Curse of the whoever this douchebag is

Before I launch into this, I should probably state for the record: I don't hate the Red Sox. In fact, under the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, I dare say I rather like the Red Sox, at least when they're not playing a team I particularly want to win (a rather short list). With that said, the way the media focuses on them (and the Yankees), and the way their fans have gone, in less than a decade, from cartoonishly depressed by their failures to cartoonishly arrogant about their successes is kind of annoying.

Don't agree? Well, in the interest of hilarious hindsight, let's take a look at this now extremely awesome article posted on NESN.com in January. It's so over the top that, knowing what we know now about how the season went, it almost reads like sarcasm.

The Red Sox have won 100 or more games three times in their 110-year existence.

They will make it four in 2011. But this team has the potential to accomplish something even bigger than winning 100 games.

The Red Sox won 90 games. And I don't think the "bigger" thing this guy was talking about was the biggest September collapse in Major League Baseball history.

The last time the Red Sox reached the 100-win mark was 1946, when they went 104-50-2 and lost the World Series to the Cardinals in seven games.

Prior to that, the Red Sox posted 101 wins in 1915 and 105 in 1912. Both seasons ended with World Series titles.

Will the duck boats be rolling through the streets of Boston again next fall?

That depends. The Bruins' parade wasn't postponed six months, right? No? Then no.

Bookmakers like the Red Sox’ chances. Current odds put them at 9-2 to win the 2011 World Series. Only the Phillies, at 7-2, are bigger favorites, with the Yankees not far behind at 5-1 shots.

As usual, the bookmakers just made a lot of money on people who thought the Red Sox were going to win the World Series.

Championships, of course, aren’t won in January. But championship teams are built during the offseason, and Theo Epstein has put together a roster that would make Branch Rickey proud.

It took an awfully long time before the Red Sox put together a team about which you could say that. (Zing! Tom Yawkey doesn't care about black people.)

Look at the starting lineup.

Jacoby Ellsbury, CF
Dustin Pedroia, 2B
Carl Crawford, LF
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
Kevin Youkilis, 3B
David Ortiz, DH
J.D. Drew, RF
Jarrod Saltalamacchia, C
Marco Scutaro/Jed Lowrie, SS

The Red Sox offense was actually pretty potent - amazingly, considering how things finished, it was the highest-scoring in baseball, with 875 runs.

Speed. Power. Plate discipline. This lineup has it all. Good luck finding a hole from 1 to 7. Saltalamacchia is a bit of a wild card, but the 25-year-old could be ready for a breakout season. And whoever is the starting shortstop -- Scutaro or Lowrie -- gives the Red Sox one of the toughest No. 9 hitters in the game.

Holes in the lineup? Well, Carl Crawford and his .289 OBP say hi. Drew only played 81 games and did not hit well when he did play. "Wild card" Saltalamacchia broke out to the tune of .235/.288/.450. Lowrie OBP'ed .303. Still, the Red Sox as a team led the league in OBP and slugging and were second in batting average.

Besides a potent offensive attack, the Red Sox will boast airtight defense, perhaps the best of any team in baseball.

Quantifying defense is always tricky, but the Red Sox were 12th in the AL in errors. Baseball-Reference has them basically average in terms of fielding runs saved, owed mostly to the right side of their infield. But sure, whatever.

Turn to the bench, and manager Terry Francona has plenty of options.

Mike Cameron, OF
Darnell McDonald, OF
Marco Scutaro/Jed Lowrie, INF
Jason Varitek, C

Cameron played 33 games for Boston this year and didn't hit a lick; he was traded to the Marlins in July for basically nothing. McDonald was a 32-year-old journeyman with a career .314 OBP; in 79 games his OBP was .303. Lowrie, more often the backup shortstop/infielder, also posted a .303 OBP. Varitek only played 68 games and had an OBP of .300.

Youth, experience and versatility will ride the pine like lions waiting to hunt. Depth won’t be a problem, especially with players like Ryan Kalish, Lars Anderson and Josh Reddick on the farm.

Depth was a problem. That .349 team OBP owed mostly to four guys: Gonzalez, Pedroia, Ortiz and Ellsbury, who were the top four on the team in both OBP and plate appearances, and handily so. The bench by and large did not hit. Reddick played in 87 games with a .327 OBP. Anderson got five September PAs. Kalish missed most of the season and never reached the bigs.

Now, you might say, "How was this guy supposed to know about injuries and that all these guys wouldn't really hit?" He wasn't, I guess, but that's kind of the point. You don't really know what's going to happen, which is why you should write columns that say things like "the Red Sox are favorites to win their division" and not "the Red Sox are going to be the greatest team in the history of ever."

In 2010, the Red Sox scored 818 runs (second-most in the majors), or 5.1 per game. They hit 211 home runs (second in MLB) and posted a .790 OPS (tops in MLB). The offense, with even more weapons now, could demolish those numbers.

And, in fact, the offense scored 875 runs - 5.4 per game - and put up an .810 OPS. They did hit 203 home runs, slightly fewer, but banged 352 doubles, tops in the league. So what was the problem?

Yet one run is all it might take to win a game on some days with the starting staff the Red Sox have assembled.

Whoopsie. The team ERA of 4.20 was ninth in the AL.

Jon Lester, LHP
Josh Beckett, RHP
John Lackey, RHP
Clay Buchholz, RHP
Daisuke Matsuzaka, RHP

Lester is a Cy Young winner waiting to happen. Beckett will notch more than six victories. Lackey should be better equipped to avoid the one-bad-inning syndrome. Buchholz has become a force. And Dice-K might be the best No. 5 starter ever. The Japanese right-hander is the only pitcher in the rotation who’s never been an All-Star, but this could be the year he ends that streak.

Lester had a good year but nowhere near Cy Young status, and he was lousy in September. Beckett did notch more than six wins (his 2010 total) and led the starters in ERA and WHIP, but he also fell apart down the stretch. Lackey was horrendous all year, throwing 160 innings with a 6.41 ERA. "Force" Clay Buchholz was good but made just fourteen starts. And Matsuzaka threw just 37.1 innings of 5.30 ERA ball before hitting the DL in mid-May.

Every Red Sox starting pitcher has something to prove. While the Phillies might be the popular choice as the best rotation in baseball, don’t be surprised if people are singing a different tune come October.

Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee are both Cy Young candidates in the NL. Josh Beckett's 2.89 ERA would be fourth-best in the Phillies' rotation. But hey, who's counting?

When Red Sox starters have to hand the ball to the bullpen this season, Boston fans won’t have to have to cover their eyes and pray. The weak link in 2010 could be one of the best relief corps in the business.

Papelbon and Bard had pretty good years overall, and Alfredo Aceves emerged as a reliable long man. The rest of the pen was pretty much cover-your-eyes awful.

Tim Wakefield, RHP
Scott Atchison/Matt Albers, RHP
Hideki Okajima, LHP
Dan Wheeler, RHP
Bobby Jenks, RHP
Daniel Bard, RHP
Jonathan Papelbon, RHP

Okajima is the only known left-handed quantity. But youngster Felix Doubront has talent and should see some action. Rich Hill, Lenny DiNardo and Andrew Miller also could contribute.

Okajima threw 8.1 innings before being demoted to Pawtucket; he never returned. Doubront saw 10.1 innings of action with a 6.10 ERA. Hill pitched 8 innings before getting hurt. DiNardo never threw a pitch for Boston. Miller made 17 appearances, of which 12 were starts; his ERA for the year was 5.54.

The right-handers in the mix all bring experience and different styles to the fire. Need long relief? Call on Wakefield to disrupt hitters’ timing. Need a middle-inning specialist to get key outs? Wheeler knows how to do the job, and Atchison proved serviceable last season. Albers could be a diamond in the rough. Want heat? Jenks and Bard throw seeds. Want to turn out the lights? Papelbon is pitching for a contract, so trust he will be ready to show he’s far from washed up. Reliability and consistency -- foreign concepts to Boston’s bullpen last season -- will be common words associated with this group.

Wakefield mostly started, and mostly wasn't very good, with an ERA over 5. Wheeler and Atchison were usable but unspectacular. "Diamond in the rough" Albers had a 4.73 ERA in 56 appearances. Jenks threw just 15.2 innings - with a 2.234 WHIP! - before vanishing from the face of the earth.

Every day should feel like Christmas for Curt Young, the new Red Sox pitching coach. The former A’s pitching coach didn’t have anything close to the horses he has now, and Oakland’s staff posted a 3.56 ERA last season, the best in the American League and fourth-best in the majors. Imagine what he can do with a Grade A collection of arms.

Oakland's pitchers also get to pitch half their games in the Coliseum, one of the friendliest parks for pitchers in all of baseball.

The Red Sox were slated to win about 95 games last year. They won 89 despite injuries to Pedroia (a former MVP) and Youkilis (a possible future MVP). Add them back, along with the new players and a healthy Ellsbury, and 100 wins doesn’t just appear plausible. It seems downright inevitable.

Youkilis missed more than 40 games, getting only 82 more plate appearances than in 2010. Also, possible future MVP? Settle down. Youkilis is already 32 and his third-place finish in 2008 seems a long time ago.

So does a date with history.

The 2001 Mariners won 116 regular-season games to set the American League record for most wins in a single season and tie the 1906 Cubs for the major league record (though the North Siders accomplished the feat in 152 games). Both those teams failed to win the World Series. The Cubs lost to the White Sox in six games in the Fall Classic. The Mariners didn’t even make it that far, falling to the Yankees in five games in the ALCS.

The Red Sox have no intention of suffering a similar fate. The way they are constructed, they could surpass the 116-win mark, but nothing less than a World Series title will make Boston happy.

"They could surpass the 116-win mark?" Come ON, man. You can't say stuff like that. 116 wins is no one's birthright. You know what the '01 Mariners' expected record was, based on their run differential? 109-53. They still needed seven wins' worth of luck. And they outscored their opponents by 300 runs. 117 wins would require a ridiculous amount of luck. And you would need to add 28 wins over last year to get there. That is REALLY hard to do.

The 2011 Red Sox possess all the pieces to have a season for the ages. If everything falls into place and the breaks go their way, they could do more than set records and become champions. They could do more than take their place on Immortality Peak and end up being mentioned in the same sentence as legendary clubs of the past: the 1929 A’s, the epic Yankees teams of the ‘30s, the 1970 Orioles, the 1976 Reds.

Honestly, when you read this, doesn't it seem like it was written by a Yankees fan as a jinx? How did this slip through? Who thought posting this was a good idea?

The 2011 Red Sox could accomplish a feat that has never been done. They could unseat the 1927 Yankees as the greatest major league team of all time.

Well, they did accomplish a feat that had never been done. Looks like the '27 Yankees don't have much to worry about, though.

That would be something to celebrate.

For the Rays.

MVP = Moronic Verducci Position

Some years there's a slam-dunk MVP vote. But whenever there isn't, and especially when there's a guy having a great season on a not-so-great team, we have to deal with it. The eternal conflict. "Should you only be the MVP if your team makes the playoffs?" The answer, of course, is no. And the history of baseball will bear that out. Albert Pujols won the MVP on a fourth-place team in 2008. The 2003 Rangers finished twenty games under .500, dead last in the AL West, but Alex Rodriguez was the MVP. And so on. Perhaps in really close cases you can make an argument for team quality as a tiebreaker... but I wouldn't. You try to find who had the best season. Period.

Unless you're Tom Verducci.

Here's his ballot as of now:

1. Jacoby Ellsbury, Boston*
2. Miguel Cabrera, Detroit
3. Justin Verlander, Detroit
4. Jose Bautista, Toronto
5. Curtis Granderson, New York
6. Dustin Pedroia, Boston
7. Robinson Cano, New York
8. Adrian Gonzalez, Boston
9. Evan Longoria, Tampa Bay
10. Josh Hamilton, Texas

Okay, not bad. I don't know about Bautista being fourth, but hey. Ellsbury has a really good case to be MVP. But... wait a second. What's that asterisk?

Yes, there is an asterisk next to Ellsbury. This vote is not final. If Boston does not make the postseason, there is no sense in handing the MVP to a someone on the team that just staged the greatest September choke in the history of the sport. It would be like handing out Best Actor or Actress awards to anyone in Gigli.

Um...

God. Where to begin.

Okay, let's start here. Tom: you realize that a baseball team has 25 players on it, right? (In fact, in September it can have even more than that!) And you realize that Ellsbury is one dude. It is very difficult to will a team to victory all by yourself in baseball. And it is ESPECIALLY hard to do that when your pitching staff's ERA in September is 5.85!!! How much of that is Jacoby Ellsbury's fault, exactly? In 25 games in September, Ellsbury is hitting .373/.417/.682. In 120 plate appearances, he has 11 doubles, 7 home runs, and (if you like that sort of thing) 19 RBI. Even though he hits leadoff!

The best part is this: Verducci is basically saying that if Ellsbury goes 0-for-10 with seven strikeouts and falls down twice in the outfield in the next two games, but the Red Sox win them both and make the playoffs, he will vote for Ellsbury. But if Ellsbury goes 10-for-10 with five homers and robs two more over the wall, and the pitching sucks again and the Red Sox lose? Bum. Not the MVP.

The same thing happened in 2007. David Wright had a hot September - .352/.432/.602. In August he was even hotter, including a .516 on-base. But of course the 2007 Mets were choking dogs, blowing a seven-game lead with 17 games to play. This certainly was not Wright's fault, but nevertheless it was laid at his feet in the voting, where he finished a distant fourth. The winner was Jimmy Rollins, who won despite having distinctly inferior stats to Wright. But of course, his team caught Wright's, so even though Rollins put up a pretty meek .333 OBP in September, he was the MVP.

Now, this isn't fair to guys like Cabrera and Bautista, who both have great stat lines and would be perfectly good winners (Bautista more so, since his numbers are better and also he doesn't play first and do it not that well). But if you think Ellsbury is the MVP on September 27, then he's the MVP on September 29. Otherwise, what you're saying is you're basing the entire decision on two games, or a big 1.2% of the season.

But let's see if Tom can defend his position.

Sorry, Jacoby, but four of the 14 teams in your league make the playoffs. Only one AL player since the expanded format began in 1995 won the MVP for a non-playoff team (an enhanced Alex Rodriguez in 2003). Ellsbury can take home every Player of the Year Award that's out there, but this is Major League Baseball. The greatest value possible -- the reason these players play the game -- is to be a winner, and there are too many great candidates from too many available playoff spots.

No, I didn't think so. First of all, what voters have done in the past should not provide a bright-line directive for future ballots. Second of all, THERE ARE 25 GUYS, MORE IN FACT, ON EACH TEAM. Over the course of a season - since last time I checked this was not the MVPOCTIS (Most Valuable Player on a Contending Team in September) Award - Ellsbury has done as much to help his team win as anyone in the league. That you think this should be tossed out because of two games if the rest of his team does not live up to his performance is embarrassing. If Boston's pitching continues to get shelled, there is virtually nothing Ellsbury can do to singlehandedly save Boston's season. That is just not how baseball works.

That said, Ellsbury has been so phenomenal that Bautista could hit 10 more home runs and Ellsbury still would have more total bases than the Toronto outfielder. (All stats entering this week.) I'm okay with either Verlander or Cabrera taking the MVP if Boston completes its all-time collapse. Cabrera has reached base more times than anybody in the league, plays every day, leads all of MLB in batting with runners in scoring position, will win the batting title with an average near .340 and has the best adjusted OPS by anyone other than Bautista.

That's right. Ellsbury has been phenomenal. How phenomenal? So phenomenal he can't be MVP if his team's pitchers suck! That's how phenomenal. Fuck yeah.

(This graf tells you a lot about Verducci's thinking, or lack of it, by the way. Yes, Ellsbury has 359 TB to Bautista's 310. He also has 650 at-bats to Bautista's 506, in part because he hits leadoff but mostly because Bautista has walked 79 more times than Ellsbury. 310+79 = 30 more bases for Bautista. Oops. Total bases ignore walks and therefore don't mean a whole lot. Unsurprisingly, Bautista has 70 points of OBP on Ellsbury, along with 61 points of slugging. Now, Ellsbury plays center and does so pretty well, which makes his offense harder to replace than Bautista's. By that standard, if you want to say Ellsbury is more valuable, it's hard to argue. But the reason why is not his total bases. I'm not even going to touch Verducci citing Cabrera's average with RISP.)

Okay, how about Tom's NL MVP ballot?

1. Ryan Braun, Milwaukee
2. Matt Kemp, Los Angeles
3. Prince Fielder, Milwaukee
4. Albert Pujols, St. Louis
5. Justin Upton, Arizona
6. Lance Berkman, St. Louis
7. Joey Votto, Cincinnati
8. Troy Tulowitzki, Colorado
9. Roy Halladay, Philadelphia
10. Shane Victorino, Philadelphia

Braun has had a great year. But he plays left, and not that well. Truthfully neither he nor Kemp is a great outfielder, but Kemp plays center, a much harder position at which to replace offense. With the two having fairly similar offensive lines, I would have broken the tie in Kemp's favor, for that reason.

See you if you can guess why Tom Verducci went the other way.

Kemp has put up a monster season with MVP numbers, leading the league in WAR, runs, total bases, home runs and RBIs. But his team, the Dodgers, didn't play a meaningful game for the last two-thirds of the season. Los Angeles was nine games out by the middle of June.

You hear that, Matt Kemp? Your team was bad! Therefore your numbers do not count. Never mind that you played all sorts of games against contending teams that certainly would not want you to do well against them and still did well against them. Never mind that you spent the season hitting in front of guys like Juan Uribe and Juan Rivera while Braun had the .400-OBPing Prince Fielder behind him. Never mind that you play in the NL West, maybe the toughest hitters' division in baseball, while Braun got to feast on a lousy NL Central. The team around you wasn't that good, so your season was irrelevant.

And this business that Kemp had no help in the lineup? Baloney. Kemp batted with 87 more runners on base than did Braun. Kemp had 24 more plate appearances with runners in scoring position -- and Braun was the better hitter in those spots (.347-.327). The seasons of Kemp and Braun are too close not to give it to the guy who delivered the most value in terms of context.

Dude, what are you TALKING about? Who cares about average, first? Kemp had a better OBP with runners in scoring position and with men on. See if you can guess why! That's right, it's my second point: PRINCE FUCKING FIELDER. When Kemp came up with men in scoring position, he could be walked - as he was 35 times out of 195 PAs - because pitchers were happy to take their chances with Juan Uribe, Juan Rivera, or the pu-pu platter of garbage hitting behind Kemp all year. 24 of those walks were intentional. You know how many times Ryan Braun was intentionally walked with RISP? TWO. You know why? BECAUSE THE GUY BEHIND HIM HAD A .400 OBP AND ONCE HIT 50 HOMERS IN A SEASON.

Ryan Braun had IMMENSE protection every time he came to the plate. Not once this year did Ron Roenicke fill out a lineup card that had anyone other than Prince Fielder hitting behind Ryan Braun. You know how many different guys have hit behind Kemp? TEN. Here's the list: James Loney, Marcus Thames, Juan Uribe, Jerry Sands, Jay Gibbons, Rod Barajas, Casey Blake, Juan Rivera, Aaron Miles, and Andre Ethier. Fielder has 35 home runs; this entire crew has 61, and the high man is Barajas (with 16), who served as Kemp's lineup protection all of once. Aaron Miles and his career 75 OPS+ hit behind Kemp more times than Barajas did. No one (except maybe in the late innings with a LOOGY waiting) was lining up to walk Braun so they could pitch to Fielder. Kemp could be walked with minimal fear. And Verducci's own rankings bear this out. The Brewers had a great season but they didn't win 115 games. You've got Braun and Fielder ranked 1 and 3. If Fielder is that good, can you really turn around and say Braun didn't have the help everyone thinks he did? No. He did have that help.

Again, Braun had a great year. But Kemp had as good or better a year, at a more premium defensive position, in a harder division in which to hit, AND he didn't get to play fully 44 of his games against the Astros, Cubs and Pirates, on whom Braun unsurprisingly feasted. Here's Braun's line against the Cardinals, by comparison: .225/.267/.366. So against the ONE OTHER DECENT TEAM IN HIS DIVISION, Braun absolutely gagged. It's a small sample size, of course, and you can only play the teams on the schedule. But if this is about "winning" and "coming up big for the team in big spots" - well, Braun really dogged it against Milwaukee's top contender.

Kemp, by comparison, destroyed divisional rivals. He hit .359/.446/.672 against the Giants, a team whose staff averaged this line against: .232/.309/.347. He hit .318/.408/.485 against the Padres, who play in the hitting-unfriendliest park in baseball and whose staff averaged .245/.313/.375 against.

In fact, how about this: against teams with a .500 record or better, Kemp hit .323/.390/.588. (He hit .324/.406/.580 - pretty much the same, if slightly better as you'd expect - against teams below .500.) Braun hit .337/.399/.643 against sub-.500 teams and .328/.395/.529 against those over .500. Also comparable numbers, but that's a pretty big dip in slugging. Anyway, the general point is that Kemp, no matter what you think about his team's quality, did not shrink from good teams, which to me is the only adequate notion of "pressure." Verducci suggests that because the Dodgers were nine games out by the middle of June, that presumably means their players no longer cared about the season. Uh, nine games out in the middle of June? We've just seen the Red Sox blow a nine-game lead over the course of SEPTEMBER. If "pressure" is real at all, I would think there'd be just as much on a team at the far fringes of contention to try to drag itself back into the race as on a team that's led its division for the better part of three months and watched its rivals disappear in the rear-view mirror.

Ryan Braun wouldn't be a travesty of an MVP vote. And neither would Miguel Cabrera, though there are many better choices. But the issue is how Verducci defends his votes, and what that says about how he understands baseball. And what it says is: he doesn't understand it nearly as well as he thinks he does.

Joshymandias, king of kings

You all remember Josh Hamilton. Inspiring comeback story, baseball talent, winner of the 2008 Home Run Derby (no?). Well, here's something you may not know: he's now the best player in baseball. I know, I know - usually it takes more than 1.5 good seasons to get you this title. Don't tell that to Tom Verducci.

Just another night in the life of the best player in baseball went something like this, at least as far as last Friday the 13th:

• Smash four hits all over the park: a single to left, a 440-foot bomb to center, a single and double to right.

• Score from third base on a pop fly to deep shortstop/short left.

• Score from second base on a ground ball to second.

• Make a diving catch on the warning track and a leaping catch against the centerfield wall.

• Cause the third-base coach to halt a runner from scoring from second on an otherwise routine run-scoring single to centerfield.

Verducci's breathless bullet points, not to mention the use of "just another night," suggest that Hamilton does this literally every day. Is Hamilton having a great season? Yes. Is this ridiculous cherry-picking? Also yes. Why, just six days earlier, he went 0-for-4 with a strikeout!

The "score from second base on a ground ball to second" piece is a tad disingenuous; while it was heads-up baserunning on Hamilton's part, it's not like he turned into the Flash - there were two outs, he was moving with the pitch, the ball was a fairly slow roller up the middle which the second baseman tried to throw to first off-balance. Hamilton is hardly the only guy in baseball who could have scored there. His "diving catch on the warning track" also wasn't; Hamilton caught the ball on the run (a good but not insane play) and then fell forward and slid onto the warning track. If you have to embellish what he's doing, was it as great as you want to claim?

• Crush the postgame spread.

Fortunately we determine the best player in baseball by how many cold cuts they can consume in one sitting.

• Throw around hundreds of pounds of iron in a postgame weightlifting session.

• Gulp down a 2,000-plus-calorie protein shake, made with real cream, on the car ride home.

Oh my God... REAL CREAM??? Move over, Albert Pujols! (For the record, this was the point at which Verducci completely lost me. Real cream? Who the fuck cares?)

• Sit down for a full home-cooked meal by his wife. (Yes, for those of you scoring at home, that's the equivalent of three full meals just between the last out and bedtime.)

And for those of you who don't care - i.e. everyone - you might realize how irrelevant this is to the story. I guess maybe it's an attempt to add "color," but Josh Hamilton's eating habits are really just wholly immaterial to the case for why he might or might not be the best player in baseball.

The legend of Josh Hamilton, Texas Ranger, is growing on a nightly basis. There is nobody like him in baseball, and possibly nobody this good, this big, this fast and this unique -- a 6'4", 235-pound sledgehammer of a hitter who can run balls down in center field and fly around the bases and hit for such a high average -- since Mickey Mantle in his prime.

He's really good. He's also 29, injury-prone, and in the middle of only his second good season. Last year his OBP was .315. And if he can fly around the bases, why does he only have eight steals?

Hamilton leads the league in batting (.362), slugging (.634), hits (161) and total bases (282). The rest of the league is playing for second place in the MVP race. He has no contemporaries, especially when you consider that the Rangers, somewhat against their better judgment, have started him 26 times in center field.

Miguel Cabrera is 19 points ahead of Hamilton in OBP and dead-even in slugging. Hamilton leads in VORP because he plays in the outfield and he does play for a better team, which means he probably has an edge in the MVP race. But this isn't that open and shut, Jizzy McFawnalot. His UZR - and just because he has played in center doesn't change the fact that he mostly plays in left, typically viewed as the easiest OF defensive spot - is 5.8, which is positive but hardly superlative. Also, UZR is typically considered to be a stat where you have to look at a three-year span to get anything of value out of it, and in 2008 - when he played mostly in center - Hamilton was a total butcher.

So, he's good, okay? And this year he's having a pretty awesome season. But I think maybe he needs to show he can produce consistently before we anoint him the best player in baseball.

How rare is that kind of skill set? The last three players to have batted .360 and slugged .600 while playing that much center field are none other than Mantle in 1957, Stan Musial in 1948 and Joe DiMaggio in 1939.

Now, are there any more questions about who is the best player in baseball this year?

Sigh. To be fair, Verducci does qualify it with "this year," although his glistening prose throughout the rest of the article doesn't really suggest that he's limiting the title to nothing but the here and now. You can't just hand out a title like "best player in baseball." The yearly title is the MVP; the other is a more honorary title which, right now, clearly belongs to Albert Pujols. (Who, by the way, just hit 30 home runs for the tenth straight season, aka every single one of his career.)

"He's certainly in the discussion," Texas GM John Daniels said. "You rarely see a guy perform at this level for this length of time."

Uh, what length of time? Okay, yes, since June 1 he's been thoroughly ridiculous: .454/.482/.815 in June, .418/.468/.704 in July, .362/.455/.617 in August so far. I don't know that we've seen months like that since Barry Bonds' heyday in the first half of the 2000s (lest we forget, Bonds' line in 2004 was .362/.609/.812 - and that's for the whole season, not two months). With numbers like that, this probably isn't your run of the mill hot streak. But it's still just two-plus months.

In 65 games since June 1, just when the Texas heat is supposed to wilt players, Hamilton has hit .423. He also sets himself apart from other great sluggers because he is one of the game's best base runners and can play Gold Glove-caliber defense in the middle of the field. He has made 14 of his past 24 starts in center field.

Hamilton is listed by Baseball Reference as being one run above average as a baserunner. Baseball Prospectus lists his EqBRR as 2.1, 48th in the majors. He has 8 steals, as mentioned. He's fine. I think "one of the game's best base runners" may be pushing it. And if he were really a Gold Glover in center, why does he not start there every night? If it's because he would get hurt... well, I'm sorry, but you can't tell me a guy is the best at a position he typically can't play because of injury concerns.

Baseball doesn't have official player rankings as does golf and tennis, though its No. 1 player typically has caused little debate -- from Ken Griffey Jr. to Barry Bonds to Alex Rodriguez to Albert Pujols. Pujols' consistency is remarkable, especially measured against Hamilton's career. Hamilton is 29 and only 16 months older than Pujols, but has yet to play 100 games in back-to-back seasons -- minors or majors. But in the snapshot of today's game, based on skill set and production right now, Hamilton is the new BPB -- Best Player in Baseball. At the end of the year he could wind up with the batting title, MVP, Silver Slugger, Gold Glove and All-Star Game election, all for a first-place team.

He means 16 months younger than Pujols. At any rate, this is what I'm getting at - the "snapshot" issue. You can't award the best player in baseball "title" based on a snapshot of 2/3 of a season! (Pujols, by the way, is having his typically ridiculous year, in a manner so consistent that we don't even seem to give him credit anymore. Oh, .315/.409/.586 with 30 homers by mid-August? Yawn.)

As for the rest of it, Hamilton will probably win the batting title barring a total collapse, but so what? It will take some doing for him to finish first in OBP, a more meaningful stat. I doubt he will win a Gold Glove since he mostly plays left; All-Star Game election and Silver Slugger are meaningless. MVP would be nice for him, but it's also pretty meaningless.

Ironically, I suspect that the very reason why Hamilton gets slobbered over so heavily by guys like Verducci is precisely because he hasn't really done it before. The guy is 29 and is playing just his second full season, and putting up great stats. But rather than assume this could be some sort of fluke season, Verducci falls all over himself to talk about how the guy has just become the best player in baseball. Let me throw another age 29 season at you:

Player X, 2005: .335/.418/.662, 46 HR, led league in hits, 2B, BA, SLG, OPS/OPS+ and TB

As you can probably guess if you're a Cubs fan, those numbers belong to Derrek Lee. Yes, Lee is a first baseman, but he's an excellent defender there and he was only a couple runs worse on the basepaths than Hamilton has been this year. Now, while people certainly talked about how good the season was, you didn't see anyone suggesting that Lee was turning into the best player in baseball. In part this was because of Albert Pujols (whose season was about as good overall) and in part it was because this was Lee's seventh full season in the bigs. Anyone who'd been paying attention knew that it was unlikely that he was quite this good. (And, as it turned out, he wasn't, though injuries did him no favors.) But with Hamilton, he's a relative blank slate. When he tears it up for two months, that becomes the story of the man. We don't have five or six years of data we can throw out to show that he's clearly playing well above his typical level. He has no "typical level" yet. So hey, for all we know, this is his typical level! Next year he'll hit 75 home runs and reach base seven times out of ten!

The game last Friday against Boston belongs in a time capsule, so that when somebody who never saw him play wonders what Hamilton could do on a baseball field, just that one game will suffice.

Oh, Jesus Christ. He's not Willie Mays, Tom. Josh Hamilton is going to need to have a lot more games just like that one before it will even occur to historians to wonder what he could do on a baseball field.

"There aren't many days when Josh goes 0-for-4," Daniels said, "but if it does happen there are so many other ways he can help us win a game. Josh can influence the outcome of a game with his bat and glove.

In fact, there have been fifteen such days this year. Sure, that's not many, I guess. It's five fewer than Pujols has. It's also five more than Cabrera has. Whatever. Also, if you go 0-for-4 and don't reach base, I don't know if there are "so many other ways" you can help your team win a game, particularly if you are the everyday left fielder.

"And when he goes from first to third, he's able to turn it on with his head up and without breaking stride and can see the ball or the coach. I was fortunate to see Larry Walker one year in Colorado. He runs the bases like that. He runs with his head up at full speed. He accelerates to full speed quickly, cuts the bases perfectly, and all the while his eyes are where they're supposed to be."

To the tune of one or two runs above an average player whose eyes are flying all over the place.

Walker and Bonds are the only outfielders in the past 50 years to hit .360 with 30 homers -- measurements within Hamilton's grasp. The men to do it before them were Mantle, Musial, DiMaggio and Ted Williams.

Walker played at Coors Field. Bonds was on the juice. So really, Josh Hamilton is the greatest player of this generation! Let's just come out and say it.

Also, Bonds and Walker did it twice each. So did Williams. Mantle, DiMaggio and Musial all had at least one other .350/30 season. Can we stop pretending that Hamilton is in the same class as those guys because he's having a big year?

Hamilton is nothing more than a breathtaking comet for the moment. He has no real career to speak of and no certainty to his future. He threw away his early years in baseball because of drug addiction, endured an alcohol-related relapse last year, and his years trying to remain clean have been marred by injuries. He has played fewer major league games than Billy Butler, the 24-year-old Kansas City first baseman.

And yet... he is the best player in baseball, a title he took over from Kevin Maas.

New Rangers owner Chuck Greenberg would love to lock up Hamilton this winter to a contract extension that buys out at least one year of free agency. (Hamilton is under Texas' control for two more arbitration-eligible seasons.) But what kind of length could be guaranteed when his body of work, however great, is so checkered? His value is complicated, too, by the oddity of not earning free agent rights until he is 31 years old. Remember, age matters in baseball now. There is not one player today in his age 36 season or older who is healthy and has an OPS better than .800.

Ladies and gentlemen, the BEST PLAYER IN BASEBALL! He has a "checkered body of work" and it's doubtful he can sustain his production for five more years! Would you ever see a paragraph like this written about Albert Pujols? No, you would not.

Just for argument's sake, you could draw a faint comparison to Kevin Youkilis, another rare late bloomer, who signed his extension with the Red Sox in 2009 at age 29 -- Hamilton's age now -- and with two arbitration years remaining and coming off a year in which he finished third in MVP voting. He signed for $41.125 million over four years. Here's how Youkilis' numbers then match up with those of Hamilton now:

Kevin Youkilis vs. Josh Hamilton
Player Age G HR RBI AVG/OBP/SLG OPS
Youkilis 29 553 66 314 .289/.385/.472 .857
Hamilton 29 447 87 311 .310/.370/.541 .911

Hamilton will have bigger numbers and more awards on which to bargain. He will lack the bigger body of work. The Rangers briefly discussed a contract extension with Hamilton in spring training of 2009, shortly after Youkilis signed, but the club hit a financial downward spiral that eventually led to bankruptcy and Hamilton played only 89 games while spending two stints on the disabled list. Both developments put extension talks off to the side.

Those numbers aren't that different, by the way. They also mask the fact that while Hamilton had more eye-popping stats, Youkilis was far more consistent.

In the meantime, the Rangers will do the best they can to keep Hamilton healthy, which is why they need center fielder Julio Borbon to hit. If Borbon doesn't hit, the Rangers have to play Hamilton more in center field than they would like, with David Murphy in left field and Nelson Cruz, when he recovers from a hamstring strain, in right field. They also need to give Hamilton a few more days at DH while resting Guerrero.

Am I the only one confused by the seeming idea that the Rangers aren't sure how to handle the playing time of the best player in baseball? Shouldn't "not being made of porcelain" be a valuable quality for such a player as well?

"It's hard to take Josh out of the lineup," Daniels said.

Yes, I imagine that would be true if he were the best player in baseball. Or even if he were pretty good.

Who knows how long Hamilton can keep up this pace? He already has dealt with tendinitis in his right knee this month. But for now, the sight of a guy built like an NFL strong safety crashing into walls, blasting long home runs, flying around the bases, and chasing a batting title with a 22-point lead on Miguel Cabrera is something to behold. There is nothing like it in baseball.

As Winston Wolf would say, let's not start sucking each other's dicks just yet. Hamilton is having a great season. But is there really nothing like it in baseball? He's a good outfielder (this year) and a good baserunner but he isn't the second coming of Willie Mays and Rickey Henderson rolled into one. The fact that he's "built like an NFL strong safety" is irrelevant. Joe Mauer had an offensive season not unlike Hamilton's last year, from the more valuable catching position. Joey Votto is tearing it up this year (albeit from first base). Both of those guys are multiple years younger than Hamilton. Hanley Ramirez has 30-homer power, 50-steal speed, and has won a batting title by hitting over .340, plus he's three years younger than Hamilton and plays shortstop (albeit not well). Carlos Gonzalez is 24 years old, has played the outfield better than Hamilton over the past three years, has a better EqBRR, and is hitting .321 with 25 homers this season. But I guess he doesn't look like Troy Polamalu, so therefore he sucks.

Josh Hamilton is having a great year. But can we please rein it in? Let's at least see him stay healthy enough to do it a second time before we anoint him the greatest talent in a sport that's clearly full of equally good players right now.

(One other thing I should probably mention: Hamilton plays in Texas, where the ball flies out of the yard, especially during the hot summers. Of his 26 homers, 18 have come at home. His road OPS is a pedestrian .887; at home, it's 1.196. His home BABIP is .424, for crying out loud. For that matter, his overall BABIP is .398, aka exceptionally lucky. Pujols', by comparison, is .301 or almost exactly league average. Ted Williams' career BABIP was .328, so you can't possibly claim that Hamilton is just that good. It's a FLUKE, people.)

A note about home runs allowed

Since Jon Heyman loves to talk about them as regards Bert Blyleven. Blyleven does have two of the three biggest HR allowed seasons in history:

1. Bert Blyleven, 1986 - 50
2. Jose Lima, 2000 - 48
3t. Bert Blyleven, 1987 - 46
3t. Robin Roberts, 1956 - 46

But:

Blyleven, 1986: 17-14, 4.01 ERA (107 ERA+)
Blyleven, 1987: 15-12, 4.01 ERA (115 ERA+)
Roberts, 1956: 19-18, 4.45 ERA (84 ERA+)
Lima, 2000: 7-16, 6.65 ERA (75 ERA+)

Lima and Roberts both led the league in ER allowed. Blyleven did not, either year.

So what do home runs allowed really mean? I'll tell you: longevity. Here's the top 21 (there was a tie for 20th) in baseball history:

1. Robin Roberts, 505
2. Jamie Moyer, 491
3. Fergie Jenkins, 484
4. Phil Niekro, 482
5. Don Sutton, 472
6. Frank Tanana, 448
7. Warren Spahn, 434
8. Bert Blyleven, 430
9. Steve Carlton, 414
10. Randy Johnson, 411
11. David Wells, 407
12. Gaylord Perry, 399
13. Jim Kaat, 395
14. Jack Morris, 389
15. Charlie Hough, 383
16. Tom Seaver, 380
17. Mike Mussina, 376
18. Catfish Hunter, 374
18. Tim Wakefield, 374
20. Jim Bunning, 372
20. Dennis Martinez, 372

So, of those 21, ten are in the Hall of Fame. Johnson is a slam-dunk first-ballot. Mussina could very well make it.

Not in the Hall: Moyer, Tanana, Blyleven, Wells, Kaat, Morris, Hough, Wakefield, Martinez. Of those guys, only Morris and Wakefield did not pitch in more than 20 big league seasons (Wakefield might yet).

And then there's this: how do they rank in terms of HR/9? Baseball-reference only does it to one decimal place, but:

1t. Moyer, Wakefield, Wells - 1.1
4t. Hunter, Jenkins, Roberts, Tanana - 1.0
8t. Bunning, Hough, Johnson, Morris, Mussina - 0.9
13t. Blyleven, Kaat, Martinez, Niekro, Sutton - 0.8
18t. Carlton, Perry, Seaver, Spahn - 0.7

So while he ranks eighth in total home runs allowed, Blyleven only gave up 0.8 per 9, which compares favorably with Hall of Famer, and total home runs allowed career leader, Robin Roberts.

For that matter, Roberts never led the league in ERA, and he twice led in losses, and three times in earned runs and homers allowed. He doesn't have 300 wins. His winning percentage and ERA+ are comparable to Blyleven's (slightly higher WP, few points lower in ERA+). I'm not saying we should set the Hall's standards by its weakest member, but...

The point is, Jon Heyman needs to find a new stat. This one is clearly worthless. But then, he'd know that, if he knew anything.

Maybe you should just stop talking

Did Jon Heyman stop with what he put on Twitter? Of course not!

"I consider impact more than stats. I like dominance over durability. I prefer players who were great at some point to the ones who were merely very good for a very long time. And I do recall it's called the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Numbers."

Oh, God. This old chestnut. So are you going to vote for Jose Canseco? Did you vote for Darryl Strawberry and Doc Gooden? Both had short bursts of excellence and certainly were very famous.

"The reason I haven't yet voted for Raines is that while he was a star in Montreal, he was merely a good player for the bulk of the rest his career, spent mainly with the White Sox and Yankees. Raines' offensive career is a little like Mattingly's in that he was exceptional for about a half-dozen years but far less than that for several more. But while Mattingly (who I didn't vote for the first seven years he was on the ballot) was greater in his great years, Raines did have many more seasons of solid performance, and I'm starting to lean in his direction."

Remember, again, that this is the same Jon Heyman who bragged about how consistent he was for continuing not to vote for Bert Blyleven. Raines' career OBP was .385 - only three points behind Tony Gwynn, who was a shoo-in because he had 3,000 hits. Also, don't compare latter-day Raines to latter-day Mattingly. After 1989 - a season in which he turned just 28 years old - Mattingly was basically league-average, aside from an Indian summer in 1993 and 1994. But he was retired by age 35. Raines put up a .306/.401/.480 line at age 33 for the '93 White Sox - a better line than anything Mattingly put up after 1987. In other words, 33-year-old Tim Raines (and, for that matter, 35-, 36-, and 37-year-old Tim Raines) was better than Don Mattingly at any age after 26. I know you just said you prefer dominance over durability... but how dominant was Mattingly, even? In 1985, when he won the MVP, he wasn't even the best player on his own team (Rickey Henderson). He had three great years, was very good for three more, and then was pretty much average until an early retirement. Fine, he had injuries. But let's not pretend he's Hall-worthy. And why did it take you seven years to vote for him anyway?

"My contention regarding Blyleven is that almost no one viewed him as a Hall of Famer during his playing career, and that is borne out by the 17 percent of the vote he received in his first year of eligibility in 1998, followed by 14 percent the next year."

Um...

Uh...

Why the FUCK does that matter? Who cares how people viewed Blyleven during his playing career? Until he clawed his way to 300 games, were people constantly talking about how Don Sutton was a Hall of Fame shoo-in? How about Goose Gossage and Bruce Sutter? People assumed Mark McGwire was a slam-dunk first-ballot guy in 1999... granted, there are some extenuating circumstances there. But still, who CARES? The whole argument for Blyleven is that he was undervalued while he was playing. Our minds are made up now because people 20 years ago might have been looking at the wrong things?

(Also, was Jack Morris looked at as a Hall of Famer during his playing career? I have my doubts about this.)

Jack Morris' first two years of eligibility: 22.2%, 19.6%. Sure, they're better than Blyleven's numbers, but they're still nowhere near Hall of Fame numbers. Clearly people did not think Jack Morris was a Hall of Famer while he was playing, by Jon Heyman's logic.

Oh, I forgot. When a stat shames Blyleven, he mentions it. And when a stat pumps up Morris, he mentions it. But aside from that, he "doesn't look only at stats."

FUCK YOU.

"I look at numbers, too, and while my numbers may be slightly more simplistic than WHIP, WAR or VORP, I think they tell a story of a pitcher who was extremely good, consistent and durable but not quite Cooperstown-worthy. Blyleven was dominant in a lot of at-bats (thus, the 3,701 strikeouts) and even a lot of games (60 shutouts). But he was never dominant for a decade, a half decade or even a full season."

I look at numbers too! By the way, you know Jon Heyman's dumb when he cites WHIP as a complex stat. WHIP = walks + hits per inning pitched. Oh no! For fuck's sake, Heyman, that's not even as complicated as ERA.

So Heyman's argument is that Blyleven was "never dominant for a decade, a half-decade or even a full season." Well, I can cite some pretty dominant full seasons, I think:

1973: 20-17, 2.52, 25 CG, 9 SHO, 158 ERA+ (led league), at age 22
1984: 19-7, 2.87, 12 CG, 4 SHO, 144 ERA+
1989: 17-5, 2.73, 8 CG, 5 SHO (led league), 140 ERA+, at age 38

Or how about this? Between 1971 and 1978 - more than a half-decade - Blyleven's ERA was above 3.00 just once (and that was 3.03). He had 38 shutouts (ten more than Morris' entire career) and led the league in K/BB twice (another extremely complicated stat).

On the other hand there's Jack Morris. He never had an ERA under 3.00. Not ONCE. This great pitcher, who Jon Heyman is implicitly defining as dominant, not once had an entire season where he shut opponents down to the tune of under three earned runs per nine. His best ERA+, to take yearly context out of it, was 133. Blyleven had nine sub-3.00 ERA years and six years better than 133 ERA+.

So WHAT MAKES MORRIS DOMINANT? Because you SAY he was? That's not good enough, Jon. You can talk all you want about people trying to reconstruct Blyleven's career from a stat sheet... but I trust that stat sheet more than I trust your memory.

Look at Blyleven's 1973 season. The guy is 22 years old. His ERA is 2.52, second to Cy Young winner Jim Palmer's 2.40 but ahead of Palmer by two points in ERA+, 158 to 156. (Also, Palmer's team won 97 games; Blyleven's 81.) Blyleven finishes first in shutouts, second in WHIP, first in K/BB, second in BB/9, third in K/9, second in total Ks, fourth in innings, third in complete games, and - hilariously given what Heyman tried to hang him with last time - fourth in fewest HR/9. He also finishes top ten in starts, H/9, and wins, with 20. Oh, and losses, with 17. Because the 1973 Minnesota Twins did not score for him. He got 4.18 runs of support. Jim Palmer got half a run more per game.

I mean... that's a pretty dominant season. Sure, 20-17 doesn't jump out at you, but Nolan Ryan went 21-16 that year. Does Jack Morris have even one season that compares to just that one year of Blyleven's?

Answer: no, he doesn't. For starters, Morris never finished in the top four in ERA, let alone second. He certainly never led the league in ERA+; only four times was he even top ten and only once top five. (Blyleven: 12 top tens, 7 top fives.) He had two top fives in WHIP; never finished above fourth. He did lead the league in shutouts once, in 1986. So let's compare Blyleven's 1973 to Morris' 1986:

Blyleven 1973: 20-17 (4.18 RS), 2.52, 158 ERA+, 1.117 WHIP, 258 K, 25 CG, 9 SHO, 325 IP
Morris 1986: 21-8 (5.46 RS), 3.27, 127 ERA+, 1.165 WHIP, 223 K, 15 CG, 6 SHO, 267 IP

So, aside from the losses... where is Morris winning here? (Note: he started five fewer games and had twice as many no-decision starts as '73 Bert.) He has a slight edge in K/9, I guess. Blyleven trashes him in ERA/ERA+ despite throwing 58 additional innings, and Morris only won one more game in spite of his sizable edge in run support.

I mean, here's how snakebit Blyleven was when it came to that. In 1976 his ERA was 2.87; ERA+ of 125, not among his very best years but better than all but three of Morris'. And what was his record? 13-16! Because his shitty teams - he was traded midseason - averaged, get this, 2.66 runs of support for him. 2.66! Morris' lowest full season RS number was 3.54, close to a full run higher, and that was only once, for the 103-loss '89 Tigers, the only bad team he really played on. And he went 6-14. Aside from that year, his lowest full season RS was 4.17, more than 1.5 runs above what Blyleven got in 1976.

In other words... WINS ARE SITUATIONAL. And if you throw out wins... Blyleven looks pretty dominant for a while there! Whereas Morris never does.

"Only four times in 22 seasons did he receive Cy Young votes (he was third twice, fourth and seventh once), only twice did he make the All-Star team and only twice did he win more than 17 games. I tend not to vote for players who I see as great compilers rather than great players, which is why I don't see Lee Smith or Baines as Hall of Famers, either. Baines and Blyleven compiled similarly in some key areas, with Blyleven finishing with four percent short of 300 victories at 287, and Baines four percent short of 3,000 hits with 2,866. And actually, a case could be made that Baines had more greatness, as he made six All-Star teams, three times the number of Blyleven."

Ugh. Who cares about this shit? Number of All-Star teams made does not equal greatness. Blyleven didn't make a lot of All-Star teams because he was toiling away on lousy teams and didn't have the star power of someone like a Nolan Ryan, even though aside from a ding on the strikeouts there's a large chunk of their careers that compares pretty favorably. And Baines is a bad comparison if you look at more than one stat. Only once was he even top ten in OBP; he was only top ten in batting average three times and never top five; he led in slugging one year but never again was even top ten. Blyleven's three league-leading shutout years and his one ERA+ year alone are more impressive than that.

Also, way to imply that you still believe that 300 wins and 3,000 hits are absolute sacrosanct numbers - make it and you're in, fall slightly short and fuck you. Because that's how we judge greatness: arbitrary round cutoffs.

"Some will say that Blyleven's career was equal to Hall of Famer Don Sutton's but I say it is just short of Sutton's. They both had big totals in other categories but Sutton wound up with 37 more victories, going over the magic 300 mark by 24."

"I say it is just short of Sutton's! Because of one number."

Blyleven career ERA+: 118
Sutton career ERA+: 108

Blyleven 162-game average record: 14-12
Sutton 162-game average record: 14-11

To be fair, Sutton's two or three best years top any of Blyleven's. But he was a real feast or famine guy. He had below-average ERA+ in 1978 and 1979, then suddenly ripped off a 160 in 1980, with a sub-1.00 WHIP. In 1970 he was pretty awful but managed to win 15 games for a second-place Dodger team; two years later his ERA was two full runs lower. I mean, what the fuck? Blyleven had longer strings of very good years than Sutton, who could never seem to put together more than three. There's also this, since Heyman talks about Blyleven being a compiler and implies that Sutton's 324 wins made him a better pitcher:

Wins after age 40
Blyleven: 8
Sutton: 44

So in other words, if Bert Blyleven and Don Sutton both drop dead on their 40th birthdays, Blyleven has 279 wins and Sutton has 280. The ERA+ difference would still be around what it is now. Does this change your answer? They're nearly the same pitcher at this point, except that most of Blyleven's non-win-total numbers are better. I mean, good for Sutton that he managed to be above-average in ERA+ as a 41-year-old, the year he got his 300th win. But let's not pretend he wasn't a compiler. And in 71 more starts, he still had two fewer shutouts for his career than Blyleven.

"Many stat people suggest wins are not important in evaluating careers. But until wins don't decide who's in the playoffs and who's out, who makes the World Series and who doesn't, I will continue to view them as important. A pitcher's goal for each game is to win the game, not to strikeout the most batters. And until that changes, I will count wins and losses. I also believe the truly great pitchers pitched to the scoreboard with the real goal in mind."

Oh, no.

Wins are a TEAM accomplishment, Jon! If a pitcher throws a one-hitter, but that one hit is a solo home run and his team gets shut out, is he a piece of shit because he didn't win the game? No! He's probably a great pitcher on a terrible team! And who was even talking about strikeouts? If you want to throw those out, can we drag Nolan Ryan into this? His winning percentage was even lower than Blyleven's (and so was his ERA+). And talk about compiling... dude won his 300th game at age 43! Throw that asshole out of the Hall of Fame!

Oh, wait. You'd never advocate for that, because Nolan Ryan won 300 games. Even though his 162-game average was a 14-13 record (Blyleven: 14-12).

Also, as I already said, Joe Sheehan disproved the pitching to the score bullshit. Just because you believe it doesn't make it true, you idiot. And really, let's say it is true - it still just verifies the idea that Jack Morris' teams scored a lot more runs than Bert Blyleven's teams. And the one year that Jack Morris was on a really shitty team that never scored runs for him, he went 6-14. Because he couldn't "pitch to the score," because that's a fucking myth. If it was true, surely 34-year-old Tigers ace Jack Morris could have pitched to the score by becoming dominant like 1972 Steve Carlton. Oh wait! He didn't! His ERA was 4.86 and he only won six games! Because pitching to the score is a fucking MYTH.

"Some will say Blyleven was handicapped by playing for a string of horrific teams. But his many teams combined for a record of slightly over .500. For the most part, they were mediocre. While his career mark of 287-250 is clearly better than his teams' overall record, it isn't that much better."

Covered this last time. It was about as much better as Morris' was over his teams' win percentage. Seriously, do you even look at this shit?

Again, I know it seems like I'm picking on Morris. But the whole point is that Heyman is sure Morris belongs in, and equally sure that Blyleven belongs out. And yet his reasons are AWFUL.

"Clearly, I don't grade on stats alone, but it is interesting to note that while Blyleven never led the league in wins or ERA he did lead the league in losses, earned runs allowed and home runs allowed. (He did lead once in strikeouts.)"

And this again. Jack Morris: never led the league in ERA. Also led in losses and ER allowed. Gave up more homers per 162 games than Blyleven over their careers. You are a fucking moron who knows nothing about anything.

Why is Jon Heyman allowed to write about baseball when he is willfully ignorant?

I can't believe we have to keep doing this

Jon Heyman is apparently quite good at getting news just before it breaks in the world of baseball. This is impressive since he clearly knows nothing whatsoever about baseball.

Heyman tweeted his Hall of Fame ballot. Here it is:

Roberto Alomar
Andre Dawson
Barry Larkin
Dave Parker
Jack Morris
Don Mattingly

Let's start with the picks that are fine. Alomar is a worthy Hall choice. Larkin strikes me as a little more borderline, but I think you can make a pretty strong case for him.

Then there are the more borderline picks: Dawson, Parker and Mattingly. Dawson probably has the strongest case of the three - he hit more than 400 home runs and was a good outfielder when healthy. His OBP stinks (.323 career, which is outside the top one thousand in baseball history), but his OPS+ was still 119, which isn't terrible. Joe Cronin's in the Hall with a 119 OPS+. Whatever.

Parker has always struck me as a weird case. From 1975-1979 he was one of the best hitters in the game, and won the MVP in 1978. He also helped lead the "We are Family" Pirates to the World Series the next year. Then he had a few lost years thanks to injuries and drugs. Then he had one more great season at age 34 in 1985... and then kind of hung around until 1991. Basically, he had six great years and 13 years in which he was, at best, good. In some of them he was basically league-average. But his career OBP was .339 and OPS+ 121, both better than Dawson, and he's maybe even more of a "what could have been" guy than Dawson. His 1978 MVP was better than any of Dawson's seasons, including 1987. I think it's weird to induct a guy based on missed potential - why not Darryl Strawberry, then? - but if Dawson is a borderline candidate, Parker has to be considered just as highly. (Of course, I wouldn't put either of them in. But I'm trying to give Heyman the benefit of the doubt here.)

Don Mattingly is a classic example of just looking at peak value (and also being swayed by hype). Mattingly's first six full seasons are, indeed, great. But he pretty much falls off a cliff at age 29 and was done at 34. The key argument for someone like Mattingly is the fact that Ralph Kiner is in the Hall, but Kiner at least was punching up multiple 1.000-OPS seasons at his peak. Mattingly didn't do that, and he played a power position. I also think his election would be a triumph of New York hype. If you had a pretty good fielding first baseman with only decent power (20 HR/162 g) and only six really good years under his belt, and he played in Kansas City or something, would he have lasted more than a year on the ballot? Yankees fans love Mattingly - no Yankee who didn't win a World Series has ever been loved more by them - and the corresponding exposure has led to the memory of Mattingly as being better for longer than he was. The guy was basically washed up by 1990. Heyman should know this, given that he was a beat writer in New York for most of Mattingly's career... but then that pretty much explains his inclusion, doesn't it?

Whatever. Mattingly's not a HOFer and fortunately he still has pretty low vote totals. I can at least understand voting for a guy based on a pretty strong peak.

Then, of course, there's Jack Morris.

So, right after posting his ballot, Heyman adds this (possibly in response to other Twitter posts wondering where Bert Blyleven is):

"regarding bert, 86% voted "no'' his 2nd yr. unlike others, i'm consistent. he never led league in wins, ERA but led in HRs, earned runs, Ls"

Do we really have to keep doing this?

Let's take these down one at a time.

1. So 86% of the BBWAA voted no on Blyleven in his second year - of course it's really more accurate to say that only 14% did vote for him. Why does that matter? Heyman voted for Mattingly, and 80% of the BBWAA voted no on Mattingly in his second year. Also, a few tweets after bragging about how consistent he is for refusing to vote for Blyleven, he states that he isn't voting for Tim Raines right now, but might in the future after reevaluating his career. Jon Heyman: consistently inconsistent.

2. Okay, Blyleven never led the league in wins or ERA. He was, however, top five in ERA seven times. And look at something like 1979 - that was one of the better teams that Blyleven pitched for (the Pirates won 98 games) - and yet even though he started 37 games, Blyleven was just 12-5. Why? Well, it helps when you have ten no-decisions in games where you gave up two earned runs or fewer. I don't know, is that Blyleven's fault?

3. Heyman brings up that Blyleven had years in which he led the league in homers allowed, earned runs allowed, and losses. These are all true statements - in 1986 and 1987 Blyleven gave up a combined 96 home runs for the Twins, then in 1988 cut back to 21 homers but gave up 125 earned runs and lost 17 games. That 1988 season was pretty bad, but when you look at '86 and '87 you have to consider that Blyleven was better than league average in ERA both years. He had a 4.01 ERA both times, not great but good enough for ERA+ of 107 and 115. (Both, amusingly, are better than Morris' career ERA+ of 105.)

While we're on the subject, Morris also once led the league in earned runs - in fact, with the exact same number, 125, two years after Blyleven did it. He also lost 18 games that year, more than Blyleven lost in his league-leading '88 season. Also, in 1986, Morris allowed 40 home runs - not as many as Blyleven's 50, but good enough for second-most in the AL! That was one of Morris' best years (21-8, 3.27), which just proves that HR allowed really isn't a meaningful number when stripped of all context.

Oh, and Heyman's big thing that he holds over Blyleven - never leading the league in wins or ERA? Well, Morris never led in ERA either. And only twice was he top five, next to Blyleven's seven. And I don't want to hear that bullshit about Morris pitching to the score, since it was disproven by Joe Sheehan years ago. Morris did lead the league in wins twice. Once was in 1981 - a strike year, when he led with 14 - and the other was in 1992, when he went 21-6 with a 4.04 ERA. His run support that year? 5.56. He won four games in which he gave up 5 runs or more; if the team doesn't score for him in two of those and he doesn't win 20 games, are we even having this conversation? Jimmy Key had a better ERA for the Blue Jays but somehow went 13-13, while Juan Guzman was probably their best pitcher, going 16-5, 2.64. Though I will grant that Morris's 60 additional innings made him a pretty good guy to have.

So far it's pretty clear that much of what Heyman holds over Blyleven can be held almost equally well over Morris. Let's see what else he's got.

"i dont mean to pick on blyleven, but his teams werent as bad as folks claim. they were a bit over .500 (& only a touch worse than him by %)."

Heyman might be right that Blyleven's teams weren't as bad as often cited. He did pitch for two WS winners. Blyleven's teams won 90 games five times; Morris' six. But Morris also pitched for below-.500 teams far less often - Blyleven did it ten times, Morris just three. And between 1978 and 1988 - an eleven-year stretch that encompasses the majority of Morris' career and pretty much his entire peak - Morris didn't pitch for a sub-.500 team even once. Between 1974 and 1984, the years in which Blyleven was the same ages as Morris during his stretch, Blyleven pitched for five winning teams and five losing teams. Also:

Blyleven's teams: .502
Blyleven: .534

Morris' teams: .539
Morris: .577

Difference between Blyleven and his teams: .032
Difference between Morris and his teams: .038

Pretty negligible. Over a 162-game season, Blyleven's teams go from 81-game winners - .500 - to 86 or 87 game winners if he pitches every game (if we buy into the idea that these percentages are meaningful). Morris' teams start at 87 and go to 93. Basically both guys add between five and six wins. The only real difference is the baseline. Next!

"i guess im going on more than stats since i saw both guys' entire careers. morris was ace of 3 WS winners"

It kills me that this canard comes up every single time Morris' candidacy is discussed. "He was the ace of three World Series winners!" Never mind that this is demonstrably untrue, unless you're using "ace" as a completely subjective, nebulous term that really doesn't mean anything.

Let me just talk about the "I'm going on more than stats since I saw both guys' entire careers" thing for a minute. According to Wikipedia, Jon Heyman grew up in New York. He graduated college in 1983. This put him in prime position to witness, as a professional journalist, the majority of Morris' career - but he'd already missed more than half of Blyleven's, and since Blyleven was pitching in Minnesota, Texas and Pittsburgh in the 70s, I really doubt Heyman saw him pitch very often... which means that the only thing he's probably really going by is stories he heard from guys who did see Blyleven and/or box scores, or as they might be called, "stats." For that matter, Heyman spent the entire period between 1983 and 1999 writing for Newsday. How often was he ever seeing Blyleven or Morris pitch live? The four times a year they started against the Yankees? What a load of crap.

Back to the "ace of three World Series winners" bullshit. So, Morris pitched for three teams that won a title: the 1984 Tigers, 1991 Twins and 1992 Blue Jays. But let me ask you a question: how does one define "ace"? Is it "best pitcher during the regular season?" "Best pitcher during the postseason?" "Guy who everyone believes to be an ace even if his stats don't bear it out so much?" If it's the latter, that's such a ridiculous dodge that I don't even want to address it. So, is it the former? If so, I will go on record as saying that it's very easy to argue whether Morris was the best pitcher on any of those three teams. But let's say - since Morris backers love to talk about the postseason - that it's his postseason performances that really made him the ace.

1984 World Series: 2-0, 2 CG, 2.00 ERA
1991 World Series: 2-0, 1 CG, 1.17 ERA
1992 World Series: 0-2, 8.44 ERA

*record scratch sound effect*

Whaaaa?

Let's get this straight once and for all. Jack Morris was, by no objective measure, the ace of three WS teams. If you want to say his regular seasons made him the ace, I would argue he was not the ace of any of those teams - Dan Petry was better in 1984, Kevin Tapani and Scott Erickson were better in 1991, and I could easily argue that Key and Guzman were both better in 1992 although Morris' innings make more of a difference that year. If you want to say his postseasons made him the ace, that's fine and I would agree he was the ace of two teams, but the 1992 Blue Jays lost two games in the World Series and Jack Morris was the losing pitcher in both of them. Also, his ERA was fucking 8.44.

And if Morris was so acey and it was so obvious to people who watched him play during his career like Jon Heyman... why did Morris never win a Cy Young? Why did he never come particularly close? If you want to hammer on Blyleven for things he didn't do, this seems like a pretty glaring omission from Morris' CV. He was the ace on three World Series teams and yet never cracked the top two in the Cy voting? In 1984 he was seventh, behind two of his own teammates (Petry and winner Willie Hernandez). In 1991 he was fourth, two spots behind Erickson. He was the only Jay getting votes in 1992, but he was fifth, not close to winning. So I repeat: the ace of three World Series teams was not considered the best pitcher on two of those teams by Cy Young voters.

Lest you think I'm ignoring Blyleven's similar lack of Cy credentials, he also had just two top-three Cy finishes, Morris had one more top-five finish and three more overall appearances on the ballot. On the other hand, at least Blyleven was always the top vote-getter on his own team. I also think it says something that three of Blyleven's four appearances on the ballot came when he was playing for teams that were .500 or worse. None of Morris' seven appearances were for sub-.500 teams and four were for playoff teams. What does this mean? Well, this is just an opinion, but I think it's a lot easier to get on a Cy Young ballot when you have a good season for a playoff team than when you have a very good season for a non-playoff team, and particularly one that isn't even very good. In 1984, Blyleven went 19-7, 2.87 for an Indians team that was 75-87 and finished sixth in the AL East. Morris went 19-11, 3.60 for a Tigers team that won 104 games. Blyleven was third in the voting, Morris seventh. Frankly, considering it was 1984 I'm a little amazed the voters got that one right.

"@petzrawr its not just that i saw them. i covered them. i saw morris be the ace of great teams. he made major impact. bert is very close tho"

This is a delightful pander since I think it's pretty clear he doesn't think Blyleven is really that close. We've already discussed how Morris was not "the ace of great teams" by objective measurement, but again with "I covered them." Hey, great. You missed half of Blyleven's career. Does that seem fair? This is like if you became a reporter in 2000, and then refused to vote for Ken Griffey Jr. because "I covered him - he wasn't a bad hitter but he was always injured and wasn't great in the field." I'm not saying that Blyleven gets a pass on the part of his career that Heyman did see, but he's ignoring an awful lot.

And again, what impact did Morris make that Blyleven didn't, or couldn't have if placed on the same great teams? The '84 Tigers didn't win 104 games because of Morris. And when it comes to being an "ace" and having a "major impact" on your teams, is there a better measurement than (1) ERA - if you're not giving up runs, you're helping your team win; (2) complete games, and (3) shutouts? Forget wins; they're situational. You can get a win if you pitch five innings and give up 10 runs so long as your team scored 11 while you were out there. The lower your ERA, the more likely that your team will win every time you go out there.

Blyleven ERA: 3.31
Morris ERA: 3.90

So on average, every time Jack Morris took the hill, his team would have to score 0.6 more runs to win the game than if they had started Blyleven. Jake Westbrook's career ERA is closer to Morris' than Morris' is to Blyleven's.

How about this: the complete-game shutout is the only way that you, as a pitcher, have almost total control over whether or not your team wins a game. Forget ERA, right? Runs allowed, who cares. You could have a few bad games and that sucker shoots right up. Morris was dominant because he could shut you down.

Blyleven complete games: 242
Morris complete games: 175

Blyleven shutouts: 60
Morris shutouts: 28

Oops. But Morris once led the league in shutouts! I'm sure Blyleven just compiled... oh, no, he did that three times.

"@DashTreyhorn i believe he was chosen to start game 1. his stats may not hold up as "best.'' but managwes consistently gave him ball game 1"

[Sic] there. So, in fact, Heyman's entire rationale for Morris being the "ace" is that he started game one in the playoffs. Not that he was the best starter... just that, for whatever reason, he always started game one. I guess that's nice, but what does it prove? Heyman's clearly an old-school guy who likes to believe that what's truly noteworthy about a pitcher is what his manager thought of him. Sure, Morris was clearly the third-best starter on the '91 Twins, but hey - Tom Kelly thought he should start Game One of the playoffs! It could be because he thought of Morris as his ace. It could also be because Morris started game 158, Tapani started game 159 and Erickson started game 161 - in other words, it was Morris' turn in the rotation. The same could be said in 1992, when Juan Guzman pitched closer to the end of the season than Morris. (Key was even fresher but he barely pitched in the ALCS - then he went 2-0 in the World Series while Morris went 0-2.) I'm not surprised Morris was picked in '84 because Dan Petry was only 25 and didn't quite have Morris' track record... but again, Petry pitched closer to the end of the season than did Morris! Heyman's argument rests on nothing more than how the rotation happened to line up? Good God. (I guess it was late in the year and you could argue that the rotation was being purposefully lined up to get Morris a Game One start; I'd have to do a lot more research to try and see which it was. Still, Morris was the most veteran of the good pitchers on his teams. It doesn't surprise me that a manager would want the most senior good guy to lead off a series. It doesn't mean that Morris himself was possessed of endemic pitching qualities that made managers choose him. It means he was in situations where he was a senior guy and baseball men like veterans. These are not HOF credentials.)

"@andytworischuk i dont believe i said "stats shouldn't be used.'' ive said i dont go by stats alone."

Come on, Jon. You don't go by stats at all! What does Morris have over Blyleven aside from winning percentage, which I've already pretty much disproved? Even the stats that you used to try to bury Blyleven simply don't hold up. Earned runs? Sure, he had one really bad year where he led the league - but so did Morris, and Blyleven's career ERA is markedly lower. Home runs? Again, a couple bad years there - but here's a fun fact for you:

Home runs allowed, 162-game average
Morris: 25
Blyleven: 21

Losses? Both averaged 12 per 162 games. What does Morris have that Blyleven doesn't? Postseason performance? Because that's an old canard too:

Blyleven postseason: 5-1, 2.47 in five series
Morris postseason: 7-4, 3.80 in seven series

I'm really supposed to believe that even though every available statistic says that Blyleven was not just better than Morris but often significantly better, I should just think that Morris was better because he was in the right place at the right time to start a few Game Ones? Who CARES?????

Last point, because this is rapidly turning into a dissertation: Heyman's entire argument seems to boil down to this: "Yes, the stats say Blyleven was better, but that's not what I remember." Here's the problem, Jon: human memory is notoriously fallible. They've done whole studies about this. There's something called "flashbulb memory," which refers to memories that stick in the mind very clearly because of their connection to traumatic events, like a car accident or something more global like the Challenger disaster or 9/11. But here's the thing: it turns out that flashbulb memories, while they are more vivid than regular memories, aren't necessarily more reliable. People interviewed within 24 or 48 hours of the Challenger explosion gave one account of what happened that day, and then a completely different one when asked again five years later - except that they still thought the memory was vivid and accurate, even though it wasn't. It was also discovered that things like television coverage often caused other information that they didn't originally have to bleed over into the memory, making them think they'd experienced these other things at the time, even though they hadn't.

What does this have to do with Jon Heyman? Well, what he's basically saying is, "I was there and I saw Morris be dominant." But did he? The stats - an objective record of the games played - certainly don't suggest dominance on Morris' part. They suggest a very good pitcher with a handful of great seasons and a few big playoff moments. Of course, Blyleven's stats suggest the exact same thing and they're better across the board, so you can't very well point to that and use it to say why Morris should be in and Blyleven shouldn't. So that leaves "personal experience." You can't just go by the stats! I was there and my memory tells me Morris was dominant!

Except that Jon Heyman's memory is almost certainly not more reliable, or less prone to alteration, than the average person's. What is the one thing that everyone knows about Jack Morris? He had clutch postseason performances. He was a big-game pitcher. Like Game 5 of the 1992 World Series, when Morris took the mound and clinched the title for the Blue Jays... oh, no. What actually happened was he gave up five runs in the top of the fifth with the game tied at two, including a two-out grand slam to Lonnie Smith of all people, and the Blue Jays had to go back to Atlanta, where they won Game 6.

That's not entirely fair, of course, but it proves my point. Jon Heyman remembers Jack Morris as a big-game pitcher for the same reason most people do: Game 7, 1991 World Series. And sure, that was a really great game. But it was one game. That's not enough, yet it's clearly coloring memories because it's not like Morris did that every time out. In the 1991 ALCS, Morris was pulled in the sixth inning of Game One because he had just let the Blue Jays close the gap from 5-1 to 5-4. (He was just pitching to the score, right?) The bullpen shut the Jays down and Morris got the win (yet another reason why wins are kinda bullshit). He's allowed bad games, but let's not pretend he was never anything but lights-out in the postseason. Heyman's memory is being affected by all the coverage that game continues to get to this day. But because people really can't be aware that their memory is altered like that, he continues to insist that he was there and he saw it happen. Even though, apart from a relatively small number of games, he probably didn't. (And of course Heyman is unlikely to remember games he saw in which Morris pitched poorly, so that just leaves memory of the "dominant pitcher" that Morris certainly could be at his very best. But so could Blyleven. Just because Heyman doesn't remember seeing it does not mean it didn't happen. That's why we have statistics, because it's impossible for one dude to remember everything that happened in one game, let alone hundreds of them.)

Really, if Jack Morris ever does get elected, he owes it all to Kirby Puckett. Why? Because without Puckett's home run to win Game Six, Morris doesn't get that chance at Game 7. And then his postseason resume goes from 7-4, 3.80 to 6-4, 4.26, and no one remembers that indelible moment which subsequently affects all their memories of Morris' talent, and we're not even having this conversation.

I don't mean to kill Morris here. It's not like he was a bad pitcher. But his ERA+ was 105. He was not a dominant starter any more than Blyleven just because he did it for a few more winning teams. Maybe you still want to argue that he's a Hall of Famer, and that's fine. But if you're going to put him in, how you can suggest that Blyleven belongs out when you have four more spots on your ballot into which you could put him... I just can't understand that.

Why We Fight

I imagine some of you wonder why I get so annoyed by bad MVP votes and the like. It's for the same reason why I don't think intelligent design deserves to be taught in public schools alongside evolution. We have scientific methods and data that can tell us things we're not always capable of guessing or perceiving on our own - but some people actively disdain these methods. Saying that people who believe in the importance of stats don't like or can't adequately appreciate baseball, as many anti-stat types do, is really no more intellectually valid than saying that a belief in evolution means I don't like or can't adequately appreciate the majesty of the earth. It's ridiculous. And, more specifically, because sometimes there is an MVP ballot so monumentally dumb that it suggests that its associated voter should not only be stripped of his right to vote for postseason awards, but dragged out into the street and beaten like Carlo Rizzi. Ladies and gentlemen, Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's ballot for 2008 NL MVP:

1. Ryan Howard, Phil
2. CC Sabathia, Mil
3. Manny Ramirez, LA
4. Carlos Delgado, NY
5. Aramis Ramirez, Chi
6. Prince Fielder, Mil
7. Albert Pujols, Stl
8. Ryan Ludwick, Stl
9. Ryan Braun, Mil
10. David Wright, NY

My first thought: Tom Haudricourt was awakened from a coma on July 1st.

1. Ryan Howard, Phil

I mostly went over this one yesterday. Ryan Howard is the MVP only if you believe one of the following three things:

(1) There is nothing more important than hitting a lot of home runs
(2) There is nothing more important than having a ton of RBIs
(3) There is nothing more important than getting hot in September

(3) is maybe, kinda, sorta true, although if you were absolute shit for the first three months of the season, and then again in August, I don't think a hot September should outweigh that. (1) and (2) are nonsense.

2. CC Sabathia, Mil

Sabathia pitched extremely well for the Brewers. He also did not pitch for them before July. Unless you put up full-season stats in half a season, you cannot be an MVP for half a season. There are no such things as extrapolation points.

3. Manny Ramirez, LA

See above. Ramirez played for the Dodgers for two months. He was a really, really good hitter during that time, but he still only played for them for two months. Mercifully, Ramirez finished "only" fourth in the balloting this year, suggesting that at least most writers were only so swayed by the "Manny has turned this team around!" narrative.

4. Carlos Delgado, NY

Remember the first half of the season, when Delgado was hitting .248 with a .328 OBP and everyone was talking about how washed up he was? Tom Haudricourt doesn't.

5. Aramis Ramirez, Chi

Dear God. At this point there can be no doubt that Haudricourt is focused primarily on team accomplishments; Ramirez had a nice season, of course, but it doesn't compare with Albert Pujols' even if you love counting stats.

6. Prince Fielder, Mil

Decent year. Better year than Albert Pujols?

7. Albert Pujols, Stl

And finally we get to the real MVP. The guy who Tom Haudricourt does not even think was a top five most valuable player candidate because his team was mediocre. Tom Haudricourt was voting for the MVPOATTAMTPOALGCTTCDBOEHCDGOHB Award, the Most Valuable Player on a Team That Also Made the Playoffs or At Least Got Closer Than the Cardinals Did Because Otherwise Explain How Carlos Delgado Got on His Ballot Award.

Who's ready for some stupid justification?

I had an MVP ballot and voted for Howard first because he almost single-handedly carried the Phillies to the playoffs by batting .352 with 11 homers and 32 RBI in September. I like to weight my voting to teams in the playoff hunt because I think that puts more pressure on players and separates the men from the boys. There's little pressure on players having big years if their teams aren't playing for anything at the end.

First of all: no. Okay, Howard had 32 RBI in September. Even if you give him full credit, as an individual, for driving in all of those important runs, the Phillies scored 138 runs. That's less than a quarter that were driven in by Howard. Maybe the other 77% of runs that were knocked in were also kind of important? Also, maybe if Howard hadn't been such a non-factor for four months, he wouldn't have needed to have such an enormous September just to "carry" the Phillies to the playoffs. Maybe?

With the Cardinals finishing fourth, I voted Pujols seventh on my ballot. I don't consider MVP to be "the most outstanding player" award and therefore don't just go by who had the best stats. I like to credit players for lifting their teams to the post-season or at least keeping them in the race until the very end.

At least he, unlike Thomas Boswell, admits that Pujols had the best stats. Then he goes ahead and ruins it by pretending that individual players are capable of "lifting" otherwise mediocre teams to the postseason. Remove Pujols from the Cardinals and they lose 13 wins if you just stick any AAA guy in his place; rather than finishing four out of the wild card - a respectable if not successful season given how low the team's expectations were in March - they finish seventeen out of the wild card and drift behind the Reds into fifth place in the Central. Why Pujols is to be punished because the rest of his team wasn't that good is beyond me. Certainly writers like Haudricourt do not seem to be able to grasp the idea that elevating any team's performance by 13 wins is "value," and it's not his fault that the Cardinals had a shitty bullpen that blew literally dozens of leads, and had it blown five fewer the Cardinals would have made the playoffs and guys like Haudricourt would be lining up to tell us how amazing a season Pujols had. But because Jason Isringhausen blew five saves that turned into losses, Pujols finishes seventh on Haudricourt's ballot. Are you capable of seeing why this makes no fucking sense? At all? Pushing the guy with the best stats to seventh on your ballot because his team's bullpen sucked is madness.

I understand that the Cardinals would not have been even close to the wild-card berth without Pujols, but I still like players who elevate their game in crunch time and lift their teams to new heights. And I thought Ryan Ludwick had just as much to do with keeping the Cards in the hunt as Pujols did. St. Louis did stay in the wild card race until mid-September, but mainly because the Brewers and Mets were gagging at the time.

I swear to God, if I ever run into Tom Haudricourt on the street, I am going to punch him in the face. Albert Pujols' on-base percentage was .462. With RISP he hit .339/.523/.678. In "late and close" situations he hit .314/.444/.600. In "high leverage" spots as defined by WPA, he hit .392/.492/.725. For the month of August, as the Cards were desperately trying to stay afloat in the playoff race, he hit .398/.491/.745. Oh, but I guess he only hit .321/.427/.702 in September. What a fucking choke artist. (Ryan Ludwick: Nice season, especially considering. But he gives up 87 points of OBP to Pujols, and was no doubt aided by the fact that he spent half the season hitting in front of Pujols, giving him better pitches to hit, and the other half hitting behind Pujols, boosting his RBI chances since Pujols was on base twice a game.)

Also, none of this explains why Carlos Delgado finished three spots above Pujols, considering that he was teammates with David Wright, Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes, all of whom are at least as valuable as Ryan Fucking Ludwick, and his team also failed to make the playoffs. If Pujols didn't elevate his game in the last two months it's only because he played at a ridiculously high level all season. So what Tom Haudricourt is saying is: Playing great all year is less valuable than playing shitty for half the year and great for two, three months tops. And also, playing great for a team that doesn't have a lot of other great players is somehow less valuable than playing pretty well for a team that does have a lot of other great players. Jesus Christ. This is the dumbest shit ever. Tom Haudricourt wrote this down and thought, "This will make sense when people read it."

It's a subjective vote and every writer has his own preferences. That's why I voted for Sabathia second and Ramirez third because even though they played in the league only half a season they were primarily responsible for putting their teams in the playoffs.

Some preferences may be stupider than others. Like yours, for example. Also, don't lean on subjectivity as an excuse. The vote should not be nearly as subjective as you've made it. And when you put two other Brewers in your top ten, that damages the argument that Sabathia was "primarily" responsible for putting the Brewers into the playoffs. How many guys can be that valuable for a team that slipped in by the skin of its teeth (and then in large part because their final weekend opponent had long since clinched)?

I voted Fielder higher than Braun because Fielder had a much better September when the Brewers were clawing to get in the playoffs. Braun was ailing, as we discovered, and did have the homer that put the Brewers in the playoffs, but I just felt Fielder did more down the stretch.

I know in this last paragraph he's comparing Fielder and Braun. But remember that he voted Fielder 6th and Pujols 7th as well.

Prince Fielder, September 2008: .316/.398/.600
Albert Pujols, September 2008: .321/.427/.702

Prince Fielder's team, September 2008: 10-16
Albert Pujols' team, September 2008: 12-13

Prince Fielder: more valuable than Albert Pujols.

Tom Haudricourt: IQ of a can of garbanzo beans.