DMN's Evan Grant votes for Michael Young as AL MVP

He's talking about TAR....Treachery Above Replacement.

 

Whatever it is, it's half-baked. If there's a concern about conflict of interest regarding incentive clauses in contracts, you'd better not vote at all. Suppose the conflict is you don't like the local guy, because he won't talk to you, so you vote for anyone but him? Doesn't that stain the vote too?

 

The concern is not staining the vote. The concern is staining your own journalistic integrity. I'm not insinuating anything. I'm merely stating it can create the perception of a conflict of interest, regardless of whether one actual exists.

Abstaining from the vote entirely because of this is not at all a half-baked idea. <a href="http://www.thestar.com/opinion/publiceditor/article/1055422--english-journalists-don-t-belong-in-game">A number of reporters do it. Some newspapers require it.</a>

 

And perhaps if you can smear the motives of those who have not so far recused themselves, you can eliminate those pesky human voters altogether.

 

bunchoflettersinarow, you should become a lawyer, if you aren't already. In no way have you discredited my comeback to your half-baked point, but the way you wrote your last post, you could probably fool a jury.

 

I’m still waiting for you to give a reasonable explanation of what makes WAR the end-all, be-all stat that should determine the winners of these awards. This isn’t some computer game. Real people play the games – flaws and all -- and real people vote on the awards, something that involves them making their best informed judgments. Sometimes these judgments may not agree with those made by others. That’s the way it goes. People like Grant and Slusser watch these games for a living and do their best to bring solid coverage to their readers, most of whom don’t give a flying flip about WAR.

But the computer jockeys sit on their couches at home and wage snarky Internet campaigns about how clueless the writers are. It’s a joke, especially when someone gets on here and questions their journalistic integrity. I give credit to Evan and Susan for coming here and explaining how they come to their conclusions, whether I agree with all of them or not. Evan has done a good job of walking everyone through his vote as well as explaining what his most important job is – informing his readers about the Rangers.

 

Who said it was the end all be all? I guess being a regional shill is much more valuable.

 

The ballot says that writers should take intangibles and "character" into account.

But I don't think the ballot necessarily requires them to do so, and I don't think they should.

Just too hard to know, particularly since each writer essentially covers one clubhouse and one clubhouse only.

 

Sports Illustrated does it all the time, often in breakout boxes.

 

Dick, I'm in the "Pitchers have the Cy Young" camp. The guidelines specifically include pitchers, so I don't see where my opinion trumps the ballot.

 

I just don't have any way to measure "intangibles." And what's more, even if I included them in my theoretical evaluation, I don't think that they significantly contribute to a player's value enough to do anything other than break a tie. And I don't think there are ties.