Nov
18
You must be this tall to win the MVP
ByYup. Dustin Pedroia is your AL MVP. As much as we don’t like him, Pedroia is a pretty good choice for the award. He had a truly outstanding offensive season at a position not known for its offense. And he’s short and gritty too.
But what is shocking are the other MVP votes. Someone with an MVP vote believed Jason Bartlett (.286/.329/.361 in 494 PAs) to be the fifth most valuable player in the league; someone else ranked Raul Ibañez tenth; one person awarded his first place vote to Francisco Rodriguez who wasn’t even one of the top relievers. Somehow, Justin Morneau finished second. It’s been a bad year for awards voting that makes sense.
The voters didn’t want to make Morneau a 2-time winner, so it all comes down to them ripping Jeter off 2 years ago, becauase Morneau should have won. It’s a joke that Pedroia is the MVP, he wasn’t even the best player on his team.
Great Greco-Cincinniraqi, them’s some stats! But is he Eddie Gaedel-esque in stature? Check those numbers.
It is more than numbers. The writers dont just sit there and crunch #’s when they vote for MVP.
Otherwise A-Rod should have been in the top 3.
Jon Heyman voted for K-Rod as the AL MVP.
Makes sense. K-Rod had 62 saves. In order to get a save, your team must win the game, ergo, saves is the single most important stat around, since it directly correlates to victory, much more than OPS and VORP and FLIRJ and XJB/QR or all the other made-up, voodoo stats.
K-Rod saved the Angels season. I can reasonably assume that without K-Rod’s 62 saves, instead of the Angels going 100-62 and winning the division, they would have gone 38-124 and finished in last place. Therefore, K-Rod is clearly the 2008 AL MVP.
And just to be consistently moronic, he voted for Ryan Howard as the NL MVP.
Pedroia also plays 2B and Youkilis plays 1B.
Pedroia is a decent choice.
better than Morneau.
Pedroia is a 2nd baseman, you nitwit.
H’ES TEH STEVE NAHS OF BASEBLAL!!!!1!!!
BIG PAPI SI SHAQ!!1!1!!!
STILL THINIK DAMIAN JACKSNO IS GOOD THO
Oh boy. Hammered at 3pm on a weekday. Having a tough week, are we?
WTF? SORYR CUSSED
YOU THINK CORA”S BEETTER UNIVERRRSITY WASHINGOTN SEATLE JAGOFFFFFFFFFFF?
having fun. that’s fun. yes, i am bored. please god no AJ for 80 mil; I’m trying to mute that out.
Excellent use of “Child labor” tag, Ben.
Why does everyone love Morneau. His stats are inflated in baggie dome. He’s good and i wish the Yanks had him @ first, but he never plays like an MVP
Except that the Metrodome ranked as a pitchers park in 2008, it was 28th in runs, just above Chavez Ravine…. therefore it wouldn’t help Morneau.
Meanwhile Fenway was 5th, making it a hitters park
Meanwhile Fenway was 5th, making it a hitters park.
Wrong. When evaluating Red Sox pitcher’s, you should consider Fenway a hitter’s park. When evaluating Red Sox hitters, consider it a pitchers park.
It’s science.
For Diamond Cutters, I’m Peter Gammons, RSPN.
Wouldn’t that have more to do with the Twins pitching/offense when evaluating over one year………….
obviously a factor, but twins ERA was 7th in the league, so nothing special, and their slugging was 10th… though OPS and Average were 4 and 3rd and they had a team OPS+ 0f 104, so none of those appear to be a big swing
whatever arod will win next year
When Selig told Pedroia he’d won the award, Pedroia responded that he didn’t care about individual accomplishments, only the team mattered. Selig then asked Pedroia to make an appearance at a press conference on MLB.tv to have the award presented to him, which Pedroia reluctantly agreed to, provided that he can wear his dirty uniform to.
Dustin Pedroia never dusts off his uniform.
Carl Pavano, by contrast, wears a very tidy uniform.
Lol
I can’t wait for Peter Gammons’ 5,000 word suck-off fest followed by three bullet points explaining why CC Sabathia will never be a Yankee.
He’s really obsessed with the Giants or Dodgers making a CC run.
He’s really obsessed with
the Giants or Dodgers making a CC runtrying to talk the baseball world into somehow stopping CC from coming to the Yankees.So do the Red Sox fire Terry Francona then? You have the most valuable player in the league…the guy who finished 3rd for most valuable player in the league…and an “ALL STAR” Catcher at the helm…and you fail to win the World Series….
Does Terry Francona get fired?!?!?
If you look at Jeter’s numbers in 1999 and 2006, they absolutely demolish Pedroia’s in every way possible. And in 1999, his best year ever….he finished like 6th.
Pedroia wasn’t even the MVP of his own team…but Youkillis is fatter and uglier and more boring so he loses out to the flashier smaller guy on the most trendy team in baseball.
At the end of the day…Who’s going to sell more t-shirts?? Let’s vote for him I guess….
if Jeter had his 1999 season in 2008, he would have won.
the problem is that there were a LOT of great seasons in 1999.
Jeter probably should have won in 2006, but there was a pretty great case for Joe Mauer too.
^morneau
Nope, Mauer is correct. Mauer was the better and more valuable player to his team than Morneau was.
Na I think he meant Mauer
yeah. i did.
Mauer
then Santana
THEN Morneau
ahh, i think i misunderstood what he was trying to say… nevermind
in any event, cap’n got robbed
As much as I can’t stand Pedroia he’s a fantastic player. I’m not sure he’s the MVP though. I really think there should be two awards - the MVP award which goes to the player that is most valuable to his team - and the Player of the Year or something like that. Pedroia is definitely Player of the Year, those are great numbers he put up.
But could Boston have made the playoffs without him? It’s likely. The Yankees record would, most likely, have been worse without Mo. MVPs shouldn’t always be the guys with the best stats but the players whose teams are a lot less competitive without them.
this makes no sense.
the Sox would have been much less competitive without Pedroia. how can you suggest otherwise?
That’s true but they still could have made the playoffs. They had a rpetty decent line up even without Ortiz and Manny in it. Someone already posted that he wasn’t even the Sox’s best player - Youkilis was.
Basically what I was trying to say was that the choice shouldn’t be on stats alone but what the player means to the team. Boston can win without him and they can make the playoffs without him.
Joe Mauer is much more valuable to a mediocre Twins team than Pedroia is to a good Red Sox team.
ok, so now you have just redefined the MVP to mean this:
“best player on the team that made the playoffs by the slimmest margin”
does that make sense? is that at all fair? for example:
player A is worth 10 wins, but his team finishes 11 games ahead in the division.
player B is worth 5 wins, but his team finishes 4 games ahead in the division.
how can you argue that player B is more valuable than player A?
if you switched Pedroia with Cano this year, the Yankees would probably have finished ahead of the Sox.
I’m not redefining the MVP to a player on a playoff team. Pujols won the NL award and rightly so. He was the most valuable player to the Cards. It’s not about making the playoffs or by what margin a team makes the playoffs. It’s how valuable that player is to that team. Typically they come from teams in the playoffs.
That’s why I first argued for two awards MVP and POY. Pedroia is the player of the year. His numbers prove it. As far as MVP goes it’s debatable.
Would you agree that Youkilis was more valuable than Pedroia based on their numbers? If you do, then how can you argue that Pedroia is the MVP of the entire AL if he’s not the MVP of his team? If Boston can make the playoffs without Pedroia, how valuable is he really?
Would you agree that Youkilis was more valuable than Pedroia based on their numbers?
no. i would not.
it’s close, but i’d go with Pedroia.
OK. Why Pedroia over Youkilis?
i just feel that Pedroia’s output from 2B was more valuable than Youkilis’ production from 1B.
but it was close.
it could probably go either way.
I see that but Youk did play some 3B as well. I think it was something like 30 games.
To me, he’s a more valuable player for that plus his ability to protect the heart of the line up make him a better asset to Boston than Pedroia.
The MVP definition is ridiculous to begin with. A players value is what it is, regardless of which team he plays for.
A guy being a great player on a playoff team only illustrates that along with himself, he has valuable teammates.
A guy being a great player on a non-playoff team illustrates that there isn’t too much value on that team outside of him.
But his personal value is what his numbers and contributions say it is. A guy isn’t “more valuable” just because is pitching staff is stellar and leads them to the playoffs.
Anyone who thinks the MVP should only come from a playoff team does not have a fucking brain.
“Basically what I was trying to say was that the choice shouldn’t be on stats alone but what the player means to the team.”
In that case, the MVP should go to the best player on the worst team, because what that player means to the team is just about EVERYTHING!
“Joe Mauer is much more valuable to a mediocre Twins team than Pedroia is to a good Red Sox team.”
I’m sure you have grids, graphs, and pie charts to back this up, but hey, I’ll just take your word for it.
“Boston can win without him and they can make the playoffs without him.”
Do YOU even believe the shit you’re typing?
On mlb.com, they called Pedroia Mr. November.
Fuck them, Jeter is Mr. November.
I saw that. Bullshit.
When you wrote that, I was all, “Fuck naw, there’s no way they really did that.” Then I looked it up…
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/articl.....p;c_id=mlb
Pedroia named AL MVP
Teammate Youkilis gets two first-place votes, finishes third
By Ian Browne / MLB.com
BOSTON — Just call him Mr. November. Or better yet, refer to Dustin Pedroia as the Most Valuable Player of the American League…
——————————————————-
OH MY GODDING GOD GOD. IAN BROWNE, YOU STUPID LITTLE FUCKING JERKOFF. I WILL LITERALLY SLAP YOU IN THE FACE IF I EVER SEE YOU IN PERSON.
You know, I was actually okay with Pedroia winning it, because, all things considered, I though he had a great year and nobody else was more deserving. But now, after seeing the existence of that article, FUCK THAT, I would have been more okay with shitty-ass K_Rod winning the MVP if it keeps ass-tards like Ian Browne from giving a title like “Mr. November” to a person who:
A) has never played a game, nor hit a homerun, in November;
B) Isn’t the actual person who already has played in said game and hit said homerun in November, thus coining the fucking phrase “Mr. November” in the first place.
What’s next? We all start calling Big Papi “The Sultan of Swat”? Jacoby Ellsbury is “The Red Sox Clipper”? Diasuke Matsuzaka is “Louisiana Lightning”?
FUCK YOU IAN BROWNE. I HOPE YOU GET GONORRHEA OF THE CANCER OF THE AIDS AND DIE.
P.S. Bonus points for further exposing your Sox Bias for mentioning in the sub-headline Kevin Youkilis, who came in THIRD, and not Morneau for coming in SECOND. You assclown.
in the words of steve…
i enjoyed this post
Ummm…wouldn’t he be Japanese lightning?
Of course he’s the MVP… look at that intensity!!!
http://i130.photobucket.com/al.....edrioa.png
Could Robinson Cano pull that off? No, he couldn’t. Because he’s a lazy, shiftless Mexican or something. He does not play the game the right way. Dustin Pedroia does.
Is that a real ad? I ask in all seriousness.
I’m not sure, but I know they ran an ad campaign like that.
Well, I know the “We’re all witnesses” campaign, but I had no idea Scrappy McGritterson was part of it.
/Nike Whoosh
We’re all witnesses…to irrational worship for short white prematurely balding guys by baseball writers.
/Nike Whoosh
I think he’s balding right on time.
It’s real.
I am now much sadder than I was 5.7 minutes ago.
Pedroia is so lame. Anybody notice that dumb facial tic he has? He constantly opens his mouth up wide. I’m guessing its from all the cocks that frequent that orifice.
He’s just being a good teammate.
http://www.instantrimshot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji-cT58rgNc
The Instant Rimshot is great
He just hit a home run in that pic… WHAMMY !!!
Pedroia: The bottom line is you’ve been spending a lot of time with this agent, Manny… You’re a member of the Boston Red Sox Baseball Team!
ManRam: That’s a given.
Pedroia: We need you… Hell, I need you… I’m a mess without you… I miss you so damn much… I miss being with you, I miss being near you… I miss your laugh… I miss your scent; I miss your musk. WHEN ALL THIS GETS SORTED OUT, I TIHNK YOU AND ME SHOULD GET AN APARTMENT TOGETHER!
Ortiz: Take it easy, Dusty. Why don’t you sit the next few plays out, stop talking for a while.
How the hell was pedroia Mr. November? Baseball wasn’t played in November this year and hasn’t ever except 2001. Jeter actually has a legit reason to be mr. november and captain october
Cuz he wins MVP in November lol.. Its not like other players have won mvp in november tho ……………………….
they are saying b/c he has won the ROY and now the MVP. which are given out in November. it’s dumb, but that’s the context.
That’s not context. It’s lazy, plagaristic bullshit.
If you take widdle Dusty out of widdle Fenway you get Adam Kennedy or the original gritty player David Eckstien.
I get what your saying but I dont agree with you
I don’t even get what he’s saying.
He’s comparing Dustin Pedroia to Adam Kennedy. You get that???
Why was K-rod so high on that list?
Mike Mussina even deserves to be in front of him
yeah put Dustin Pedroia in Comerica or any NL West stadium, see what happens
Wrong.. He did get some help in Fenway but he’s a solid ballplay all round.. What ya see is what ya get with him..
Lol ballplay………meant ballplayER
Career home/road splits
Home: 162 games .339/.392/.501
Road: 165 games .288/.347/.418
Still better than Eckstein or Kennedy..Plus hes only 2 years in.. Hes a solid ballplayer but Cano will out do him next year
Cano will never outdo Pedroia, until he learns how to work the count..
I think the time of comparing these two is over for a long time.
Wrong as usual.
Solid != MVP. Bobby Abreu is a solid ballplayer, but no one is advocating him for MVP, are they?
Also, you’re exactly right. What you see is what you get with Pedroia, which is a solid player whose numbers were definitely aided by playing half his games at Fenway. I’m sure someone can cite some stats to prove my point. Here are some rudimentary ones:
Home: .344/.393/.519, OPS .911
Away: .309/.359/.468, OPS .827
He did hit 10 HR on the road, vs 7 at home, but only 19 doubles vs 35 at home.
so, his numbers were excellent on the road and incredible at home?
is that an argument against him winning?
remember, this is a middle infielder….
No, it is an argument against people saying that playing at Fenway has no bearing on his numbers (not you).
Not really.. Im just sayin hes not adam kennedy or eckstein with out fenway… He’d still be a top 2b in the league.. Your probably right he wouldnt of won mvp this year if you took fenway out.. but he is still young and developing and could be an mvp candidate in the future even if hes not with the sox.. His first 2 years were good.. Maybe he will have a shitty year next year like Cano did this year..
gotcha, my bad
He’d probably get more hits, because there’s more room for balls to drop in.
Remember how Placido Polanco’s career went down the tubes as soon as he got to the Tigers?
If Twins make playoffs does Mauer or Morneua win it ?
If Santana was on the Yankees, does he win it?
If A-Rod had embraced Kabbalah sooner, does he win it?
If Quentin doesn’t break his wrist, does he win it?
YES
Does K-rod even deserve to be on the ballot?
What’s the matter? I think I actually saw one or two messages here without a “fuck” or a”shit” or someone else wanting to die from Aids.
That’s a real classy clientele here. There must be a lot of insecurity.
I normally do try to stay classy. But Ian Browne is a fuckhole for writing that, and you know it.
I’m sure Sox fans would just love hearing some Yankee beat writer refer to Robinson Cano “The Splendid Splinter.” Root for your team, fine. But show proper respect for your opponents.
I agree with you Tommy, there was no need to break out the Mr. November monicker. Jeter earned that and you’re absolutely right that Red Sox fans wouldn’t appreciate it if one of our beloved nicknames was suddenly assigned to a Yankee who hadn’t earned it.
Hmmm…a(n apparent) Red Sox fan trolling a Yankee board discussing whether Dustin Pedroia is a viable MVP. That’s not insecure at all. Nope, no siree.
I’ve been a Yankee fan for > 40 years. Trolling a board? Nope, I come here daily. I just made the mistake of reading a thread here with greater than 50 comments. It doesn’t take many more than that for the vitriol to come out.
This year will undoubtedly go down as one of the weakest MVP seasons in MLB recent history. Not only are Pedroia’s #s relatively paltry in comparison to almost any other MVP, but his level of competition was equally craptastic.
In ten years, people are going to look at this crop of MVp votes and say, “really, that’s the best the 2008 AL had to offer?”
At least New England can pretend that this really means something to make them sleep better at night, what with the Sox losing game 7, Tom Brady being gone, and the Bruins being the bruins. Between Pedroia and the Celtics, every little Sully can stay warm in those cold winter nights through sheer grit and grind…
Someones Boston hatred is clearly effecting how they deal with things.
The guy had a great yr. Give respect and move on. The guy was a monster at the plate and absolutely carried a good team for whole stretches this yr with Manny gone and Ortiz hurt.
“A monster at the plate?” Really. Hmm, define “monster” for me. Are you measuring that in OPS, OPS+, HR, Avg, RBI, R, or what?
Because in not a single one of those categories did Dustin put up anything resembling “monster.”
He “absolutely carried” the Sox huh? Again, please define that. By that do you mean that he alone was responsible for the Sox winning games for long stretches? Because, of course, that simply isn’t true. Do you mean he went on really really hot streaks? Well, perhaps.
But no, I have no hatred for the Red Sox or Boston.
What I said is a fact and there is no way shape or form that you can deny it. Pedroia’s #’s will go down as some of the worst for a MVP, and no amount of dirt doggedness, scrapitude, or clutchiness can change that
I was looking at the draft that year on baseball-reference.com and we could have picked pedroia, instead we pick Brett Smith! What happened to him anyway?
You can make your head hurt thinking about who we could have picked the last 6 years.
Our drafts have been embarrassing.
You can make your head hurt thinking about who we could have picked the last 6 years.
So can the other 29 MLB teams.
Our drafts have been embarrassing.
Not any more so than the other 29 MLB teams. In fact, lately they’ve been pretty good.
Our drafts have been pretty good?
Really?
Besides Joba who’s been good the past 5 years?
You going to give me a Double A OF who has tools? Ok. I’ll give you Jackson even though he is raw. Hughes? Still got hope and hes young. Ok. Who else?
Last years draft was a flat out disaster. And thats assuming Bleich will be decent.
Ben, you’ve got to stop it with griping about beat writers and their gaffes. I’ve noticed three posts in the last week or so where you’ve taken the chance to take swipes at professional sports writers for their errors, or for what you take to be poor judgement.
Seriously, it detracts from the value of your blog, which I enjoy a great deal. Enough with the ad hominem. Let’s just talk baseball.
Wait a sec. Part of our whole thing around here is that professional beat writers aren’t anything special. Why should we give these people passes for voting for Jason Bartlett as the fifth most valuable player in the American League?
An ad hominem attack would consist of my attacking someone baselessly. We have a perfectly good gripe here.
Totally not ad hominem.
Ad hominem would be: “Fredor Hayek beat his wife, so we should discount his thoughts on the Austrian school of economics.”
We’re talking about these writers in the context of their profession. What’s wrong about that?
Why shouldn’t they or anyone comment on when and where the “pros” screw up?
Isn’t that one of the perks of a blog?
I’m glad they and others point out what writers screwed up. This is why the old school writers hate blogs and new media. They actually have to defend their points and actually work.
Hey guys, is it true that one voter left Pedroia off his ballot completely? If so do you know who it was and would you mind providing his name/affiliation?
If I can find out who, I’ll let you know. I’d love to know how included Bartlett as well.
Gammons says Youkilis was more worthy then Morneau.
And ESPN’s Next Level stat to day was OPS with RISP.
Are you kidding me?
I wonder if Peter Gammons masterbated when he found out a red sox won an mvp
The Gammons hatred is over the top. The guy is one of the best in the business at what he does. And he loves some Yankees just as much as he loves some Sox. You ever hear him utter a bad word about any of the Yankee core from 94-2008?
Are you serious? I respect Peter Gammons as a Hall of Fame journalist, but he would be among the first to admit that he himself is a huge Red Sox fan. Gimme a break.
Yep and Red Sox fans worth their salt will admit the same thing. He’s a homer, no doubt. He does says lots of good things about the Yankees, but that’s probably because he’s an honest person. I’m sometimes forced to say good things about the Yankees even though I don’t really want to. I try to give credit where credit is due.
This year was a very weak MVP class in both leagues. With that said I am a fan of Pedroia. I wish our more talented 2nd baseman could take some cues from his style of play, his attitude and his gumption.
well, in the AL it was.
what we saw in the NL was one of the greatest offensive seasons of the last 20 years, non-steroids division.
Alex Rodriguez places eighth? I’m not saying he should of won the damn thing, but his numbers clearly place him closer to the top than some of his collegues.
These awards are a crock of shit.
This is why I don’t follow this brainless nonsense like MVP awards, and Cy Young, and these inane popularity contests that cheapen baseball and degrade the product by destroying credibility. Dustin Pedroia? Are you kidding me? And Derek Jeter a couple of years ago with the type of season he had does not get the award? Review the numbers as well as the clutch performances Jeter gave all year, that year and compare them to Pedroia’s. All that tells me is that the baseball writers have their heads up their volcanoes. They lost me and my revenue. I do not go to baseball games anymore.
So you don’t go to the games because the BBWAA are a bunch of monkeys? That’s a bit of an extreme reaction.