A MATTER OF OPINION: Voters Disagree on MVP Criteria

Baseball Digest, Dec, 2000 by Kevin Acee

Since baseball writers began picking league Most Valuable Players in 1931, controversy has been a part of the election process

UNIQUE TO BASEBALL AMONG THE major sports is the phenomenon of different people looking at the same thing and having so many different strong feelings.

Never was this illustrated so graphically on a national scale as in the voting for the 1999 American League's Most Valuable Player Award.

Boston Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez received eight first-place votes to Texas catcher Ivan Rodriguez's seven, but Rodriguez won the MVP by 13 points primarily because two writers left Martinez off their ballot completely.

The scribes, LaVelle Neal of the Minneapolis's Star-Tribune and George King of the New York Post, said they could not justify giving the award to a player who participates every fifth day. Also, they argued, pitchers are eligible for the Cy Young Award, which Martinez won unanimously in 1999. That, even though MVP voters were asked to recluse themselves if they felt they could not vote for a pitcher.

The outrage went beyond that felt by Boston's passionate fans. "It really made (writers) all look very dumb," said Buster Olney, who covers the Yankees for the New York Times. "people were operating under different rules. The question of eligibility is a very basic thing. People were determining eligibility for themselves."

The modern MVP Award was established in 1931, when the Baseball Writers Association of America began polling three writers in each city. The modern practice of two writers per city began in 1961. Each voter ranks 10 players from each league, their only guidelines being that all players are eligible and that the MVP is the player that is most valuable to his team.

"It's not the best player," said Gordon Edes, who covers the Red Sox for the Boston Globe. "It is the most valuable player. There is some ambiguity there."

And for that, the system is not perfect, though there is likely no way to make it so.

The writers questioned for this story said they take their vote very seriously, some of them spending many hours analyzing statistics and weighing the importance of RBI versus runs scored or run-saving defensive plays. Most start with a list of 12 to 15 players and speak to various general managers, players and beat writers for the teams of the top candidates.

One of Los Angeles Times' beat writer Mike DiGiovanna's criteria is "if you take that guy out of a lineup, how good would that team be."

That may have helped Andre Dawson when he won the N.L. MVP in 1987 despite his Chicago Cubs finishing in last place. Maybe some writers' feeling was this: How bad would the Cubs have been without Dawson's 49 homers and 137 RBI?

Though the common thinking when considering a good player on a cellar dweller is that the team wouldn't have been any worse off without him.

The rules say nothing about the MVP having to play for a good team, though most writers acknowledge it helps for a guy to be on a winner.

"I always give greater weight to a guy on a winning team, there's no question," Edes said.

What many writers will not admit is that they give greater weight to guys they like personally.

Right up there with last year was the A.L. MVP voting, which Joe DiMaggio won by one point over Ted Williams. The legend--disputed by some who say the reporter in question did not have a vote that year--goes that Boston Globe reporter Jack Webb left Williams off his ballot because he didn't like the Splendid Splinter.

In 1995, Albert Belle, a notorious enemy of anyone with a notebook or tape recorder and not exactly the fans' best friend, lost the A.L. MVP to Mo Vaughn by eight points. Vaughn was universally loved at the time.

Many writers explained that vote by saying Belle's numbers were inflated by a gaudy September, when his Cleveland Indians already had wrapped up a playoff berth, while Vaughn carried the Red Sox into the playoffs.

Olney, who covered the Orioles for the Baltimore Sun and had an MVP vote in '95, did acknowledge that Belle's temperament came into-play in him voting for Vaughn.

"Back then Albert was involved in more stuff than he is now--telling off fans and that sort of thing," Olney said. "At that time, baseball was in a very, very fragile state, having come off the strike year. I felt like the MVP was also who was most valuable to the game as a whole.

"I do think that's probably a human element that determines what happens sometimes. There are certain guys you want to vote for."

With the addition of mile-high Coors Field to the National League, there will forever be the debate about players from the Colorado Rockies winning the MVP.

In 1997, the Rockies' Larry Walker won the National League MVP Award over Mike Piazza by 96 points. Piazza carried the Dodgers the entire season as they fell one game shy of the playoffs and had the greatest offensive season ever by a catcher. He batted .362 with 40 home runs and 124 runs driven in.

Walker's season was remarkable, as he batted .366 with 49 homers and 130 RBI. He had an amazing .720 slugging percentage and a .455 on-base average and won a Gold Glove along with becoming the first N.L. player since Hank Aaron in 1959 to have 400 total bases in a season with 409.