Buster Posey and Miguel Cabrera win MVP

[Oblong]

Originally Posted by DSpivack

You have to go back to 1976 just to find a season in which both MVP winners were in the World Series.

1988, Gibson with the Dodgers and Canseco with the A's.

As soon as the announcements were made I went and looked it up. I would not have guessed that off the top of my head.

[DSpivack]

Originally Posted by Oblong

1988, Gibson with the Dodgers and Canseco with the A's.

As soon as the announcements were made I went and looked it up. I would not have guessed that off the top of my head.

D'oh!

[chicagowhitesox1]

Kirk Gibson was kinda known as a guy who won a MVP due to his World Series homerun but he actually had a very good year in WAR standards. I think he came in 6Th place overall for WAR that year. I always thought of him as being one of the worst MVP picks of alltime but he actually had a pretty good year compared to the rest of the league.

Daryl Strawberry or Orel Hershiser probably would have been his number one competitors.

[WhiteSox5187]

Originally Posted by chicagowhitesox1

Kirk Gibson was kinda known as a guy who won a MVP due to his World Series homerun but he actually had a very good year in WAR standards. I think he came in 6Th place overall for WAR that year. I always thought of him as being one of the worst MVP picks of alltime but he actually had a pretty good year compared to the rest of the league.

Daryl Strawberry or Orel Hershiser probably would have been his number one competitors.

Unless they changed the way they vote, the MVP is selected before the World Series and announced after.

[TDog]

Originally Posted by chicagowhitesox1

Kirk Gibson was kinda known as a guy who won a MVP due to his World Series homerun but he actually had a very good year in WAR standards. I think he came in 6Th place overall for WAR that year. I always thought of him as being one of the worst MVP picks of alltime but he actually had a pretty good year compared to the rest of the league.

Daryl Strawberry or Orel Hershiser probably would have been his number one competitors.

The MVP votes were cast before the beginning of the postseason.

Maybe Gibson won the award because he was the team leader of the Dodgers, clearly the most valuable player on the team, while there was no clear most valuable team leader on the Mets who won the NL East, Strawberry and McReynolds splitting the remaining first place votes. I wasn't watching much NL baseball at the time.

If you just look at stats almost a quarter of a century later, you take the award out of context. If you only look at stats, you diminish the award. MVP shouldn't be something you can quantify mathematically.

Since divisional play, especially now with three races and wild cards in each league, statistics have carried more weight because the are so many heroic stories and the voting writers don't even see some of them. Bob Costas suggests the the MVP vote come after the league championship series because the pre-World Series postseason has become part of league play. And he might have a point.

I would have been surprised if the vote for either MVP this year would have been closer. I would have been less surprised if the Cabrera or especially Posey had been unanimous. I'm not at all a Cabrera fan, but I think he was clearly the AL MVP.

I think some are vocally disappointed in the vote because they see it being about stats and failing to validate their argument that batting average and RBIs don't mean anything. Of course, even if batting average, RBIs and clutch hitting aren't a predictor of future success, it's what Cabrera did. And as the season wore on, it's what Trout didn't do at the same level.

[SephClone89]

Originally Posted by TDog

I think some are vocally disappointed in the vote because they see it being about stats and failing to validate their argument that batting average and RBIs don't mean anything. Of course, even if batting average, RBIs and clutch hitting aren't a predictor of future success, it's what Cabrera did. And as the season wore on, it's what Trout didn't do at the same level.

"Wait, why was this Mike Trout MVP thing about stats?"

[BleacherBandit]

This is my view:

If the standard should be changed so that the player with the highest WAR is the MVP then the MVP as an award would become outmoded.

If WAR is to be considered the single indicator of a league MVP, there is no need for consideration. MVP titles become something of a universal mathematic truth. If the MVP title is to remain an award, then I think it's perfectly acceptable for a man who won the triple effin' crown to be considered the best player for a given year.

Why are these awards handed out every year? Because there shouldn't be a consistent mathematical outcome which determines a player's worthiness, a purely subjective consideration. If you're upset that Trout didn't win the MVP, consider that winning something is different than earning something.

Trout earned the respect and admiration of baseball fans because objectively he's the best offensive and defensive player in the American League. Cabrera won a silly plaque. Who cares?

[SI1020]

Cabrera led the AL in BA, HR, RBI, Slugging Pct., OPS, Total Bases, Runs Created, Adj Batting Runs, Adj Batting Wins, Extra Base Hits and for the true Saber lover Situ. Wins Added (WPA/LI).