Keith Law says it was "an awful pick," but Justin Morneau is your 2006 AL MVP. Who should have won?
| Morneau |  101 (35.31%) |
| Derek Jeter | 61 (21.33%) |
| David Ortiz | 6 (2.10%) |
| Frank Thomas | 6 (2.10%) |
| Jermaine Dye | 6 (2.10%) |
| Joe Mauer | 55 (19.23%) |
| Travis Hafner | 17 (5.94%) |
| Vlad Guerrero | 0 (0.00%) |
| Johan Santana | 29 (10.14%) |
| Other (specify) | 5 (1.75%) |
Hopefully the Jays have some good PR people who can push that a little bit, to give a positive buzz to some of the fairweather or less-informed baseball fans in Toronto.
And I say that as someone who was born in the same city as Mr. Morneau. ;-)
Howard's winning was wrong, but defensible. At least Howard hit 58 jacks. Morneau had pretty much a run-of-the-mill good season for a 1B. The voters voted for the best story, rather than the most valuable player.
That's Canadian pride for you. My happiness that a good Canadian boy like Justin won it overwhelmingly negates any ill feelings over whether he won it unfairly. Congratulations, Justin!
(That said, I voted Jeter. Don't tell Don Cherry.)
Yay, MVP Trifecta!
p.s. Hey Keith, it's not an awful pick. The last half of the season, people were saying Jeter or Morneau. Or maybe Ortiz and Dye (with an outside chance). Morneau put up great numbers and was a complete player. The Twins were carried by him. So stop being such a jerk. It's not like this pick came out of nowhere.
I'm biased in favour of positional players (I agree with Joe Morgan that in the Cy Young, pitchers have their own "most valuable" award). If I literally had to choose the "most valuable player"--meaning a cornerstone player, the one who, based on last season's performance, provided the most value and whom I would most want to build my team around--I would choose Santana.
I would rank Mauer just behind Jeter, and Morneau, Ortiz, Thomas, Dye and Hafner a close third. Thomas and Ortiz were immensely valuable to their respective clubs (and Oakland made the playoffs) but neither was the league's MVP.
I am amazed that Morneau is winning this poll. Anybody care to make the case for him over Mauer?
a seperate award for closer of the year, so they don't win the Cy Young. A reliever can win this too (look at all those holds!).
the Cy Yound should be the only award a starter can win.
the Most Valuable Hitter award should be awarded to the most valuable hitter.
the Most Valuable Player award should be awarded to the most valuable player to his team. So the latter two don't get crossed up....the MVP's true definition tends to change from person to person.
http://www.baseballanalysts.com/
What's the distinction between someone like Mourneau getting a ton of votes, and Ortiz and Hafner barely making a dent in the voting?
Is it purely the fact that he plays defense? Was on a winning team?
Those are the only two factors I can figure out. And not the most convincing either.
The over-reaction has been surprising...unles it's all just Jeter-love in disguise from the Morneau haters. Morneau was 5th in win shares in the AL, 8th in WS above bench. He was behind a few DHs (and yes, I am aware Win Shares already make the positional adjustment for DHs), but it's not like he was way-way behind. Not the best choice, sure, but oh well.
The MVP goes to players who get hot when the team does and gets them near/in the playoffs most of the time. Guerrero won because of that. So did Tejada, Suzuki, Giambi (over Delgado), Ivan Rodriguez, etc... Some may have deserved the award based on more quantitative criteria...but that's not why they won. The "right" choice, from a stats view, only coincidentally overlaps sometimes.
Acknowledging that there's a great deal of truth to what you have said (for good or for bad), there were two other players on Morneau's team that would have made for preferable choices. If the voters were dead set on selecting a Twin, why that one specific Twin? RBI lust?
To overgeneralise how some voters seem to be reasoning it.
Mauer was hot at the beginning of the year, and the Twins weren't winning then...Santana is a pitcher, and therefore not the MVP. Jeter was on an all-star team, Hafner was a DH (and missed a month), as were Ortiz and Thome (who's teams sunk in the second half). Dye was also on one of those sinking teams. Manny missed a month, we don't like Giambi, so Morneau, how about him? Look at those RBI! I pick him, RBI are the most important thing in the world!
And if you think the "clutch bonus" reflects reality, have a look at David Ortiz? This year, he was docked significantly for his clutch performance. "Clutch" for this purpose incidentally refers to "run production clutch", not "game clutch". So, if a hitter singles with a runner on second in the ninth inning of a 10-0 game, that is considered to be a positive for clutch purposes. On the other hand, if a hitter hits a walkoff solo homer in an extra inning game, that is not a positive for clutch purposes.
Player G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO BA OBP SLG SB CS GDP HBP SH SF IBB
Player A 157 592 97 190 37 1 34 130 53 93 .321 .375 .559 3 3 10 5 0 11 9
Player B 152 566 97 177 30 0 35 113 60 104 .313 .381 .551 1 0 25 8 0 9 3
Player A is your AL MVP (15 first place votes, among the top 4 on all 28 ballots).
Player B was named by exactly one voter, who put him in 8th place.
They don't look all that different to me...
Obviously true if they replaced him with me, or if they went through the season without a first basemen. But they would be allowed to replace him with someone. And there is no shortage of AL players who would have represented an actual upgrade on Morneau, in 2006. It would have been a whole lot easier to replace what Morneau brought to the Twins than it would be to replace Mauer. Or Santana.
What case?
It's 1987 all over again. For the most part, it doesn't really matter (although Alan Trammell's Hall of Fame chances would probably have received a boost. That shouldn't affect Jeter too much.)