Dos trofeos para Pujols
Congratulations to baseball's best player, Albert Pujols, on being named the National League's Most Valuable Player Monday for the second time in his career (the other came in 2005), and on becoming the only Cardinals player other than Stan Musial to win the award more than once. (Stan won in '43, '46, and '48.)As to which player deserves the annual award, I'm previously on record as saying it should go to the best player on the best team, but since the endless round of playoffs have rendered the regular season almost entirely meaningless, and the "best team" utterly insignificant, who the hell cares? I'm glad the guy from my team won. He was the best offensive player in the league, and he's also a better defender and baserunner than the MVP runner-up at the same position. The Cards may have finished in 4th place in their division, but their 86 wins was only seven off that of the champion Philadelphia Phillies. The Great Pujols had been the Maid of Honor in the voting three times before, but losing this time around to a guy who batted .251 and struck out 199 times while playing his home games in the best hitting park in the majors would have been a bitter pill indeed.
In all candor, Pujols has actually morphed into one of the Least Valuable Players in baseball as his presence on the Cardinals' roster allows the team ownership group to go cheap at every other position.
posted by CM @ 3:30 PM
3 Comments:
Under your previous criteria, you would be congratulating Aramis Ramirez as the MVP, but that truly would have been a travesty.
I tend to agree that the winning person's team should at least be in the playoff hunt in September, unless someone from a bad team was far superior to other players in the league (a la Andre Dawson in '87). It's amazing to see that Sutcliffe was only 2 points away from tying for the Cy Young. Imagine the MVP and Cy Young coming from a last place team. I guess the Cubs underperfomed that year.
Wow, you're right. It would be Aramis Ramirez. Little wonder no one votes that way.
Of course the Ramirez point and the fact that he's an awful post-season player also brings up the question about why playoff performances don't count for MVP voting. All performances until the World Series should count. Why are we naming an MVP of the league when the league hasn't even been decided?
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