Mauer Gets MVP But Writers Have Some Explaining To Do

Well the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) got most of the awards right including Joe Mauer winning the 2009 American League Most Valuable Player Award. He was listed on 27 of 28 ballots as the first place candidate. The other vote? Not Derek Jeter or Mark Teixeira or Kendry Morales or Kevin Youkilis....

It was for Miguel Cabrera. MIGUEL CABRERA!

This is the same guy who was out late drinking with the opposing team the night before his team's most important game of the season, the guy who was so out of control once he got home that his wife had to call the cops on him, they same guy who experts said could never have been sober by game time, and yes, the same guy who did this all while his team was spiraling out of a playoff spot. Inexcusable.

As I said at the beginning of October: "Miguel Cabrera...decided it was more important to get drunk and party with the White Sox players until all hours of the morning while his team was fighting for a playoff spot. Then he came home at 5 AM 3 times over the legal limit for driving, woke up his child and his wife, got into a physical altercation with his wife (complete with some nice scratches), and had to go to the police station because he was "very uncooperative and highly intoxicated". What did he do the next two days, the two most important days for the Tigers? He went 0-4 and left four runners on base in the first game and went 0-3 in the last game. That's not being an MVP. Say what you want about A-Rod, but he'd never do this. The Detroit Free Press has more details and Shysterball talks more about the fact this is his second police incident in about a month."

I listed Miguel Cabrera as my Least Valuable Player and said this last week: "[Cabrera] would have been a top-7 MVP candidate and then he decided to go out and drink with the opposing team before the biggest part of his team's season. They didn't make the playoffs and I hold him responsible. If any writers voted for him because they didn't wait until the end of the season, they should be ashamed of themselves."

And yet some writer put him FIRST on an MVP ballot. Voting privileges should be revoked from that writer. According to Ken Davidoff (via Twitter): "Keizo Konishi of Kyodo News, based in Seattle, voted Miguel Cabrera first."

Some other voting head scratchers:

• 16 players finished above Zack Greinke who made it only onto 4 ballots (that's 14%) and Felix Hernandez got only one vote. 

• Finishing ahead of King Felix? Placido Polanco(?!?!) who hit .285/.331/.396 which gave him an adjusted OPS of 88, or more than 10% below league average.

• Jason Bay finished 7th thanks to a 3rd and a 4th place vote. Did those two people hand in their ballots before the All-Star break?

• A-Rod got a 3rd place vote but was left off of 21 ballots. Ummm...?

• Ben Zobrist got less than half of the points that Jason Bay did despite Zobrist's WAR (according to FanGraphs) leading the Major Leagues at 8.6 and Jason Bay finishing at 61st with a 3.5 WAR (which was below Nick Swisher).

• Derek Jeter has one 8th, one 9th and one 10th place vote. How exactly did those writers figure out that 7, 8 and 9 people were more valuable than Jetes?

• Lastly, Robinson Cano finished ahead of Evan Longoria. I'm a Yankees fan, but seriously?

Curious some of your other thoughts. Please post in the comments below. A summary of all the voting can be found on the BBWAA website.

Update 2:50 PM: Ummm....I think someone should check this guy's bank account to see if he was paid off by Cabrera: @jasoncollette: With that 1st place vote, Miggy got pushed up to 4th place and got $200,000 bonus. Without it, no bonus. Wow