Red Sox

[cookie6]

thanks

lets start over-no more mean-ness K?

[residentalien]

Like I said I honestly don't know his prowess at 3rd this year. I just remember him getting off to a shaky start. I just don't see his defensive skills factoring into the MVP voting.

there has to be an impact on the field too...not just batting. have u seen ortiz play 1st base??

[nomembername]

lets start over-no more mean-ness K?

maybe if you stopped acting like a B I T C H you wouldn't make so many enemies on here and have to keep starting over with people

[cookie6]

maybe if you stopped acting like a B I T C H you wouldn't make so many enemies on here and have to keep starting over with people

like who gives a care OOOOO KKKKKK ????

Did you get the message I think I left you on Friday??

[nomembername]

there has to be an impact on the field too...not just batting. have u seen ortiz play 1st base??

I wouldn't say "has to"...like I said I have no problem giving it to an everyday DH player but I just think his numbers need to be much better than lets say a player like A Rod who happens to play 3rd base extremely well.

Than again you can also look at it from the point of view where a guy like Giambi or Juan Gonzalez won the MVP and they were extremely bad in the field. They don't get votes taken away from them for hurting the team in the field.

I don't know, it can definitely be argued either way but as of now my vote would still go to A Rod

[nomembername]

Did you get the message I think I left you on Friday??

told ya know...you probably dialed the wrong # and left it for someone else cause i didn't get shit

[phatbastad]

there has to be an impact on the field too...not just batting. have u seen ortiz play 1st base??

Except for a small handful of games I haven't seen Ortiz play the field this year. Have you seen A-Rod make a ton of game saving defensive plays this year? You talk about him as if he is the 2nd coming of Ozzie fuckin Smith. I got news for you. He isnt. He is meidocre at best as a fielder. IMO very few writers are going to look at his defense. They are gonna look at how many bombs each player has hit and how many RBI's they drove in. Maybe Ortiz's offensive production will over shadow A-Rod's just a lil more cos he has more game winning hits.

oh wait so for Cy Young they are going to look at Wins, Losses, ERA, strikeouts oh and your fielding pct at that position?

[xlr8ted]

In the national league its Andruw Jones hands down.. guy is tearing people apart at the plate and hes got a great glove.

[phatbastad]

In the national league its Andruw Jones hands down.. guy is tearing people apart at the plate and hes got a great glove.

No doubt he's runnin away with it....AND a perennial gold glover every year....

[headpusher]

In the national league its Andruw Jones hands down.. guy is tearing people apart at the plate and hes got a great glove.

Derek Lee

[nomembername]

Have you seen A-Rod make a ton of game saving defensive plays this year? You talk about him as if he is the 2nd coming of Ozzie fuckin Smith. I got news for you. He isnt. He is meidocre at best as a fielder. IMO very few writers are going to look at his defense.

Yes I have seen him make a bunch of amazing plays this year. You keep saying he's "mediocre at best" yet you admitted to not seeing him play the field that much this year. I'm not saying he's Ozzie Smith either but he is well above average...i think he's showing signs of being a GREAT all around 3rd baseman.

[cookie6]

told ya know...you probably dialed the wrong # and left it for someone else cause i didn't get shit

LOL

I wouldnt doubt it. I remember it was like 5:30ish and I saw some guy repeatedly grabbing his crotch and I thought of you I couldnt really hear anything (or see) at that point and I thought I called you LOL

[residentalien]

Derek Lee

disgaree albert puljols

[nomembername]

Derek Lee

No shot...MVP usually goes to someone who has helped carry his team to the playoffs. Gonna be Jones or Pujols...I might be inclined to give it to Jones just because he carried the Braves on his back while Chipper was out but I think in the end Pujols will get it

[phatbastad]

Yes I have seen him make a bunch of amazing plays this year. You keep saying he's "mediocre at best" yet you admitted to not seeing him play the field that much this year. I'm not saying he's Ozzie Smith either but he is well above average...i think he's showing signs of being a GREAT all around 3rd baseman.

What I am saying is b/c we dont get Yanks games up here I dont see him on an every day basis and can only go by the few times I have seen him. Which was at the beg of the year here he made a few errors early. You would know better than I if he was showing signs of being a great 3rd baseman. but to say that his defense will carry him over Ortiz for the MVP.....I dont know about that.

[phatbastad]

No shot...MVP usually goes to someone who has helped carry his team to the playoffs. Gonna be Jones or Pujous...I might be inclined to give it to Jones just because he carried the Braves on his back while Chipper was out but I think in the end Pujous will get it

Agreed

[basicmike]

Pitchers have won the MVP in the American League and they are "one dimensional". But I agree that Ortiz would have to be far and away the better hitter to be a favorite for the award.

[phatbastad]

Ortizzle....HOLLA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[basicmike]

Kid is on Fiya... back 2 back!

[mixwell]

Fuck A-Rod! MVP is all about Ortiz. He hasn't done shit on the field, but he has drop some mad bombs. Clutch performance. I am sure that these two will be close in the votes.

As for the national league, I also feel that Andruw Jones. He has done an awesome job with the Braves. Haven't heard much out of Derek Lee in a while.

[calebdead]

Nobody will dispute that Andruw Jones has had a fabulous year. But he might not have had quite as fabulous a year as you might think. If you just check his RBI totals, it's an impressive sight to see he's opened a 16-RBI gap over Albert Pujols and Pat Burrell. But not all RBI totals are created equal. And especially in this case. Despite all those RBIs, Jones' batting average with runners in scoring position was .225 or someshit -- 111 points lower than Pujols (.336) and 85 points lower than Burrell (.310). That might not seem possible. But when one guy (Jones) has almost 40 more plate appearances with men in scoring position than another guy (Pujols), it's real possible. What's just as possible is that Jones could actually set a record for lowest average by a modern RBI champ with runners in scoring position. In the 30 years the Elias Sports Bureau has kept those scoring-position numbers, the lowest average by any RBI champ was .252, by Eddie Murray in the 1981 strike season. Lowest in a full season: .256, by Vinny Castilla last year. To avoid this not-so-coveted feat, Jones would need to go 8-for-8 in these spots over the next couple of weeks, by our calculations. Wish him luck. You'd hate to see a season like this end in a record like that

[calebdead]

As for the Ortiz-AROD debate...It's all about value. Take away each respective player from their team and try to see which one would still be in the playoff hunt.

[calebdead]

Lee- 117 AB w/ RISP, .342 BA w/ RISP

Pujols- 128 AB w/ RISP, .328 BA w/ RISP

Jones- 170 AB w/ RISP, .224 BA w/ RISP

[basicmike]

As for the Ortiz-AROD debate...It's all about value. Take away each respective player from their team and try to see which one would still be in the playoff hunt.

From sonsofsamhorn

Like many here, I've always had a general sense that, while Alex Rodriguez is always able to put up huge numbers for the Yankees, it seems like most of his actual prodcution happens in the 19-8 blowouts (3-5, 5 R, 3 RBI) and not in the tough close extra inning games (1-9, 1 R, 2 RBI). Ortiz obviously has the exact opposite feeling. The question isn't just "which one is more clutch?" or "who would you want up with the game on the line?" although those are both relevant questions and I can't imagine any Yankee fan would honestly say Rodriguez to either. The question is, "how many games did Rodriguez actually help the Yankees win this year?" and the same for Ortiz. For that, it seems to me, is the real meaning of the word valuable.

So I went through all pulled out all the games in which the player was the difference maker for his team. That is to say, all the games in which the player's team won, but if you took away the runs produced by the player, the game would be a tie or a defeat [any game in which the players team won and R+RBI-HR>= Run differential]. I then looked closer at those games, to see how many times the player produced a key run (a tying or winning run) and how many times the player produced a key run late in the game.

For Rodriguez, the answer is 23. That is, there have been 23 games that the Yankees have won this year by a number less than or equal to the number of runs produced by ARod. Of those, removing ARod's production would result in a loss in 7 games, and a tie in the remaining 16.

Ortiz, meanwhile, has been the difference maker in 27 Red Sox victories. Of those, 12 would have been losses without Ortiz' run production, and 15 would have been ties.

Thus, assuming a .580 winning percentage for both teams in all the 'tie' games (generous given the shape of the Sox bullpen), the standings without the offense of Rodriguez and Ortiz looks something like this:

Yankees 72-77

Red Sox 69-81 3.5 GB

(of course, this is replacing the two superstars not with a league average player, but rather with a player who never drives in or scores any runs at all, so the dramatic difference in records is unsurprising)

So on one level, the answer to the question 'how much is Ortiz' offense worth relative to Rodriguez' is approximately four games; the difference between a half game lead and a three and half game deficit. Another look through the numbers makes it look even greater, however. In the games where Rodriguez' production has been a difference maker for the Yankees, ARod has produced the tying or winning run in 13 of those games, and has produced the tying or winning run late in 6 games. Here, the difference with Ortiz is massive. Ortiz has produced a tying or winning run in 22 of the 27 games in which he has been a difference maker. In more than half of those games, the tying or winning run was produced late in the game (13 times, which doesn't count the fact that on August 16, he hit both the home run to tie the game and the hr to win the game, both late).

I would never use something like this as a measure of calculating an individual player's ability, since it so obviously is dependant on a wide variety of team factors, and I'm sure that over the course of a million iterations the difference would even out. But the MVP award is about performance, not ability. Be it random chance, a mythical clutch hitting ability, or some other factor, it seems obvious to me that Ortiz' offense has won significantly more games for the Sox than Rodriguez has. It seems difficult to imagine that Rodriguez' defense has been a difference maker in four Yankee wins (and his advantage in basestealing is either already counted in his runs scored, or not worth counting). As a result, and with this extremely narrow focus, I would have to say that Ortiz has been the more valuable player.

[nomembername]

It's going to come down to who makes the playoffs and that last weekend series in Fenway