Derek Jeter had his best chance at winning the MVP this year. He had stats that were well above average, and uneven competition since the Red Sox and White Sox both faded, taking Ortiz and Dye out of the running.
Well, it looks like the award will go to Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins. What does a guy have to do to get appreciated by the sports media? Apparently Jeter didn’t do enough. Maybe he just doesn’t get enough attention because he’s lost among all those big stars in New York. It doesn’t seem fair.
This sentence… it’s a funny, right? Derek Jeter? Doesn’t get enough attention? Derek? Jeter? I’m getting whooshed.
I’d have a very hard time building a convincing argument for Derek Jeter as the MVP this year. Had I been voting, I would probably have voted for this guy before Morneau or Jeter, because his numbers are entirely comparable to Jeter’s, and he plays a more demanding defensive position than Morneau, and plays it better than Jeter plays his.
If he hadn’t gotten hurt, though, I’d have picked Travis Hafner, DH or no.
Mauer would have been the runaway MVP if his production hadn’t dropped off a bit over the last few months. Understandable, given his position. I think you could make the case that overall, Mauer was the real MVP of the Twins: he was a major catalyst during the Twin’s turnaround, after he hit .452 in June, with an OBP of .528, when the Twins started their big push. But he was hurt by pretty bad August, when he hit just .275.
In contrast, Morneau was a big factor down the stretch after Liriano went down for good, Radke’s arm fell off, and every other starting pitcher not named Santana basically stunk.
Both Morneau and Mauer were definitely better MVP candidates than Jeter, who is a marginal shortstop at best. Had A-Rod had any a slightly better year, Jeter wouldn’t be anywhere near the MVP debate at all; he only got mentioned at all because of A-Rod’s ‘struggles’ and the injuries to Sheffield and Matsui. But this ‘he carried the team’ crap is still total bullshit - having to ‘carry’ a team that still had A-Rod, Giambi, Cano and Damon, and then added Abreu? A team that led the majors in runs scored, was fifth in home runs, second in team batting average, and was third in team slugging percentage?
The only reason he was in the MVP debate was because people realized it was likely his best chance for the emotional leader of the team to win an MVP, as a sort of ‘lifetime achievement award’. I’m glad Jeter didn’t get it - I have an enourmous amount of respect for him as a player, but he simply didn’t deserve it, not this year.
Derek Jeter gets 18 mil for an average season of 17 hrs 78 rbi, .317 average and average or slightly above average fielding. I am not impressed. Oh yeah he’s a “winner” with “intangibles not found on a stat sheet”. Whatever.
Maybe, just MAYBE, this will lay to rest the idiotic notion that New York players get too much respect and adoration from the media.
Over the past 40 years, how many Mets players have won the MVP award? Zero! How many Yankees have won it? Three.
Does that REALLY sound to anyone like the evil New York media have some kind of conspiracy going on? More Texas Rangers than Yankees have won the MVP in my lifetime!
Are there benefits to playing in New York? Sure! You get paid a lot more than you would in Kansas City, and you have opportunities for endorsements that you won’t get in Cincinnati. But you do NOT get automatic adulation from the media. If anything, I think writers from other cities are often irrationally hostile to Yankee contenders for awards.
MVP? Check. (Morneau)
Cy Young Winner? Check. (Santana)
Batting champ? Check. (Mauer)
Baseball Executive of the Year? Check. (Ryan)
Contender for Rookie of the Year? Check. (Liriano)
Contender for Manager of the Year? Check. (Gardenhire)
And three and out in the playoffs.
sigh
God, I hope we can sign not just one, but at least two good arms for 2007.
Morneau seems like a nice guy and he’s certainly a fine player but he’s the worst MVP pick in 19 years, easily. It wasn’t just the wrong selection, it was an idiotic selection, driven almost entirely - once again - by the fact that the BBWAA seems to understand just one thing: RBIs.
Morneau not only wasn’t the league’s most valuable player; he wasn’t in the top five. Jeter was certainly better, and I’m not talking about intangibles; he was statistically better than Morneau. He created more runs (136 to 121) and was more defensively valuable. Yes, Morneau drove in more runs; Jeter scored more, and he made fewer outs doing it. He was the better player, period; there is essentially no rational argument to the contrary.
Alex Rodriguez, who got ripped all year by the fans and the press, was better. (Yes, he was.) David Ortiz was better. Jermaine Dye was better. Joe Mauer was, indeed, better, and if you think games won in June are less valuable than those won in September you’re a retard. I would have voted for Carlos Guillen over Morneau.
I didn’t realize I had drifted THAT far away from baseball until today, when I didn’t even *RECOGNIZE * the name of the AL MVP. I surf sports websites all the time, watch some ESPN here and there … what a jarring thing this is!
It’s not just a statistical award. It’s for the player most valuable to his team. It’s hard to argue any Yankee is “most valuable” when the team has all the expensive players they have. If they didn’t have Jeter, they’d just go out and sign the most expensive shortstop they could… or take the fantastic shortstop they have at third base and move him over and go sign the most expensive third baseman they could. The Twins depend on guys coming up through the system to deliver, and Morneau did.
Runs scored are no more good an indicator than RBI. Jeter hits earlier in the line up and has guys like A Rod, Giambi, etc., waiting to knock him in. Morneau has guys like Hunter and Castillo, definitely good players, but not guys with the gaudy numbers of the guys hitting behind Jeter.
They picked an MVP who was absolutely essential to his team winning what was probably the toughest division in baseball. You can make a case for Dye, Ortiz, and Jeter, but their decision wasn’t “idiotic.” Just based on different criteria.
New York won 97 games. Minnesota won 96. There is essentially no difference at all between them in terms of how much total value they had. “Value” in a baseball sense is all about how many wins you put on the board, and Jeter put more wins into the W column than Morneau did.
That New York’s players cost more is George Steinbrenner’s problem. That the Twins develop their players internally is cause to give TERRY RYAN, not Justin Morneau, an award. It has nothing to do with the MVP Award, which is supposed to be about “the strength of a player’s offense and defense.” Jeter would not magically become a more valuable baseball player if they hadn’t paid Carl Pavano to sit on the DL. If the Yankees hadn’t had Jason Giambi or Mike Mussina, Jeter would have been exactly as valuable as he was anyway (assuming that taking those players away didn’t somehow cause his performance to be better or worse than it was.) Jeter was better than Morneau, and more valuable than Morneau, and so were some other guys.
I’m not hanging my hat on runs, I’m just trying to illustrate the idiocy of handing out MVP Awards based on RBI.
Jeter was a better offensive player. Morneau had more power; Jeter got on base much more, got out less, and is the best baserunner, IMHO, in the American League, except maybe for Ichiro. Every analytical approach I am familiar with ranked Jeter well ahead of Morneau. He created more runs, created more runs per game, more runs per out used, had more Win Shares, had a higher EQA, a higher everything. You don’t even have to necessarily get really stat-geeky to figure this out. I mean, which player’s 2006 would you rather have if you were picking a team to fight it out? I’ll take the shortstop with the .417 on base percentage, Alex.
Jeter was a better hitter. He is a more valuable fielder. Jeter was better than Morneau on both sides of the ball, playing for a team that, like Morneau’s, won its division, in fact doing so with about the same number of wins. As usual, the attempt to divorce the concept of “value” from how much a guy actually helps his team offensively and defensively is being force-fit into whatever can justify this year’s dumb-ass pick.
Sure, they based it on RBI. And yes, it was idiotic.
