Actually, i think that giving the MVP award to someone on a last-place team is perfectly logical. So what if they would be last with him, and last without him? Why should a player be penalized just because everyone else on his team is hopeless? Their incompetence doesn’t make him any less valuable as a player.
Let me ask you this: If Albert Pujols were playing for the Washington Nationals this year, and the Nationals were still languishing in last place with a record of 26-65, and Pujols was still hitting .333/.456/.730 with 34 homers and 90 RBIs, would you vote for Pujols as MVP?
If not, i’d have to ask you why you would penalize the best player in the game for something completely beyond his control? His WARP would be the same, meaning that he would have contributed about 7.7 wins to the team. Hell, you could even argue that contributing 7.7 wins to a 26-win team is more valuable than contributing 7.7 wins to a 51-win team, because it’s a greater percentage of the team’s total wins.
If he was legitimately the MVP, sure. Andre Dawson in 1987 is, unfortunately, a bad counterexample because he WASN’T the best player in the league in 1987 no matter what team he was on.
Sorry, i should have been clearer. Obviously, i’m asking about a player who is (a) clearly the best player in the league that year, and (b) is on a losing team.
It seemed to me that gonzomax’s point was less about Andre Dawson, per se, than it was about the principle of giving the MVP award to a guy on a losing team. I could have misinterpreted him, though.