“What unites baseball fans? Throwing arms? Gold gloves? Pennants? Stats. There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good stat. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it. “And who has a better statline than Breg the ‘brew-kin? The boy who fell from a high desert and lived in a swamp. He knew they should but wouldn’t walk him, so he learned to hit fly balls beyond the Wall, replaced the crippled boy at Short, and became the Two-Time Champion.” “He is our memory, the keeper of all our stories. The WARs, no-no’s, playoff berths, massacres, famines. Our triumphs, our defeats, our past. Who better to win the AL MVP?” —Jose “The Dwarf” Targuve
Shouldn't have spent the first 2 months or so popping the ball up every 3 ABs. The batting average on those is pretty damn low.
The argument Stros media should be pushing is the AL and NL debates are exactly the same. Both Yelich and Trout played about 130-134 games then got injuries knocking them out for the year, yet both have significant leads in most of the rate statistics. Both Bellinger and Bregman, played most of the season with dominant offensive teams and lead in most of the categorical stats. Trout always get this huge bounce for playing CF, but he is not the best at the position. No one has Yelich as having a mortal lock on the award, if anything it could either way. And his many of his rate statistics are better than Trout's. So why should Trout be considered a "near unanimous" selection?
A homer is worth about 0.16 WAR. 2 homers should do it provided he doesn't go 0fer his other PAs or makes errors.
Their wars are about the same. Being on the field should count for something. Plus bregman's team is good. Give him the MVP.
No way the national media gives all the awards to the Astros. If Bregman played for the Yankess, he would win it hands down.
Baseball isn't as bought into the fake hype surrounding this award. D.J. Lemehaiu has had a huge year for the Yankees, and was getting a little MVP talk this summer... its non-existent now because even NY-biased hype can't fake the numbers.
It's the consensus top 2 and then a bunch of guys - LeMahieu/Semien/Cruz/Devers/Verlander/Cole, but don't be shocked if LeM gets a good number of 2nd place votes
I'm glad they put the part about "less than 90 Ks," because that gets almost completely overlooked, and Trout has way more Ks for many fewer games and at-bats. That's a strong "best player" stat, IMO. However, they completely missed the part that TK and Blum rightly were pushing hard which was Bregman's defensive contribution. In 150 games, Bregs played 86 games at 3rd, 50 at SS, 13 at both positions, at one as DH-SS. His defensive WAR (per BB-ref) was 1.2 compared to Trout's 0.3 for what it's worth. From what's I've read, overall WAR underestimates fielding. Normally, I'd rarely consider record as a key factor in MVP voting, but when your team lost 90 games, it's like you're not even playing in the same league at that point. More of AAAA team than a pro-level competitive team. You can't even really compare anymore. I know Bregs isn't going to win, but that's going to be because of NBA-quality justifications. He's close enough in offensive stats that all the other considerations ought to easily take him over the top in the absurd scenario this season.
Seems like the "not on a winning team" argument has always hurt Houston candidates in the past, though I may be thinking of the Rockets more than the Astros. As a Houston fan it's annoying for the trend to be "eh, who cares" in this case.
Ironically, not playing defense and only playing half a season won't prevent Yordan from winning ROTY. It would be real interesting to see that voting if there was another strong candidate.
If Bregman doesn't win, it is because he lost the media narrative. If Bregman wins, it will be because Trout lost the media narrative. NBA doesn't have anything to do with this. Bregman and Trout helped their teams win games by basically the same amount. I'd vote Bregman, but how I would vote won't change anything.
