Donn's Thoughts on Men in Tight Pants

MVP or MOP?

It’s that time of year again. The pennant races are wrapping up, and the true gamers are stepping up to carry their team to a playoff berth. You can’t put the television on any sports related programming and not hear some MVP chatter from anchors and analysts alike. It’s an exciting time that leads to an exciting discussion. Right?

Not so much. Unfortunately, the baseball writers that vote on and ultimately determine the winner of this award each year have completely destroyed any and all credibility that this award once had.

A few years ago, Alex Rodriguez won the AL award while piling up ridiculous numbers for the last place Texas Rangers. Last year, Ryan Howard earned the NL honors while accumulating an awe-inspiring number of home runs for his third place Philadelphia Phillies. To be sure, these players had absolutely remarkable seasons. However, a question remains regarding whether or not these players were truly baseball’s Most Valuable Player. Or to put it in other words, were these guys so valuable to their respective teams that the teams would not have achieved what they did were these players not on their teams?

Actually, no, and the reason is simple: THEIR TEAMS WON NOTHING. How valuable can a player be to his team if that team does not even stand to make the playoffs? There’s little doubt that ARod’s Rangers would have still come in last place were they forced to play without his presence in the lineup. Similarly, what’s the difference between Howard’s Phillies coming in third or fourth place? As the old saying goes, second place is first loser. So how much more worthless is a third place finish?

I say all of that to say this: Major League Baseball has instituted an award to be given to the best offensive player at each position – it’s called the Silver Slugger award. As such, the MVP awards should go to the players that truly are the most valuable to their teams and not merely the players with the prettiest numbers as has become the common practice. Obviously, carrying a team to the playoffs should be an obvious prerequisite for the award. So where would such a philosophy leave us regarding this year’s award winners?

In the American League, there’s no doubt in my mind that the aforementioned Alex Rodriguez is most deserving of the honor, with David Ortiz (.325/33/114) and Vladimir Guerrero (.322/26/123/) getting a tip of the hat. Rodriguez has put up staggering offensive numbers (.309/53/151/24SBs) while carrying his team all the way back from trailing the Tigers by 8.5 games to capture the AL Wild Card.

The National League, however, paints a more competitive picture. Matt Holliday(.338/36/132/11SBs), Jimmy Rollins (.296/30/91/37SBs), Ryan Howard (.265/43/128), David Wright (.321/30/105/34SBs), Eric Byrnes (.288/21/82/49SBs), Ryan Braun(.325/33/94/14SBs), and Prince Fielder (.290/50/119) have all accumulated impressive numbers while carrying their respective teams to playoff contention. Due to the overall murkiness of the NL playoff picture at the time of this writing, it’s impossible to name one odds-on favorite for the award from this group. My solution however, would be to rank them as follows:

Holliday (Great numbers carrying a team devoid of big talent to protect him)
Fielder (Great power numbers, takes a hit due to solid support from Braun & JJ Hardy)
Wright (Great all around numbers, but not as much power as Holliday)
Rollins (Takes a significant hit for being surrounded by the best offense in the league)
Braun (Rookie put up great numbers despite not starting for the first month of the year)
Howard (Takes a significant hit for being surrounded by the best offense in the league)
Byrnes (Good numbers on a relatively unknown team, but not quite MVP-quality)

Then eliminate each player whose team fails to make the playoffs. The player who subsequently remains at the top of the list is my NL MVP winner. Then again, I had forgotten that this has become the Most Outstanding Player award - might as well engrave Miguel Cabrera or Albert Pujols’ name into the trophy.