The BBWAA Gets It Right?
Joe Mauer. Albert Pujols. Zack Greinke. Tim Lincecum. The 2009 winners of the most prestigious awards baseball has to offer — and they were actually the four guys who deserved the accolades. It’s almost as if the sabermetricians have won the battle for the minds of the baseball world. Almost.
The full voting results here:
AL MVP
NL MVP
AL Cy Young
NL Cy Young
Mauer was a no-brainer in the traditional sense, not just in the sabermetrical sense. He was a good-fielding catcher who hit .365, winning his THIRD batting title. He has a chance to be the greatest catcher of all-time. That baseball writers almost voted him the AL MVP unanimously is not a massive development. Pujols winning unanimously isn’t a revelation either. Sure, it’s awesome that the right guys won the awards, but when you dig a little further into the balloting you still see some disappointing and baffling choices.
Chase Utley was left off 14 ballots. I chalk this up to the never-ending under-appreciation of Utley’s greatness. But what can you expect from the rest of the baseball world when I actually had an argument with a Phillies fan who said that Jayson Werth had a better year. Come to the Mets, Utley — I’ll respect you.
Ben Zobrist was left off 17 ballots. Basically the AL equivalent of Utley this season. I can understand that he doesn’t quite have the name recognition because he came out of nowhere, but by WAR he was easily one of the top 3 players in the AL. But since a lot of that value came from fielding, and he didn’t hit any magical numbers in his counting stats, he got screwed.
Ryan Howard finished ahead of Prince Fielder. The Phillies made the playoffs. The Brewers didn’t. I’m pretty sure it’s as simple as that. Or the voters really like five-dollar footlongs.
Mariano Rivera finished ahead of Zack Greinke. So the guy who ran away with the Cy Young award with a 2.16 ERA in 229.1 innings is less valuable than the robot who threw a quarter the amount of innings (66.1) to a 1.76 ERA? And Greinke actually had a lower FIP! Yankee mystique.
Jeremy Affeldt was put on a ballot. Speechless.
And that’s just a sampling from the MVP balloting. Now, I’m not saying there can’t be some differing opinions, but these five things are just WRONG.
The Cy Young voting is admittedly much more encouraging. The fact that Greinke and Lincecum won with 16 and 15 wins, respectively, is a huge step — but no pitcher hitting 20 wins for the first time ever might have had an effect on that. A sad fact is that in the NL, Adam Wainwright actually got more first-place votes than Lincecum — no doubt due to his 19 wins. A 20th win probably would have pushed him over the top. Chris Carpenter fell in between the two, and there was a huge outcry about Keith Law, who left Carpenter off his ballot.
The Cy Young balloting only includes three slots, and I thought Law’s reasoning was totally sound with regards to voting Javier Vasquez second and Wainwright third. I believe it boiled down to the fact that Carpenter pitched under 200 innings, and I think that’s a fairly reasonable stance. For him, it was Lincecum and then the next three guys in a toss-up, anyhow. It’s not like he voted for Jeremy Affeldt for MVP. And looking at the balloting, he wasn’t the only one to leave Carpenter off. This other guy must have voted Lincecum-Wainwright-Haren. That’s arguably a worse ballot.
…almost as bad as the guy who voted Justin Verlander first in the AL Cy Young voting — who I really hope wasn’t the same guy who screwed up Mauer’s unanimous win by penciling in Miguel Cabrera first. He needs to be stripped of his voting privileges if so.
So 2009 is wrapped up now. It’s time to look forward to the hot stove, while wondering how inefficiently the Mets will spend their money.
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