Who should win the 2012 AL MVP award?

[AsiaticSkinsFan]

You say all of this, but the vote won't even be close. MCab will win pretty easily.

if it isnt close, then the BWA should be ashamed of themselves. Plain and simple

Just like they fouled up not giving Trout the gold glove this year. Shoot, thats the biggest joke of this entire season, imo.

[stevemcqueen1]

Here is another reason I will go with Cabrera, and it has something to do with the same argument I use every time debates like these come up.

If it was who was the best player in the league, I would give it to Trout. But it is Most Valuable Player. I think the Angles would still be okay without Trout, even though he had a ridiculous season by all accounts, but I dare somebody to tell me that the Tigers would have made it to the World Series without Miguel Cabrera. It wasn't going to happen.

I hate when this awful semantic argument comes up in MVP debates. I think it's a way people use to argue for obviously wrong choices. What the hell is the point of giving someone an award if it's clear he wasn't a better play but was more valuable to his team for X, Y, Z reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with him (i.e., his team sucking).

The MVP should go to the best player that season period. Put him on any team and he would be the best and most valuable player for them. All we should care about with an award like this is picking out who the best player was. Otherwise the MVP is no better or more meaningful than the popularity contests the gold gloves are.

[StillUnknown]

This is very true. Trout was the best OF defensively by miles

And Cabrera played a terrible third base.

[lovetoaster]

I apologize for that.

But that makes the case for Trout even stronger because those dudes were struggling without him, and still ended up with down years. The reason why they made a push towards the postseaon was due to Trout.

No worries. I definitely recognize that about Trout, his team was flat and floundering before he got there. There is no way either team got where it did without those two guys.

[stevemcqueen1]

Most valuable does not = best player.

It absolutely should. Who cares about anything else?

---------- Post added November-15th-2012 at 01:26 PM ----------

if it isnt close, then the BWA should be ashamed of themselves. Plain and simple

Just like they fouled up not giving Trout the gold glove this year. Shoot, thats the biggest joke of this entire season, imo.

Almost as funny was giving Andrew McCutcheon one.

[Sticksboi05]

I think the value of the Triple Crown is trumped up because it's a statistical oddity and not inherently valuable.

You could win the triple crown and still not be that good if the rest of the league was in a down batting year.

Carl Yazstremski's 1967 is not amazing because he won the triple crown. It's amazing because it was a 12 WAR year. Tied with Rogers Hornsby for the fourth best single season ever.

1. WAR is not the end all be all. There are multiple formulas which by definition means it is far from perfect.

2. Yastremskii's season was amazing for four decades before WAR was even thought of. I don't need sabremetrics to tell me that. The eye test if I was alive then would've been easy enough.


Trout is a better all-around player, that is obvious to everyone, but, he certainly wasn't adding enough wins down the stretch when the Angels needed him to lift them into the postseason. Cabrera meanwhile lit it up. Trout hit .257 and that matters. Harper won ROTY thanks to his scorching September and we needed all that production when the games mattered most.

[Brad_Edwards_Fan]

bingo

at the start of the season, Trout was playing in Triple A. You see the difference?

I wont mind seeing Trout win ( i would give it to Miggy), but this is a point that i dont care about. The players are evaluated for what they did this year in the majors, no one gets a bonus for lack of games played. Perhaps if he comes up short Trout has a beef with the Angels org for keeping him down too long, but to me the fact that he did what he did in fewer games does not matter.

[lovetoaster]

if it isnt close, then the BWA should be ashamed of themselves. Plain and simple

Just like they fouled up not giving Trout the gold glove this year. Shoot, thats the biggest joke of this entire season, imo.

I think it is going to be very close, although like I said earlier, often what the baseball writers do makes no sense. I think they need to look at some people's voting records and take away some privileges.

And yes, even as an Orioles fan, it is a joke that Jones won the Gold Glove over Trout. That was awful.

[Tulane Skins Fan]

I absolutely agree with this. But the voters themselves have been inconsistent with this. The award is Most Valuable Player, not Most Outstanding Player. There is a difference.

Didnt the Angels win more games than the Tigers? So, because Cabrera plays in a ****tier division, he's a more valuable player?

---------- Post added November-15th-2012 at 01:33 PM ----------

I think the value of the Triple Crown is trumped up because it's a statistical oddity and not inherently valuable.

You could win the triple crown and still not be that good if the rest of the league was in a down batting year.

Carl Yazstremski's 1967 is not amazing because he won the triple crown. It's amazing because it was a 12 WAR year. Tied with Rogers Hornsby for the fourth best single season ever.

What Trout did was truly, historically, valuable.

First off, it was the best season by anyone under the age of 24 ever.

Second, it was tied for the 20th best individual season in the history of baseball.

Trout's 10.7 WAR 20 year old season ties Ted Williams's best season and Willie Mays's second best season of their careers. It's just a hair behind Mays's best season ever of 10.8. It's also just behind the two best years of Mickey Mantle's career of 11.0 and 11.1. Those guys were in their primes when they did it. Trout's play was at the level of the greatest CFs in the history of the game playing at their absolute peak.

Cabrera's 6.9 WAR total isn't even that outstanding of a total for an MVP in a normal year. I'll wager that's one of the worst WAR totals from any triple crown winner ever. That should give you some sense of how little of a factor he was as a fielder and base runner.

To head off the claims that Triple Crown automatically = MVP: There is precedent that it does not. Ted Williams won the Triple Crown in 1942 and 1947 and neither of those seasons were his two MVP years. And he had a 10.2 WAR in 1942 and a 9.6 WAR in '47!!!

It's nice that Cabrera won the triple crown. But it would be an absolute travesty if Trout didn't win the MVP. Trout's season should be winning it in almost any year. The only other seasons in Trout's neighborhood in recent history belong to Barry Bonds at the height of his cheating. Before that you have to go back to Cal Ripken's 1991 season to find a better one. To find a comparable one, A-Rod's 2000 season of 10.1 WAR is it--although he may have been cheating then. And those three seasons are the only non Bonds/Sosa-cheating 10+ WAR seasons since the 1960's.

[MLSKINS]

Didnt the Angels win more games than the Tigers? So, because Cabrera plays in a ****tier division, he's a more valuable player?

---------- Post added November-15th-2012 at 01:33 PM ----------

You can only play the teams that is on your schedule.

[Tulane Skins Fan]

You can only play the teams that is on your schedule.

But half of you are saying that Cabrera deserves credit for helping his team to the playoffs, but he didn't help his team win as many games as Trout's did! Its in response to this ridiculous assertion that Miggy was more valuable because his team made the playoffs, despite the fact that they would not have made the playoffs if they were in the AL West.

If you are going to stay true to your logic, then you have to throw out that the Tigers made the playoffs. And, I agree with that. But you (maybe not you personally) can't have it both ways.

[MLSKINS]

This shouldn't even be debatable

I can admit I was wrong. Not only is it a debate, it is a good one.

[MLSKINS]

But half of you are saying that Cabrera deserves credit for helping his team to the playoffs, but he didn't help his team win as many games as Trout's did! Its in response to this ridiculous assertion that Miggy was more valuable because his team made the playoffs, despite the fact that they would not have made the playoffs if they were in the AL West.

Pressure is pressure. Don't matter who you are playing, when it's on the line you either rise to it or not.

So when you combine that with the Triple Crown, and their playoff run, you have to give it to Miggy.

[Tulane Skins Fan]

Pressure is pressure. Don't matter who you are playing, when it's on the line you either rise to it or not.

So when you combine that with the Triple Crown, and their playoff run, you have to give it to Miggy.

If the Tigers and Angels were in the same division, then the Tigers would have finished behind the Angels. And then you'd be saying Trout's season was more valuable?

And as for pressure, I already showed that Trout had a higher WPA then Miggy.

[MLSKINS]

If the Tigers and Angels were in the same division, then the Tigers would have finished behind the Angels. And then you'd be saying Trout's season was more valuable?

How would we know? They aren't in the same division, we don't know how the Tigers would have reacted.