think is really all that valid since someone's gotta play DH, and it's not like A-Rod is Brooks Robinson. On the other hand, Ortiz probably picked up more votes than he should have because of his ninth inning, SportsCenter highlight-reel heroics. A home run in the first inning counts just as much as a home run in the ninth. But if, as you and Rob Neyer say, awards based on performance are losing relevance due to the explosion of coverage and analysis of baseball, then that just leaves us with the emotive impact of the top players in the game if you're going to keep the MVP award interesting. There's a long history of the best player in the major leagues not necessarily winning the award. Granted, much of that has been due to ignorance, but what if we just started to accept the fact that things like walk-off home runs (and 56 game hitting streaks) will put a guy over a statistically better player for MVP? Otherwise, we might as well just tally up Win Shares and VORP at the end of the season and let that be that. And that doesn't really sound like a lot of fun to me. Joe Sheehan: Speak for yourself. Jeff: There are still holes in every system, like how they handle defense, but it really has reached the point where you can objectively name the best player in each league by running some numbers. Pete Rose: Who's running numbers now? Jeff: Maybe the MVP award really should go to the best player who did the most memorable things. It can be used to memorialize great individual achievements in during the course of the season. Things like DiMaggio's hitting streak, the 1998 home run race, and Derek Jeter's flying fist pump.
Rob: It is odd that Derek Jeter has never won an MVP, even in the year he actually deserved it. Go figure. New York Post: Jeter's got four rings, that's all that's important. Ya hear that A-Rod? Huh, you little punk? Rob: Poor A-Rod, he just can't do right. Why do I get the feeling that the year he finally does win a World Series, he'll have had a subpar year and all anyone in New York will talk about is how the Yankees won in spite of A-Rod. I'd feel bad for him if it wasn't so funny. Jeff: And if he weren't such a prissy, purple-lipped douchebag. |
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