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Lammycat

By Lammycat,
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bobbob1313

bobbob1313

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How much better might the Phillies have been if they'd had Pujols at firstbase instead of Howard?

 

Going by WARP, Pujols was worth a full 8 wins more than Howard (~2.5 just by defense alone). That would have put the Phils at 100 wins. If Pujols has the season he had for the Phillies, he's the unanimous choice.

 

It's absurd.

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bobbob1313

bobbob1313

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Pretty good interview with the FJM guys here

:upset

 

Most people know him as the late character actor Michael Jeter's little brother, but to me he'll always be the only baseball player whose tears cure malaria in whales. There's been a lot of talk about Jeter in the last few days. Men who deal with numbers have declared him overrated, almost to the point that many are now saying he's underrated. This discussion bores me. How can you overrate or underrate a glorious sunset? A sunset just is. That's Jeter.

 

Ah, that place was brilliant.

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MrRain422

MrRain422

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This guy had Pujols 7th on his ballot, and the 4th best firstbaseman, behind Ryan Howard, Carlos Delgado(!), and Prince Fielder. The guys he voted for 2nd and 3rd place both played 2/3rds of the season in the American League. Some writers shouldn't be allowed to vote.
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bobbob1313

bobbob1313

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This guy had Pujols 7th on his ballot, and the 4th best firstbaseman, behind Ryan Howard, Carlos Delgado(!), and Prince Fielder. The guys he voted for 2nd and 3rd place both played 2/3rds of the season in the American League. Some writers shouldn't be allowed to vote.

 

 

And I thought Ryan Ludwick had just as much to do with keeping the Cards in the hunt as Pujols did.

:frusty :frusty :dontgetit

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bobbob1313

bobbob1313

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"I see it this way: Someone who doesn't take his team to the playoffs doesn't deserve to win the MVP." - Albert Pujols

So Albert Pujols is dumb, is what you are saying?

 

Also:

 

"I think the writers made the right choice in 2006," Pujols reiterated Monday. "He did deserve it."

 

Just as Pujols believed he earned it this year. "I wasn’t surprised at all," he said.

 

Voting was completed before the playoffs began.

 

"I’m happy I didn’t have to make that decision," Pujols said on a conference call from his St. Louis home. "What you do for your team. The players who take their teams to the playoffs should have some consideration."

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mfwahl

mfwahl

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I just thought it was funny.

 

I definitely think he deserves it this year. But I can understand his former frustration. Most valuable doesn't mean best so it's kind of ambiguous.

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bjorn_skurj

bjorn_skurj

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"I see it this way: Someone who doesn't take his team to the playoffs doesn't deserve to win the MVP." - Albert Pujols

Well, how about that.

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MrRain422

MrRain422

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Ryan Howard got second place. They play the same position. Pujols dominated Howard offensively this year, by no matter what measure you use. Pujols is an excellent fielder, and Howard is a terrible one. There is absolutely no facet of the game at which Pujols wasn't substantially better than Howard. There are several other Phillies who have a better case for MVP than Ryan Howard. To give the award to Ryan Howard instead of Albert Pujols would be to pretty much award the MVP by selecting a random player from the best team.

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bjorn_skurj

bjorn_skurj

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As much as it pains me to type this, the Phillies won the World Series. While Howard had an up-and-down year, he was big for them down the stretch, making him a quite valuable player.

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MrRain422

MrRain422

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It doesn't matter that they won the World Series. Voting was done before the playoffs began. And there are other Phillies who had good years at the plate but aren't such defensive liabilities, so I think it could be pretty easily argued that Howard wasn't even the most valuable player on his own team. Chase Utley, for example, was a better hitter throughout the season than Howard was, and plays a harder position better than Howard plays his easier one.

 

Howard was very good down the stretch. He was also absolutely terrible for several other lengthy stretches of the season. The award is for the whole season, not just the last 4 weeks. Should a player whose team won a close playoff chase be favored over a guy who played better all year, but whose team dominated their division and clinched early? Sure, the Phillies might not had made the playoffs if he hadn't had a great September, but they also might have made the playoffs a lot more easily if he hadn't had a terrible April, June and August.

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MrRain422

MrRain422

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By the way, the article by the Milwaukee writer who voted Pujols 7th came from this as always fantastic King Kaufman article on the subject:

 

 

King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008 04:00 PST

Pujols first, daylight second

 

The baseball writers got it right Monday, though not without their fair share of bang your head on the desk nonsense. They voted Albert Pujols the National League Most Valuable Player.

 

I used to care a lot more about this sort of thing than I do now, which I don't anymore. There was a time when Brad Lidge getting two first-place votes, or Ryan Howard getting 12 of them, or Jose Valverde getting the same number of votes as Jose Reyes, would have really toasted my cookies.

 

But I got tired of arguing about what the word "valuable" means. I think the most valuable player in the league is the best player. Many members of the Baseball Writers Association of America, who vote on the awards, operate under different definitions.

 

I'd tell you what they were but I don't understand them and they change from voter to voter and year to year. The methodology seems to be: Figure out who you like as MVP, then fashion the current year's definition of "valuable" to fit.

 

It's not that it's hard to argue with that kind of logic. It's that it's boring. There just isn't an interesting conversation to be had between someone who believes the MVP award should go to the best player in the league and someone like this guy, who turned in a ballot that had Pujols in seventh place. He had Pujols down as the fourth-best first baseman in the National League. Think about that one for a second.

 

Fourth most "valuable," that is. Whatever that is. The guy, Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, explains what it is, and it sounds to me like someone explaining why there's a giant meatball watching over us all and keeping us safe. "I thought Ryan Ludwick had just as much to do with keeping the Cards in the hunt as Pujols did," Haudricourt writes, and I respect anyone's right to practice his religion even if I think it's a little nuts.

 

So if the writers want to give the American League MVP to Justin Morneau again Tuesday, like they did in 2006, let them. I don't think they will. I think they'll give it to Dustin Pedroia. I'd give it to Joe Mauer but really, I can't stress this enough: They can give it to Denard Span for all I care. They can give it to Bobby Crosby. They can give it to Bing.

 

A conversation about who the best player in the league is in a given year, that's a lot more interesting. Except this year in the National League, when Pujols was practically the best team, never mind the best player.

 

He was so good he even fit this year's definition of "valuable." Whatever it was.

― King Kaufman

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