Wednesday, November 21, 2007
From the Files of WTF!: MVP Voting Hijinks
The postseason award balloting this year thankfully stayed safely on the side of sanity. There were no egregious mistakes like Bartolo Colon winning the Cy Young over Johan Santana in 2005 or Justin Morneau winning it over like five other, more deserving candidates in 2006. I've already detailed why the Gold Glove awards are a joke, but pretty much all of the other winners of the (legitimate, or at least relatively so) awards were clearly deserving.
The only questionable pick was probably Jimmy Rollins for NL MVP. David Wright seemed like a more deserving pick, as he was a better player and put up better numbers in a much tougher park on hitters, and you can make the argument that Rollins wasn't even the MVP of his own team. Wright was also unquestionably hurt by the Mets' late-season choke job (a couple of tards even left Wright completely off the ballot), but Rollins did have a monster year and his selection certainly wasn't an outrage. Plus, he gets bonus points for his brash playoff guarantee way back in the spring, channeling Kirk Gibson's 1988 pre-season tantrum that basically got him a totally undeserved MVP (somewhere Darryl Strawberry cries).
No, the only real bit of idiocy from this season's award vote came out of the AL MVP race. Alex Rodriguez, of course, was far and away the most deserving winner. No question about that. No one could touch him, and yet two misguided souls somehow found a way to give Magglio Ordonez their first place votes. Now, don't get me wrong, Magglio was awesome this season, but how could anybody be so frigging blind to the simple numbers? Just check it out, and we don't even need those fancy-pants BP stats to demonstrate why A-Rod was so superior.
A-Rod: .314/.422/.645 177 OPS+
Magglio: .363 /.434 /.595 167 OPS+
Rodriguez has ten points of OPS+ on Ordonez, he bombed 26 more homers, knocked in 17 more runs, scored 26 more runs, played a somewhat tougher position, and even threw in 24 stolen bases, for what that's worth. And this is before breaking out the VORPs and WARPs and MLVRs that we dorks all cherish. Trust me, you adle-brained Magglio voters, you don't want to go there.
The two writers who voted for Ordonez were from Detroit, which I guess explains it. Maybe they also held the typical "unclutch A-Rod" grudge and thought he was putting up empty numbers, or maybe they just had some sort of brain lesion that prevents a person from determining what makes one player more valuable than another. I guess you could justify their vote by saying that Rodriguez had better hitters around him, and thus got better pitches to hit, or that he's won too many MVPs already, or...um...
Nah, they just fucked up.
The only questionable pick was probably Jimmy Rollins for NL MVP. David Wright seemed like a more deserving pick, as he was a better player and put up better numbers in a much tougher park on hitters, and you can make the argument that Rollins wasn't even the MVP of his own team. Wright was also unquestionably hurt by the Mets' late-season choke job (a couple of tards even left Wright completely off the ballot), but Rollins did have a monster year and his selection certainly wasn't an outrage. Plus, he gets bonus points for his brash playoff guarantee way back in the spring, channeling Kirk Gibson's 1988 pre-season tantrum that basically got him a totally undeserved MVP (somewhere Darryl Strawberry cries).
No, the only real bit of idiocy from this season's award vote came out of the AL MVP race. Alex Rodriguez, of course, was far and away the most deserving winner. No question about that. No one could touch him, and yet two misguided souls somehow found a way to give Magglio Ordonez their first place votes. Now, don't get me wrong, Magglio was awesome this season, but how could anybody be so frigging blind to the simple numbers? Just check it out, and we don't even need those fancy-pants BP stats to demonstrate why A-Rod was so superior.
A-Rod: .314/.422/.645 177 OPS+
Magglio: .363 /.434 /.595 167 OPS+
Rodriguez has ten points of OPS+ on Ordonez, he bombed 26 more homers, knocked in 17 more runs, scored 26 more runs, played a somewhat tougher position, and even threw in 24 stolen bases, for what that's worth. And this is before breaking out the VORPs and WARPs and MLVRs that we dorks all cherish. Trust me, you adle-brained Magglio voters, you don't want to go there.
The two writers who voted for Ordonez were from Detroit, which I guess explains it. Maybe they also held the typical "unclutch A-Rod" grudge and thought he was putting up empty numbers, or maybe they just had some sort of brain lesion that prevents a person from determining what makes one player more valuable than another. I guess you could justify their vote by saying that Rodriguez had better hitters around him, and thus got better pitches to hit, or that he's won too many MVPs already, or...um...
Nah, they just fucked up.
Labels: from the files of wtf, stupid award voting
