Let me think. No. I guess not. We better start with this one.
Anytime a ballplayer starts arguing his own case for a major award, it means just one thing: He doesn’t think he’s going to win it.
Wrong. It could mean that. It could also mean he thinks he's going to win and he just wants to make sure of it. It could mean he's bored and he decided to answer one question out of a thousand honestly instead of diplomatically. It could mean he's under a lot of stress because Wily Mo stuck a banana in the tailpipe of his GMC Yukon.
That’s certainly the case with the Boston Red Sox's David “Big Papi” Ortiz, who spent time Sunday presenting his AL MVP portfolio to ESPN. Everything he said is pretty much right on. He confessed to having the best offensive season in the American League and to be deserving of the award.
Wrong. He's not pretty much right on. Travis Hafner is having the best offensive season in the AL thus far. He probably won't finish with it now that he's hurt, but still. Check this page out. Or this page. You will find that David Ortiz ranks fifth in the AL in VORP and fourth in EqA. Hafner is first in both.
If he doesn’t get it, he went on, three other very worthy candidates would be Jermaine Dye and Paul Konerko of the Chicago White sox and Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins.
Or, I don't know, Hafner. Of course he won't get it. He's out with an injury. And his team isn't playoff-bound, so he's automatically not valuable.
Papi was my choice for MVP last year, when he carried the Red Sox into the playoffs and was what he is this year — the best clutch hitter in the game.
Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees collected the hardware instead, despite the certain knowledge among Yankees fans that, despite a statistically terrific year, he wasn’t even the MVP of his own team.
You couldn't be more wrong. Who, HatGuy, was the HatGuy Most Valuable Player on the Yankees in 2006? Please, if you're reading this, let us know in your next completely, utterly wrong column. (Last year, Alex Rodriguez posted a .351 (!) EqA.)
Papi argued that if A-Rod could be MVP for a last-place team, he can be MVP of a Boston team that finishes out of the playoffs. There’s nothing wrong with his logic. I disagree with the premise to start with and would never choose a player from a losing team as the most valuable in the league.
Because you, HatGuy, represent everything that's wrong with MVP voting -- again, a thing I shouldn't care about at all but is still fun to get all snippy about. There you go being wrong again.
In my book, to be MVP, you have to be the most important player on a team that wins something, or, at a minimum, comes within a whisker of winning.
A whisker being a baseball term for "a measure of whatever I feel like determining when I put my hat on in the morning." Your book = W is for Wrong (FINALLY A SUE GRAFTON PARODY ON FJM).
I would never have given the award to Ernie Banks when he played for the pathetic Chicago Cubs, if that’s not redundant.
It's not. Your sense of humor is wrong, though.
I wouldn’t have given it to A-Rod when he played for the Rangers, either.
Let me think what you would have been that year, then ... oh, right: wrong.
The award isn’t for the best offensive player in the game. It’s for the most valuable player, which is why pitchers get to win it now and then.
No, it's not. It's for the Most Valuable Player on a Team That Wins something, or, at a Minimum, Comes Within a Whisker of Winning. Unless, by your own standards, you're admitting you're wrong.
But the MVP is so poorly defined, that writers have on occasion handed it out to players whose greatest value was helping their team to finish within 35 games of first place instead of 45 games.
How does that contradict the definition of the Most Valuable Player being the most valuable player in the league? If Weird Al Yankovic were writing a song parody about this article, it would be a Sisqo takeoff called "The Wrong Song" (FINALLY A SISQO MENTION ON FJM).
This year, it’s a different story. No one other than Ortiz is having the kind of year offensively he had last year.
David Ortiz 2005 EqA: .333
Manny Ramirez 2006 EqA: .345
Jim Thome and Hafner are also up there. Heck, Jeter's at .324.
I happen to think Jeter should get the hardware, but that may be because I see him more often than I see the others.
Wait. Are you saying you watch the Yankees more than any other baseball team? Huh. I'm going to have to revise my assessment of you, HatGuy. Youareblowingmymind.
All I know is that the Yankees lost Hideki Matsui and Gary Sheffield early on for nearly the entire season.
I'd like to think that HatGuy is making a profound statement here. Like seriously, the information in this one sentence is all I know. I don't know how to operate a toaster. I cannot recognize the secondary sexual characteristics of a female human. I don't know the difference between right and wrong.
They had multiple problems with the pitching staff. They lost Robinson Cano for a stretch and have seen Jason Giambi miss time. For long stretches, A-Rod has been all but invisible.
But, but -- I thought all you knew was ... never mind.
And through it all, Jeter has been the glue that’s held it all together, hitting anywhere manager Joe Torre needs him and doing all the little things that add up to winning ballgames.
Doesn't Joe Torre get any glue credit? Certainly Torre is a little gluey. What about Damon? I keep hearing good things about his glueiness.
He won’t lead the league in slugging, but he’s near the top in on-base percentage, may win the batting title, and is one of the best situational hitters in the game.
He also makes every play his team needs in the field.
Except the ones to his right. Is it his right side he can never get to? I forget. Remember that one play where A-Rod came over to make a catch and then Jeter nudged him and neither one of them caught it, and then Jeter gave A-Rod a dirty look? That was a funny dirty look.
I also know that when the Red Sox lost Jason Varitek, their catcher and captain, they collapsed despite Ortiz’s continuing presence in the lineup. To me, that makes Varitek, not Ortiz, Boston’s MVP.
Oh man. I stopped writing the word "wrong" in every response a few paragraphs ago because even I got sick of it, but let me make up for it here:
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Correlation is not causation. Jason Varitek, a catcher with an EqA of .257 this year, is not more valuable than David Ortiz, a monster of a man who wins baseball games with the sheer brightness of his smile and controls the weather with his mind.
As I said, I don’t believe in giving the MVP to pitchers, but it’s done.
Great. Is it okay if I retroactively blame you for Pedro Martinez not getting the MVP in 1999? It is? Cool.
I’d give it to Jeter.
I know. You said that already. And crazily, that might be the only thing you're not wrong about in this whole article.
But just for good measure:
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Labels: HatGuy, mike celizic, mvp
