A-Rod gets the MVP over Ortiz

[Bosox21]

You have World Series RING not rings.

I didnt know the team shared one ring. If you read my post I was refering to the whole team.

[A'sDiehard]

And some of those overall results are crap. Manny and Hafner didn't even get a vote from someone? Podsednik? Santana got no votes? Bob Wickman? Cantu? I mean, ridiculous stuff there.

Excellent point about Hafner; I totally forgot about that guy.

[Fishercat]

To be fair, Derek Jeter was actually quite good this year. But Pods?

[Kingdom]

holy crap, GO CANTU!

[Providence A's]

As a hitter only, Ortiz only deserved a silver slugger, not the MVP.

[Bosox21]

Then why have a position that gets discriminated agianst? baseball put the position, DH, into the rules but yet it's held agianst a player if he plays it? Come on.

[Kingdom]

if the idea is that cause arod plays defense,
should andruw jones win mvp, because pujols made a lot of errors at first?

[love_that_reefer]

Pujols played a great first base no if's and's or but's. Good to see Arod win the MVP since he brought a lot more to the table than Ortiz did. Whoever voted for guys like Pods, Sexson and Sizemore should be banned from voting forever.

[Providence A's]

if you're going to discriminate against pitchers for the MVP because they don't play every day, then the DH shouldn't win because they don't even play the field.

[Kingdom]

14 errors at first ain't great

[HuskerFan2002]

A-Rod doesn't have the clutch hitting numbers, avg. w/ RISP, RBIs when they don't have a lead, game winning Hs & HRs... But he is the diva so it was damn close.

[love_that_reefer]

14 errors at first ain't great

!4 errors and still having a .992 fielding percentage is. Pujols had more putouts and more total chances than anyone by 200. If you actually watched Pujols play you would know better. Pujols did very good at first.

[Fishercat]

Doesn't that just mean, with some other smaller factors, that the Cards induce many more groundballs and perhaps not as many DPs? I'm not sure, I don't watch them, but that's the first thing that came to my mind.

As for defense and the MVP, I prefer to make the DH the base 0. If a player performs above that level, then he gets credit based on that, same with below.

[McKain]

Errors are a horrible statistic to judge a player by. The easiest way to demonstrate this is a comparison of two shortstops.

Let's say we have Derek Jeter at shortstop, a runner on third, and a ball is hit in between he and Alex Rodriguez. Jeter dives for it, stops the ball, but it bounces out of his glove and a runner reaches first. The runner at third does not advance. Jeter is given an error because the ball hit him and he could not contain it, but he got to the ball and prevented the runner from scoring.

Let's say we have Neifi Perez in the same situation, runner on first, ball hit between him and the third baseman. Neifi runs for the ball, doesn't even get to it, gets no hand on it, a runner scores, the runner reaches first.

Jeter receives an error for making a beneficial defensive play, Perez receives nothing for making a hurtful defensive play.

More errors happen in situations like that than one would think, so errors are really an extremely faulty stat in the first place. The only way to judge a player's defense is to watch all 162 games of their's, then watch every other person at that position play their 162 games. Until someone decides to do that, statistics are really a horrific way to measure defense and should not really be used; and if used, they should at least be something a little more telling than errors.

Now on to the actual issue of MVP, Alex Rodriguez was a better choice than David Ortiz. Let's take a look at some offensive numbers, which unlike defense, can actually portray how well someone did (though "clutch" is obviously not a facto rin them, since it's an immeasurable stat).

Rodriguez: .421 OBP, .610 SLG, good defense at third base, .350 Equivalent Average, 99.7 VORP
Ortiz: .397 OBP, .604 SLG, no defense at designated hitter, .336 Equivalent Average, 85.8 VORP

The numbers are quite telling here; Rodriguez was better in all facets of the game. Defense does not play much in terms of its value for me in determing the MVP, but clearly Rodriguez has an edge there. He had better sabermetrics numbers, he had more value as a player, etcetcetc. So why should Ortiz get it? Because he's "clutch"? Because some thing we can not measure, can not judge based on seeing it, somehow pushes him over the vast edge Rodriguez has in most other aspects? Please, that's a garbage argument. Rodriguez was the better choice.

The NL MVP is a different beast entirely to tackle.

Lee: .418 OBP, .662 SLG, great defense at first, .347 Equivalent Average, 106 VORP
Pujols: .430 OBP, .609 SLG, great defense at first, .344 Equivalent Average, 98.8 VORP
Jones: .347 OBP, .575 SLG, great defense in centerfield, .298 Equivalent Average (!!!!), 60.9 (!!!!) VORP

Jones is, unfortunately, probably going to win the MVP, because he "led" the Braves and was the "only good player the Braves had." But clearly, he wasn't all that good in comparison. I don't even consider Jones a candidate in the MVP race because his numbers are so much weaker than Pujols and Lee. Obviously I think Lee should win it, seeing as I presented numbers that demonstrate him being better than Pujols. however, I don't see any feasible way in which the voters did not vote Jones.

[DirtyKash]

Clutch might not be quantifiable in itself, but it exists. We know about it; we know who is clutch and who isn't clutch. And it's a factor in voting. Just because we can't measure it as a number doesn't mean we shouldn't consider clutchness, "big hits".

If Ortiz had played a mere 80-90 games or so at first base and played it averagely, he wins the MVP award hands down.