Justice was served in baseball land today, as the mythical beast known as Albert Pujols won his second NL MVP award. While the BBWAA should be commended for giving the award to the right guy, I still have a beef with the voters, specifically Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Not only did Mr. Haudricourt have Pujols at #7 on his ballot (somehow behind THREE other first basemen), he managed to have three Brewers on his ballot. (h/t KLaw)
Three Brewers on his ballot. Three Brewers.
So, let’s get this straight. A writer who covers the Milwaukee Brewers for a living used three of the ten votes on his MVP ballot to vote for players who play for the local team he covers. If that’s not fishy enough, Haudricourt also claims that he likes “to weight (sic) my voting to teams in the playoff hunt because I think that puts more pressure on players and separates the men from the boys,” which would be perfectly reasonable if he didn’t have Carlos Delgado three spots ahead of Pujols on his ballot. Let’s review.
Carlos Delgado: .271-.353-.518, 71 XBH, 124-72 K/BB ratio, 38.2 VORP for a team that finished 1 GB of the Wildcard
Albert Pujols: .357-.462-.653, 81 XBH, 54/104 K-BB ratio, 98.7 VORP for a team that finished 4 GB of the Wildcard
But Mike, Carlos Delgado didn’t start hitting until midseason, you say. Well, let’s look at their stats after Delgado finally started hitting at the end of June:
Delgado: .308-.392-.626, 47 XBH, 80 RBI
Pujols: .356-.444-.664, 50 XBH, 73 RBI
LOGIC FAIL. Pujols still has him beat, and this doesn’t even consider his Gold Glove caliber defense. I wonder if Pujols’ 7th place vote has anything to do with him residing in the same division as Haudricourt’s beloved Brew Crew? If writers can not put their personal biases aside, they should not be voting for baseball’s major awards, period. Pujols was far and away the best player in the game this year (Hanley Ramirez finished second in VORP at 79.4), and to have him seventh on a MVP ballot is just ignorant.
/rant
Meanwhile, back in the Bronx, the Yanks managed to pull off some under-the-radar roster moves over the weekend. Are you ready? Here it goes: Jon Albaladejo, Andrew Brackman, Chien-Ming Wang, and Jorge Posada were activated from the 60 day DL. That’s it. Groundbreaking stuff, I know. The Depth Chart is up to date; they need some starting pitching. Like, bad.
Elsewhere, the first free agent came off the board as LHP Jeremy Affeldt inked a 2 yr, $8M deal with the Giants. Great signing by Brian Sabean, locking up an effective and underrated bullpen arm before the reliever market exploded. And because Affeldt was a Type-B free agent, we now officially have a Sandwich Round in next year’s draft. Make sure you check out our 2009 Draft Order Tracker as free agents sign throughout the winter.
So here’s your open thread for the night. Talk baseball, Browns-Bills, Rangers-Senators, whatever you like. Just don’t be a dick.
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