Are you seriously contending that it was a “travesty” for a guy to win the MVP with 58 HR and a .313/.425/.659 line? It’s not like Pujols hit 70 HR – his line was .330/.431/.671, which is nearly identical to Howard’s, and he played in 16 fewer games than Howard, and they even played the same position, so there’s not the SS vs. LF argument. So the argument for Pujols over Howard basically comes down to glove work. How does that render Howard’s award a “travesty”? Perhaps (as with Rollins), certain advanced metrics give a slight edge to another candidate, but calling it a “travesty” way over-states the case. The 1947 AL award, now that was a travesty, with Joe DiMaggio winning the MVP at .315/.391/.522 with 20 hr, 97 runs and 97 rbi (and only playing 141 games) over Ted Williams, who won the freaking Triple Crown while going .343/.499/.634

I have actually played this game in my head before, and discussed it with others for suggestions. If I had to start somewhere, I would say an NFL quarterback would give a Major League hitter a strong run for his money, if not exceed him, in regard to the toughest job in sports. I suspect it is the toughest.

Yet, it doesn’t seem like there is any real way to make that argument based on tangible information.

One of the gigs that also always seems to come up, is hockey goalie.

I love the NHL, have been following it for almost 30 years, and respect and acknowledge how difficult it is to stop a puck. That said, even the most terrible goalies succeed approximately 88% of the time (save %), and that is a markedly different succeed/fail ratio than a major league hitter faces.

Who knows? Maybe we need to get Jon Heyman up to speed on VORP first, and then we’ll tackle the larger matters.

That’s without mentioning that an at-bat in April is just as valuable as an at-bat on September 31, regardless of how much human emotional stock we put in the September games.

Having a successful at-bat is a ridiculously tough thing to accomplish – quite possibly the toughest thing in sports

If possible, it’d be interesting to have some kind of a study done to see what is the hardest job for an athlete. My hunch tells me that an at-bat is among the toughest.

That said, I read a lot of blogs written by people with like-minded views, and I can’t believe how rigid I find my thinking in comparison to other “Vorpies” (Thanks Jon).

I believe that if David Wright finished with the same numbers he did in 2007, the Mets still “choked away” the division, and he went 1 for 31 down the stretch, he should receive the same amount of weighted MVP consideration due to the 155 games he happend to play previous to that.

Major League Baseball results are created when immense talent collides with considerable luck, creating results that may not be random in the literal sense, but are as close to random as you can get in regard to any given at bat, or cluster of at bats.

Having a successful at-bat is a ridiculously tough thing to accomplish – quite possibly the toughest thing in sports – and I just can’t judge a player by his inability to get the job done in a small sample size…even if it is the last week of September, or any week in October.

I’m surprised to see you both referencing a week’s worth of play, when discussing his candidacy.

1) SS is more important defensively than 3B

2) J-Roll is a better defensive player than Wright.

3) Intangibles

On the first two, it’s pretty clear he is ignorant of WARP, or any defensive metric, because they all favor Wright. I agree that this is the flaw in his argument (and the lazy part), but it never seemed he was trying to make an all-stats centered argument.

I agree that this sort of half-assed approach to advanced metrics is annoying, but the overall point seems to be that Rollins’s leadership and the Phillies winning the East were the overiding factors, which I think is completely legitimate.

I never found Junior’s SI column on-line. It’s early in the magazine.

It’s like he was just jotting down thoughts as they came, and he realized the statistics favored Wright, so instead of just deleting what he had written, he kept it and then went down a different path. Maybe he had a deadline to meet.

His whole point of writing this article was to bash Sabermetrics and the people who use them. It was a statistics-oriented article, and he tried to make a statistical case for Rollins. Obviously, he failed. =/

It seems he thinks Wright may have better offensive credentials but that intangibles make up for it.

And read this line again:

He is doing what he wants (ignoring defensive statistics, using intangibles and team performance) and you rip the guy for it.”

and look for the word defensive!