This One's For You, Andre Dawson, And You Too, Ernie Banks

I will take this portion of the blog space/time to get a minor point of baseball irritation off my chest. It isn’t relevant at the moment, since MLB won’t be selecting its Most Valuable Players for several months, but I kind of just woke up thinking about it and went with it.

I’ve argued for a long time that baseball’s MVP award is simpler than the baseball writers will allow it to be. It is not a philosophical puzzle. The award should go to the player with the most outstanding performance of the season. That title, in itself, is often worthy of the kind of tasty debate baseball people live for. In fact, deciding which player had the best year should be the only issue at hand for an MVP voter or commenter. We don’t need the etymology or the interpretive permutations of meaning for the word “valuable”. We don’t need to arbitrarily add qualifying requirements which don’t officially exist, like when we insist that an MVP play for a playoff team (a notion widely accepted as an unwritten rule). All an MVP has to do is have the best season out of all the players in his league.

The baseball writers who vote, by thoughtfully considering their reasons, rightfully exercise diligence in their selections. They get it right far more often than not, but they sometimes stray into the realm of overanalysis. According to Wikipedia, the criteria for choosing a most valuable player were left intentionally undefined, providing a fruitful opportunity for interpretive debate. That can be productive. Hyper focusing on solving the mystery surrounding the word “valuable” has, I think, led to the cult of the playoff team prerequisite. After all, according to this line of thinking, how valuable can a player be if he doesn’t spur his team into the playoffs? How valuable to his team’s success can a player be, if his team has little success?

The flaw with this requirement is that, the way I understand it, players outside the pennant race have no value.  That’s curious. And ridiculous. And it directly contradicts voter guidelines. There is no mention of this prerequisite in the MVP criteria handbook (which also doesn’t exist), but, instead, there is a reminder that playing on a playoff team is specifically not a requirement:  

BBWAA members assigned to the National League Most Valuable Player committee are told, “There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means. It is up to the individual voter to decide who was the Most Valuable Player in each league to his team. The MVP need not come from a division winner or other playoff qualifier.
“The rules of the voting remain the same as they were written on the first ballot in 1931: (1) actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense; (2) number of games played; (3) general character, disposition, loyalty and effort; (4) former winners are eligible; and (5) members of the committee may vote for more than one member of a team.”  http://www.opposingviews.com/i/what-are-the-guidelines-for-mlb-mvp-voting

Does the best player on the best team have more value than the best player on an also-ran team? I say no, not necessarily. A player isn’t responsible for overcoming the limitations of his team, nor is he due the praise for team success. The MVP is an individual award given in a team sport. It is not a team award. The team’s fortunes are rewarded or punished in the standings and the playoff race. The MVP award shines a light on one player’s performance in each league.

If, for argument’s sake, we allow ourselves to color outside the lines in order to favor players only on playoff teams, then I might as well indulge in a construct equally artificial in rebuttal. My point is this: wouldn’t the player with the best season, playing on a non-contending team and having the most value to that team, also carry the most value if he were put on any team in the league? Wouldn’t that player tip the scales of a pennant race if thrust onto any contending team? The MVP is a league award given for individual performance in a team game. The best individual performance in the league would most benefit any team in that league. That’s value, if we want to play the interpretation game.

I don’t think I’d be breaking any news to suggest that the interpretive wiggle room, when misused, has most often come to justify the selection of a player more popular with writers than another. Matt Kemp should have been MVP last year, and I think playing for a playoff team, not popularity with the writers, is what won it for Ryan Braun. But I remember feeling like Albert Belle should have won in 1995 instead of Mo Vaughn (though Edgar Martinez might have been even better). Belle was reputedly in the sporting media’s doghouse. Ted Williams was notoriously at odds with sportswriters, and although he actually won two MVP awards, he probably should have won three more. I thank Ernie Banks and Andre Dawson for making my point for me, and I tip my hat to the writers who voted them MVP without sniffing the postseason.