Joe Mauer is your 2009 AL MVP and Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter were both shut out of first-place votes! This was already mentioned in the cup of coffee, but I figured it deserved its own post.
Joe got all but one first-place vote and was second on that ballot. Some moron voted for Miguel Cabrera. You know, the idiot that went on a drunken binge in the final week of the season while his team's lead in the division was wasting away to Mauer's Twins. It will be interesting to see who voted for Cabrera. My guess is it was a Detroit writer. Either that, or the guy voted for O-Cab and the BBWAA assumed he meant Miguel.
I also have been noticing a lot of Favre for MVP love right now. Could the Twin Cities have the MVPs for the nation's two most prominent sports this year?
Remember the time Joe Mauer won the MVP award? That was awesome.
SHOULD HAVE BEEN #3!!!!
Arguable. Fangraphs lists him as fourth in 2006. Sizemore has a sizeable lead over number two as well. Plus, there's Santana.
His second consecutive though? Definitely.
No defense awarded to catchers by fangraphs.
Or baserunning. Adding in baserunning from BP (EQBRR-EQSBR) widens the gap to nearly two wins. Mauer better have had a magical defensive season.
I'm in the camp that didn't think he necessarily deserved MVPs in 2006 and 2008, just that he should have been higher than his Canadian teammate both years and instead of 6th and 4th should have been about 3rd and 2nd. I was fine with Petunia last year, Mauer should have been #2. Now this year on the other hand, no doubt about it. Get him locked up Billy.
Per ESPN: "Cabrera's first-place vote came from Keizo Konishi of Kyodo News, a member of the Seattle chapter."
But Neyer and Law weren't judged worthy by the BBWAA. Heh.
Run him up the pole!!!
You, spookymilk, and frightwig should pay him a visit.
I see that Dave Cameron has commented via Twitter:
And the same goes here. Never heard of the guy. I went to the Kyondo News English website, and to look at any of the baseball articles I found at first, you need to be a subscriber. Which is too bad, because it looks like they might have English-language NPB coverage.
Consider him visited, if I ever figure out who the hell he is.
He's part of the Ichiro contingent. Kyodo News is based in Tokyo and distributes its content to Japanese media.
So Miggy is big in Japan?
Not sure, but binge drinking and spousal abuse are.
Prior to this, Konishi's most notable claim to fame (or infamy) in the US was when he wrote up an interview with Ichiro after the 2005 season which sparked speculation that Ichiro was unhappy in Seattle, after a sloppy English translation of the article came out in the Seattle P-I. Reporter aims to get it right.
In the linked piece, he talks a bit about his background. He's been covering Ichiro since 1994, and came to Seattle with Ichiro in 2001 to continue his beat. Also, "one of my jobs as a reporter for more than 15 years [since about 1990, then] for the international news organization Kyodo News has been to write Japanese articles based on English news reports." So he translates or rewrites American articles for the Japanese audience, in addition to covering Ichiro and the Mariners.
Looking at the traditional stats right now, I can only guess that he voted for Cabrera because he may have seemed like the best combination of avg. and HR/RBI, to his mind. (A lower avg. than Mauer or Jeter, but more HR/RBI; not as much HR/RBI as Teixeira, but a better avg.) Silly, but it's the only thing that makes any sense, that doesn't involve sake.
So, who decided that this cat got a vote?
Good question. I don't want to come off as xenophobic, but you would think that members of the Baseball Writers Association of America should be, you know, American. Although many of them barely qualify as writers, so maybe I'm off base.
It's not the NOT AMERICAN that bugs me. It's that he's not really covering the game. He's covering ONE PLAYER and translating stories written by others.
You might remember last year the brouhaha about Neyer and Keith Law not getting BBWAA membership because they didn't attend enough games or some such, despite covering the game extensively for years for the WWL. So, these guys, insightful writers (even though I don't always agree) are shunned, but a translator who follows Ichiro! around gets a card and is selected by the BBWAA to cast one of the two votes for league MVP?
I laugh at you, BBWAA! You are a joke, even if your members did a pretty good job selecting the winners (the fact that that is a story is also humorous).
I laugh at you, BBWAA!
BBWAA-ha-ha!
Without reading his regular filings for Kyodo News, we don't know how much general coverage of the M's he normally writes. It looks like his primary reason for sitting in the pressbox is Ichiro, but he may qualify for BBWAA membership as a Mariners beat writer if he regularly files Mariners game recaps. Who knows.
IIRC, in all the controversy over whether or not internet writers should get admitted to the BBWAA, the BBWAA essentially claimed (and yes, it sounded completely ridiculous at the time, too) that it's main purpose was to help facilitate the process of beat writers getting credentials to see games in person. So if Mr. Konishi attends enough games each year, I don't think it really matters what he writes about, so long as he is regularly requesting credentials. He's probably writing Mariners recaps, though, since it's hard to fill all that many column-inches with any one player's exploits, but I don't think it really matters what specifically he's writing about.
Not to mention, if he's writing in Japanese, what's the likelihood that someone at the BBWAA is checking up on him?
"Hey, can anyone read the voting on this MVP ballot? It looks like chicken scratching! Aw heck, just put him down as a Miguel Cabrera, I guess."
The Kyodo News has an English site, it's just subscriber-only, so presumably it wouldn't be that hard for his colleagues to read his stuff.
Even still, though, I was listening to Reusse a while back and he was complaining that he hadn't been tapped by the BBWAA to vote on a prestigious award in years -- he was always getting MGR of the year. How did this guy get selected to vote for MVP?
BBWAAHAHAHAHA!
That is a bit of a head-scratcher. If I had to trust the judgment of any one TC media member, I would hope that nothing was riding on it, but I would choose Reusse.
Maybe Reusse doesn't get tapped for the big votes because he's not a beat writer. As a columnist, the BBWAA may assume that he doesn't see enough games or couldn't be an objective judge of value like they believe a beat reporter would.
Silly, but it's the only thing that makes any sense, that doesn't involve sake.
Considering Miggy's drinking habits down the stretch, you may want to consider possibilities that involve sake.
It was just about 6 months ago that Common Man wanted to issue an award for "most outrageous statement" because Dan Gladden said "someday there will be a statue of Mauer at Target Field"
The amount of crow eating the talking heads have had to do this year has been very enjoyable.
Is the morning show the only listenable hours on that station? I enjoyed this morning, because they were discussing the kid from Christmas Story going into porn. Hard hitting topics.
Joe C.:
Reusse probably not liking that comment.
Could the Twin Cities have the MVPs for the nation's two most prominent sports this year?
possibly
too bad the Wild and Wolves stink. The TC's could go for the clean sweep in player trophies!
Joe Mauer.
Mark Prior.
Barreiro says he's actually going to have Mauer on his show in 20 minutes.
Hinske!
Upon reflection of the results, I think Shin Soo-Choo should have had a reasonable number of downballot votes, did not get one. He's my John Buck of 2009. I think I would have voted him #5 or so.