The NL MVP comes down to 2 guys in my opinion. And until recently (actually 20 minutes ago) I was saying that Ryan Howard should win the MVP. I admit now that I was wrong (ah the horror). I, like most others who have been supporting Howard, have used these 3 points to make my case:
1) Howard has more home runs than Pujols (48-37)
2) More RBI (146-116)
3) His team made the playoffs (and this is always a factor in voting whether you think it should be or not)
But in almost every other statistic you look at Pujols has the edge (and it's not even close in many cases). I knew Pujols had a huge advantage over Howard in average (.357 to .251), but I decided this wasn't enough to take the award away from Howard. The thing that really put me into Pujols corner was his slugging percentage was higher than Howard's (.653 to .543). This I was not expecting. I figured Howard should at least be ahead of Pujols in every power category if he's going to strikeout 199 times and bat .251. Pujols also led Howard in total bases, 342-331, while playing in 14 fewer games than Howard.
I am one of those people who does like to consider team performance in giving out MVP, but in this case the numbers aren't that close (thanks media for misleading me here, do I have to do everything myself). Hopefully the media doesn't end up giving Howard the MVP over Pujols again like they did in 2006.
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