Check out Joe Posnanski’s appreciation of Miguel Cabrera over at Sports on Earth. Cabrera is in the running for the American League MVP. I don’t think he’s the best player in the league–and I generally feel the best player is the most valuable–because when you factor in base running and defense, Mike Trout is his superior.
But I think Cabrera will win the award (see 1996, Juan Gonzalez over Alex Rodriguez). He’s got the RBI and he’s been great for a long time now. This will like when Paul Newman won the Best Actor Oscar for The Color of Money, a lifetime achievement award. And even if you believe Trout is the MVP, you could do worse than Cabrera.
Whether he’s your MVP or not, he sure is a Load.
[Photo Credit: Robin Buckson/Detroit News]
I agree Alex, give my non-vote to Trout for his absurdly high level of hitting, defense and baserunning. Cabrera is a better hitter - best in baseball, but not by enough to make up the defense or the baserunning. That being said, I think this is a much closer race than you would gather by just looking at the WAR total, which has Trout by a landslide.
Every baseball game is a discrete event with an important result. You can't win Tuesday's game with 4 homers on Monday. You have to show up both times. So if you accumulate tons of value in a shorter amount of time, it's not necessarily equal to or better than someone accumulating similar value over more time. It might be, but it's not a given.
Trout missed a month. He had the flu in Spring training, the Angels played it cute for awhile, probably some arb clock shenanigans as well. But I don't care why he wasn't there, all that matters is that he wasn't impacting any of those games.
One month is longer than I'd want someone to miss and still get an MVP award, but Trout missed only 20 games because April is a short month (baseball wise).
It would take something extraordinary to make up 20 games over a guy who might win the triple crown, but I think Trout's done it. That said, I think the voters will get crushed by WAR lovers if they vote for Miggy C and I don't think they would deserve it this time.
If Miggy gets the triple crown, he has to win it. If not now, when?
Yeah, I agree with you, Jon. But the voters won't be able to resist if Miggy gets the triple crown.