It’s also illogical to accuse me to being subject to “East Coast Media Bias” when a) I’m not in the media, and b) any objective analysis of my writings on baseball over my tenure on the SDMB will clearly demonstrate I have no such bias.
Nope sorry, you are now firmly locked in with us irrational Yankee and Red Sox fans. You now represent everything **Lamar ** thinks is wrong with baseball. Does not matter if you are the most objective baseball person I have met. Your one of us now. Bwa-ha-ha-Haa!
Jim 
AND you live on the East Coast! Hah! Enjoy the toxic sludge, sucker!
Well, you kind of opened yourself up for it by putting Holliday fourth.
The National League West was a great division for pitching this year. Maybe the best in baseball.
And in that division Holliday led the National League in average, hits, doubles, and had more home runs and RBI than anyone you put ahead of him.
I think Holliday is the MVP, but to have him any less than a close second is just a joke.
Rollins, hands down, is the NL MVP. Over 200 hits, over 20 doubles, over 20 triple, over 20 HRs. Second player in history. Most extra base hits ever in the NL (second only to A-Rod on the Mariners). Check it out:
And he’s a kick-ass shortstop! Holliday? Puh-leez! He bats 89 points higher in Colorado. Before you point out that Citizen’s Bank Park is also hitter’s friendly, consider that the “42-point difference between home and road batting average is more than twice the next highest NL difference” for Coor’s Field. His slugging percentage is over 200 points less on the road. Sheesh, gimme a break.
And David Wright? Fine ballplayer, but a bit overrated in my book. And his team tanked, you may have noticed. No way he gets the nod over Rollins or Holliday, not in any sane universe.
FWIW, VORP rankings.
Ixnay on the ollidayHay VPMay alktay.
If Holliday wins, the rockies cheep ass ownership will never try to keep him around. There’s only like a 3% chance anyway 
Which is apparently precisely where he should rank, according to VORP. Let’s look up Win Shares… oh, look. Fourth. His OPS, adjusted for context, isn’t even in the top five. Okay, he just missed fifth (151, the leader being Albert Pujols.)
He’s the fourth best player in the NL. I stand by my ranking of Holliday. (Of course, according to those metrics, I didn’t necessarily have the right people in the top 3.) He’s a heck of a hitter, but he’s just a hitter, has limited defensive value, and he hits in a park that balloons his numbers.
Come on, seriously?
Rollins, SS, PHI
BA: .296
OBP: .344
SLG: .531
HR: 30
RBI: 94
SB: 41
SB%: 87%
OPS+: 120
VORP: 66.1
Wright, 3B, NYM
BA: .325
OBP: .416
SLG: .546
HR: 30
RBI: 107
SB: 34
SB%: 87%
OPS+: 152
VORP: 81.1
There is not one single offensive metric by which Jimmy Rollins’ 2007 season grades out as better or more valuable than David Wright’s. Do you favor old time rate stats? Wright’s batting average and slugging percentage were both superior to Rollins by a significant degree, and his OBP was more than 70 points higher. More advanced methods of analysis make the difference even larger. “Over 200 hits, over 20 doubles, over 20 triple, over 20 HRs,” is utterly arbitrary; the “race” between Rollins and Wright wasn’t even close. The Mets tanked, but Wright emphatically did not, and the idea that his value is less than Rollins’ because Scott Schoenweis and Guillermo Mota couldn’t hold a lead in September is just silly.
Holliday and Wright had very similar years offensively, alloting for the enormous difference in their ballparks (Coors was the third best hitter’s park in the majors in 2007; Shea was the seventh worst, something for which Wright seldom gets credit). Holliday had more power and Wright got on base more often, but their OPS+ was very similar and VORP was pretty close. Given the nearness of their offensive contributions, I’d say Wright gets the nod for playing good defense at a more difficult position.
Prince Fielder had a splashy year, but gets a tick against him for the position he plays. Hanley Ramirez outperformed Jimmy Rollins in every way that it’s possible to outperform someone - slugged better, got on base at a better clip, stole more bases, led the NL in VORP and had a OPS+ on par with the big boys (Holliday, Wright, Fielder), and did it all in a lineup where he was one of only two useful offensive players.
My ballot looks like this:
- Hanley Ramirez
- David Wright
- Matt Holliday
- Prince Fielder
- Jimmy Rollins
- Chase Utley
- Brandon Webb
AL MVP
- Alex Rodriguez
- Magglio Ordonez
- C.C. Sabathia
AL CY YOUNG: Sabathia
NL CY YOUNG: Webb
AL ROY: Pedroia
NL ROY: Braun (what an awesome player he’s going to be)
FWIW, I didn’t accuse you of East Coast Bias. I said your NL MVP rankings reflected it. Most casual baseball fans didn’t even know who Matt Holliday was until this week.
I’m not a casual baseball fan. There may be an EAst Coast bias in the media. You really need to stop pretending it’s affecting me.
Yes. As a Phillies fan, I’ll admit an anti-Mets bias. But there is no way that any player on a team that made such a colossal collapse gets MVP, even a fine player like Wright. Just won’t, and shouldn’t, happen.
I don’t subscribe to the belief that only playoff teams should get to produce MVP’s, though certainly that should be a factor. But such an epic collapse would make the baseball gods angry if it produced the league MVP, however fair that feels to Wright. If he didn’t contribute to this disaster, he didn’t prevent it either.
Set aside some of the stats just for a second. Rollins names the Phils the team to beat, produce tremendous numbers for a shortstop, scores or drives in the winning run in 6 of the Phils’ last 7, and overtakes the fatally gagging bad guys in New York–it’s too good a story, whatever our friends at the Baseball Prospectus have to say about it. The Phils would not have done this without Rollins.
OTOH, the catastrophic end to the Mets’ season trumps all other matters when Wright’s name is mentioned re: the MVP. Just my opinion, of course. And I’ll bet you a cup of coffee he’ll get at least one–his day will come. But it can’t be this year, and shouldn’t be.
Well, that’s a fair opinion, and a common one, but I can’t agree with it. Again, it means that the MVP this year will be determined more by the play of Guillermo Mota and Jose Mesa than by the play of David Wright and Jimmy Rollins. That seems counterintuitive to me. The Mets wouldn’t have been in a position to blow a seven game lead in seventeen without David Wright.
However, if playoff participation is required, then Holliday is still clearly a better candidate than Rollins. And Hanley Ramirez was a better player than Rollins all around this year. Hell, Rollins might not have been the most valuable player on his own team.