If didn’t have work to do, I’d try and initiate the public shaming.

“Seriously, this is like giving the Pulitzer Prize to Jugs.”

Actually, this is worse than giving the Pulitzer Prize to Jugs – at least a piece in Jugs would probably be consistent with the stated aim of the magazine.

I could fill out an MVP ballot in a dream and have it make more sense. Sure, the ballot would contain maybe my old neighbor, Chester A. Arthur, a milk truck, and Jeff Reboulet, but it’d still be better than an MVP ballot that lists Carlos Delgado above Albert Pujols.

He can be contrarian, that’s for sure. I think he’s a good writer and when he does his miscellaneous radio spots he’s quick witted and funny. He’s also quite unlike the typical compromised beat reporter. Not toward the end, but in the heart of the season he and Yost would go at it pretty hard. I loved it when the postgame would have audio clips and you’d hear those guys elevating their voices and borderline yelling. Yost never wanted to be questioned and he did it regardless. I can’t recall a single question that wasn’t legitimate either.

His reputation goes way back. Wendy Selig-Prieb nicknamed him the Prince of Darkness for his questions.

His vote for MVP? Since there is no definition to work from and he provides his thinking, I’d put him a notch above a lot of people. Most of the critics want raw stat lines to be the absolute determining factor. If they define “most valuable” that way, fine.

Nobody talks about what an obnoxious jerk Pujols can be. He often seems to think that he should get preferential treatment for no good reason. I remember a pitchfx breakdown of the year before last and the guy had an awful lot of strikes down the middle called balls. Maybe he thinks its all owed to him somehow. He was also in the middle of plays that could be called dirty like the one where he slid off the base path and injured a player. Was it dirty? I don’t know.

I didn’t see enough of his late year performance to draw a conclusion but he did have a number of late season opportunities against the Brewers where he failed and substituted it with histrionics and physical posturing. I don’t care enough to check Ludwick’s late season hitting, but Haudricourt offered that contrast.

I think its kind of a stupid award anyway. For all I care, Braun can get votes because he’s under contract. I don’t want Prince to get a vote because he’s in arbitration and it’ll drive up his cost. Pujols can have it because it just makes him that much more expensive.

Besides, Pujols says that he got the award because of the decision of an unnamed deity. Since the deity is all powerful, Haudricourt was somehow just doing what he was told.

I just don’t think he falls in the elite hitter category this year. (He may well be an elite hitter in the future, though.) Ten other NL hitters had a better OPS than Braun. And some of them played more difficult positions than Braun. According to Fangraphs, Braun had a negative clutch number, meaning that his WPA declined in leveraged in situations. That may or may not mean anything. But based on WPA and the clutch contribution, Berkman was better…well, the best if you want to rely on just WPA.

For all the reasons clack stated, Braun came up short, and Howard wasn’t even the best guy on his team.

As for the Brad Lidge controversy, his nomination violates the rules of the voting:

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.

5. Members of the committee may vote for more than one member of a team.

Rule number two pretty much rules out Lidge. So does rule number one. He never pitched more than an inning and he only pitched 69.1 innings in 72 appearances — so couldn’t really even have provided his team that much value. If Howard wasn’t the most valuable player on his own team, Lidge definitely wasn’t either.

The BWAA is a joke.

that people keep bringing up Pujols’ statements back in 2006. It’s not like he determines the rules for winning the MVP. If he was the most valuable player, then he deserves the MVP. And, what’s more, if you buy his line about players who don’t make it to the playoffs not deserving the MVP, why vote for him at all?

What strikes me as really odd about Haudricourt’s ballot (beyond the sheer number of Brewers on it), is that he put Delgado at #4. The Mets didn’t make the postseason, so why vote Delgado so high?

Well, I suspect Haudricourt would say, it’s not Delgado’s fault that the Mets’ bullpen sucked. Delgado made significant contributions (though Wright and Beltran contributed a hell of a lot more) to his team’s playoff hopes. But the same would be true of Pujols and the Cardinals or Berkman and the Stros. Just by looking at Haudricourt’s ballot, it seems like he just threw darts at a board after putting Howard at #1. It doesn’t seem like his voting was governed by any logic or reason, just a sense for cliche and intense homerism.

In the end, I think this really shows the problems inherent in baseball’s award structure. The writers are (despite a few gems like Joe Posnanski) a bunch of idiots. And, while I don’t think that they are any smarter or less susceptible to bullshit, I’d prefer it if the players and managers voted. That seems to make some sense.

As for the Cards fans getting all hyped up about this: I can understand it. It would be really cool to see Berkman win the MVP, just like it was cool to see Clemens win the Cy Young (I’m a little too remember Bagwell’s MVP, though I suppose I was in Kindergarten at the time). The Cardinals probably have the best player in baseball right now (and if he keeps going at this pace, maybe the greatest of all time), and it’s legitimate to want his greatness to be recognized by all of baseball.