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In this recent column from Jim Molony, at MLB.com, David Wright is not mentioned among potential National League MVP candidates.
…which is ridiculous…yes, ridiculous…look, he may not win, but when talk radio, other columnists, tv shows, etc, keep mentioning his name as a possibility, i think it’s far to call molony’s omission ridiculous…
Molony lists Prince Fielder, Albert Pujols and Jimmy Rollins as favorites for the award, while Matt Holliday and Chase Utley are considered darkhorses.
By the way, Wright is the only player in the National League who is batting over .300, with at least 25 HR, 30 stolen bases, 90 runs scored and 90 RBI.
He is also on pace to be the first player in the history of baseball to hit at least .300, with a .385 OBP, along with 30 HR, 35 SB, 110 runs scored, 110 RBI, and 35 doubles.
…thanks to Robert Renode for the information…
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I was hoping you’d post on this. What a travesty. Pujols should not be a favorite this year. One could make a case for Holliday over Wright, but take the ballpark factor into account, and the kind of offensive numbers Wright is putting together is staggering.
That said, I think having one NY 3rd baseman as a lock for MVP hurts Wright, as well as an anti-Met bias that I do believe is there in the national media.
That said, if Wright has a red hot two weeks and ends up batting closer to .330 with 34 HR and 110+ RBIs, I think he forces himself into the favorite position.
But darkhorse? No way.
I was wondering when this article was going to show up here after all the discussion the last few days regarding Wright’s MVP candidacy. I didn’t know MLB.com published comedy….
Not saying Wright is going to win, but to put Rollins ahead of him….come on.
steve phillips picked dwright as mvp on espn…he still thinks the mets will finish 3rd though
Well there you go…Wright will lose but the Mets win the WS.
If Hanley Ramirez didnt hit leadoff and had some sort of offense in that line up he’d have wrights numbers.. maybe even better – next yr his HR will go up but his avg probably down
Marlins do have some sort of offense in that lineup: 709 runs scored.
Not sure where Mr. Molony gets his info from, but there’s a very good chance all five of his ‘favorites’ will not make the playoffs. I realize that making the postseason alone is not a deciding factor, but when was the last time that none of the top five vote getters made the playoffs? Regardless of what he says, DWright has to be considered one of the top 2-3 candidates right now.
um ok so your point is if the marlins were good and ramirez was their best player and batting 3rd hed be the mvp? um ok….buster olney was on baseball tonight last night and said he feels holliday should win if the rockies make it and frankly i cant argue he has carried that team all year, but he also said if the brewers make it fielder wins, im not sold on that bc ryan braun has been so ridiculous for that team if you look from the all star break on you could argue fielder isnt the MVP of his own team, and lastly he said brewers and rockies out MVP goes to wright so essentially he feels wright can at the worst finish 3rd in the voting so theres no way hes a darkhorse.
The thing is, is that Molony doesnt even list Wright as a darkhorse!!! He is listed as an “honorable mention” along with Reyes and Beltran…What is this man smoking? I can write a better and more informed column during my lunch break!
I wish you would! The majority of sports writers are such tools, blinded and bound by “tradition” and homer-eroticism.
When two Phillies can be mentioned as being the race, that should diminish their values. How valuable can one player be to his team, when there is another player right there with him?
It was an argument that I heard – and sort of agreed with – last year when people wouldn’t put Beltran in the MVP talk. They said Reyes and, to a lesser degree, Wright were right there with him.
As for the other guys. Holliday has been great and has carried the team and if the Rockies get into the playoffs and he wins it, I’m cool with that.
I can’t put Fielder in the talk, even though he has the ’sexy’ numbers. At the beginning of the year when the Brewers were at their best, while Fielder was good, it was JJ Hardy that carried that team. After JJ Hardy cooled off, Ryan Braun came up and carried that team. IE Fielder has had a lot of help. Plus Fielder is a horrible defensive player at a relatively easy position to play. I think that should be considered as well.
All the players Molony mentioned could see their teams miss the postseason. And I’m in the group that says, unless a player is just having an out-of-this-world type of year a MVP should come from a playoff team.
If I were voting these would be my choices.
1. Matt Holiday – if the Rockies make the playoffs
2. David Wright
3. Brandon Webb (yes a pitcher, but considering the team, they needed him more than anything else).
4. Prince Fielder
5. Jimmy Rollins
Holliday’s teh one guy I don’t mind Wright losing to.
Holliday is a beast….but he needs to get in line behond Wright. There is a pecking order in baseball. This year he is the clear MVP on the best team in the league, a year after being one of 3. Holliday is an up-and-coming star on an up-and-coming team who will have his day, but not at the expense of Mr. Wright.
Get Pujols out of this discussion. What’d he carry his team to? Nice surge, but they will finish 10 games under anyway.
As for Fielder, wasn’t enough to prevent a 3-month swoon, and it seems like that team was carried by JJ Hardy early and Ryan Braun late as Fielder’s co-pilots.
I’d make Rollins #3 – he really has backed up his talk – its not his fault their pitching kills them.
1st is not a “relatively easy position to play” — it just happens to be the one position where someone with no mobility can be least exposed.
As Mex has said, it might be one of the easiest positions to play passibly, it is one of the most difficult to play well.
Maybe that’s what you meant, but as a former 1st sacker, I hate the “1st is an easy position” thing, it belittles the skill that it takes to really play it well, and the impact it has on an entire infield if you do. Mex and Johnny O. should be example enough of that.
That is sort of what I meant by ‘relatively’. To play it great you need great skills, but to play it good-to-average you necessarily don’t. Unlike SS or 3B – to play play it good or even average – you need better skills.
Either way, it could be the most difficult position on the diamond, but Fielder still plays it poorly, even if based on average 1B.
Honestly, it’s impossible not to be fed up with the nonsense that goes into these awards.
Somehow last season Joe Girardi was deemed a better manager than Willie, LaRussa, or even Jim Tracy for getting his team to be “respectable.” What does that even mean? Not that it diminishes his ability to manage, but didn’t he get fired? I guess personality doesn’t count.
And Ryan Howard won for ALMOST lifting his team into the playoffs, blowing away the top candidate from the team that made Howard’s an afterthought in its Division before June.
And yet, in 1999 and 2000, Mike Piazza’s candidacy was hurt because he didn’t get his team over the hump in the Division despite leading his team to the Wild Card. So you tell me.
Anyone who has watched the Mets this season knows that Wright has been the one constant in this team since mid-May. This isn’t one cog in a perpetual All-Star team. The fact that we have no other viable candidates should underscore this, no?
i think we’re the only ones reading this guys column. if hes trying to write a legitamite piece about who will win the NL MVP and cant take the 5 seconds to look up winshares and (even if he doesnt include winshares in his piece) know that wright is in the MVP mix is an absolute joke.
how is Rollins even in the conversation? if he is then Reyes should be right up there with him, if not miles above.
Rollins hit 17 of his homers at his small stadium and others drive him in, hence his 126 runs. hes only helped that number 32 times by stealing a base whereas Reyes has scored 108 runs but helped with 76 stolen bases. hes manufacturing runs and wreckin havok on the basepaths as well as giving hitters fastballs to hit…
i’ll never understand how some people think hes better than reyes or even hanley.
The number of players in the mix for this year’s NL MVP award is high. I think it’s wrong to eliminate a player from consideration just because his club did not make the playoffs, though I think it is reasonable to restrict consideration to players on contenders. Of course there are more contenders now because of the Wild Card, but there are also more contenders due to parity (this may be the first season in which MLB has no team with a wining percentage > .600 or a losing percentage < .400). So, in order to choose an MVP, look only at contenders (ignore pitchers): division leaders (Mets, Cubs, D’Backs) and teams within 4 games (just to eliminate the Braves) of the wild card leaders (Padres, Phillies, Dodgers, Rockies, and Brewers).
Team MVP Candidate
Mets Wright/Beltran?
Cubs Ramirez
D’Backs None
Padres None
Phillies Rollins/Utley
Dodgers None
Rockies Holiday
Brewers Fielder (Yes, Hardy and Braun have been important, but hitting in front of Fielder is a major reason for their success.)
Do you include Beltran or not? If you knock Fielder or Rollins and Utley because of the other excellent players on their team, you have to put the knock on Wright (Beltran has produced the same hrs, extra base hits, rbi in fewer games). I’ll exclude Beltran and just consider Wright. I’m also going to exclude Utley and focus on Rollins because of the possibly historic year. And I’m going to ignore the Coors Field effect with Holliday unless its head to head vs. Wright.
Player BA OBP OPS HR RBI Runs
Wright .315 .412 .954 28 96 98
Ramirez .315 . 369 .923 23 89 61
Rollins .296 .347 .877 27 82 126
Holliday .333 .396 .983 30 119 103
Fielder .289 .386 .999 44 106 96
At first glance I would eliminate Ramirez from consideration. That still leaves 4 worthy candidates. If you look at Holliday’s splits home/away he would still be on pace to drive in 100 and score a 100, so he stays in. I think Wright gets the edge because of the Mets success, but if the Phillies or Rockies or Brewers make it into the playoffs, I can’t argue with any of them winning. My guess is Wright will be the MVP as long as he doesn’t slump down the stretch and the others don’t make the play-offs, if both of those happen, I think it will be Holliday.
Wright = MVP…………..put it in the books
As an extension of the discussion of the apparent general anti-Mets bias in the national baseball media– I watched the Phillies-Marlins game on Fox last Saturday, and “analyst” Joe Giraldi played press-agent for Jimmy Rollins, lobbying for him for MVP. He said that the “other contenders” had been “fading.”