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

Yes, it is that crazy. 3rd in average and 5th in RBI, this is your criteria? Look at his OPS and tell how this isn't a crazy vote

 

You can't say you're voting off what your eyes told you, then support it with numbers about what Young hit in different spots of the lineup, etc. That's voting off what the numbers tell you (the wrong numbers, in this case). In a broad sense, the difference between a .333 hitter and a .300 hitter over the course of a season is not even one extra hit per week, so even someone watching every game wouldn't know the difference unless they looked up the numbers. My guess is that if the justification were honest, it would basically read, "I've gotten to know Michael Young really well. I respect him and like him personally, so I want him to win this award."

 

It's a good thing the Rangers won their division and reached the Series. If this had been for a guy on a middle-of-the-pack team, they might have torched Evan's house by now.

 

Or it could be he covered the team all season, watched it get to the World Series and decided no player was more instrumental to that run than Michael Young, for the reasons he stated.

Just a thought.

 

If you want an even more confusing line of reasoning...

http://www.news-herald.com/articles/2011/11/21/sports/nh4772249.txt

 

Yep:

http://www.news-herald.com/articles/2011/11/21/sports/nh4772249.txt

 

http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/awards_1999.shtml#AL_MVP_voting::none

Is Grant's vote as bad as George King leaving Pedro off the 1999 AL MVP ballot?

 

Except the ballots were due before the postseason.

As far as the anti-Verlander/anti-Martinez arguments, at least those arguments are simply a product of thinking the wrong way about baseball, not being a biased booster.

 

Well, that's debatable in King's case -- he said pitchers weren't worthy of MVP votes but he had Wells on his ballot in '98.

 

I understand the reasoning for leaving him completely off the ballot once you decide you're not going to vote for him No. 1. All-in or all-out argument. Now, saying a pitcher can't win MVP when the actual rules in no way say that ... whole different story.

 

I don't follow baseball as much as I did in 1999, but I would have bet any amount of money that Pedro was going to win the MVP that year.

Grant's vote may have been stupid, but at least it didn't cost someone the award.

 

I'm also reminded of last season's NL ROY, when a writer in LA either left Buster Posey off his ballot or voted him low because he was a mid-season callup.