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

Yeah - if you're going to vote for one of your guys to even out the "bias", you give him a last-place vote, like whoever voted for David Robertson.

 

And here is what writers mean by the personal attacks. Because you disagree with th conclusion, you question whether the writer bothers to watch baseball and imply that she doesn't take her vote seriously.

 

Not at all, the conclusion is based on regional ignorance, she admits as much.

 

Here's another thing: if you actually cover a team, you're going to see less of the other teams than if you didn't cover any team at all, because you're always at a game.

You have to go by the stats and what the players/managers you talk to say, because you just don't have enough of what you observe for any team but the one you cover and maybe the others in the division (but probably not even then).

 

As I prepare to pull the trigger on all-area teams and MVPs, I hate this thread for reminding me of how worked up people get about subjective awards.

 

As a reader, the problem for me isn't the actual vote. Rather, it's the flaws it reveals in the writer's analytical capacities--calling into question the quality of the coverage he provides during the season.

 

A baseball writer and a baseball analyst/evaluator are two different things.

It always bugs me when I hear people equate the two and think you aren't good at the former if you aren't good at the latter. A baseball writer's job is to find news, to tell stories and to give fans a vehicle to find the answers to questions they can't get answered simply by watching on TV. That's it.

His ability to correctly judge who is the better between two players is not relevant. Even if he was better at it than the front office, that still doesn't matter, because his opinion doesn't count for anything important. He's still going to have to ask the GM why he picked one player over another. You just need a very basic working understanding of evaluation to know what questions to ask, and after you ask, your work is done.

Does that mean there are other people more qualified to vote on annual awards and the HOF? Absolutely. As much as I hate Keith Law's snarky, smartest-kid-in-the-room attitude, he's more qualified than any beat writer to do evaluations, not only because of his training, but because he doesn't have many of the responsibilities or time commitments that a beat writer does. He can see every team from his couch and study all 30 of them equally, because he's not flying his ass all around the country following one. He is paid to be able to evaluate all 30 teams. Evan Grant and Susan Slusser are paid to cover the news on one team.

So why don't more of these couch analysts vote for BBWAA awards? Because they aren't in the BBWAA and these awards were created by the BBWAA, for the BBWAA.

Nowadays, all you need to be a member of the BBWAA is to be employed by a major organization, independent of MLB, to write about baseball. The market itself weeds people out, not the BBWAA. If no one is willing to make a commitment to hire you -- not just let you write for free on Bleacher Report -- how can anyone be sure you're legitimate?

Non-BBWAA members are free to create their own awards. SBN Nation picks winners, the MLBPA has the Players' Choice, the Internet Baseball Writers have awards. Is it the BBWAA's fault that none of those has risen to the level that people care?

As for the HOF, the HOF decides who votes for the HOF. That's on them. They picked the BBWAA, and they are the ones who exclude everyone else. They could open it up to broadcasters and analysts tomorrow if they wanted, so direct your complaints to Jeff Idelson, Cooperstown NY.

 

I think some people won't be happy until it really is an objective thing, with the numbers deciding it all.

The second word in MVP is becoming something different because the connotation of "value" has changed in a relatively short time.

 

What else would decide it?

Numbers always have.

 

Part of our disagreement likely stems from different conceptions of a beat writer's job, but the arguments about that have been turned over in many other threads, so I won't re-raise them here. That said, even under your view of his responsibilities, a writer needs to understand how to analyze the game enough to ask the proper questions to GMs, managers, and players. One would hope he also understands the game enough to convey to readers whether what those people are telling them has merit, or is purely bull. These votes and the reasoning behind them cast doubt on the ability of these writers to both ask the proper questions and evaluate the answers (as well as what's happening on the field on a daily basis).

 

I disagree. There is a point of diminishing returns on analytical expertise being worthwhile in covering a baseball team.

If you were a sports editor, would you hire someone who knew how to write, report and develop sources or someone who could calculate WAR?

 

He or she damned well better be good at both.