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11/16/2004: I suppose you have to admire consistency....
but dammit, "MVP" is not, last I looked, part of Barry Bonds's job description. To hear the Baseball Writers Association of America tell the story, it is a part of his job description, though.
Congratulations to Barry; I can't say he doesn't deserve it. But damn, I'm tired of seeing Bonds named MVP every damn year, just like I'm tired of seeing the Braves win the NL East and the Yankees win the AL East every damn year.
Come on, can't we have some variety? Please.
I'm not even going to bother with commenting about Adrian Beltre coming second over Albert "The Great" Pujols, other than to say that I want to know what drugs the BBWAA members are taking; I need me a serious reality break right now, myself.
:-)
But just to show that there's some objective basis in my ranting (i.e., I'm not pulling for Pujols just because I'm a big fan of him in particular, and the Cardinals in general): if you believe, along with Bill James, that the MVP award should go to the player who best helps his team win games (determining the extent of a player's contribution to his team's victories is the basis behind James's Win Shares system (link is to a .pdf file; Adobe Acrobat Reader required); for these purposes it's sufficient merely to note that the more Win Shares a player has, the bigger his contribution to his team's successes), then the voting should have gone like this (ranking the players in order of their total Win Shares):
Rank Player Team POS Bat Pitch Field WSAA Total
1 B Bonds SFG OF 50.4 0.0 2.7 37 53
2 A Pujols STL 1B 37.6 0.0 2.1 21 40
3 S Rolen STL 3B 32.5 0.0 5.6 22 38
4 A Beltre LAD 3B 31.2 0.0 6.1 19 37
5 B Abreu PHI OF 33.3 0.0 3.8 18 37
6 J Edmonds STL OF 29.7 0.0 6.5 19 36
7 J Drew ATL OF 29.4 0.0 4.8 17 34
I wonder if the voting results are indicative of a "Left Coast bias" (or perhaps more accurately, a coastal vs. heartland bias, or a big market vs. mid-market bias) in the part of the writers?
Oh well, it could have been worse. Rob at STL Outsider points out:
It is hard to believe, however, that a professional baseball writer thinks that the 2004 National League had five players more valuable than Albert Pujols (Pujols got one sixth-place vote) and at least ten players more valuable than Edmonds and Rolen (they were left off one ballot each).Like I said. I want to know what drugs some of these writers were taking....
Len on 11.16.04 @ 08:03 AM CST
