bobbob1313

Woah, wait. What?

Fiusm.com. You can also read my various bullshit that I've written there by searching for "Chris Towers." Shameless plug.

Next Tuesday at Noon I'll be on WRGP Panther Sports Talk Live doing a Hot Stove segment. I'll keep you updated.

Possibly. There's a lot of people who hate the Red Sox, and you know all of you Sox fans would listen too.

Come on, The "Chris Towers, Sabermetric Hatin' on the Red Sox Radio Hour." Your telling me you wouldn't listen to that? You could make an argument for that.

I do. Don't stop, I'm like an addict. I need to get on sports talk radio or something.

It's very tangible, unless you assume that he wouldn't have done anything over the final month. An intangible argument to use for him is the White Sox record with out him, 12-14. You could use that as an argument for him or against him. For, because they were lost without him, and against because he almost cost his team a playoff spot by hurting himself.

Youk Quentin A-Rod Bradley All had seasons at least as good as Pedroia. If you want to say he's "more valuable" because of intangibles, you can, but it's not like Mauer and Pedroia were the only good players. Youk had more Win Shares than Pedroia did, even. My card would probably have looked like this: 1. Mauer 2. Quentin 3. Youk 4. Pedroia 5. A-Rod

I love the Rising. A couple of bad songs, but the good songs are incredible.

Side one "No Reply"

If he doesn't play in Boston and isn't the size of Polly Pocket, he doesn't win the award. Like I said, he's not a terrible choice, but he's also not a great choice. It's foolish to pretend he is. For sure, I love having these conversations. I prefer when they give it to the wrong guy, because it lets me be all snarky and self righteous. I like the subjectivity, and I wouldn't have it any other way. If they gave it to the right guy every year, there would be nothing for me to get mad about. Baseball is great because it is imperfect.

I want every player in the league to have a chest X-Ray, and whoever has the largest heart should win. Bam. Either that or an algorithm based on percentage of salary donated, number of clothing items with team's insignia owned, amount of team dinner parties hosted, as well as heart size.

A google search for "Manny Ramirez Clubhouse Cancer" returns 8,630 results.

Pedroia has the advantage in WARP3, Youkilis has the advantage in Win Shares, which (I believe) utilizes the +/- defensive metric, which is widely considered to be a more accurate defensive metric than FRAR, which is what the WARP stats us. They are both really close in value. Youk kicks his ass if you just look at the numbers, but you have to give Pedroia credit for playing a tough position well. Now, if we want to talk about the intangibles crap, I'd go with Youk there. He's got a giant ass goatee which has to count for something, he is willing to play 1B or 3B depending on where the tea

It's like this: If you are a "little guy player" (Don't hit a lot of homers or get RBI, most of your value comes from AVG, Getting on base, Defense, baserunning ala Pedroia, Mauer, Jeter (sort of), Gwynn, Puckett, etc), and you don't play for a big market team, you probably won't win an MVP.

I don't mean to sound like I think he's a terrible choice. He'd be in the bottom part of my top 5, but there's not a huge gap between them all. I just think he doesn't deserve it.

It doesn't with me either. Frankly, Mauer only ranks slightly higher Pedroia, and probably would've been 3rd or 4th if I had a vote. Practically every metric that attempts to quantify value (VORP, WARP3, EQA, Win Shares) doesn't see Pedroia as the most valuable player. There's a handful of players who were more valuable than either of them. That Pedroia won it despite being arguably the 5th-7th most valuable player in the league (not to mention arguably the 2nd most valuable player on his own team) is going to rightfully bring up debate. If Pedroia's 'intangibles' are really that valuable,

Baseball writers are dumb if they voted for Pedroia over Mauer because of intangibles. That's what I'll say. I'll say him playing in Boston and being 4 and a half feet tall had much more to do with him winning it over Mauer than intangibles. If Mauer does what he does in Boston he's a two time MVP winner.

Oh, I definitely think if it came to it, Mauer's probably much more loyal to the city of Minneapolis and the Twins than Pedroia to Boston and the Red Sox, though I don't like that kind of discussion to muddy what should be a strictly performance award. And there are a number of reasons Pedroia won it over Mauer. Major market has a lot to do with it, and also Pedroia's mighty mouse stature. If Pedroia puts up the numbers he did this year and he's 6-0, 200 lbs like Ian Kinsler or 5-11, 200 lbs like Dan Uggla, or 6-1, 200 lbs like Chase Utley (to name 3 2B that had better years than Pedroia) he

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And the various sports writers outside of Boston of Minneapolis who have covered the two for 6 games each over the course of the last season know them well enough to know that Dustin Pedroia lets his teammates sleep on his couch and gently holds and caresses them as they weep in their sleep after their wives kick them out, while Joe Mauer molests his teammate's kids. This is why I hate 'intangibles'. You can pretty much say whatever you want to prove a point as long as you intangible it up enough. Dustin Pedroia doesn't have better stats than Joe Mauer but you want to give him the MVP? Intan

I don't know. He's younger than all of them, but not so young that I would be willing to put him above the rest of those guys who have produced more. On second thought, however, I would probably move BJ off the list and put Lincecum in his place. I'm enamored with BJ's insane patience, but the power dropoff last year is concerning. I guess I'd round out the top 10 like this: 6. BJ Upton 7. Longoria 8. Justin Upton 9. Ryan Braun 10. Felix Hernandez For fun, here's Bill James' list: 1. Prince Fielder, Milwaukee Brewers first baseman, age 24  2. Hanley Ramirez, Florida Marlins s

Woah, woah, woah. How the hell can anyone pretend to know or say that Pedroia is more loyal than Mauer to his team, or has more character and puts more effort into the game than him. That's a ridiculous thing to say, because none of that can be quantified or proven, and since none of know either of the guys personally there's no point discussing that. So to imply that Pedroia somehow wins the intangibles-off over Mauer is really out there. And the number of games played argument holds no water for me, because Mauer played an insane number of games at the most phyiscally demanding position

My top 5 most valuable using that standard would be: 1. Hanley Ramirez (24) 2. Prince Fielder (24) 3. Miguel Cabrera (25) 4. BJ Upton (24) 5. David Wright (25)

Maybe. It's entirely possible. Three guys who might've been more valuable all missed about 20-30 games (A-Rod, Bradley, Quentin). So yeah, it's either him or Joe Mauer. Both guys who play difficult defensive positions pretty well (Mauer's probably better), and both who don't hit for a ton of power (Pedroia's got the edge here). Mauer had a 37 point advantage in OBP, but their OPS were pretty much dead even. I'd probably give it to Mauer, because he plays a more difficult position and had a much better OBP. He also played 139 games at catcher, which is kind of absurd, if you think about it.