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http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3106745

Braun, Milwaukee's brawny third baseman, edged Colorado shortstop Troy Tulowitzki by two points in balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America.

Not very surprising, Braun had a solid offensive season. Can't say I'm not a little disappointed for Tulo, though.

This board explodes in 5....4....3....2.....

1?

Both well deserved IMO.

Very well deserved by both players. Troy had a great season, but it wasn't as powerful as Braun's. But Troy is going to be one hell of a player in this league. Braun and Tulo will be fighting for MVP awards in the near future.

Yessss!!!

A big **** you to all those scouts who thought Dustin Pedroia wasn't good enough to cut it in the majors.

He led the league in batting average plus slugging on pitches out of the strike zone. Beating Vlad Guerrero. He played the final month+ of the season with a broken bone in his hand.

both of these guys will be all-stars next season. mark my words.

I wish I could find that "Pedrioa SUCKS!" thread on the Boston board right about now...

http://www.realgm.com/boards/baseball/v ... php?t=1195

Next person to compare him to David Eckstein will die.

Tulo had more RBIs and was a defensive stud. Braun is a great power hitter, but is one of the **** defenders in the major leagues. Milwaukee are not a fundamental team, they can hit, but they sure as hell can't pitch or defend. As great as Pedroia was this season, Delmon Young had a better hitting season.

I was with you until you uttered Delmon Young's name. There were no fewer than 8 better rookies in the AL.

cold5 wrote:Tulo had more RBIs and was a defensive stud. Braun is a great power hitter, but is one of the **** defenders in the major leagues. Milwaukee are not a fundamental team, they can hit, but they sure as hell can't pitch or defend. As great as Pedroia was this season, Delmon Young had a better hitting season.

So you're going to use RBI's to say why Tulo should've won? Well Braun wasn't called up until May 25th, who cares about the rest of the Brewers this isn't about them. Braun had a historical offensive year and would've run away with it if he played even average defense. Since he was such a bad defender and Tulo was so good we ended up with the closest vote in history.

imagine if braun played the entire season, we would even talk about him for MVP.

You mean Ryan Theriot didn't win?

Posey H8er wrote:You mean Ryan Theriot didn't win?

He would win a gold glove over Braun though

Bleeding Green wrote:I was with you until you uttered Delmon Young's name. There were no fewer than 8 better rookies in the AL.

Pedroia
Okajima
Matsuzaka
Bannister
Guthrie
Willits
Fields
Soria
Perez

Then there's Iwamura and Harris on his own team!

As great as Delmon will be someday...If it weren't for almost leading the league in at bats and having 681 plate appearances, then his counting stats would have sucked, and the impression that his rookie season was very good would have been ruined. It was a pretty good rookie season, I think. Well, except for leading the league in double plays hit into. Then again he got 16 assists from right field, so...Yeah, pretty good year. Maybe among the 10 best rookie years in the AL last year.

trwi7 wrote:So you're going to use RBI's to say why Tulo should've won? Well Braun wasn't called up until May 25th, who cares about the rest of the Brewers this isn't about them. Braun had a historical offensive year and would've run away with it if he played even average defense. Since he was such a bad defender and Tulo was so good we ended up with the closest vote in history.

Tulo also had a historic offensive year at his position, breaking the NL records for HR and RBI by a shortstop. The award should have been his, you can only extrapolate at bats so far. Maybe Braun has a year reminiscent of McGwire in 1987. Maybe he doesn't though, maybe he suffers a wicked slump in the 50 games he missed.

wigglestrue wrote:-= original quote snipped =-



Tulo also had a historic offensive year at his position, breaking the NL records for HR and RBI by a shortstop. The award should have been his, you can only extrapolate at bats so far. Maybe Braun has a year reminiscent of McGwire in 1987. Maybe he doesn't though, maybe he suffers a wicked slump in the 50 games he missed.

He also played at one of the most hitter friendly parks in the majors. He had a .720 OPS away from Coors.

Braun finished with a fielding percentage below .900. That's unfathomably bad. Go ahead and say fielding percentage doesn't mean anything and then realize that every single objective measure of his defense says it was without question the worst in the majors and probably in quite a while.

Defense matters. A lot.

I wonder what the Brewers are going to do to cure their defensive woes. They have a lot of young, athletic players but none of them can play defense really (at least where they are currently positioned). Braun should be in right, Hall should move to third, Hart to center (can he play there a full season?). Weeks is pretty bad at second I think, but there is nowhere else to put him. Maybe he could platoon in 2B and LF with Gross playing in LF and someone else playing at second? A three-way platoon? I don't know; I think it'll be really interesting and what they do regarding it will basically determine how good they'll be over the next few years. If they do nothing they won't go very far, but if they can optimize the defense they could very easily be the kings of the Central for the next few years.