The ongoing war against baseball stupidity can be sort of fun.
For example, every single year, Albert Pujols dominates the National League and every single year writers try to figure out a way to convince themselves that he wasn't the most valuable player. Then we get pissed and write a big diatribe as to why those writers are idiots. Repeat.
Sort of an amusing little dance (for us anyway).
But in 2008, SI.com's Jon Heyman has taken things too far. He's gone and made comments on the subject that were so dumb that we had to bring in some reinforcements to help dismantle them.
Before we get to that, here is Heyman's fake ballot for the MVP award in the National League...
1. Manny Ramirez, Dodgers. The savant saved the storied franchise, slugging .743 and lifting the Dodger dogs to the NL West title.
5. Albert Pujols, Cardinals. Kept the Cardinals in the hunt with .357 average despite a banged-up elbow.
This is a national baseball writer for one of the biggest media entities in the sports world...someone whose job it is to watch and analyze baseball...like, he actually gets paid for it...probably six figures...and he has Albert Pujols as the 5th most valuable player in the National League in 2008.
Needless to say, we were flabbergasted. Here is Heyman's justification for Manny being in the top spot and CC Sabathia as the runner up...
Both candidates are deserving. I don't care that they were late arrivers to the National League this season. Sabathia (11-2, 1.65 ERA in 17 starts for Milwaukee) and Ramirez (.396, 17 homers, 53 RBIs in 53 games with L.A.) easily made the biggest impacts. Ramirez is the MVP and Sabathia the runner-up on my ballot. Although the reverse works for me, too.
Before laying into Heyman, let's review the rules set up by MLB for the MVP voting...
1. Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.
2. Number of games played.
3. General character, disposition, loyalty and effort.
4. Former winners are eligible.
5. Members of the committee may vote for more than one member of a team.
Apparently the rules of voting don't mean a ***damn thing to Jon Heyman.
So here's my secret way to win the MVP. Play 50 games really well, then sit out the rest of the year. Say you injured your biceps, your triceps, your quadriceps, and your quinticeps (these are fake muscles). Then wait until the end of the year and pray that your team narrowly makes the playoffs. You point to your amazing 50-game run and Jon Heyman and his ilk immediately choose to ignore the literally hundreds of players who played full seasons in blatant disregard for the rules of voting.
Or how about this: people like Heyman say that if your team doesn't make the playoffs, then the whole season is essentially completely devoid of value. Nothing -- nothing you do can redeem your individual performance. But let's take it a step further. No one remembers who gets eliminated in the NLDS. Hell, who cares who loses in the World Series? The only team that has a season of value at all is the team that wins it all. So let's wait until the absolute end of the playoffs, until the final out is recorded, and every year we'll give the MVP to the guy who has the ball when the World Series ends.
Making things even worse is that, when the dust settled, the Cardinals had a better record than the Dodgers by two games. Heyman's claim that Manny "lifted the Dodger to the NL West title" should really read Manny "lifted the Dodgers to a 30-24 record in his two months on the team and lucky for them it was good enough to barely win the worst division in baseball."
As it turns out, we've also already had this argument over at JoeSportsFan last week in response to a column advocating Manny for MVP by Fox's Mark Kriegel. Here was our commentary on the issue...
Basically what we’re saying is – why would you vote for a player whose been hot for two months, when his counterpart has been hot the entire season? Unless he was working Joe Torre’s bunch like a ventriloquist from 3,000 miles away for the first four months, it’s only possible for Manny to have had an impact on 33% of the games played by the Dodgers this season. Pujols has played in 91% of the Cardinals games.
Albert Pujols is not the reason the Cardinals are going to miss the postseason. Albert Pujols is the reason the Cardinals ever had a chance at the postseason to begin with.
We're still confident that Pujols will win it in the end, but who knows how many Jon Heyman's and Mark Kriegel's there are in the country who actually have MVP votes. Fighting baseball stupidity is definitely an uphill battle.
But in 2008, SI.com's Jon Heyman has taken things too far. He's gone and made comments on the subject that were so dumb that we had to bring in some reinforcements to help dismantle them.
Before laying into Heyman, let's review the rules set up by MLB for the MVP voting...
