Hate to say it, Tigers fans, but a sampling of online opinion this morning would seem to suggest Justin Verlander s chances of winning the American League MVP award this afternoon aren t very good.
Few national writers think Verlander, who was a unanimous selection for the AL Cy Young award last week, will be the top vote-getter, while others believe Tigers teammate Miguel Cabrera is at least as deserving of the award.
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We ll know for sure at 2 this afternoon. Meanwhile, here s some of what the national pundits are saying.
The MVP ballot contains the biggest discrepancies of all the major awards in terms of guidelines for voters. The 28 voters have to make a personal judgment call on whether the award is for the best player overall or the player most important to a playoff team. Some voters refuse to include pitchers in their top five and some do.
Bearing that in mind and with an understanding of the makeup of the voting bloc from having dealt with them over many years, here is how I see the AL top three when the announcement is made.
1. (Curtis) Granderson. 2. (Miguel) Cabrera. 3. (Justin) Verlander.
It s time to answer the question can a pitcher be an MVP? If the Tigers Justin Verlander isn t worthy, how can any pitcher ever be? Verlander didn t just win the pitching Triple Crown, he turned in a grand slam. The Tigers ace led the American League in wins (24), ERA (2.40), strikeouts (250) and innings pitched (251). Then for good measure he also allowed only 6.2 hits per nine innings and had an 0.92 WHIP, which were also the best such figures among ERA qualifiers. In other words, he was tough. Very tough. But does that make him the MVP? I don t think so .
It wasn t an easy choice, and I do expect Verlander to receive serious consideration for the MVP (and maybe even win it), but if I had been given a ballot I would have gone with (Miguel) Cabrera first and Verlander fourth.
Phil Rogers, Chicago Tribune
A lot of people have endorsed Detroit starter Justin Verlander as the M.V.P. He had one of the best seasons by a pitcher in recent memory, by all the traditional statistics. Advanced statistics placed him tied with Toronto s Jose Bautista in Wins Above Replacement, as determined by baseball-reference.com .
So who will win? No idea, of course, but here s a prediction: Bautista. He may not get the most first-place votes, but I think he ll get a lot of second-place votes and will take the most points.
If you are looking for precedents for the AL Most Valuable Player Award voting, maybe the best could be drawn from the 1876 presidential election, when there was no consensus and the guy who won the popular vote wound up losing .
The guess here is that Verlander will get the most first-place votes, but because of how splintered the voting figures to be, the key will be holding down one of the top three spots on as many ballots as possible. And it figures that (Jose) Bautista and (Jacoby) Ellsbury will be ranked No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3 on almost all the ballots, and will wind up being the Rutherford B. Hayes of the 2011 AL MVP voting.
I wouldn t give (Justin) Verlander any chance at all, because some voters just don t like pitchers no matter how good they are. But with (Dustin) Pedroia and (Ian) Kinsler splitting some votes and (Jacoby) Ellsbury and (Curtis) Granderson splitting some votes and Adrian Gonzalez and Miguel Cabrera splitting some votes and Jose Bautista s second half, maybe this is the year a pitcher can sneak in and win for the first time since 1986.
My gut tells me that (Justin) Verlander will get it. Why? Because I imagine that when the (Red) Sox crapped out on the last day of the season (Jacoby) Ellsbury lost support and that those people storyline voters, I ll call them, who wanted to give it to him on the theory that he was carrying Boston into the playoffs will defect to Verlander in greater numbers than (Jose) Bautista.
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