Amidst all the late-season debate over who deserves to be the American League MVP, nobody has yet asked the man whose numbers make him the most deserving choice.
So I asked him.
Do you deserve the award?
“That’s a hard question for any person to answer about themselves,” Jose Bautista said. “It’s not for me to say. It’s for other people to look at my accomplishments and decide if I’m deserving or not.”
Which, you’ll agree, is the sort of political answer you’d expect.
Scratch a little harder and you’ll find that while Bautista isn’t printing up campaign signs, he has some clear ideas about how the award should be decided. On that basis, his case is currently the most convincing.
By general media consensus, the MVP is now a three-horse race between Bautista, Yankees centre fielder Curtis Granderson and Tigers starter Justin Verlander. What the media believes is usually a little like a vacuum — without tangible substance.
But since the MVP is voted on by members of the Baseball Writers of America Association, in this one instance what the media thinks is all that matters.
Bautista doesn’t believe that pitchers should be considered for the award, since they already have the Cy Young as a measure of accomplishment.
“It’s the biggest award you can get for an individual offensive performance in all of baseball,” is how Bautista describes the prize. Emphasis on the word “offensive.”
Using that definition, it’s a contest between Bautista and Granderson.
The numbers favour the Jay. Despite having 60 fewer plate appearances than Granderson, Bautista has as many hits, more home runs and half again as many walks.
Bautista’s batting average is nearly 40 points higher; he has the advantage in slugging percentage by 60 points; and he’s staked a 130-percentage point lead in on-base plus slugging. Granderson has had a great year at the plate. Bautista has had a better one.
Granderson leads the league in two categories — runs and RBIs. Both are as much a reflection on the superior quality of his teammates as they are on him. He has better speed, which might be a factor if he played on a small-ball club. He plays on one that’s going to lead baseball in home runs. Defensively, it’s a wash.
If Bautista is going to win, he’s going to win on a stats-based argument. He gets that.
“There’s no lying in the numbers,” Bautista said.
Let’s agree that if this was just about numbers, Bautista wins the award if it’s voted on today.
There is one mitigating factor that may rob him of it. He’s fully aware of it as well.
That is the playoff argument — that no player can be thought of as “most valuable” if he has not pushed his team into a post-season appearance.
“It doesn’t say ‘most valuable player in a playoff team.’ I never read that,” Bautista said. “As a matter of fact, I think in the criteria when the award was originally instituted it said that that’s one of the things people should not look at — whether or not the team was eligible of the playoffs.”
So he’s been thinking about this. And he’s right.
“The MVP need not come from a division winner or other playoff qualifier,” the letter of instruction to voters reads in part.
http://www.thestar.com/sports/baseball/ ... -s-the-mvp
